We covered quite a few places on the 2nd day in Busan! My calves and thighs were seriously screaming throughout the day (had also walked a lot in Seoul).

Day 2: KSGI Busan, Jagalchi Market (부산 자갈치시장), Busan Gamcheon Village, Songdo Beach Skywalk, BIFF + Kyochon

KSGI Busan Haeundae Hope Cultural Centre

Whenever I travel, I’ll try to see if I can pop-in a visit to the local Soka Gakkai centre. This time, our itinerary in Seoul was quite packed so I decided to just have a visit in Busan instead.

Of course, we brought the official letter from HQ over and had a quick visit! The staff and members were friendly – I don’t think many people from Singapore visit that kaikan – so they asked if they could have a picture with us.

I particularly liked their kids room next to the main meeting area for kids to hang out while their parents were attending a meeting!

Jagalchi Market (부산 자갈치시장)
Address: 52, Jagalchihaean-ro, Jung-gu, Busan
Opening hours: 5:00-22:00 (2nd floor restaurants from 9:00)
Closed on 1st & 3rd Tuesdays of the month.

This was a highlight for me. I terribly want to eat seafood in Busan as I’ve watched way too many videos on Youtube about how nice they are.

We don’t really know what to do – as we realised that in Busan, most people don’t speak English and my terrible Korean language knowledge was not going to get us anywhere. There was a buffet at the top floor of Jagalchi Market that we wanted to go but in the end Eugene said to just try the restaurants at level 2.

Luckily we did as the food there was cheaper (I felt) and with a variety. We ate at one of the first few eateries we saw and the staff kept trying to sell us the set as it was better. I was personally a bit unsure about it until the food came – it definitely was more value for money to order the set and we saw that the locals all had ordered the same set as ours (do what the locals do right?)

The food was delicious! And definitely worth the money that we paid. Pictures below to feast your eyes to.

Busan Gamcheon Village (부산 감천문화마을)
Address: 203, Gamnae 2-ro, Saha-gu, Busan
We then took a short bus ride to Busan Gamcheon Village which was situated on a hill! The hill is quite tall too so we had to basically walk almost vertically (ok it felt like it) upwards some steep roads all the way up in order to see the view. Friends who have been there had told me that it was a hike and they weren’t kidding.

You can purchase a map if you like at the visitor centre and collect stamps from various checkpoints along the village which was pretty fun.
Certain photo spots (like The Little Prince one) was very popular and there was a queue for it. We went to the one next to it where surprisingly not many people even noticed it.

The view from the top, however, is worth the hike.

We spent about 1.5 hours there.

Songdo Beach (송도해수욕장)
Address: 50, Songdohaebyeon-ro, Seo-gu, Busan
We took another short bus ride and a 15 mins walk from a bus terminal near Busan Gamcheon Village to Songdo Beach.

The highlight at Songdo Beach was the Skywalk, which allows you to walk out to the sea on a bridge.
There were loads of beach activities too – people were swimming, taking their mini electric boats out, and taking lots and lots of pictures. There were some statues that you could take pictures with.

You could also take a cable car (which we didn’t) to see the beach and travel from one side to the other.

BIFF Square (BIFF 광장 (구, PIFF 광장))
We took another quick bus ride (back to near Jagalchi Market) but this time walked to BIFF Square.
BIFF stands for Busan International Film Festival. I didn’t know that the BIFF Square was open all year round (I thought it only was there during the film festival) so it was quite nice to be there.

There were quite a lot of street food and stalls for you to shop and eat there.We aren’t really shoppers so we just had a look around and saw people drinking Gong Cha so decided to head to Gong Cha to see what the difference is between the Singapore bubble teas and Korean ones.

The menu was in Korean (I will definitely learn the words for “take away”, “order”, “payment” etc before I go back to Korea again) and my limited Korean (and Eugene’s app) only allowed us to figure out what the drinks were. We accidentally ordered bubble teas to drink at the cafe so we did.

Something we learnt in Seoul – if you are not taking out your order, the orders will be in reusable plates/cups. This is an environmentally friendly initiative I guess so try not to have takeouts wherever possible!

Kyochon Chicken
Special mention here!
6 years ago when I went to South Korea with my family (it was with a tour group), we got the chance to eat Kyochon fried chicken in Jeju. I’ve NEVER had such nice fried chicken before and even after trying different Korean fried chickens in Singapore, I’ve never found that taste again. Until when we went back to Korea I guess 😀

We ordered their half-and-half chicken, which came with pickled radish, and we bought some beer from the convenience store just at the first level of where we were staying. Chimaek 치맥 it is!