We took a look around the station, there were fishcake stores, convenience stores, dunkin donuts, paris baguette.
Finally decided to have Bonjuk Porridge as our first meal! It was located on the top floor and the place was huge with a ton of tables.
Look at this glorious set of mushroom oyster porridge and pumpkin porridge. Both were so delicious but portion was huge so truth to be told we could not finish and felt so bad about wasting food. My pumpkin porridge even had little rice cakes. Mum's oyster porridge had at least 8 oysters inside? Wew. Also that pink soup is a clear, slightly spicy cold radish soup.
Headed to the toilet and it had a view.... LATER GOT DRONE HOW. I ALREADY WORRIED ABOUT PIN HOLE CAMERA LIAO
Obligatory shot outside of Busan Station. I asked on my instagram earlier this year what to do and 90% of the replies were take the train... fight off zombies... like thanks fwens lub u 2.
We also noticed a ton of lockers here, even those which are big enough for your luggage so you might wanna use them if you need to store them.
We headed to Gamcheon Culture Village via taxi thereafter. The ride cost us 6,500 won and took only 10 minutes from Busan station. We realised that taxi rides are quite cheap and the road to the village entrance was SUCH A STEEP HILL WE WOULD HAVE NEVER MADE IT UP WITHOUT GIVING UP. That's an issue I had in my previous trip, where a straight path of 500 m could actually be an upslope with a 40 degree incline. Yikes.
The view at Gamcheon Culture Village was really pretty and we got lucky with the weather. No clear blue skies but grey skies. Yet with grey and gloomy weather it means that it was cooling too! :D
Looking at the screengrab of the map and after walking around haphazardly, we recommend first skipping the main entrance (marked in blue) and heading to this other parallel road (marked in purple). At this spot we had the lovelier view of Gamcheon as the buildings facing us (including the little prince statute) was prettier than when we stood at the other side. It made for a nice photo.
Thereafter, we actually walked down the slope and was guided by a local ahjumma who pointed at a steep staircase for us to get back on track onto the main road. Instead, you ought to head back to the main entrance and walk along the main road (the map above, with the orange line), all of the main attractions and the touristy murals and stuff pasted on the wall are actually along that one stretch.
There are actually other activities you can do which involves a map and getting chops but this included wandering further into the area where the residents actually stayed and I genuinely did not want to be a nuisance (or trip and fall due to all the steep stairs) so we decided to stick to the main road.
Along the way you can see this humongous macaron ice cream, we ate the yogurt flavoured one it was great. 4000 won though hmm a bit too overpriced on hindsight
My selfie stick also broke 5 HOURS AFTER LANDING INTO SOUTH KOREA so I bought a replacement straight away haha. There are a couple of souvenir shops and snack shops but we only popped into those which we thought were interesting.
Cafe Avent was a cafe which I heard has a fantastic view of the village and it located just toward the left of the main entrance to the village and the parallel road I was talking about. But we had to eat lunch so we left.
Took a taxi to Gukje Market AND WERE SO LOST. We went to Gwangjang Market before but we were lost as to how to navigate the huge market and it did not seem like we could buy anything useful for ourselves. The stores seemed to be somewhat closed also (this was about 12pm) so we wandered for the longest time, looking for street food and not finding any.
Also wandered into this random capsule toy store and I liked how they recycle the capsules? I hope it's not all for show :<
While walking toward Biff Square we walked past this Seollongtang store and we decided to eat there. Seollongtang is known as oxbone soup and it's like samgyetang (chicken) in terms of a clear soup but the taste is a bit different.
The restaurant is Nampo Seollongtang (남포설렁탕) and the address is 24-2 Nampodong 2(i)-ga, Jung-gu, Busan, South Korea.
My mum got a spicy beef noodle soup that looked so good other tables started copying us to get it too lol.
This was also when I started to notice that brown sugar bubbletea is everywhere. They love gula melaka so much?!
We shopped a little while around the Biff Square area as there were a couple of shops selling fashion, accessories and the usual korean beauty brands.
And I was actively looking for the APEACH Cafe. I fell in love with this character after going to this cafe.
Just look at that cheeky face.
And this "I'm so done with life" face.
Our food and drink was lovely this was arguably my favourite cafe visit of the entire trip. The cake was a layered caramel cake <3 And the drink my mum ordered was a berry ade containing popping bubbles and mine was a yogurt jelly drink with this huge yogurt flavoured jelly in the shape of apeach's face at the top. Price wise I don't think any cafe is all that cheap but yes it says a lot when the cost of this cafe order cost more than our lunch meal... 5000 won more, in fact.
And after we came out of the cafe towards Biff Square, AHA WE FINALLY SEE ALL THE ROAD SIDE STORES. I think they only set up at 4pm. 4 months of research and no one bothered telling me that they only set up at night. Sigh.
So this stretch of food stores which only opens in the later half of the afternoon is located north of the biff square location you find on googlemaps.
Sometimes I read so many blogs and no use there are so many things I cannot find answers to until I gave up and told my mum "MUMMY LET'S WING IT I CAN SPEAK KOREAN ANYWAY SCARED WHAT" and my mum trusts me saranghaeyoyoyo
Amongst all the items we only ate the 1,300 won famous hotteok with nuts and this other ahjumma was directing the way by collecting money from us and then making us queue in an orderly manner.
We were quite tired and too full so we decided not to eat anything else.
We were really near Jagalchi Market as well but again, too full and way too sleep deprived so we decided to head back to the hotel.
Before leaving I took a quick picture of all the hands of famous directors which is printed on the floor. We didn't want to walk the full stretch just to see the handprints so we left.
Toyoku-Inn... is really... unaccomodating and refused to let us into our room for an early check-in even though it was just 15 mins before 4pm. Seriously.
Anyway went to the hotel and took a short nap before we headed out for dinner.
I decided to bring us to Bonjeon Dwaeji Gukbap which mum found that was really near our place, just the opposite side of Busan Station, hence a mere 10 minute walk away.
I ordered the Dwaeji Gukbap, which is pork slices in soup (and you are supposed to add your rice into the soup to eat it together) and my mum ordered suyook, which is this steamed pork and the soup comes separately.
Honestly her suyook tasted soooooo good like the pork with salt was so deliciously soft yet flavourful, as though it was melting in my mouth. My pork soup was good also but not as tasty. It was a bit unfortunate that the bowls didn't really help to keep our soup warm and it became cold quite quickly so we had to eat fast.
After our delicious meal we headed to Seomyeon, which had an extensive underground shopping area. To be honest it was a wasted trip for us as it was okay but not as good as Seoul's goto mall and we didn't find the clothes and accessories etc very affordable. Didn't end up buying anything either. We also tried to go up to ground level but thursday night 9pm seems like a dead town already.
Perhaps it would have been better if we had gone to BIFF square again. I strongly recommend going to biff square after 4pm! #sian #imissmyhotteok
Oh great, Park Jimin <3
