Somewhere In Busan…

Everyone knows that when you visit South Korea, Busan is one of the biggest destination stops. It’s a city near the beach and has various sights to see and things to eat. Thanks to Korea’s fast and reliable transportation, Busan is easily reachable from Seoul in a 3 hour train ride. I was thankfully able to plan a trip this past weekend to this very city! I stayed for three nights, in two accommodations, and had an overall great time during my explorations.

The biggest highlight from my trip was Gamcheon Village. This is probably one of the top three tourist spots in Busan. It’s a village known for the seemingly endless multicolored houses and artsy exhibits throughout it. It’s a spot that takes quite a long time to fully get through; the longest recommended route being about 2 to 3 hours. For 2,000 won you can buy a map that shows the different routes, the pit stops they recommend to take, photo zones, gift shops, cafes, etc. As you follow the routes there are different “Stamp Zones,” where you stamp the designated parts of your brochure and you obtain postcards. My group decided to take the second longest route throughout the village. It was a pretty nice route for what it was worth, we only missed a small part of the neighborhood. I was truly taken aback by the beauty of the area and the time seemed to pass so quickly despite us being there for hours on end. Once we reached the end of the park and I had seen most of the sights, I could understand why Gamcheon Village is such a popular attraction. I wouldn’t mind visiting another time somewhere down the line.

While in Busan, I could tell that the atmosphere was quite different from Seoul. Despite receiving a lot of questioning stares in Seoul, it is nothing compared to the stares we were met with while in Busan. Additionally, I thought that because I’m not fluent in Korean I wouldn’t be able to detect the Busan dialect, but there multiple times I was able to notice a stark difference between the tones of Busan compared to the tones of Seoul. Even the little things like the train stations, the sidewalks and bus stops, and transportation card readers were contrasting and made different sounds. You can definitely observe how the pace of things are different from Seoul. This was a hard adjustment even for the three nights that my group and I stayed there for.