South Korea: Seoul, the KTX and Busan by the sea

I came to Seoul for the food, and Seoul agreed immediately. I'd barely dropped my bag before I was standing at a Gwangjang Market stall, watching a woman flip a mung-bean pancake the size of a dinner plate, pointing at it because my Korean stops at « hello » and « thank you ». She laughed, handed me a paper plate, and that was the trip starting properly — at a counter, mouth full, with no idea what was happening but absolutely sure I was in the right place.

I'd planned a loop I'd been dreaming about for months: a few days in Seoul — palaces in the morning, cafés in the afternoon, night markets when the lights come on — then the KTX down to Busan to swap the city for the sea, and back up. A train country, a food country, a country that, as everyone warned me, is wired to the teeth.

Seoul, from palace gates to neon counters

My days fell into a rhythm I never wanted to break. Mornings at Gyeongbokgung, watching the guard-changing ceremony with its drums and impossible colours, then wandering Bukchon's wooden hanok lanes before the tour groups. Afternoons in Seoul's café temples — and I mean temples; this is a city that treats a flat white as a serious art form, with three-storey coffee houses and queues out the door. Evenings belonged to the street: tteokbokki in chili sauce that announces itself, hotteok sugar pancakes burning my fingers, skewers under bare bulbs in Myeongdong.

« Seoul doesn't ask you to choose between the old and the new. It just hands you both, on the same street. »

Now, the honest bit about connectivity, since that's the house specialty — and here it's almost a non-story. South Korea is one of the most connected countries on the planet: 5G is genuinely everywhere in Seoul, the metro has signal in the tunnels (which still feels like a small miracle to me), and cafés practically pour wifi with the coffee. You will not struggle for a connection here. So the eSIM wasn't about rescuing me from dead zones — it was about not landing at Incheon with a dark phone. I had it installed before takeoff, and the second the plane doors opened I had maps, my translation app, and a message to my guesthouse, all without hunting for an airport SIM counter or a sticky public hotspot.

The KTX south, and the smell of the sea

The KTX to Busan is the kind of train that makes you a little smug about your travel choices. A bit over two and a half hours, give or take, gliding past rice fields and apartment towers and green hills at a speed the countryside can barely keep up with. I'd booked a window seat, queued a playlist out of habit, and barely touched it — I just watched Korea scroll past and ate a gimbap roll I'd grabbed at Seoul Station. By the time the doors opened in Busan, the air had changed: salt, fish, sun off the water.

Busan rearranged me. Jagalchi fish market, all silver and shouting, where you point at your catch and they cook it upstairs. Gamcheon, the hillside village painted in every colour, alleys folding into staircases. Haedong Yonggungsa, a temple built right onto the rocks with the sea breaking below — the rare temple where the view competes with the prayers. I sent my sister a video call from the cliff steps, because some places have to be shown, not described.

What three cities-in-one taught me

Connectivity that good changes how you travel, quietly. I navigated unfamiliar neighbourhoods without a second thought, read menus through my camera in real time, paid for nearly everything by phone, and never once rationed my data like a precious resource. The eSIM didn't save the trip from disaster — there was no disaster to save it from. It just meant I was online and sorted from the airport curb, which, when you're solo and jet-lagged in a city that speaks a different alphabet, is its own kind of luxury.

What I take away

I came for the food and left with a country. Seoul and Busan, stitched together by a train that turns the distance into a long lunch with a view. South Korea makes connectivity so effortless you forget it's there — which is exactly the point. Get yourself online before you land, and then go get lost on purpose, counter to counter, market to market, one mung-bean pancake at a time.

— Nora, somewhere between a night market and the next train.