Itinerary summary:
Day 1
Gwangali beach and surroundings
Day 2
Haedong Yonggungsa Temple - Dalmaji street and surroundings - Haeundae beach - Dongbaek island
Day 3
Gamcheon cultural village - Jagalchi Market - Nampo and surroundings
Day 4
Beomeosa temple - Pusan National University Youth street
Day 5
Taejongdae - Seomyeon
Day 6
Haeundae beach - Centum City - Pusan National University Youth Street
Day 7
Busan Museum - UN Memorial Cemetery
To get there, we took the train to Haeundae station and took bus 181. It was a pretty long journey and again, there were no signs in English at all! So we tried asking some fellow passengers and thankfully, being a tourist attraction, they understood us and told us to get off together with them. The location of this temple is quite interesting. Just before you reached the main entrance at the foot of the 'hill', you'd pass by a big outlet mall and there were a few under construction. It looks like this place will soon turn into a big shopping area for tourists.
The usual sights of a touristy area! Lots of stalls selling the same stuff - hotteok, oden, tteokbokki, souvenirs and the most unusual of all is fresh produce. Most of the stalls are manned by ahjumma. I do think that the Korean ladies work really hard.
Once you've walked past the stalls, you'll be greeted by the statues of the zodiac animals that you can find in a lunar calendar. That is a pig in the picture, which looks like a mighty pig warrior to me, and right at the start, there were 2 elephants which do not belong to the zodiac family. I guess they were just guards. I was pleasantly surprised to see a big dol hareubang there as well, the famous guard of Jeju!
This temple is located by the cliff and undoubtedly, one of the best attractions in Busan. Busan seems to be a Buddhist city. There are many Buddhist temples around and this is one of the most popular with a view.
We were quite fortunate to be there during the Lantern Festival. The city is adorned with these colourful lanterns and you can even many of these lanterns in temples as the event is mainly a Buddhist event. It was a beautiful weekend and it was not surprising that there were many locals and tourists at the temple, either just to capture the beautiful view or to cast their prayers.
Just like the temples in Asia in general, you could actually donate some money to have you wish written on it or to just put your name as a donor.
Tucked in a corner, you would also see many miniature monk figurines on rocks with various poses. This is probably one of the nicest touch I've seen at this touristy spot. Right at the back of this picture is one of the dragons, which I assume to be the guard of the sanctuary.
We headed back to Haeundae station and was roaming the street for a light snack. The street near the beach is like a street for snacks. There were several shops selling these sticks with fish cakes, tempura and tteokbokki. We ended up at a shop with the most customers and it definitely did not fail us. I suspect that it is probably owned by Paik Jung Won, one of the celebrity chefs, as there were many signatures of artistes in the shop. Though the food was good, the staff was not friendly at all.
With filled tummies, we decided to embark on a 3km walk to Dalmaji street. It's a really long road if you finish the entire trail. Given the hot afternoon sun, and there were really nothing to entice us (the cherry blossom season just ended), we decided to just do a very short trek half way to the observatory.
From the observatory, you could actually see both the famous beaches in Busan. It was quite a sight really, and I think this is the essence of Busan - having both the city and nature aspect in a dynamic place. There were loads of posh hotels and cafes along the street and if you're up for it, you could spend a night there for a nice sea view.
From the observatory, we saw this railway track which is open to public for photography purpose. There were many young couples and young families there, and trust me, the Koreans really do love taking photographs. I have never seen so many selfie enthusiasts before and they're not just youngsters who are good at it but people of all ages! Looking at the picture above, you'd think that I'm joking but I was just really fortunate to snap this picture at the right time and not having so many human beings blocking the view. Some houses along the railway track also open up to do business by selling cola or ice cream. They even prepare chairs for you to sit and enjoy your drink if you purchase from them.
We trekked our way down again towards the beach before our tummy starts to rumble again. So off we went in search of food and we stopped at BBQ Chicken to try their fried chicken. The cost of the fried chicken in Korea is similar to Singapore. For this 1kg basket, it costs us 16,000KRW. Between the two of us, it was really a lot of chicken. Nevertheless, it was a good respite from the sun even for that hour and a half before we walk towards the other side of the beach.
We walked back to the beach area and saw some massive sand castle work in progress I've not seen an excavator employed to build a sand castle before but this is not an ordinary exhibit. There's an annual sand castle event at Haeundae and there were some really great sculptors at work even on a sunny afternoon. We were actually at the beach at around 2pm and this place is crazily crowded with young families.
We walked from one of the beach to the other. If you look into the photo, the little hill on the right is actually where Dalmaji road is and the whole stretch of Haeundae beach is right before you. At this end, there is a Westin hotel connected to a short trail which will bring you around Dongbaek island. This island is named as such because this is where you can find many dongbaek trees.
At the top of the island, there is a statue and a monument of Choe Chi-Won, a scholar and writer during the Silla Kingdom.
Before you reach the top, you'll also see Korea's own Little Mermaid, like the one you can find in Denmark. This statue is build to commemorate the legend of Princess Hwangok.
There is actually a nice proper trail for people to walk around this island, and the Busan Tourism Organisation has actually declared the island as one of the many tourist sites in the city
.
That building in the photo is not too far off from the lighthouse of Dongbaek Island. This is where the Nurimaru APEC house is located. From the deck of this place where the APEC meeting was held ages ago, one could see Oryukdo Island, Gwangan bridge and Dalmaji hill. Nevertheless, I thought it was quite a waste to build such a beautiful structure but never really utilise it.
This pretty much sums up the activity on Day 2. After the trek, we had some light snack on our way back for an early rest.
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