That's me!: buzzkorea - Day 2 In Seoul

31st May 2010 (Monday)

안녕하세요 !Today is the 2nd day of our Korea trip! Woke up really early today as the weather was really cold! After washing up and changing into a new set of clothes, we went off to take a look at the area at Anguk!

That's our room! No.3!

How our hostel looks like in the morning

A store selling 떡 (rice cakes)

A store selling 한복 (Korean traditional clothes)

After 1hour of wandering around Anguk area, we decided to have our breakfast as our stomach are growling! There are so many food stores, but in the end , we decided to have bread! So we went to this really nice bread shop(I have forgotten the name, opps!). There was a lot of variety of bread! In the end, i chose this bread, where there was a lot of custard! It was really nice!

Our Breakfast

After we are done, we officially starts our itinerary for the day! We will be heading down to Insadong to see Jongno tower and Bosingak Bell. We walked all the way from Anguk station and it takes around 20mins or so. Bosingak Bell is just next to Jongno Tower, across a road. Bosingak Bell is not open all year round, if i am not wrong, it is only open on New Year.

Bosingak Bell (You can't see the bell as it is inside..)

The cute lamp we saw!

The famous

Jongno Tower

After taking photos,we decided to hurried back to our hostel to have our early lunch and to take our luggage as we will be taking the Korail to Busan at 12pm. As i missed the tofu stew from my previous trip to Korea, we decided to have tofu stew for our lunch. In Korean, it is called 순두부찌개. It is really soft and nice. To me, the spiciness is ok because i love to eat spicy food. But for CY, she don't take spicy food so to her, this stew is a bit too spicy. This stew is really cheap. It cost only 4900Won! To add on, in Korea, water is provided free in restaurants and all meals come with panchan(side foods), which you can replenish for free.

By the way, don't worry if you don't know Korean as the store owners are very friendly and most times, there are pictures in the menu and some basic English!

The panchan and tofu stew

Us and our lunch

After we finished eating, it was already 11am. So off we go to Seoul Station to catch our train! We had booked our train tickets at http://info.korail.com/2007/eng/etr/etr02000/w_etr02100.jsp . For foreigners, there is this KR pass where we can buy tickets for 3days unlimited usage, 5days unlimited usage and 7days! Do check out the website for more information! After we gotten our tickets, it was time for us to board the train. All i can say that the trains are really clean and safe. I am really glad that i choose to take the train instead of the airplane!

How the train looks like!

The interior of the train

Reached Busan!

We reached Busan in around 4 hours. We had booked out hostel online and we now have to figure out how to go to our hostel. It is called Zen backpackers. Just a note 1st, this hostel is really cheap and the place is nice and clean and is right in the centre of Busan. The owner is really friendly and will always try to help when you needed one. He also recommends to us the places we should go in Busan! For those interested, do visit http://zenbackpackers.com/ . Ok! Anyway, it is also very easy to travel in Busan. Because as like in Seoul, there is also a subway and we can almost go anywhere with it! We managed to find the place in about 45mins! After settling down, it was already dusk. So we decided to have dinner and roam around in Seomyeon(where out hostel are) area, which is the heaven for youngsters!

As the weather was really cold, we decided to have 삼계탕 Samgyetang (Ginseng Chicken soup). We went to this restaurant and it costs only 600won! We also ordered soju and this is the 1st time we are having it. Well, it is really special! After dinner, we went around the area and we say a lot of roadside stalls! Spicy rice cakes, skewers, fried stuff! Well, it is really special! After dinner, we went around the area and we say a lot of roadside stalls! Spicy rice cakes, skewers, fried stuff! And there is an election currently ongoing in Korea, so we saw a lot of campaigns! Cool! After that, it was rather late and we went back to rest! Hwaiting!