South Korea
Busan
Fish markets the size of aircraft hangars spilling onto beaches backed by neon-lit cliff temples.
The market is the size of an aircraft hangar. Entire floors are dedicated to live fish auctions that begin before dawn. Outside, the beach stretches for 1.5 kilometres in the centre of a city of 3.4 million. Busan is not subtle about anything.
Busan is South Korea's second city, its largest port, and its most dramatic collision of urban density and coastal geography. Jagalchi Market — Korea's largest seafood market — operates on a scale that borders on industrial: multiple floors of live tanks, auction halls, and second-floor restaurants where fish is served within minutes of purchase. Haeundae Beach stretches 1.5 kilometres through a high-rise district, offering the surreal experience of ocean swimming backed by a 30-storey skyline. Haedong Yonggungsa temple clings to ocean cliffs below the city's eastern suburbs. The port handles 75% of Korea's maritime freight, and the working docks add industrial grit to a city whose food culture — dwaeji gukbap (milky pork bone broth), seed-stuffed hotteok pancakes, fish cake skewers — is as forceful as its geography.
Solo
Busan's street food culture is built for solo grazing — fish cake stalls, hotteok carts, raw fish counters where you eat standing up and move on.
Couple
The Haeundae night skyline, cliff-temple sunrises, and harbour-front seafood dinners give Busan a dramatic romantic register that Seoul cannot match.
Friends
The beach, the market, the soju culture, and the sheer volume of street food make Busan Korea's best city for a group trip with no plan beyond eating and exploring.
- Jagalchi Market is Korea's largest seafood market — entire floors dedicated to live fish auctions
- Haeundae Beach stretches 1.5km in the centre of a city of 3.4 million people
- Haedong Yonggungsa temple is built directly onto ocean cliffs below the city
- Korea's busiest port handles 75% of the country's maritime freight
Dwaeji gukbap — milky pork bone broth poured over rice with fermented shrimp paste on the side.
Raw fish so fresh the slices still twitch, eaten at Jagalchi Market's second-floor stalls.
Grímsey Island
Iceland
A wind-battered island where you step across the Arctic Circle among a million nesting seabirds.
The Ring Road
Nauru
Salt air and phosphate dust on the road that loops an entire country in nineteen kilometres.
Tulagi
Solomon Islands
Japanese float planes still rest in the harbour shallows of a bombarded colonial capital.
Whitby
England
Gothic abbey ruins over a harbour where Dracula came ashore and jet jewellery gleams black.
Sokcho
South Korea
North Korean refugee grandmothers stuffing squid with noodles in a misty, sea-battered port town.
Mungyeong Saejae
South Korea
Three stone gates guarding a dirt mountain pass that Joseon scholars walked to the capital.
Gunsan
South Korea
Faded wooden merchant houses frozen in time from the 1930s Japanese occupation in a quiet port.
Museom Village
South Korea
Timber houses reached only by a bending log bridge over a wide, sandy river.