South Korea - it's a wrap

South Korea - It's a wrap

16 July 2025

As has become standard for me when I've ended a trip I've taken to doing a last summary or a 'greatest hits' review whenever I managed to complete the final entry on the 'how, why, when and whatever else may have been alcohol related' blog series of my most recent escapades.  Usually at this point I’ll write, ‘sticking with the tradition of other escapades’, but the fact is that in more recent entries I just didn’t get around to completing a wrap. So lets now celebrate the belated return of the tour wrap ……

,,,,,I therefore bring you the close out of my South Korea experience, So let’s do it, here are the highs, lows, hits and misses of imagining your own Korea tour.

[Morocco - Europe wrap - June/July 2008]

[Laos wrap - April 2009]

[Vietnam-Malaysia wrap - December/January 2009/10]

[Europe - Morocco - South America wrap 2010]

[USA - Mexico wrap - February/March 2011]

[Brazil/U.A.E wrap - December/January 2011/12]

South Korea - 2025

Favourite places

In Seoul it has to be Euljiro, or as the locals call it, ‘Hipjiro’ – one of Seoul’s most captivating contrasts. By day, a maze of hardware shops and prints stores, but by night, this place exudes mystery, energy and promise. A hidden playground of speakeasies, craft beer bars, restaurants and multi-coloured neon-lit alleyways – to quote myself from the original blog piece, a neon-soaked playground of vibrant energy with subtle dystopian undertones. Intoxicating a vibrant, this is stands out as my favourite nighttime destination in Seoul.

Euljiro - Seoul - South Korea

Euljiro - Seoul - South Korea

In Busan I rate Gwangalli beach highly. I was drawn to it by its Saturday evening drone show and then quickly came to realise that this location had a laid-back seaside charm that also has a buzzing nightlife equal to any major city. Framed by the glittering Gwangan bridge, I witnessed the shoreline transform during the early evening into a strip of bustling, thrumming, bars and restaurants. At some point I found myself in a bowling alley on the 10^th floor of a building, having a drink and looking out onto the Gwangan bridge – that to me was the epitome of a cool experience and kinds of sums up what I think of South Korea.

Gwangalli Beach - Busan - South Korea

Gwangan bridge from Gwangalli Beach - Busan - South Korea

Most surprising

This response is less about a place or area and more about Seoul’s café culture obsession. If Melbourne is the café hub of Australia ( a badge that it wears with pride), then Seoul is an alpha city, competing easily with any contender or pretender to that throne. Every neighbourhood boasts stylish, themed, and very ‘Instagrammable’ destinations. On my first day in Seoul I spent some time on Café Onion, in Anguk (Jongo) district, and it was an experience. I also passed Soha Salt Pond in Ikseon-dong, which from the outside looked like more of a destination than a place to get a caffeine hit, but be sure, the output is certainly equal to the hype. For my experience, Anguk, Ikseon-dong & Seongsu-dong were teeming with cafes – which also aligns to another surprising element beyond the caffeine fixes, there seems to be a deep appreciation and loved for baked goods. Obviously there’s an association here but boutique bakeries are everywhere. I often passed the Artist Bakery in Anguk and there was never a time that the line didn’t go out the door and wind around the building. Each bakery takes the time to carefully craft & present their delicate, artisanal wares. This is an experience and something not to be missed when in Seoul.

Cafe Onion - Anguk - Jongno District - Seoul - South Korea

Cafe Onion - Anguk - Jongno District - Seoul - South Korea

Coolest place for a night out

Euljiro in Seoul and Gwangalli Beach in Busan were my standouts. Honourable mentions in Seoul go to Hongdae, Itaewon and Ikseon-dong, with Ikseon-dong being my favourite from the runners-up. To me, Ikseon-dong felt like a secret village hidden in plain sight. In a city of 8 million people, stepping off the main street and into its hanok alleys was like walking into an open air speakeasy. Intimate bars, cocktail dens and quirky cafes abound in the midst of beautiful collaboration of old world charm and modern creativity. I also want to highlight Seosulla-gil  in the Jongno District which became familiar to me through my nightly walks home. An ‘up and comer’ in Seoul, this is being identified as a ‘to-be’ hip destination before being widely accepted as such. Get there now.

Ikseon-dong - Seoul - South Korea

Ikseon-dong - Seoul - South Korea

Best accommodation

I only stayed in two locations, so instead of nominating an actual property, I'll nominated the areas that I think would make great stays. In Seoul, for me the Jongno District or Ikseon-dong had it in spades. In all my pre-travel research I was taking bets on Myeongdong for how central it is, or, Itaewon for its integrated nightlife - I don't believe that either would have been appropriate for me. Jongno and Ikseon-dong have a lovely blend of the old charm of Seoul, with the new, creative, modern hip spirit of youth. These areas feel more refined, are trendier and less crowded, but have far more appeal that the high flyers mentioned. In Busan I stayed on Haeundae beach, which was fantastic but would give this one to Gwangalli beach on reflection. Gwangalli seemed to have a bit more of everything in the night life stakes but with that said, both were fantastic.

Best drink

Soju is the undeniable king here. With me it had an inauspicious start on my second morning when I grabbed a bottle out of fridge at the Benikea – The Bliss, hotel in Incheon. It didn’t earn any plaudits on its debut. Usually a distilled rice drink, it presents as clear, smooth and slightly sweet. Drinking it out of the bottle ‘just for kicks’ did nothing, but with that said, I knew nothing. The moment that I paired it with my favourite style of meal, usually a spicy or savoury dish, then the whole world of soju made perfect sense.

Soju - Itaewon - Seoul - South Korea

Best meal

This one is easy, Dak-galbi is a dish of bite sized chicken pieces marinated in the wonderful gochujang sauce/marinade, which imparts a spice, sweet and savoury taste. The chicken is stir-fried with vegetables and then topped with cheese. When paired with soju the combination is an epicurean delight. An honourable mention goes to tteokbokki, also a fiery & sweet street made food, made from chewy rice cakes and simmered in a bold gochujang sauce. That darn gochujang is so addictive that it was one of the first things I sought out once I arrived back in Melbourne. A shout out to the stall holders at Gwangjang market that made my tteokbokki experience all the more enjoyable.

My favourite disk - Dak-galbi - Itaewon - Seoul - South Korea

Gwangjan market - Euljiro - Seoul - South Korea

Tteok-Bokki - Gwangjan market - Euljiro - Seoul - South Korea

Best bars

Honestly, too many to mention. I’ve already identified Euljiro and Gwangalli beach as key in Seoul and Busan, and I would be remiss if I also didn’t mention Huaendae beach in Busan, which was the near equal of Gwangalli. So rather than naming the best bar, I’ll give this one to both an interesting and surprising option, which is Sul 24 on Seousulla-gil 53 - Jongno District – Seoul. This place is literally an unmanned bar, run 24hrs per day, 365 days of the year. There’s no staff, no pressure, just grab your own drinks and enjoy. It says a lot about South Korea and its people that this place work without an issue.

Sul 24 on Seousulla-gil 53 - Jongno District – Seoul - South Korea

Favourite photos

The nightscape is so vibrant - Gunam-ro - Haeundae - Busan - South Korea

The back alleys of Euljiro - this to me is evokes those feels of mystery, energy and discovery

Euljiro - Seoul - South Korea

I took this whilst walking the back streets of Itaewon - its simple but there's something cool about it

Itaewon - Seoul - South Korea

Sky capsules in Haeundae - I love how the capsules traverses the skyline

Haeundae beach - Busan - South Korea

Early evening on Cheonggyecheon canal - Euljiro - Seoul - South Korea

Coolest moments

Sitting outside at another wonderful bar in Euljiro, looking out onto a little lantern filled alley, I was just in the moment and truly enjoying the whole experience.

Un-coolest moment

Seoul works so efficiently, everything makes sense and is intuitive, even for the first time tourist, but what I can’t figure out for the life of me is why a travel pass can only be topped up with cash. There was no option to top up with a credit card, which in itself presented a problem to me when I lost my initial travel card and was able to get a replacement, but couldn’t place any credit onto it. Going around to find an ATM presented such an unnecessary nuisance, especially on my last day.

Most random but still cool moment

On my first night wondering Anguk, I walked into a cute little bar hidden inside a Hanok village, and there I met barman Min, bartender, resident DJ and great guy extraordinaire. He was so attentive, so personable and on my second night in attendance, he let me bash out a really bad version of What’s the story morning glory. If I can somehow find the name of the bar at a later stage, I’ll include the link.

My man Min, spinning some tunes for me in Anguk - Seoul - South Korea

Best comeback

This relates directly to my un-coolest moment and just goes to show how acting like a confused foreigner will give you liberties that otherwise wouldn’t exist. After misplacing my travel card the evening before and not wanting to run around with my luggage to find an ATM, I elected to play dumb through various metro lines, acting confused and bewildered whenever I was pulled up for ‘insufficient funds’. The most I was every interrogated was at my final stop at Incheon Airport where the transit officer quizzed me on where I purchased the card, how many won I added, etc. After a couple minutes of a circular argument he obviously realised the futility of the situation and let me through – case closed.

Travel breakdown

Total number of flights - 2

Total flying hours – 18 hrs

Total time spent in airports - 'Not many, if any...' - All recognition and rights to that line go to Scribe, not may people can roll like him!

Total number of train rides - 1

Total number of bus rides - 1

Total number of sky capsule ride - 2

Total distance travelled – 17220 kms

Total bottles of Soju downed - 12 (give or take)

Thank you South Korea

Incheon Airport - Incheon - South Korea

South Korea, the surprise packet! Energetic, vibrant and running towards the future, whilst at the same time, incorporating its culture in a number of ways to ensure that its preserved for generations to come. A truly engaging, wonderful place. I can’t wait to come back and spend more time here.

Busan (South Korea) - A Saturday in Busan

Busan (South Korea)

12 July 2025

A Saturday in Busan, and a rarity for me, a full day dedicated to doing anything that came to mind in my ‘Busan discovery’.  For this morning, I was going to dedicate some time to an interesting, vibrant and somewhat beatnik area of Busan, Gamcheon Cultural Village. Sometimes called the ‘Santorini of Korea’… but for me….not quite, I more aligned it to being akin the ‘Valparaiso of Chile’ or the ‘La Boca of Buenos Aires’, but a little more of that shortly.

Waking up relatively early, I allowed myself time to take in the spectacular Haeundae Beach from the Mipo Oceanside Hotel. Its always a pleasure to give yourself the opportunity to absorb your surrounding unimpeded and without haste. Travel can so often be compartmentalised into check-box items, snippets of manufactured or tokenistic highlights, where your experience is more about tolerating the process and the crowds. These days I find a lot of pleasure in those quiet, reflective moments. With the morning sun beating down on the beach, the full sounds of the waves hitting the shore and the faint punctuation of early the early morning active crowd, this made for a great start to the day.

Haeundae Beach from the Mipo Oceanside Hotel - Busan - South Korea

I left the hotel about 0830 and effectively utilised the walk to the station as a bit of a time trial for the next day as I’d also be out early in order to head to the inter-city bus station in Nopo. I wanted to test out the walk to Jung-dong station, which on paper looked like the closer metro stop to the hotel but actually felt, in testing, like the longer walk. In any case, jumping on the metro at Jung-dong, I took the green line to Seomyeon station and then changed onto the Orange line in order to get to the closest metro stop to Gamcheon Village, Toseong station.

I made the perhaps the whimsically flippant decision to walk from the station to the village, which I assume by many would been just plain foolhardy. I found relatively quickly that there was a significant amount of effort that needed to be expelled in order make the ascent up the hillside just to get to the starting point. At this point it was about 10:00am, the sun was beaming, and we were easily about 30 degrees….but hey…you know I like a challenge! I’m also 100% sure that Inga would have approved of the escapade.

Climbing up out from Toseong station, guessing my way blindly to where I ‘thought’ the village would be located, which I occasionally verified with mental picture of the location map that I downloaded into my brain the night before. With that said, both my intuition and natural sense of orientation got my up to the village in a reasonable amount of time, with not a single wrong turn.

Gamcheon Cultural Village – the ‘Santorini of South Korea’?

My scepticism rises sharply whenever a person or place is compared to something iconic or universally recognisable. For example, a soccer player being called ‘The Messi of Surinam’, or a location being known as the ‘Niagara Falls of Kuala Lumpur’. That comparison doesn’t do anyone any justice. So lets just leave out the unfair comparisons and lets discuss what the village it, which a tumbling cascade of brightly painted houses stacked on steep hillsides overlooking the port, and what makes it  particularly striking is the way rows of pastel-coloured homes and winding alleyways spill down the slopes, creating a vibrant patchwork that has become one of Busan’s most recognisable sights. And for sure, there are visual associations that I have, the vibrancy and colour remind me of La Boca and Valparaiso, and I’d say the latter is the closest association – Valparaiso being a port town, built on a number of slopes, with houses the colours of the rainbow. Gamcheon is Valpariaso-esque and definitely worth visiting, but its like comparing Tim Cahill to Lionel Messi, Cahill is a great Aussie football star, and Messi is the greatest of all time.

Gamcheon Cultural Village - Busan - South Korea

Gamcheon Cultural Village - Busan - South Korea

Gamcheon Cultural Village - Busan - South Korea

Gamcheon Cultural Village - Busan - South Korea

A little about Gamcheon

The village has its roots in the 1950s, when refugees from the Korean War settled in the area. At that time, Gamcheon was a poor hillside community where housing was built quickly and cheaply, with residents making do on the margins of the city. For decades it remained underdeveloped, known more for its poverty rather than its beauty. However, that all started to change in 2009, when the government and local artists launched the "Dreaming of Machu Picchu in Busan" project, which aimed at transforming the village into a cultural hub. Walls were painted in bright colours, murals were created, and art installations were placed throughout the streets. This community-led regeneration brought a sense of pride to residents while also attracting visitors. And that’s essentially where we stand today, a major tourist attraction of Busan that draws in travellers for its mixture of visual beauty, artistic perspective, history and local life.

I slowly made my way through the labyrinth of alleyways, steep stairs and streets, appreciate the spectacle. Filled with museums, hillside café’s and bars, the area offers sweeping views over the hills out onto the port. I have to say that I enjoyed a leisurely few hours, stopping for the occasional beverage to once again let it wash over me.

Gamcheon Cultural Village - Busan - South Korea

Gamcheon Cultural Village - Busan - South Korea

Gamcheon Cultural Village - Busan - South Korea

Gamcheon Cultural Village - Busan - South Korea

Gamcheon Cultural Village - Busan - South Korea

Gamcheon Cultural Village - Busan - South Korea

Gamcheon Cultural Village - Busan - South Korea

It is interesting how places like this, or La Boca, or Valparaiso, once neglected, utilise the resilience and pride of its residents to ‘find a way’, to go beyond just natural aesthetics and achieve something of world-renowned cultural significance, which in itself is a story that obviously resonate far beyond Busan and South Korea itself, it exemplifies how an idea, art and community driven regeneration can transform hardship into heritage, turning a space marked by poverty into one celebrated for beauty and cultural expression.

After Gamcheon I made my way back to Haeundae onto Gunam-ro, where for some reason I felt compelled to make a lunch stop at a Mexican restaurant, ‘Tejano-Tex-Mex BBQ’, https://www.instagram.com//tejano_tex_mex_bbq/, which I think drew me in for its rooftop access and view, plus its promise of fine margaritas.

Tejano Tex-Mex - Gunam-ro - Haeundae Beach - Busan - South Korea

My afternoon was quite sedate, a walk down the beach, a bottle of soju in my room, and a watching of the last few episodes of series 3 of the Squid Games, which I felt was quite a serendipitous juxtaposition of circumstances.

Gwangalli Beach

In the evening I had planned to make my way to Gwangalli Beach, primarily to check out the drone shows that run twice nighty all through the year. In all honesty, I hadn’t done a lot of research about this area other than the fact that I had assigned myself an evening to explore, but the moment I arrived, I identified very quicky that I had shortchanged myself!

The first evening drown show at 8:00pm clearly displayed everything about Gwangalli Beach that I had not discovered in pre-arrival research. The main road heading to the beach and the immediate side-streets were filled with people in the 15-20 mins prior to the show, so much so that I initially commenced viewing from the street across from the beach. It also noticed that this place was ‘happening’, in a very different way to Haeundae. Lined with exceptionally stylish bars, restaurants, and café’s, this placed exuded energy, style and fun. Certainly it didn’t feel overtly glamourous but there was a sense of style and cool that made the place immediately intriguing and enjoyable.

Gwangan bridge - Gwangalli Beach - Busan - South Korea

Drone show - Gwangalli Beach - Busan - South Korea

Gwangalli Beach - Busan - South Korea

Drone show - Gwangalli Beach - Busan - South Korea

Settling into a spot on the sand, I watched as the night sky came alive with geometric mastery. The drone show was nothing short of spectacular, hundreds of lights gliding effortlessly into place, weaving intricate, almost impossible patterns that unfolded above me in luminous precision, all of which being supported by an equally as luminous Gwangan bridge and a flotilla of colourful pleasure craft that made their way into the bay for the nightly event. I thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact I liked it so much that I thought I’d hang around until the second show at 10pm, and not that was at all difficult in a place like this – Gwangalli was happening. Weaving through the streets of heaving humanity, there was a cacophony of sounds, smells, lights. I wondered why this area had escaped my greater scrutiny during my ‘South Korean investigation period’. It definitely warranted more than just an evening, and on reflection, I found myself deliberating if I should have based myself here.

As the evening marched on, I for some reason locked into to another Mexican style bar/restaurant and whiled away the hours as Busan moved around me. As an inherent introvert and one predisposed to quiet reflection, I felt the city pulse and move around me, with me, in the middle of my bubble.

As the evening unfolded, I found myself drawn into another Mexican-style bar, where I let the hours slip by as Busan moved restlessly around me. I’m an inherent introvert, predisposed to quiet reflection, there I sat within my own bubble, feeling the city’s pulse thrum and flow around me, with me , yet apart from me. I kind of like that sort of groove. I like when I choose to be involved or as detached according to my mood. This was just right.

As the hour approached and the second drone show took to the air, I found myself a prime position in front of French windows that opened out onto the beach. The second show even more impressive than the first as I was in the perfect position to make the most of it.

Drone show - Gwangalli Beach - Busan - South Korea

Post show I walked around the beach, taking in all in. The fantastically lit neon-lit Gwangan bridge casting a glittering reflection across the water, melding with the hum of the bars and restaurants, and the incessant sounds of the waves crashing on the shore. There’s adventure and stories just waiting to be written all over this neighbourhood. I mean I walked into a bowling alley located on the 12^th floor of a building – it had an incredible view of the bridge, the beach AND it had a bowling alley in the sky! I mean really, its as if the universe itself had scripted the opening line of a great yarn right there in front of me…but alas, not for tonight. I’m sure there will be another time, in this very place, and when that day (or night comes), remember I said this, ‘I told you so’. Gwangalli, if there’s truth in precognition, then I know there’s already a moment that has left a mark on me enough to understand that you are significant.