JET: Spring Break Trip- South Korea and Taiwan pt. 1

Hello, apologies for this post being so delayed, I just never got around to writing it 😅 But without further ado, here is my blog post about my South Korea and Taiwan trip. Since this post got a bit long, I'm going to split the trip into two posts 👍

My spring break trip was 10 days, 5 days in Korea and 5 days in Taiwan. I was excited to return to Korea after a year and a half since my study abroad there. I went with one other acquaintance to Korea, and another acquaintance would join us in Taiwan.

On March 26th, we flew from Matsuyama, in the neighboring prefecture of Ehime, to Busan. I had been to Busan once before, but was excited to go and explore a little more. We arrived late at our hotel, so we just went to bed for the next day. Unfortunately, the weather for the next day was not good for what we had planned. It was really foggy with low-lying clouds and low visibility. Our first thing on the itinerary after a cute cafe breakfast was a cable car ride to see the views, but we had to scrap that because of no views 😢

We pushed the next thing on our itinerary forward, which was the Gamcheon Cultural Village. This also turned out to be a bit of a bust because we couldn't see any of the colorful villages that make the village special. We were about to see the close-up art on buildings as we walked by them, and that was really cool, but we missed out on the main draw of the location.

After the Gamcheon Village, we headed to a nearby area that had markets after markets after markets. We stopped at one of the first Tteokbokki stands we saw (which might have been a mistake, it was a bit touristy-trappy and not the best quality) and ate some Busan-style Tteokbokki, which I love, and some sundae, blood sausage. We explored the vast markets and even headed to Bosu-Dong Book Street. This street has been leftover from war times when Busan become the temporary capital of Korea. A couple of evacuees from North Korea set up a used book stand with some boxes and old magazines and books placed on them. After the war ended, many evacuees had a hard time finding books even though they wanted to study so these types of book stand became quite successful. The street is now filled with tons of book stores and tens of thousands of books piled from the ground to the ceiling.

We grabbed more lunch and split a Jajamyeon, black bean noodles. After our bellies were full, we decided to check out Busan Tower. We didn't go up the tower because you couldn't see anything out of it, but the area around it was still cool. With our spare time we went to a nearby mall that had an incredible water and lights show inside. We shopped around and walked around the roof of the mall. The mall's architecture was very cool and the roof was a designed shared space and we could see some views of Busan from it.

Next, it was time to check out the fish market. The fish market was long and had every kind of seafood imaginable, straight off the boat that morning. In one building, there were hundreds of fish stands on the first floor and then restaurants as you went up. We went to one of the restaurants in the market and had raw soy sauce marinated crab. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but my friend is not as adventurous an eater, so she did not enjoy it as much.

But do not fret! As we were walking the night streets of Busan, we noticed that it started clearing up some and decided to try Busan Tower again. And we were able to go up and see somewhat of a view! Busan Tower was fun at night as well and there were a lot of fun lights in the surrounding area, and the tower didn't just have views but also fun areas for you to explore.

The next day, it was still chilly, but it had cleared up a bit from the day before. We went to a temple in the north of Busan after breakfast. It was interesting to see the differences between Japan and Korea's temples and it was a very beautiful area. There was even some Sakura! After some noodle lunch, we bussed over to Gwangju.

We arrived in Gwanju with some time for dinner and we got super spicy octopus. I had remembered this from the last time I was here and wanted to have it again. It was super spicy but oh so delicious 😋

The next day, I met up for lunch with some of my friends from study abroad. We went to one of my favorite soup places and chatted for a bit. It was weird to speak to them in English as I had only ever spoken to them in Korean but since my friend spoke no Korean, the lunch was in English. It was a little awkward since we had not seen each other in so long and they were still university students so not many life updates to talk about, but it was good nonetheless. We then grabbed dessert at my favorite place, Sulbing! They have something called Bingsu, which is like shaved ice but with milk. It is so creamy and refreshing, I wish there were Bingsu shops everywhere I go 😭 After being rained on and finding temporary sanctuary, my friend ordered us a taxi and we went our separate ways.

My acquaintance and I then stopped at the Asian Culture Center where they also have very cool art exhibits going that you can see for free. Then lastly we stopped at the 5/18 Memorial Musuem, which has had some upgrades since I last went to it. The museum was very informative and we had a nice volunteer older lady give us a tour in English. If you wish to know more about what 5/18 was and what it means please Google it 👍We then hopped on the train to Seoul!

Day 4 and 5 were spent in Seoul. I had never been to Seoul before, so I was very excited! We started by going to the War Memorial Museum which was very beautiful.

We then went to 3 different palaces because they were all going to be closed the next day haha😅 We took a lot of pretty pictures and enjoyed seeing the traditional palaces.

We both have seen some historical K-Dramas so it was really cool to go to the palace they use to film, Gyeongbokgung Palace.

It was a huge palace area and, of course, we got ordained in hanboks before entering 😊 Many many pictures were taken of us in our hanboks and the sun even decided to shine right towards the end which added some great lighting. In one day we had gotten clouds, rain, snow, wind, and sun so it was quite the interesting day haha

We then lastly grabbed dinner with one of my friends who participated in the same study abroad program. We got Korean bbq and went to a cute traditional shopping street for dessert. It was good to catch up with her and it was a little less awkward than the first lunch since we had both started doing similar jobs just in different countries.

The last day in Korea started with, of course, a cute cafe coffee and breakfast. We then made a brief pit stop to see the HYBE building. HYBE is the company that manages a couple of K-pop groups I like, so I thought it would be cool to see where they practice. After the pitstop, we headed to the National Museum of Korea. It was a beautiful museum and very informative. I learned a lot about the long history of Korea and saw a lot of very cool artifacts.

For lunch, we went to the Han River to have a picnic. You always see in the media picnics at the Han River so I was very excited to try it for myself. We got delicious Korean fried chicken and it was the perfect picnic. We strolled around the river after to digest our food and enjoyed the beautiful views.

After our picnic, we went to Seoul Tower to get a view of Seoul. We got much better views than what we got at Busan Tower so that was nice. Seoul is definitely a big city! We then headed back near our hotel for some dinner, classic Jjigae (stew), and then headed to bed early because we had an early start the next day.