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Fishy Business and Purr-fect Times
Busan, Korea Rep. |
Busan, Korea Rep.
Our last stop in South Korea was Busan, the second largest city and the main bustling port known for its annual film festival and its fish market.
We had a lovely smooth flight from Jeju, caught the airport bus into the city and found ourselves dropped on the pavement in the middle of the main high street on a Saturday afternoon with a demonstration march going down past us and a map that was as good as useless. Bugger, everything had been going so smoothly in South Korea until now. We crossed the road out of the madness and stood around looking gormless and surprisingly not a single person rushed to our aid. Every where else in South Korea if we even hesitated with a map in our hands someone was there by our side trying to help us, but Busan just left us hanging. Through pure luck we stumbled into a Tourist Information Booth and thankfully they armed us with a map and directions to our hostel.
After our amazing hostel on Jeju we were excited to get to the Blue Boat in Busan as it had such good reviews and looked so good in the pictures. Sadly this hostel turned out to be a bit of a ‘fur coat no knickers’ hostel. It did look just as good as it did in the pictures, with modern retro style furniture, it was clean, well located, the beds and bedding were comfy and there was even a Powder Room complete with free toiletries, a nail bar, hair dryers and straighteners. The down side of the hostel sadly overcame all of the good features. The location whilst right near all the main attractions was sadly right in the bar centre of Busan so had non stop noise from 5pm to 5am, this was bearable with earplugs but what we really struggled with was the Korean style bathroom. The mens shower room had 3 showers with shower curtains, however you had to walk through each others shower curtains to get in or out. The ladies was not much better, we just had glass panels dividing the three showers. Just to add to the complete lack of privacy we also had the standard Korean size towel, which we would call a flannel or a hand towel at best, needless to say we became somewhat nocturnal here showering in the dead of night.
Our first day exploring we found ourselves on the hop on hop off bus. There were two main stops that we visited on the bus, first the UN Memorial Cemetery. This cemetery began construction in 1951 to commemorate the lives lost during the Korean War. It is laid out over 35 acres, the graves are set out in 22 sites designated by the nationalities of the buried service members. I can’t believe it has taken me to the last blog of the Country to give you a brief history lesson of the Korean War.
Korea has had a long and arduous war torn history, from 1910 to 1945 it was under Imperial Japanese rule, then in 1945 the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and with the agreement of the US, occupied the North of Korea, whilst the US occupied the South. By 1948, two separate governments had been set up. Both governments claimed to be the legitimate government of Korea, and neither side accepted the border as permanent. The conflict escalated into open warfare when North Korean forces, supported by the Soviet Union and China, invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950. The Korean War raged from 1950 to 27 July 1953 when the final armistice agreement was signed. The Korean Armistice Agreement provided for monitoring by an international commission. Since 1953, the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC), composed of members from the Swiss and Swedish Armed Forces, has been stationed near the DMZ.
It is estimated that the death toll during the Korean War is around 1.2 million, a sad and tragic figure when you consider that this beautiful country is constantly on the brink of war again with the madness of Kim Jong Un ready to let leash at any moment. Kim Jong Un is the third member of the family to take succession which has never happened in any communist country. You can but hope that one day North Korea will be free from the madness and can be properly open for people to visit as the South is such a beautiful place and visiting the North is not impossible, but expensive and so controlled that you see little of the real country.
The cemetery was a beautiful and peaceful place and the wall of names of all the fallen soldiers was pretty breathtaking, broken down by country it was heart wrenching to see how many American’s lost their lives.
Our next destination was Haeundae beach, this is the most touristy beach in Busan, by far the biggest and the best. With the city full of skyscapers behind it the hundreds of umbrellas in perfect rows just make for an absolutely stunning view. It was a warm sunny day and the beach had a few people relaxing, but I would love to have seen it at the height of summer when there is not a scrap of sand to be found. We found ourselves in a little fish market street with tanks filled with eels just waiting to be executed and eaten. It was a pretty terrifying sight watching them being prepared as even with their heads cut off their bodies writhe around whilst they are being dissected. Eugh.
Back in the city and there was still plenty to see, obviously we had to go up Busan Tower. This tower serves absolutely no purpose save to give people a view over the city. I didn’t know that that was a rarety but Tim reliable informs me that they are usually radio towers or suchlike?! Regardless of having a second job, the tower did a damn good job at providing views over the city, so much so that Tim had several hissy fits whilst editing the hundreds of pictures that we each took covering every possible angle from the tower, and as if that wasn’t painful enough we went up again at night and took just as many photo’s, ha ha. I infact took a whole lot more than I intended to on our night visit as there was a man who appeared, seemingly demanded that the lights in the tower be turned off and he singled me out, walked me around every pane of glass in the tower, moved whoever was in the way out of the way and pointed my camera in the right direction for me. I was so embarrassed and have no idea why he picked me to have a private photo tour at the top of the tower, you have to laugh, but as I said Tim was definitely not laughing when he was editing these pictures ha ha.
Busan’s most famous attraction is Jagalchi Fish Market, This giant warehouse building on the waterfront is most definitely the biggest fish market I have ever seen. The ground floor is the main sales floor selling live fish in every size, shape and variety you have ever seen. This is one of those places that I love to hate. The people working in the market were largely ladies in their 50’s and 60’s who’s faces told a thousand tales, dressed up in their overalls, head scarves and wellies tending to their fish was a real sight. For me the tanks full to the brim of precious fish and beautiful octopus was just so sad. I was beating myself up as to whether it was more cruel to kill them and sell them and then have to throw away what is not sold as I am sure is the way in western society or to keep them alive in these little tanks. It is a tough one. Sadly the market didn’t end there, there was another floor of dried fish and restaurants where they freshly prepare the catch for you and outside on the street there was another market where dead and dried fish were being prepared and sold, it was particularly sad to see whale meat being sole here.
In need of some light relief after the fish massacre market we headed up to the Busan International Film Festival Square (BIFF Square), these streets are teeming with food stalls, sock vendors and fortune tellors. Yep I did say socks, there was stall after stall all selling trainer socks with various patterns and pictures. Obviously I had to partake and learned that there are called K-Socks, I am not the very proud owner of Batman socks, socks that look like I have a pair of converse on and the obligatory cute teddy bear socks. With grey clouds looming we needed to take a break for a coffee and what did
I see before me, only a sign for a cat café.
I had read warnings that some of the cat cafes in Biff square were not as good as others but for me a cat is a cat and I think they all deserve a cuddle whilst I drink coffee. This was definitely not the cleanest or freshest smelling cat café but from what I could make out these are all rescue cats and not just the cute furry pedigree cats that are now becoming the norm for cat cafes. We were made to feel very welcome when a small kitten popped up on the chair next to Tim and did a huge pee, nice. Aside from the annoying children who were tormenting the cats with treats and just begging to be scratched this was a nice little café with adorable cats. I particularly liked the moody faced furry ones that just have that look that they hate you.
On our way home we decided to try one of the Busan street food specialties, we were not sure what they were or what they were called but everyone was eating them and we had managed to get enough information to know that they were vegetarian. We later discovered that they are called, Ssiat Hotteok (seed-stuffed pancake). We opted to head to the stall with the biggest queue as that is usually a sure fire way of knowing you are getting the best of what’s on offer. We were probably in the queue for a good 10 minutes, but when we got our hands on this delicious little treat we were ready to head back to the queue to start all over again. It is basically some kind of donut dough with black sesaeme seeds mixed in. They then mould them into a little ball, place a spoon of dark sugar in the middle, shallow fry and squash them into little discs and the last stage is to cut them in half and fill them with a mix of seeds. Mmmm, my mouth is watering just writing about them!
There were some cool pictures in our hostel which we soon discovered were taken in the Gamcheon Culture Village, a popular tourist attraction which is a genuine village built into the side of a mountain with a selection of art exhibits to find as you wonder through its tiny streets. Getting to the village was something pretty special. We followed the online instructions and got the metro and waited outside the local hospital with a variety of people sporting gowns and drips to get the bus to the village. Whilst it is probably walking distance I had read it is uphill so the bus is the best option. Boy are we glad we took this advice. There most definitely was a hill and even on the bus it was something of an endurance with the driver throwing the bus around the corners, but it was definitely worth the short white knuckle ride.
We just had time for one more activity and at the mention of coffee, this was my chance to drag Tim to another Cat Café. I had my directions at the ready for the café that I wanted to visit that had an adorable skinny bald cat. I followed the directions and they seemed to be working perfectly up until the last one. It advised that the café should be on our right, but the only sign for a cat café we could see was on our left. Assuming this was a typo, we went in. This was not a typo, we were somehow in the wrong café, either it is some seriously impressive competition or just fluke, but we arrived at this café on its opening day. They were still putting up the pictures but we didn’t care, there was a whole room full of cats new to this job of working in a cat café and I was only too ready to meet them all. The main cat was just awesome, a huge white cat with his body shaved making him look a bit like a poodle and he was sporting a rather fetching pale blue and pink t-shirt, OMG, could this cat be any cuter. Getting our directions wrong turned out to be the best move ever, these cats were adorable and playful and as there were only 2 other people in the café we had them pretty much all to ourselves, bliss. The added bonus was that they actually also made really good coffee, not something that we have ever found in a cat or dog café before.
Our final day in South Korea and what an amazing experience it has been, for somewhere that I had no interest at all in visiting, it has blown my mind and is totally somewhere that I would like to come to again. South Korea is renowned for its Jjimjilbangs, or spas as we would call them, like the hot spring Onsen in Japan the Jjimjilbang are made up of hot spring pools and also various hot rooms, from saunas and steam rooms to salt rooms and charcoal rooms all at temperatures varying from 20 degrees to 75 degrees. Most Jjimjilbang are same sex only so you wonder around in your birthday suit which means that Tim and I would definitely never have the balls to try one. Thankfully Busan has Spa Land, the biggest Jjimjilbang in South Korea and whilst the hot springs in the changing room area are men or women only, there are hot foot pools and a huge selection of hot lie on the floor rooms which are mixed sex and you are provided with a pair of prison style pyjamas to wear. Aside from the huge amount of nakedness in the changing rooms, Spaland was amazing. We lazed around, tried out every room under 40 degrees, some of them twice, we tried the smoked boiled eggs that everyone else was munching on, they were chewy and weird and after our 4 hours were up we left relaxed but sweaty and minging as we were both too shy to partake in the communal naked showering. All in all it was a great way to end our stay in South Korea.
What an amazing journey it has been, sadly it is time to move on, next stop Taipei, Taiwan.
Beans Around The World 