Busan, Korea Rep.

Waking up was tough but I managed and quickly packed an overnight bag for my night in Busan. Once again Karina and I met up and she introduced me to another of her fab friends, Christine, a Canadian girl. Aalia joined us too and we made our way to the KTX express train which would get us to Busan in two hours instead of the usual four. Christine is a girl after my own heart and had packed oodles of delicious snacks including home baked choc chip cookies which were SO yummy. We got up to 305km/hour in the KTX and arrived right on time. We made our way to Indy House, a hostel in Busan only a short walk from the beach. I was really impressed with the hostel – it was spotlessly clean and nicely decorated. We dropped off our bags and there was a minor incident with a big black spider in Christine’s bag as she was looking for her swimming costume. There were a few screams (it was pretty scary and fast!) so I armed myself with a pair of chopsticks and a plastic cup and managed to get him out. I passed him on to the neighbours over the road…

Next we got into our bikinis and made for the beach. The water was far too cold for mine & Christine’s liking but I did put my feet in…Aalia and Karina went for a dip and soon some guys on jet skis arrived and offered them a ride. Unfortunately the sun disappeared right as we got to the beach and didn’t reappear at all the entire time we were in Busan. It didn’t dampen our spirits though!

OK, so the most amazing thing I have seen so far was a dog in a nappy. Yes, you read right. A dog. In a nappy. At first I thought it was a little pooch wearing shorts with a hole in for its tail! I did a double take because at home you only get jerseys for dogs, not shorts. But then Christine told me it is actually a nappy. If only I’d been quick enough to get a photo! I have a feeling I’ll be seeing more of those though!

We spent a lot of time looking for places to eat. We read restaurant reviews in Karina’s Lonely Planet book and tried to find one of those, but the one we were looking for had closed down. It was tricky because I eat anything (except bones & live squiggly octopi), Aalia does not eat pork, Karina only eats fish and Christine doesn’t eat seafood. So we went from place to place trying to find somewhere that could cater for all of us. We did eventually find somewhere on the beachfront for lunch and for dinner we went to an Italian restaurant. One thing I’ve noticed here (and I love!) is that everywhere you go gives you free stuff (they call it a “service”)! I love free stuff!! At the lunch place we got given a bottle of coke and cups of coffee, at the Italian place we got given free pizza pieces (as many as we liked) and if we’d ordered a bottle of wine we would have got a salad. It was here that I had my first glass of wine since I arrived in SK. It was Chilean and obviously tasted different to SA wines but it was good nevertheless and so nice to have a glass of red with dinner.

We slept like logs that night and woke up around 9am on Monday morning. We had to be out of the room by 11am so we got cleaned and packed and went to the common room where you can help yourself to bread to toast and peanut butter or jam. Christine brought some yummy teas and coffees which were great but I still missed my usual good old English Breakfast Tea with milk and sugar. We arranged to leave our bags at the hostel for the day so we could walk around easily.

We all wanted to see the Jagalchi fish market so we headed there. It was amazing, I have never seen so many sea creatures in one place, not even in an aquarium! The sad thing was that they are obviously all there to be eaten. It was mind boggling to see so much in one place and makes me seriously worry about the condition of our oceans if so much is being harvested in only one area. Scary. I am definitely going to make more effort to find out which fish species are “green, orange and red” according to that system that is used in South Africa. Unfortunately, again, there seems to be no such thing in this country (although I stand to be corrected.) I felt so sorry for all the animals swimming around in tiny tanks waiting to be bought and killed. Some of the octopi tried to escape but it was all futile as the stall owner just pushed them back in the water after all their efforts 🙁

For lunch we found a place to eat where, for W12000, we could eat as much as we like from a huge buffet. The great thing was that it was all Korean food (usually these buffets have western food but not so nicely made) and you could also cook your own meat & fish on the roaster in the centre of the table. So more food was consumed! After we rolled out of there we headed to Hae-undae beach, the famous beach in Busan. It was still grey and drizzly so we had a quick look and then took refuge in a Starbucks where we could enjoy the view on comfy couches. Eventually we headed back to the hostel, collected our bags and went back to the station to catch the KTX back to Cheonan-Asan. We climbed into a taxi and got home around 00:30. A whirlwind tour of Busan but great fun!