Saturday, July 19, 2014

Ivy's Travel: Korea Trip Part 4


Day 6 (BIFF Square, Gukje Market, Busan Tower, Yongdusan Park, fly to Jeju Island)

Today we left Busan and fly to Jeju. It was sad to leave Busan. We regretted how we only spent a day there, but the ticket to Jeju has been bought, hotel has been booked, to make a changes would cost too much cancellation fee. :(
If you go to Korea, make sure spend at least two nights in Busan. The city is just too peaceful, I love the serenity.

BIFF (Busan International Film festival) Square

Our flight is not until late afternoon so we spent the morning visiting as many as places we could. We started our morning with a walk to BIFF Square. BIFF Square is the place where all the film festival in Korea is held. It's an area with all the Korea movie stars' hand printing, and during movie festivals, all Korean stars will fly to Busan to attend the event at BIFF. 


When there is no festival, the place is basically a street surrounded with hundreds of stores and cart food. I love how clean the street is and how the air is so fresh with no pollution! Jakarta should really learn from them. One of the precious thing I love from holiday abroad is all the walking! Everytime I went abroad, I will make sure to skip using cab if possible, just because I love walking from one place to another since it is impossible to go anywhere in Jakarta by foot! Gosh, as much as I love my hometown, Jakarta seriously need a big changes on the street structures and safety.



Directions: Jagalchi station, line 1, exit 7 (walk straight and turn left)

Gukje Market

If you only have limited time in Busan, besides Nampodong, make sure you spend some time at Gukje Market. They are one of Korea's largest market with each alleys crowded with stalls of sellers selling almost everything. From fashion, kitchen ware, souvenirs and many more. For me, I love how the streets just connected one to another and just like that we stumbled on an alley full of food sellers. The alley is crowd with food street like Gimbab, Japchae, cold noodles. It was an amazing view to see how the sellers are all elderly just like the sellers at Jagalchi fish market. I did mention that we saw a lot of elderly here in Busan compare to Seoul. Though it's not really a normal sight for me personally to see people in elder age still working, but they seemed to enjoy it very much.


The food sold are practically the same one to another. Since there are no pollution, customers could just grab a chair and eat on the spot in front of each stalls. We had one of the best Japchae there. I couldn't remember the exact spot as we just wandered and walked around, but it was definitely still around Gukje market where we found the best gimbab I've ever had. I swear, if money and time are easy, I would so fly there just to have that scrumptious gimbab. It was so addictive. Incase you are not familiar with what gimbab is, it's a tradional korean food, made from steamed white rice, normally stuffed with veggies and fish cakes, rolled in layer of seaweed. It's like sushi in Japanese and it was so goood! I haven't found any even close to decent gimbab in Jakarta.


Oden is also a popular Korean dish, especially close to autumn and winter season as it's a steamed fish cakes in stick stewed in a light soy flavoured broth. The locals normally eaten it right on the spot. They just grab the stick and dipped it with the soy sauce and the seller will serve the free refill broth in a small cup. I seriously love how Korean live and eat! Of course, another popular dish is the tteokbokki (soft rice cake serve with sweet red sauce). The dish is commonly found in any Korean restaurants in Jakarta. It happen to be one of my most anxious food to try during our Korea trip. Not because I love it so much, because I don't, but more to my curiosity on how everytime I saw Korean drama, it looks like they all enjoy it so much while I tried several in Jakarta and never seem to understand what's so good about it. So, I thought probably the ones in Korea is better, but when I tasted it, I still don't like it, a matter of taste then.


Directions: Jagalchi station, line 1 exit 7

Yongdusan Park and Busan Tower

Yongdusan park is one of the popular tourist place in Busan. It is a place with beautiful scenery where the Busan tower is located. If you are into historical and scenery things, the place would totally fit you.


Directions: Nampodong station exit 1, walk 10 minutes.
Open all day long, no entrance fee.

If you stay at Towerhill hotel like us, there's a stairs at the corner of the park. You can just walk down the stairs and it will lead you to the side of hotel. We actually did the walk down, but not the walk up. Didn't have enough stamina to walk up those hundreds stairs.


Continue to Ivy's Travel: Korea trip part 5...

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