On the second day, the weather was quite bad. It was raining heavily early in the morning. We waited for rain to subside before leaving Elysee Motel. It was quite easy for us to walk from our accommodation to Gukje Market and Bupyeong Market. Not too sure whether was it because of the bad weather or we were just too early, a lot of the stores at Gukje Market and Bupyeong were not opened when we were there. We went to one of the stores to have red bean porridge since that day was cold and I wasn’t feeling well that day as well.

After our first meal of the day, we walked around and bought some snacks such as seaweed. We also went to one CD shop to check out CDs and DVDs of our favorite boyband, DBSK. The price there was actually quite pricey. So, I decided not to buy anything from there. Generally, I feel that if you want to try some of the local korean street food, markets will be the best place to go. But to shop for clothes and bags, you won’t be able to find anything suitable in these markets.

We decide to walk towards Nampodong area where all the shops were and visited almost every single cosmestic shop they you know of which includes The Faceshop, Innisfree and Etude House. These were the shops to get your cosmetics at lower prices compared to Singapore. According to my cousin, certain products were priced cheaper compared to the same shop located at Seoul. But I have seen was that some of the bundle sets sold in Busan were different from Seoul and thus the different in pricing.

After a bit of shopping, the rain started to get heavier. We decided to walk back to Elysee Motel first to rest a bit before travelling to our next itinerary. And, we chanced upon Let’s Eat Alley where there were tiny little stalls set up with some transparent plastic sheets hanging above those stalls to serve as shelters. Customers can sit at those tiny stools and order Gimbap and other street foods. Because we were not very hungry, we takeway some Gimbap from one of stalls manned by an Ahjumma.

After reaching our room, I took a short nap as I was unwell in the morning. We left the motel around 2 pm and rain has already stopped. We took the subway to Haeundae station where the famous Haneudae Beach and Busan Aquarium were located at. I guess it was the rain…you don’t see a lot of people at the Haneudae Beach. We proceed to Busan Aquarium which was just next to the beach.

I feel that Busan Aquarium and S.E.A. Aquarium were very similar. Both aquariums have a corner for visitor you to touch some of the sea creatures like starfish. So, i think I will not go back to Busan Aquarium again given that S.E.A. Aquarium has similar types of fish and animals as well.

After visiting the aquarium, we have some street foods from the shops just located near the beach. Since we have some time left after filling out stomach with soondae, oden and rice cake, we decided to drop by Shinsegae Departmental Store, which was right above Centum City station, one station away from Haneudae Station. Shinsegae is just like Takashimaya where it sell clothes, household-related items, food etc. You can also get some red ginseng products although it will be slightly pricey. If you walked out of Shinsegae, there will be other shops just like Ngee Ann City’s layout. They have Gyobo Bookstore, just like Kinokuniya, but it sells mainly books written in Korean. I bought my Active Korean Book 2 from Gyobo Bookstore as well because it was so much cheaper compared to Singapore. At Shinsegae, you can also do your tax refunds if you buy anything from their stores.

After shopping, we went to Gwangalli Beach to see the diamond bridge. Not a lot of people were aware of this place but it is worth to visit during nighttime. You get to see the beautiful night view from the beach. To get to that place, we took subway and alight at Gwangan station, From there, I used Google Map to google our way there.

That’s all for our second day at Busan. The next post is about Jejudo, another beautiful place that is worth to visit.