Yongdu-san

Sick of the cold in Seoul, I headed to Busan on the south coast where it looked to be about 10°C warmer. South Korea has an excellent train system including bullet trains so I was across the country in only a couple of hours. Busan is a very sprawling city that has a few different centers, so I spent a bit of time in a few of them.

I started in Seomyeon, which is the main shopping and nightlife area. Not particularly interested in either of these things, I spent a lot of time just hopping from cafe to cafe, and trying as much of the amazing Korean food as I could. Some of my favourites included Gimbap (like a sushi roll but with veggies and meat rolled in rice and seaweed), bibimbap (hot rice with various items including meat/tofu, veggies, kimchi, and a fried egg), Korean chicken (chicken cooked in various sweets and spicy sauces), kimchi dumplings and various hot pots and stews. I also loved the salad restaurants that were dotted all over the place, and the restaurants where each place setting has it's own individual hob to cook your own hot pot.

Next I headed to Nampo which was a much more local and less flashy area than Seomyeon. Nampo is an old fishing town and is home to Jagalchi Market, the largest fish market in South Korea with all sorts of seafood including some pretty weird looking things like the Korean snake eels. If you want you can buy fish in the market and take it straight upstairs to a restaurant to be cooked or prepared for you as you want. You can't get fresher than that! Nearby was also the colourful Gamcheon Culture Village. Gamcheon was built on the hills surrounding the port in the 1920/30's when the government wanted to move the working class away from the port but still close enough to work. This resulted in low quality housing tightly packed onto the steep hillsides. In 2009 the government endorsed a public art-themed renovation project to regenerate the area. The village is now an interesting way to see how people lived and an attractive area to wander around, with plenty of art galleries, shops, and cafes. Next up was Songdo Sky Park, a Forrest park with walking trails along cliffs with great views of the coast. The park is best accessed by a cable car that takes you straight over the sea. You can also walk the admittedly pointless suspension bridge to a small rocky island. I think it would have been much nicer to see the view of a rocky island than walk around a manmade path bolted onto the island, but I guess anything to bring the tourists in!

Finally I stayed at Haeundae Beach, which is usually a very popular beach resort for Koreans but as I was there in February, it was pretty chilled. It felt a lot like being at home, strolling the coast in wind and drizzle! On the smaller streets away from the chain coffee shops and fast food restaurants were dozens of tiny traditional Korean restaurants selling fresh sea food, many of them displaying the seafood in tanks outside. When it wasn't raining this was also an excellent place to get some street food, the dumplings were especially good. Not far along the coast from here was Haedong Yonggungsa Temple, dramatically perched on the wild coast. Apparently it is unusual for temples to be by the sea in Korea, they are usually in the mountains. But I can't think of a better place for it than the dramatic Koran coast, it's certainly a place to feel humbled as you witness the waves violently crash against the rocks again and again.Read more