South Korea: Busan 4-day itinerary
This is a continuation of my travel recap of my South Korea trip from October 2023. My fiancé and I spent 2 weeks in South Korea visiting Seoul, Jeju Island and Busan.
After spending 3 lovely days on Jeju Island, we embarked on our last and third part of our trip – Busan! Busan is the second largest city in South Korea and it is known for beaches, temples and mountains.
In this post, I will share everything from where we stayed, to where we ate and what we did in our 3-4 days in Busan.
Read more about my South Korea trip
South Korea trip 2023 recap
Seoul – part 1 | Seoul – part 2 | Jeju Island | Busan | Paradise City
Day 9: Arrival to Busan
We started off day 9 half in Jeju Island and half in Busan.
We essentially took our sweet time checking out of the very comfortable and spacious hotel in Seogwipo and drove 40 mins back to Jeju City to return our rental car (goodbye). We hopped on the airport shuttle from the rental car shop and arrived at CJU for lunch and to wait for our 2pm flight to Busan.
Flights from Jeju Island to Busan cost us around $80 CAD per person and it is a quick 1-ish hour flight direct.
Lunch: Lotteria
We actually spent some time looking for Lotteria inside the airport because I really wanted to eat there for lunch. Lotteria is like the McDonald’s of Korea. They have similar branding – red and yellow – and offer a menu of hamburgers and fries.
The airport Lotteria was very busy and kinda messy/dirty but I didn’t really care too much since we were just looking to grab a quick bite. We ordered on machines so we didn’t need to order in Korean and everything we ordered costed us around $30 CAD.
We ordered the shrimp burger and Kelvin got the bulgogi burger. We made it a combo with fries, a soda and added some sticky cheese sticks as a side.
Overall, I liked my shrimp burger but the structural integrity of it is questionable. I was really expecting the quality to be more similar to McDonald’s Japan’s ebi burger, where the bun is perfectly smooth and things are just staying together. Sadly, quality is not up to par with Japanese McDonald’s.
Kelvin’s bulgogi burger was a tad too sweet for his liking.
Accommodations: Airbnb on Gwangalli Beach
So far in Seoul and in Jeju Island, we have been staying in hotels and have had a pretty positive experience. For Busan, we decided to go with an Airbnb apartment unit that was facing and right on Gwangalli Beach.
It was actually pretty confusing to find the right apartment tower and go up the correct elevator 😟. We got pretty frustrated as we were carrying big luggage and the host wasn’t necessarily responding quickly. But eventually, we found the right unit and settled in.
I was very happy with the beach view, the kitchen (even though we never cooked in it), and especially glad to see the laundry machine 😌! Since we were nearing the end of our trip, we had quite a bit of dirty/stinky clothes collected in our suitcases. We like to stay at a place that offers laundry either in the middle of our trip or the end to help us decrease the amount of laundry we need to do when we get home + increase what outfits we have left remaining if we do not want to buy any more clothes.
Bedroom was spacious but definitely disappointed a little by the size of the double bed (slightly smaller than a queen). This is a big difference from the California king bed we just slept on at GoldOne Hotel in Jeju Island. I was also a little off-put from the bed sheets – there was this white blanket on top but there was no duvet cover or anything so I wasn’t sure if we just use it like that. It kinda felt like a paper/diaper and pretty thin material 😬.
One thing I did want to point out was that in the living room area behind the TV, I noticed quite a few little holes that had already been stuffed with some sort of paste. It made me a little paranoid as I had read several articles about people installing small cameras to watch you be naked 😱.
The Airbnb cost us $186 per night so we spent $745 for 4 nights. At this price point, I think a hotel would have been more luxurious and still within the range.
Dinner: Handasot
Loewe’s rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
For our first meal in Busan, we looked up nearby places on Naver and decided to check out Handasot, which was very close to our Airbnb. They specialize in rice bowl sets in metal bowls and it was very hearty and comforting! Also very foreigner-friendly.
In total, we spent $54 for 2 people on dinner here.
Recommended: Read my full review of Handasot, a Korean rice bowl restaurant by Gwangalli Beach in Busan.
Drinks: Cocktail on the beach 인 칵테일 온더비치
After having a nice dinner, I was feeling in a good mood so I wanted to grab a drink at one of the bars along the beach strip. We walked by and saw a Thursday Party and I was suddenly transported to being drunk on the streets of Itaewon 😂.
Anyways, there were lots of bars to choose from but we ended up at the most basic spot called Cocktail on the beach in English. We didn’t get a spot by the open walls facing the beach, but was able to enjoy the night time view of the beach and the Gwangalli bridge anyways.
The cocktails were not cheap and costed us around $48 for 2 people.
After we finished the cocktails, we saw it started raining so we left to go back to our Airbnb and rest for the rest of the night.
There was actually some sort of a Surfer’s Open festival/event on the beach right across from our apartment, so we could see the stage and people dancing. They were blasting music and giving out prizes – fun!
Day 10: BIFF Square + Gamcheon Culture Village
We are on our first full day in Busan!
I was actually pretty worried because Kelvin got sick following the cocktails on the beach last night 😨. We think it may have been running back to our Airbnb in the rain and he just caught some sort of cold. But in the morning, he was feeling better so we still decided to go out and explore Busan.
Breakfast: Jagalchi Market
Jagalchi Market is the largest fish market in Busan and actually the largest seafood market in the country. At the market, you can see tons of stalls selling fresh seafood (fish, octopus, shellfish, etc.) and you can also eat the seafood there.
How it works: after you decide which stall to buy the seafood from, they will send it to one of the restaurants upstairs to prepare for you so you can comfortably eat. They can prepare it in a variety of ways – raw sashimi style (most popular and recommended), in a soup, etc.
Recommended: Read about our fish market experience in Seoul when we ate at the Noryangjin Fish Market
We were planning on having a similar experience to when we ate at the Noryangjin Fish Market in Seoul, but were surprised when we walked near the giant building and noticed tons of people! There were tents set up along the streets, singers and dangers performing on stage, and a huge crowd of elderly Korean folks having the best time 🥳.
Apparently, it was some sort of fish festival and at every bundle of tents, they were selling some sort of dish. We ended up eating from these tents instead of going inside the actual fish market building.
The first tent we ate at served us a plate of assorted sashimi. As a free “service”, they were also giving out bottles of original soju if you purchase the sashimi 😂 (lots of people were drinking and it was only 11 am). I’m not sure what type of fish they were, but there were 3 different kinds. We didn’t really like the shredded white fish as there was a lot of cartilage (very crunchy) and didn’t taste that good to me 😬.
The second tent offered an seafood porridge and a vegetable pancake. I really enjoyed the pancake and the porridge helped Kelvin feel better as he was still recovering from last night’s cold.
Explore BIFF Square
BIFF Square is a trendy area with lots of first-run movie theatres, food options and memorabilia on famous Korean actors and actresses. “BIFF” stands for “Busan International Film Festival” and actually during our time in Busan, it was actually time for the Busan International Film Festival so the area was very busy!
We stopped by this pet store that had the most adorable dogs omg. Made me miss Tofu back home 😭 and I was so tempted to bring one back with me.
We also stopped inside an arcade where we saw an indoor disco pang-pang. I’ve seen some videos on it, and it basically is like a mini-amusement park ride where you sit inside a giant spinning circle that bounces you up and down. There are no seatbelts so you actually have to hold on to the bars the best you can.
Tickets cost around $10 CAD per person and it was a lot of fun! There is a controller/DJ who controls how fast the ride spins and bounces you 😵. They are also known to make fun of you and talk to you while doing this. The DJ didn’t speak much English, but I was able to understand him with my very very basic level of Korean after watching so many Kdramas and K variety shows over the years.
Gamcheon Culture Village
Next stop on our itinerary was to explore the Gamcheon Culture Village. This is a fun area with lots of small alley-like streets and colourful houses. It is pretty much a touristy location, but I really enjoyed the atmosphere although it was quite a trek to walk up to this village (lots of hills and quite steep). There is actually a bus you can take to the top of the hill but based on the bus we got on from BIFF Square, it only dropped us off at the base of the village.
Since we were very sweaty and tired from walking uphill, we stopped for a drink at a cafe. There are many cute and themed cafes in the Gamcheon Culture Village, but we chose a popular cafe that is near the entrance of the village.
Coffee IT House is a trendy and very pink cafe! They have a lot of different themed rooms with fake flowers where you can enjoy the view of all the colourful houses + a rooftop if you want to enjoy the breeze. They also have a hanbok studio in the basement if you want to try on a traditional dress and take some photos.
We ordered a strawberry latte and a peach fizzy drink for around $5 each.
After our drink, we explored the village and there are so many murals! Lots of photo spots and also cute boutique stores selling all kinds of merchandise and handmade goods.
There are also some street stalls where you can buy some snacks if you are feeling hungry.
Dinner: Ryusenso Gwangan
Loewe’s rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
After a tiring day exploring Busan with lots of walking, we bussed back to the Gwangalli Beach area for dinner. It started raining again around 4/5pm so we wanted to stay close to our Airbnb.
For dinner, we spotted a small ramen shop with good ratings called Ryusenso Gwangan. They feature some specialty items like oyster ramen and a bowl of ramen is only $12!
Recommended: Read my full review of Ryusenso Gwangan, a ramen shop by Gwangalli Beach with $12 oyster ramen.
Listen to some busking
After dinner, we decided to walk around the beach strip since it wasn’t raining anymore. It was a Sunday night but the strip was still very busy and we noticed a lot of people had set up busking stations along the beach.
Some of the performances we stopped to watch were some kpop dance covers, a singer-songwriter, and 2 old men playing the saxophone + 2 drunk young guys dancing to it (it was hilarious 😂).
After walking all the way to the end of the beach strip, we headed back to the Airbnb to rest for the night, but we thoroughly enjoyed the free entertainment.
Day 11: Haedong Yonggungsa Temple + Spa Land
This is our second full day in Busan and the weather is looking better than yesterday.
On our itinerary today, we are venturing out a bit farther away from Gwangalli Beach area – making stops at Haedong Yongungsa Temple, a surprise fun activity and Spa Land to end the day relaxing.
Breakfast: Cafe Pascucci
We start our morning off at one of the cafes underneath our apartment building.
Cafe Pascucci had a nice second floor seating area with views of the beach and Gwangalli Bridge in the daytime. We ordered 2 pastries – a slice of cheesecake and a twisty roll up puff pastry – and 2 drinks – a matcha latte and an espresso – for around $18.
We spent our morning enjoying the breeze and watching some people continue to surf since it was still a Surfer’s Open event.
Haedong Yongungsa Temple
When I travel, I do like to hit up one cultural or art spot, and Haedong Yongungsa Temple is that spot for me in Busan. Until now, we haven’t really gone to any temples in Korea during our trip.
Haedong Yongungsa Temple is dedicated to the Goddess of Buddha and is one of the very few temples along the shore so it has been coined one of the most beautiful temples in the country. It was a bit far from Busan city center, but we got there after a 45 minute bus ride from Gwangalli Beach.
We didn’t reach much about the temple before going so we mostly explored on our own. There were some really cool statues on the road to the temple, each one depicting an animal from the zodiac.
There were also some stairs you can take to a lower level, where a gold buddha statue sits. Along these steps, we saw a lot of “wishes” written on these gold and red foil leaves. For a donation of $5, you can write your wish and hang it on the stair railings. The motto at this temple is “At least one of your prayers will come true if you pray/wish sincerely” 😊.
Walking towards the main temple building, there is a small cafe if you are hungry or thirsty. There is also a much bigger gold buddha statue for you to look at also.
Peeking inside the main room, there are many colourful lanterns attached to the ceiling – beautiful!
Skyline Luge Busan
On the way to the temple, we actually passed by a large area where we saw a luge attraction. We were intrigued so on the way back from the temple, we decided to get off and check it out.
The luge ride is also really close to Lotte World Busan, which I didn’t even know existed! It looked really empty and if we had known about it, maybe we would’ve come to this one instead of the one in Seoul because it was hella crowded during Chuseok week and exhausting.
Recommended: Read about my Seoul part 2 recap where we spent a morning at Lotte World.
The cheapest tickets you can buy for the luge ride is $27 per person for 2 rides. You cannot split this between 2 people, so we both paid $27 to ride twice. Luckily, there are some different routes you can take so it’s not exactly the same.
You have to wear a helmet and ride a ski lift up the mountain to the top of the ride. At the top, you sit on a luge, which is kind of like a self-driving mini car that moves because of the incline you are going down. You control the speed by pushing handlebars back and forth.
It was cute and quite fun 🤩! Felt a little bit like Mario Kart and really not that fast at all, although you can pick up some decent speed if you never brake once.
After this, we also explored a little bit the outlet mall next door Lotte Premium Outlets, but didn’t find many things we wanted to buy (mostly luxury brands).
Spa Land
Spa Land Centum City is a gigantic Korean-style spa with 13+ different sauna and spa areas like jjimjilbang and open-air foot spas. They have 2 different kinds of all-natural spring water pumped from 1,000m underground – one is to remove dead skin cells and make your hair shiny and the other is good for circulation and headaches.
Spa Land is open from 6am – 11pm and we actually arrived just past 7pm and got their late night happy hour discount so tickets only costed us $20 per person.
After buying our ticket, men and women have to separate to different change rooms. They provide you with sauna clothing, a towel, and a wristband where you can purchase additional items inside the spa (food, drinks, etc.).
The inside is massive and very quiet. It was dimly lit so a little dark inside but you can easily find your way around. The first thing we did was check out the open-air foot baths outside – so relaxing! They have different temperature waters and also private booths if you want to just sit with your party only.
Next, we checked out some of their many saunas and other facilities. Each room had something different about it whether it was a charcoal room, a cold room, a really hot room, etc.
I personally cannot stay inside a sauna or steam room for too long because I will have trouble breathing, so I was mostly in there to check out the rooms and for the not-so-hot rooms, I would stay for a bit to try to break a sweat.
Other facilities at Spa Land include a resting room, where there are these first-class airplane looking seats with individual TVs. They actually have audio holes right near your head so only you can hear the sound from your TV without the usage of headphones or earphones – cool!
They also have a restaurant (which was closed) by the time we got there at 8pm. They have a self-serve instant noodle station for around $10-15 and they also have an arcade room.
In the end, we decided to eat dinner elsewhere, but we indulged ourselves in the jjimjilbang tradition of drinking some sikhye (rice punch) and eating some boiled eggs. The eggs were actually pretty hard to crack via hitting my own head (I felt dumb af hitting myself with the egg). And overall, the egg just tasted like normal boiled egg so I don’t really know what I was expecting 😅.
After you are done using the saunas and other facilities, you can go back into the change room and soak in the nice baths and tubs before taking your time to get ready and leave (note: you will be completely naked for the baths – no swimsuits). You pay for any additional items you purchased with your wristband when you exit.
Dinner: Random pancake restaurant
I didn’t do a separate review for this pancake restaurant because we didn’t like it that much 😕. We stumbled upon it on our way back from Spa Land and not many places were open for dinner actually. So we ordered a pancake, some rice wine and had a kinda weird-tasting pork and tofu kimchi dish.
Day 12: Songdo + Haeundae
This is our last full day in Busan and luckily, we had some schedule alignment and we were able to meet up with some Korean friends in Busan!
We had 2 friends show us around Seoul during our first week, which was so amazing but during our time in Busan, it was just me and Kelvin deciding where we wanted to go and what to do. We were looking forward to relaxing and having fun as a group.
Haircut
Not sure if this is of any interest, but Kelvin got a haircut early in the morning at a cool barber shop near Gwangalli Beach.
I also wanted to do some sort of hair treatment or haircut, but we just had no time in Seoul.
Lunch: Hana Tonkatsu Namcheon
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
We chose to eat lunch at a busy tonkatsu restaurant named Hana Tonkatsu Namcheon. Sets were relatively cheap – around $14 and we shared a set.
Recommended: Read my full review of Hana Tonkatsu Namcheon, a tonkatsu restaurant in Busan.
Cheongsapo Station + Cable car
The first plan for the group was to meet up to ride the new cable car (you may have seen videos of it on Instagram). If you google it, it mostly tells you to go to Songdo Station, but we got tickets to meet at Cheongsapo Station instead. Luckily, our Korean friends helped us buy tickets because I didn’t know how to reserve our time slot.
We arrived a bit earlier to Cheongsapo Station and explored the small seaside port town for a little bit. We found a cute Instagram donut store called Alice Donut and stopped here for some expensive donuts and a pretty drink – 2 donuts and 2 drinks costed us $21.
When it was our time to ride on the cable car, we split into 2 cars (max 4 adults per car). I was happy we got a pink/purple car but on the inside it all looks the same.
The cable car took around 20-30 minutes to travel 1 way and you get a nice view but all in all I would say it was a little boring albeit a cute attraction 😏.
We arrived at Haeundae Station which was much more busy and lively than Cheongsapo Station.
I actually thought we would then hang out in Haeundae Beach, which is a very popular beach with lots of restaurants and bars in the area (like Gwangalli Beach), but we ended up taking taxis back to Cheongsapo Station because our friends had parked their vehicle there.
We found a seafood BBQ restaurant right by the shore and ate and drank there for a couple of hours. It was fun just to hang out with our friends and not be on tourist mode 🥰.
Gwangalli boat ride + fireworks
Another activity that our friends helped us book was a boat ride near Gwangalli Beach 🤩!
We actually saw these boats in the previous nights from our apartment/our area. We saw fireworks go off under the bridge and wondered how to get over there, and I was happy that we ended up being there! Our friends reserved a private boat on Kakao (I think?) and it wasn’t that expensive. The boat ride was around 20 minutes – you can bring your own food and drinks on board and they provide fireworks and you can play your own music.
After the boat ride, we ordered takeout and ate it at our friend’s Airbnb. After that, Kelvin and I ubered home back to Gwangalli Beach.
Final thoughts
We had some busy days in Busan as a couple!
I really liked the vibe of Busan – even more so than Seoul. I loved the beaches – the sand is actually soft! I found the general vibe to just be more relaxed and fun, whereas Seoul felt a bit more stuffy and more crowded. I also really liked the Gwangalli Beach area we stayed in even though it isn’t exactly in the Busan city center.
I found our Busan itineraries were a good mixture of tourist/go-go activities and some down time. I was a little bit disappointed that we didn’t end up exploring Haeundae Beach since it is one of the biggest and most popular beaches in Busan, but I wonder how much different it would have been from the Gwangalli Beach area that we were always in.
I was a little worried to travel alone with Kelvin in Busan, mostly because I felt he was relying on me more to guide him and plan out our days. My Korean is just learned from watching Kdrama and Kpop, but even at that level I found it pretty easy to be able to navigate around Busan by ourselves with Naver Maps and Google Translate.
We definitely traveled more by bus in Busan vs. in Seoul we almost always took the skytrain/MTR/Subway. Traveling by bus allowed us to see a bit more of the city!
Keep on reading for more travel recaps of my trip! My next post will be my last one and it will be all about staying in Paradise (the hotel… like Singles Inferno).
South Korea trip 2023 recap
Seoul – part 1 | Seoul – part 2 | Jeju Island | Busan | Paradise City
Sincerely, Loewe
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