Busan is Korea’s second most populous city and its busiest port. Despite its size, it has a bit of a more relaxed vibed compared to Seoul. I am thinking the closeness to the sea does that to a city.
It is also quite simple getting to Busan from Sokcho (or anywhere else in the country for that matter) – especially if you live directly across the street from the Intercity Bus Stop. I caught one of the first buses of the day from Sokcho- I think there are about 7 of them. It cost me around 40.000 KRW for a one-way ticket across the country, which is about 30 €.
The only tricky thing is, that the bus stops at East Busan Bus terminal, which is not at all close to Haeundae Beach, where I was staying. So after arriving at East Busan, it took me at least 1,5h to get to my Canvas Hostel, which is not really non-Korean speaker friendly, but looks really nice and is 5 minutes away from the beach. I used public transport to get to the hostel – metro, as I feel it is easier to navigate than the bus in a new city, but maybe that’s just me. I paid with my T-card of course. Metro in Busan is or looks a bit different than in Seoul, but it is manageable. Maybe fewer things are written in English, but they still give you English names of stops once you are on the train. Using Naver doesn’t hurt though.
The only thing I did after arriving at the hostel was a walk to Haeundae Beach to dip my feet into the sand. Oh, and I finally decided to treat myself a bit and try my Muji sheet mask (with the help and advice of Katka. Looks completely creepy, but its effects are awesome. Also – masks are heavy in the backpack, so I had to get rid of them.
As I realized transport days are really tiring, I gave myself the next day off from sightseeing. It was a Saturday, so the whole city of Busan was relaxed and buzzing. I walked around the Haeundae Strip – checked where the post office was (which doesn’t work on weekends), found the stop of the shuttle bus to the airport, the tourist info office – they are a really good source of information in English, wrote my blog and my postcards and found a really awesome Irish pub from this list – Wolfhound. Reminded me of home in a sense that I had the first proper meal with meat in weeks and a Mojito to go with it – Living the good life. 🙂
I continued the day in a similar tempo and spent it reading a book at the beach. Really not the worst if you think about it. Also, cannot remember when was the last time I did that.
Another interesting thing – didn’t actually see any Korean women wear only a swimsuit at the beach, so I spent the day in a skirt and swimsuit – if you don’t want to feel uncomfortable, maybe don’t wear the smallest bikini you can find, just in case.
So basically in Busan, I got my lazy mode on.
