We love Busan!!! We have always stayed in Haeundae when we visit Busan because the Love Motels are really nice and relatively inexpensive, and who doesn’t want to wake up and be able to walk to the beach? Haeundae is a fun place for us to go in Korea because it has one of the nicest beaches in the country! For these reasons it was one of the places we went in Korea on our honeymoon.

So we broke out the camera and decided to show the inside of our luxurious Love Motel. For those not familiar, Korea has several types of overnight accommodation when you are visiting some area of the country. A Goshiwon (고시원) is an inexpensive option if you can find one, and is usually a very small but clean place to lay your head at the end of an evening. We don’t usually stay in Goshiwons because Love Motels are the next cheapest option, and oh so much more fun! Love Motels sprung up in Korea from the need to have a place for a man and woman to escape to when it’s time to take care of ‘bizness’. They were never really meant for foreigners to use as a place to stay when traveling around Korea, but that’s exactly what we do when we are traveling here is find a love motel. Prices have risen recently, but depending on where you are within the country, a Love Motel can run as low as about $30 US per night. We paid 55,000 Won per night (about $50 per night) for the room we stayed in featured in the video. Not bad because it had a computer, flat screen TV (which we never turned on), refrigerator with complimentary water, tea and coffee, and a lovely bathroom with a shower and a separate tub. Love Motels are also a lot of fun for the décor! Ours in the video had English written all over the wallpaper, and a lot of it is just funny nonsense that’s misspelled. It’s really quite entertaining.

There are also regular hotels that are located in all the major cities in South Korea, and well as plenty of franchise hotels familiar with people who travel internationally. They are all really nice places and confortable to the nines, but usually run several hundred dollars US per night to start.

As you walk around Haeundae, you notice a lot of tourists, and that new hotels/motels are common everywhere. I believe the motel that we stayed in is less than 2 years old. Our motel was about a 5 minute walk from the beach, and that’s really close for us since we live in Suwon with no beach for miles. There are also plenty of great restaurants in this area, many of which are serving up some sort of seafood. Of course that’s not the only dish available. We sometimes do not go to seafood restaurants in the country because we are far less familiar with seafood dishes. We love eating seafood with Koreans, because they always know exactly what to order. But between ourselves, we admit that we get a bit gun shy about pulling the trigger on something we are not sure what it is.

That being said, we chose a restaurant that we’ve eaten in before (on our honeymoon!) and ordered Kal-gook-su. This dish is a popular one, and it can be made many different ways. Ours in the video was similar to what many westerners might know as chicken noodle soup with a fish stock. This one did not have any clams in it, but we eat it that way as well. The dish came with radish kimchi and yellow pickled radish. The total came to about 7.50 US (8,000Won)

We headed to the beach after that! They were setting up for the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) while we were there right on the beach. We grabbed coffee beforehand and just relaxed for about an hour. We noticed our microphone was turned off so most of what we filmed at the beach is not included in the video. Whether that’s for better or worse, we are not sure, but we did manage a few nice beach shots to include in the vlog.

The end of the video concluded with us in TBS Efm Busan radio station where we were interviewed by DJ Chad Kirton about Hallyu Back. Holla!!! We will make sure to include a link to the interview if you are interested in listening to it. Chad is a Canadian who has been living in Korea for many years now, WAY longer than us. He speaks fluent Korean and does his radio show in both languages. About 2 years ago we made a really cool documentary movie about Chad because he rocks it down in Busan. We might be wrong, but we believe he has the number 1 English radio program in Busan.. which is pretty damn cool.

Be sure to check out the end of the vid where Chad runs into some fans on the street when the interview was finished! ☺