Zombieless Train to Busan

For the average-knowledge person like myself who knew Korean culture by flashes of movies and Buzzfeed suggestions on Youtube, the word Busan rang in my head with correlation of the famous apocalyptic film that had that word in its title, Train to Busan. A great film, and lots of zombies. It seemed to me that the wonder of this country went as far as its capital city. Should this trip solely come from my itinerary then I wouldn’t be coming there too, leaving all those wonderful parts into oblivion. But truly, I did find quite great experiences in Busan.

A three-hour ride from Seoul would get yourself to the city of Busan. Surely it was nothing compare to the outcries of Seoul with all the excitement of Gangnam, wearing adorable hanbok on Gyeongbokgung, your crazy skin cares spending in Myeong-dong, or those romantic getaway in Namiseom. And yet Busan turned out to be a delightful city (and by my personal view, it was definitely resided by more elder people in comparison to the youth ones) and kind of served as the slower pace of vacation in preparation for coming back to the hassle of a corporate employee. Sort of buffer period days so then all the vacation vibes would not be abruptly halted.

Among the wide selection of tourism places in Busan, largely we visitted these two: colorful houses in Gamcheon-dong and the famous off-the-sea bridge of Oryukdo Skywalk.

Gamcheon-dong Culture Village

Those colorful houses in Saha District bore many resemblances to the one in Venice’s Burono or the Indonesia’s version of Kampung Warna Warni in Malang. Almost all of the houses were painted colorful (duh, thus the name) and if you saw how they looked like from above the hill it was wonderful!

Wrote about those amazing two places here: Venice and Malang.

The place provided a map for us to walk through the official walking-track so then to ensure that every tourist coming to Gamcheon-dong got the best experience this place offered. Along the walking track, there were a lot of houses turned into souvenirs shop, restaurant and, the best of all, fish cake shops. Were those fish cakes and their warm savory broth perfect with Korea’s autumn weather. The map noted some unique spots for us to witness the majestic view when the valley of colorful houses met the vast ocean ahead, and some others unique installation arts.

In order for us to reach this beautiful village, it took several transportation of metro train and bus. Busan indeed didn’t have the wide integrated metro network as Seoul’s, therefore we had to pay a good deal of attention of its bus schedule. Once you mastered it, going places in Busan would be a child’s play.

Oryukdo Skywalk

Those friends of mine kept saying that this place was a must as it appeared on the famous reality show of Running Man (which apparently I missed that episode and basically just lost track on the number of episodes it had now) and by going there it would cross another bullet point on their bucket list. How one’s expectation were just not getting high there.

This skywalk was seated by the ocean so far from the Airbnb that we rented in. It took us more than an hour by bus to reach it. After sitting on the bus for that long time and kept sneaking at my Google Maps every five minutes to ensure that we were on the right bus number, we finally arrived at the edge of nowhere. We got to the right place, but there was nothing there except for the adrenaline-challenged bridge. There was not even any restaurant, supermarket or our most-lovely fish cake shop. Having made all tourists to reach the place so far away, in my opinion, they could have created the place more convenient with all those other attractions otherwise for most of the visitors it would be a five-minute walk on the bridge then went home experience, including us.

And Fun fact, by the time I was there in South Korea, it turned that the government had decided to ban Google Maps from its official and international recognized navigation app. Later I found that Korean had another navigation app that’s using the whole Hangul to navigate. Therofre using the Google Maps would surely make you look back as a young scout that consistently rotate your phone to look for the True North.

In spite of that, the view from the bridge was indeed magnificent and clearly you could see how vivid the waves crashing the rocks down there. It was free of charge to have your five-minute walk on the bridge, but you could only do it once. The officer there wouldn’t allow us to get our second route.

For me it was always fascinating and fulfilling to venture to different parts of the world, even as a small adventure as looking at another tourism spots in South Korea other than Seoul. I found some new compelling side of the country that it was not all about the buzzing streets and alleys, or the highly hyped of Idols and K-Pop industry. It surely put Busan as one of the must-to-visit place on your Korea itinerary and little did we know that the prices there were definitely cheaper compare to Seoul, even by halves! Lovely, right?

-R