Today was finally the day of my trip to Busan! I woke up and my mood got way better compared to last night because someone eventually apologized. And I spent most of the morning just packing my stuff and preparing my luggage, which was already getting too full. I spent like an hour and a half just preparing my luggage and clothes, as well as throwing out my unused stuff. I had so much to stuff in one luggage, but I eventually got it done. I took a bath and eventually booked a taxi ride going to Seoul Station KTX. I had to say goodbye to one of, if not the best, hotel room I've ever stayed at (even compared to some 5-star hotel rooms I've stayed at in the Philippines). I also left the hotel which was kind of my home for these past few days. Eventually, the taxi had picked me up and the traffic was kind of congested and I kind of got worried because I just had to go to the correct KTX platform and navigate it, all in under one hour. I eventually got there at around 7:40 a.m. and my train was bound to leave at 7:58 a.m. so it was kind of a nail-biter. I took the elevator going up and then navigated to the platform to where my train was. It was on track 7 and it surprisingly took me only a short time to get from the main train platform to track 7 itself, and I was carrying my luggage, too.

I got to my scheduled train just in the nick of time!

I left my luggage at the storage area and went to my seat. I got my MacBook out and I just listened to some music for a bit. I tried to connect to the Wi-Fi inside the train, but it wasn't that reliable, so I just connected to the hotspot that I had. I was seated across some ladies who spoke Chinese and next to some Korean man. I watched Train to Busan (2016) for a bit and I even wondered if I was on the correct train because it made several stops. But I got reassured that it was the right train and that the stops were normal. I eventually passed out as I was listening to my Antok FM playlist. When I woke up, we were close to arriving at Busan, which was kind of the expected time anyway. I got up as the people were leaving the train and that was surprisingly straightfoward.

After arriving in Busan, I had a bit of a dilemma: my hotel booking wasn't until 3 p.m. or so, and I arrived in Busan at 10 a.m. in the morning, so I had a lot of free time to kill. I tried to find some lockers, but the ones were full and some guy even scolded me a bit, but it was just some random dude and not a train station employee. I had to rent 2 lockers: one at Busan Station itself and one at the nearby subway. The one at Busan Station had my large-ass bag and MacBook, and I made my way to the subway nearby so I could store my luggage. After that, I just chilled, ate at a convenience store nearby, ate some snacks and bread at the Paris Baguette, and eventually had some mandu and fried, cheesy chicken at the food court. The cheesy chicken kind of reminded me of the ones I used to eat at Maisen in the Glorietta food court, so that was interesting. I couldn't finish all of the mandu, though. After that, I just walked around to pass the time and eventually got my stuff from the lockers at around 2 p.m. or so. I had to carry my heavy-ass luggage and bag down to the subway to ride the train to Jungang Station, where my hotel was at. I got confused a bit, and even a lady scolded me and showed me that there was an elevator because I looked like a tired jackass for carrying my luggage down the stairs. I eventually got to Jungang Station, and a guy even helped me out by carrying my luggage over the turnstile, and another guy helped out by carrying my luggage up the stairs. He was with this woman and they were both students. We didn't talk much after that and I headed to my hotel on foot. I got checked in to the hotel and I asked if they had extra rooms for 1 more night, and they said that they were fully booked out, so I'd have this “limbo” issue tomorrow because I had to store my stuff in lockers again.

When I got into the hotel room, it was tiny compared to the one I've been staying at. It felt kind of like a shock since it was extremely small, and there was barely any space. The bathroom was small as hell, too, and it kind of made me miss my hotel room back in Seoul. But I didn't have much time as I had to leave immediately so I could catch my scheduled Busan tour. I just dumped my stuff and then booked a taxi to Busan Station. I actually made it in time and I was pretty early, I ordered some matcha for myself. I met up with our tour guide, David, and there were some elderly ladies to which David spoke Japanese to, which shocked me because this dude was trilingual. I eventually met up with the others and we boarded the tour bus and met up with the others. The bus ride to pick up the other passengers took a while since the traffic was bad and that it was a Friday, but I got to see my first sighting of some cherry blossoms. I took a photo and just stared out as we headed to pick up the other tour attendees.

After picking up the other people, we eventually went to our first stop which was the Haeundae Sky Capsule. We were dropped off at the Blue Line Park, took a group photo, and David gave us free time to explore and walk around for 5 minutes or so as he got to claim the tickets at Mipo Station. I got some souvenirs and some Busan caramel, which seemed interesting. I got paired up with an elderly and sweet British lady named Sarah, who was on this solo Korea trip as well. I mostly just asked her about her life back in the UK, her family and kids, and I guess she was kind of surprised that I was extremely fluent in English. We eventually rode the Sky Capsule and I took a few pictures. Sarah was nice enough to take a few pictures of me and I also took photos of her in exchange. I got to have some good views of the sunset, even though it wasn't that visible because of the air quality and that it was a bit cloudy. I got to wave and exchange glances at the other people in the capsules that passed by, which was funny. But the “ride” eventually ended once we got to the other station and I talked to some of the other people there who were solo travelers, too. One was even a Filipino-American who came from the US. I talked to him as we headed to our next stop, which was Cheongsapo Daritdol Skywalk, and it was this cool rainbow bridge that looped back from a cliffside. I asked our tour guide, David, to take some photos of me and cooked with those photos. I got some pretty cool shots, which were so nice. Then we made our way back to a nearby seaside restaurant. I talked to some of the other solo travelers, too, including one teacher who was from the US and another one from the UK. We ate at the seafood restaurant and we actually got to order a lot of food since we were a group.

We all shared how nice it was to actually order some grilled food and have sides because we were all solo travelers, and it is notoriously hard to order good food as a solo diner in Korea. We had seafood which was a mix of some clams, this “new-to-us” sea creature which was just an abalone, and some shrimp. It was nice to eat out and talk to fellow solo travelers, and it was actually the first time I've felt less alone in Korea. What we ordered was so interesting, some people from another table took videos of the food we got, which was funny. After that, we went to The Bay 101 where we took more photos, had David explain to us some expensive apartments in Busan, and I got some cheesecake there. Us solo travelers also took a few photos together since we were all acquainted at this point. Then we went to Millac The Market and David explained some history about it, which had some funny entrance doors. I ordered some bread there, but it wasn't some stuffed bread that I wanted. Us solo travelers also tried to go to the photo booth nearby, which was PONYFILM, and it actually ate the money that we put in there, funny enough. We tried fiddling with the machine and in the end we ended up using pics that Sarah took on her iPhone 15's front camera, which was funny. Afterwards, we took kind of a long trip to a place that overlooked Busan at night. We didn't do much there aside from just stand around and look at the view, but afterwards we were all worrying about how to get to our respective places since it was getting late and around 10:40 p.m. already. We exchanged Instagram handles and I took the tour bus back to Busan Station. I took the subway back to my hotel room and eventually got some well-needed sleep after such a long and eventful day.