Busan Trip Continued

I left off on Thursday in Busan. The next day, we had planned to go surfing, so we got to Songjeong beach, but it was really crowded and the waves weren't very good. I would have gone if it were just me, but I had the feeling that my friend didn't really want to do it, so I decided not to surf. It was a pity because the next day had no waves. :(

This is the beach - Songjeong. It was really beautiful and I would hhave loved to surf there :(

This is a rocky point. It was really cool, I guess volcanic rock. 

After the beach, we decided to walk a fair distance to the nearest metro station. It was pretty far, but it was a really nice walk. 

This is from a viewpoint, you can't see anything, but there are supposed to be two lighthouses, one white (right) and one red (left). It was pretty misty.

The walk to the station was over/around a mountain, so we were quite high above the water.

After getting to the train station we headed to Spa Land. It's another Onsen. It was very popular. It had various relaxing rooms, like body echo rooms and salt rooms. Inside the baths, they had sodium bicarbonate (good for soft skin) and sodium chloride baths (good for chronic pain and neuralgia). My favourite thing to do is rotate between very hot (44 C baths or 80 C saunas) and cool water baths (18 C). There are some baths of 30 C or 36 C but those feel tepid to me... It's not nice, but rather gross. This Onsen also had outdoor baths which is nice. I don't see any improvement from the salt baths for my pain though :( I guess you need to keep going.

In the same complex as the spa (a giant - the world's largest - store called Shinsegae) there was a model of the Trevi Fountain. How random.

After the spa, we wandered to the Busan International Film Festival theatre complex. It was really cool. They have several indoor theatres as well as an outdoor theatre. 

Very futuristic movie theatre...

We were going to see a movie, but it would have ended pretty late, so we decided to just return to the guesthouse. The next day my friend was leaving, so I was on my own for one day.

I enjoyed being by myself. I guess I'm a loner. I decided to go to Gamcheon Culture Village. This village started off as a place to house the many refugees of the Korean War. At the time of the war, Busan had a population of 400,000 people, and during the war, 700,000 refugees came... You can imagine they couldn't cope very well. So many refugees settled in tiny little houses that were squished very close to each other.

The village.

People still live there, but it has become an important artistic and cultural area. There are many community art projects in the are and the houses are all painted bright and happy colours. In Korean they call it the "happy village." While it certainly looks happy, I found myself thinking that the residents couldn't have been that happy. The houses are very small and literally on top of each other. What's more, the village is built into the side of a mountain, meaning that the hills are steep and there are sooooo many stair cases. Most of the residents seem to be elderly, so I imagine it must be difficult to get around. On top of all that, they have to deal with literally bus loads of tourists who don't always respect their privacy and homes. 

People birds.

More people birds. It was a public art installation.

The colourful houses of Gamcheon. Literally on top of each other.

Lots of stairs... A lot of houses are accessible only by narrow staircases and paths like this.

From an angle she almost jumps out at you. 

This is Korea, so of course there were love locks. 

Colourful mural.

At a well supposedly built during a drought by a starving but determined young man. 

More houses!

The house of peace. Apparently it has signatures of Koreans hoping for peace and reunification of the Koreas.

The stairs of stars. This staircase has 148

steps and is very steep. It's called the stairs of stars because people used to see stars climbing it with heavy loads on their backs. Tough life...

One of the narrow passages connecting houses to staircases and roads.

Public fish art.

Gamcheon.

After walking around the village, I walked back down the mountain. All throughout the area, the houses are made of random materials. Sometimes, brick, cement, stone, tile, or painted plaster. 

A house covered with stones.

After getting back down the mountain, I went to Busan's namesake station - Busan Station. There was a traditional market in the area as well as an "international shopping street" which was full of bars and clubs established by foreigners I guess. There were Phillipines bars, Russian clubs, Czech coffee houses, and many more. I felt it was a very shady area and wouldn't want to be there after dark when everything was open... 

All in all it was a cheap and good trip. I got some cheap beauty products and enjoyed some Korean food. I regret not surfing though :(

Trip to Busan - Golden Week 2016

This year for Golden Week I went to Korea again. I was a little worried in light of the tense situation with North Korea. Extra worrying was the Party Congress that North Korea was gearing up for... In the previous week there were 2 (failed) missile launches. I was worried they were going to launch an attack in honour of their special day, but nothing happened. Luckily, I was going to Busan this time, not Seoul. Seoul is directly south and an obvious target for North Korea, whereas Busan is in the south of Korea. 

This trip was hastily put together and came after my rather shocking news, so it has been a bit of a distraction for me. However, my thoughts often turned to that shock and the possibility of impending surgery. I keep telling myself that it isn't necessary and that the MRI will be negative for any damage. Two days after I get home I have a doctor's appointment where more will be decided. Here's hoping no surgery!

Anyway, back to the trip! I left Tuesday afternoon and arrived at around 8:30 pm in Busan at Gimhae International Airport. The day was very windy and I was warned by the airline that we might get sent back to Narita if the winds were too strong. My friend was supposed to arrive much earlier, but her flight was delayed and she ended up arriving only slightly earlier than me. The flight was smooth and I watched half of "The Revenant" on the plane. I guess I'll watch the other half on the way back. We were served a small meal (!) of beef and rice. It was good (except for the rice...). After we met up, we tried to find our way to the guesthouse... It was no easy feat because everything was in Korean (surprise, surprise). We got on a bus and then I thought I saw the characters for our stop, and we got off, much too early. Oh well. We found our way and had a rather long walk to the hotel. At least it helped me get my bearings. The guesthouse is called Yusun Guesthouse. The owner is really nice and it's very cheap! For 5 nights it cost me ¥6500. It's of course not very clean and fresh looking, but it works. 

On the second day, we wandered around our guesthouse area. There is nothing around it. There is one tiny convenience store and then everything else is industrial, meat-related or building related. We eventually found a cafe (which are ubiquitous everywhere but our area, apparently...) and had some much needed coffee. After that we walked around more and found a busy shopping area and traditional market. The market was huge and it mostly sold meat, fish, and vegetables and fruit. It was very interesting to walk around. After the market we decided to look for food. It's very difficult in a non-touristy place because everything is in Korean. We found a restaurant with pictures and pointed to what we wanted. It was a one pot kind cooking kind of place, like hotpot. 

My friend and our hotpot stew dish. It had lots of greens and then stewed beef bones with meat on them. It was good but soooo filling. 

After lunch we went to find the folk fishing museum and were able to find it just as it was closing :( With nothing else to do, we went shopping a little instead and found a Starbucks and had very expensive coffee. A tall cappuccino was about $5 (or 4600 won). Crazy! After that we made our way back to the guesthouse. 

This was displayed at Starbucks, where there was an impressive lack of sugar. Only white, brown, and liquid sugar were available...

The next day we went to the Busan Museum and Cultural Centre. At the cultural centre there was an exhibition of calligraphy. I remember finding a similar thing in Seoul. Here are some of my favourites: 

After the exhibition we went to the museum. We passed by the U.N. Memorial Cemetery, the only one of its kind in the world. Buried/interred there are the graves of the U.N. Soldiers who fought to keep Korea free during the Korean War. I think there are 2200 graves there. 

 U.N. Memorial monument.

UN memorial cemetery.

Playing on Korean park exercise equipment.

Trying to mold myself to the glop of public art.

After the museum (I didn't take pictures inside), we went for lunch, we had bibimbap, a popular Korean dish that mixes vegetables, beef, a raw egg and rice in a hot bowl. It was okay, luckily I gave most of my rice to my friend, so it was more enjoyable. 

After lunch we had a cultural experience and partook in a traditional Korean tea ceremony. It was similar to Japan, but also different. 

I'm making tea in the traditional way!

The set up and the sweets. 

Perfectly lined up. 

Interestingly enough, the tea ceremony explanation had to be done in Korean and Japanese. We were the only two non Koreans there, but they couldn't do it in English, so we got it in Japanese. It was nice to hear and speak Japanese. Everytime I wanted to speak to Koreans, only Japanese would come out, as if it were a reflex. It was strange.

The cursory freeze shot in front of the museum.

I can jump sooo high (not- talented photographer)!

This was for Glen.

After tea ceremony we went to oncheonjang, an area at the base of the mountains with lots of hot springs. We went to the Onsen in Korea and it was good but also alarming. In Japanese onsens, there are many rules and I expected the same of Korean ones, but I was wrong. People were washing themselves by the pools, sitting on the floor and grooming themselves, swimming in the Onsen, and putting their heads underwater. All of these are no-nos in Japan. The Japanese Onsen experience is much quieter, politer and calmer. 

This is a colourful monument to the onjeong well, which supplied Onsen water for a bathhouse almost 400 years ago. They say the water was hot enough to hardboil an egg back then.

This was a motel (I'm pretty sure it was a love hotel, and the place was full of em) with a very interesting inscription on it: "have you ever slept in the motel 'dream' that kills you" 

I'm not sure what to make of that... 

That concludes the write up for the first half of my Busan trip. There's more to come!