Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Fish and ships in Busan

Several people had said how much they'd liked Busan, South Korea's biggest port city on the southern tip of the peninsula, so I arrived with a certain amount of anticipation about my last stop in the country.

First impressions were good. Busan has a very efficient metro system which got me easily from the bus station to my hotel, even with my two big bags. (As I was getting off the train a man observed: "You have a lot of luggage.").

I stayed down near the port area, one of three major touristy spots in Busan. It's also close to BIFF Square, one of the locations for the annual Busan International Film Festival and a big shopping district where every day street food stalls set up their wares. On the Sunday I arrived the street food market was especially big so I went and tried the local green onion (= spring onion) pancakes, some grilled prawns on a stick, and a hotteok. Hotteok are basically little doughnuts filled with sugar and fried in butter, and then once they're done they get cut open and filled with a mixture of nuts and seeds and handed to you hot from the griddle. They're pretty good. I had one each day I was in Busan!


In the afternoon I walked up to Gamcheon Cultural Village, which the Busan tourist people optimistically describe as 'Korea's Machu Picchu'. Or 'Korea's Santorini'. Neither really hits the spot. My Olympic colleague Petter, who went to Busan before me, captioned his photo of the place as 'favela Friday' and frankly I think he's more accurate. Gamcheon was at one point a poor area, with low-rise, small boxy buildings built on a hill. In the last 10 years or so they've gentrified it, cleaned it up, made sure all the buildings are painted in bright pastels, and put in loads of street art and art installations. The shops are souvenir shops and the place is full of tourists taking selfies at the 'photo zones'. Granted, Gamcheon is touristy but I liked the art and the colourful buildings and it was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

In an ideal world I'd have spent the next day walking up one of the many hills surrounding the city, but it chose to pour with rain in the morning. So instead I went to see one of Busan's top sights, the Jagalchi Fish Market which was just near my hotel.

The fish market is housed in a large building by the harbour and much of the fish sold is alive. The stallholders sit behind large tanks, many crammed with fish and shellfish swimming around, with water gushing through to keep everything fresh. I wouldn't say that the fish looked desperately happy in their tanks but I guess they were due to be in a pot fairly soon.

There were all sorts of weird and wonderful types of fish that I'd never seen before, from eels to big fish to various sorts of shellfish and gigantic mussels, sea squirts and other mysterious creatures. Upstairs there was a big restaurant area and a section selling dried fish. I went back to the restaurant a little later at lunchtime; possibly because it was early March and raining it was quiet and I was pounced upon by every restaurant owner. One lady enthusiastically offered me a massive discount on everything in the menu, so I chose a blue crab soup - avoiding all the raw fish options - and soon sat down to a huge bowl of delicious seafood.


It was still raining a bit after lunch but I went to the UN memorial cemetery, where many of the soldiers who fought and died for the UN forces during the Korean war are buried. It was a quiet and peaceful place but, as so many war cemeteries are, shocking in the numbers of names listed on the memorial wall and the young age of so many of those laid to rest there.

With the rain still coming down I was at a bit of a loss of what to do. Korea is annoyingly one of those countries where the museums are closed on Mondays. I consulted the map and decided to go and investigate what is apparently the world's largest department store. When I got off the metro, in an area which reminded me a bit of Canary Wharf, that was closed too. Luckily it wasn't a totally wasted trip as nearby is the Busan Cinema Centre, which boasts the world's longest cantilevered roof and was quite nice to look at.

My last day in Korea luckily dawned dry. I jumped on the bus and headed down to an area called Taejongdae, where you can walk by the coast and on a clear day catch a glimpse of the Japanese island of Tsushima about 50km offshore. There's also one of those little 'trains' to catch but the walk was only about 4km and on a good pavement. The sea air was good, there were decent views from the lighthouse, and I avoided going to yet another temple.

With a bit of time left to kill I finished Busan with a visit to the Korean National Maritime Museum, which is in an extraordinary building and has a very comprehensive selection of exhibits about Korea's maritime history, as well as a small aquarium. I like a good maritime museum and enjoyed this one, which was almost empty of people.


Back near the hotel there was just time to pop up the Busan Tower, a new sight which is trying to be a landmark viewing 'experience' with funky videos in the lift and so on. It's not going to be a Petronas Towers any time soon, but it was surprisingly fun and the views were good. I descended for a final hotteok, and then caught my train to Seoul and the long flight home.

2 comments:

  1. Welcome back! I've enjoyed revisiting Korea through your blog posts :) It's a shame the weather wasn't good enough for a walk in the hills.

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