The Rest of My Busan Trip

Here we are with part 3 of my Busan trip! This will post will contain all of the other things that we did while in Busan (restaurants, a spa day, street food, and more)!

Our Hotel Room

This is a picture of one of the beds in our Air BnB (with Buddy napping in the corner). It wasn’t big, it was pretty small. I meant to get pictures of the entire room, but wasn’t able to. There was a small bathroom where sometimes the light worked and sometimes it didn’t (we think it was on a weird timer). Our room had two queen sized beds and a small (but full) kitchen. The beds were really hard (Korean style, apparently) and left marks and bruises in my aunt and I. The room had free wifi, and a TV that I couldn’t get to work 😅

Restaurants

The first restaurant that we ate at was an Indian Restaurant that I cannot remember the exact name of and cannot find it on Google, but I think it had the word Bombay in it. If you know me well, you know that I cannot tolerate any sort of spiciness whatsoever. I have stayed away from Indian food for this exact reason. However, I was “being adventurous” that night and my aunt refused to tell me what was spicy and what was not, so I was forced to try it anyway. A lot of the food was too hot for me, and the only thing I could tolerate was the chicken and the naan. We had those along with butter chicken, jasmine rice, something that looked like potatoes and chicken, and some sort of deep fried dough thing. My Aunt and Ms. Rebecca liked it a lot, and we all ate a ton.

While we were at Haeundae beach and before we went to the aquarium, we had lunch at a Lobster restaurant that I again cannot remember the name of and cannot find on Google (pretty sure it had Lobster in the name though). We sat next to a Lobster tank so that we could watch them while we ate (seems kind of cruel…). We ordered Lobster Macaroni and Cheese and two servings of Jumbo Garlic Shrimp. I LOVE shrimp. It’s one of my favorite foods of all time. But this shrimp… this shrimp tasted different. It was ridiculously seafood-y, and I’m not sure the garlic glaze/sauce helped. However, the lobster macaroni and cheese was delicious.

Our last night there, we ate a Chinese restaurant (I don’t read Chinese, so again, I don’t know the name 😅). We had dumplings, some sort of sweet and sour pork, steamed buns (which is one of the few words that I actually can say in Mandarin), rice, and some sort of vegetable mix. It was all very good, and we all left very stuffed.

Ms. Rebecca has a friend who has a friend who owns a small cafe in Busan called “Wakey Wakey”, so we decided to visit there as well. It was a really cute little cafe! I got a caramel frappucino that had the creamiest foam on top:

Right outside of this shop is also where I took a picture with this statue of a man playing the accordion:

There were quite a few statues near by, and after a little bit of research, what comes up is that: during the Korean War, people were able to come take refuge in this street and were given food, drink, and accommodations. There was this statue, a man firing a canon near two young boys, and a woman carrying her two young children.

The other restaurants we went to were McDonald’s and Starbucks, and I don’t think those really need any explanation 😂

We also went out for street food one night, but sadly, didn’t find much. We had Mandu and Hotteok, though. This was my first time trying Hotteok. It’s basically a small pancake filled with some sort of honey-syrup, and in Busan, they put nuts inside. It was good, but I think I’d prefer it without the nuts. They serve it right off the grill, so it’s perfect on a cold night.

Spa Land

In Korea, there are these places called “Jjimjilbangs”, which are basically like public bath houses. I have never really had the desire to go to one because I am extremely modest and private and get really uncomfortable about certain things. However, we wanted to relax and I was told that we wouldn’t have to hang around any naked people.

When we first got there, we signed in and paid at the reception desk before taking an escalator to the second floor. There, we took off our shoes and were given our spa clothes (a loose fitting t-shirt and shorts) as well as two small towels. As soon as we entered the women’s locker room, I was in a sort of shock. Nobody had any clothes on and was just walking around like that was normal! I did my best to stare at the floor, wall, or ceiling the entire time we were in there. My aunt got dressed in the main room, whereas I sought out the privacy of a bathroom. After my aunt, Ms. Rebecca, and I were all changed into our spa clothes, we (thankfully) left the locker room.

The first place we went to was the hot springs, which was an outdoor area with several shallow pools to sit and put your feet in. We sat at a small, hot one first, before walking through a cooler “acupuncture” one, and ending up at a semi-warm “private” room one. It was really nice!

After that, we went inside and upstairs to get some drinks and snacks, and to try out massage chairs. I had earl grey tea (my favorite). While drinking my tea, my aunt told me of the horrors of these massage chairs. I didn’t really understand how bad it was until I sat down in one. Their are slots for your arms and legs, and I don’t know if I’m just really fragile, but it felt like it was going to literally break my bones. Just when I thought it was tight enough, it would squeeze my feet even tighter to where I couldn’t move them. That is when I decided, “Nope, I’m out.” I then pulled my legs and arms out of their slots and held them up or off to the side. Then, the back massage started. It was awful. It was like someone was purposefully punching me in the spine or hips to be mean. So, I leaned forwards the rest of the time 😅

Then we went downstairs to do all of the different rooms. All of the rooms were different temperatures: some were super hot and some were super cold. We went into a few hot ones, including one very hot one that was shaped like a pyramid. There were several people on their phones inside, and upon exiting the room, we saw a sign that said, “Please, no phones inside. Could cause explosion.” So glad to know that people were being safe. We also went into the coldest room that they had. However, it wasn’t very cold. I get cold really easily, and it was actually really comfortable in this room.

Train Rides

I had never been on a train before Busan. We took a KTX there, and an SRT back. The KTX got us to Busan in one hour, and it went around 300 kmh (186 mph)! It was super fast and super cool. The SRT went slower (I’m not exactly sure how fast it went), and got us back to Daejeon in 3 hours. On the KTX, I sat across the aisle from my aunt and next to an elderly man, who, thankfully, did not need to get up the entire time. On the SRT, I sat by the window and directly next to my aunt. You get to see a lot more of the Korean countryside on the trains!

And that finishes up my Busan trip! This weekend (Thursday-Sunday), I will be in Japan (Tokyo and Yokohama, I believe)! I will try my best to take plenty of pictures to share with you guys! See you then!