Trip to Busan: The Chuseok experience

Our first Chuseok, aka Korean Thanksgiving, was like a box of songpyeon... we didn't know what we were going to get!

We had a couple of friends visiting from Europe and we wanted to go south with them for the long weekend. However buying train tickets (even if a month in advance) proved to be a serious endeavour cause everyone else wanted to go somewhere as well:

Seoul Station at 9am on the day train tickets became available

As a celebration of the good harvest, Koreans visit their hometowns during Chuseok and share traditional food and drinks. Everyone was going to be on the move and we were joining the flow. We finally managed to book the tickets online but only from Monday to Wednesday. Busan was the destination! At least we knew there would be shops and restaurants open for business.

I started the preparation for Chuseok by attending a songpyeon (small rice cakes with sweet fillings) making class. I was told to eat this traditional Chuseok treat within 24 hours otherwise I would have to freeze and re-steam them. No need to say that the steamer never left the kitchen cabinet.

Songpyeon

Seoul was not as empty as I thought during the weekend of Chuseok, so I hoped that the same would apply to Busan for the rest of the holiday. We boarded the train early on Monday and, to my surprise it was not full. We checked in the hotel in Haeundae and went to the beach. The water was cold but bearable after a few minutes of prep work, limb by limb.

We had dinner in the fish market on the eastern side of Haeundae beach. Tasty but no frills. There's a huge construction site near the market and to embellish the area they put up some photo backgrounds on the fences. We couldn't resist this one:

The BIFF red carpet (*cough*)

He had planned a hike in Geumjeongsan for the following day and according to the information in our guidebook, the level of difficulty was quite acceptable so I took my plimsolls thinking it would be like a walk in the park. We stock up our backpacks with red bean buns from a bakery close to the hotel and off we went…

Lesson learned for life: I will never ever climb a hill in Korea without trekking shoes.

The hike took us at least four hours and included going up to the wrong peak (me asking a Korean couple where was the “mountain” instead of the “peak” didn't help – lousy guidebook!), steep and rocky stretches and constantly being taken over by Koreans, who by the gear they were wearing, seamed they were ready to climb the Himalayas... very expensively!

We still had lovely views from the mountain:

Geumjeongsan

And managed to get to the right peak thanks to a group of Korean hikers, who we followed gladly for a while, after coming down from the wrong mountain.

Godang-bong peak

We were tired therefore we deserved a reward dinner to lift our spirits. We ended up in the Millak Hoe Centre (raw fish market) in Gwangalli Beach.

Raw fish restaurant (Millak Hoe Centre)

We went to the beach the next day, just before the checkout. It wasn't as crowded as on the main Chuseok day and we were glad for that. After checking out we headed to the city centre and had lunch close to the Jagalchi fish market. Our friends left to Namhae and we went to Gwangbok (Independence) Street and the Yongdusan Park before taking the KTX back to Seoul. We still had time to go and try the famous pajeon (green onion pancake) in Dongnae before leaving.

Mushroom pajeon and banchan

Masitkke deuseyo!