2nd Day in Busan

I was quite ambitious in my plan of what we should do today only to accomplish maybe 50% of it. Sigh, I guess the oldness catches up!

The thought was to visit Beomeosa Temple this morning, followed by Jalgalchi Fish Market, Taejondae hike, but by the time we finished the fish market, we realized that it will take 1 hour 30 minutes to get to Taejondae, and we had to walk 30 minutes of that time in order to get to it. Not only that, there were many things that I wanted to eat at the market that I didn't get to eat because we were just too full.... So as a concession, I was gonna just walk around Seomyeon, where we are currently living, at night, just to check it out, except I slept from 7pm to 12am. If I go outside now, all I would see is probably drunk people.

Darn it! The oldness and heat doesn't help! I guess it will have to wait until the next time (if there is a next time) I come to Busan....

Ok, now, for the things we did visit.

So Beomeosa Temple is named after (legend) a golden fish that came from heaven that lived there.

At first, I didn't know that's why there is a fish in its name... and looking at the map, I thought it was because it was shaped like a fish.

But Joyce says it is shaped more like a rat. I suppose she's right.

After we got out of the subway station, we were supposed to walk 3km to the temple. I thought that was just gonna be about 1.5 miles or so... not a big deal, but as we walked up, Joyce saw a lot of ajumma waiting on the left. We looked to our left and it looked like a bus stop. After asking them about it, it is a bus that takes us to the temple. We decided to follow the ajumma and take the bus.

It was the best thing to do!

It was a long trek for the bus up the mountain..... which I realized that 3km is the horizontal distance, not the diagonal distance, as one would think about the Pythagorean Theorem at this point (or would that just be me?).

We followed the ajummas at the stop that they all got off, and pretty much followed them into the temple.

Ajummas then stopped at this mountain area to cool off, and so did we!

The scenery at the temple was nice... but I think in general, I'm not too interested in temples, so I didn't take as many pictures as I could?

There were a lot of people hiking or biking up to this temple. Seriously, props to them. It was sooooo hot, not to mention that they sent an warning to Joyce's phone that please be careful about the heat after 11am. At this point, we kind of just wanted to be in an A/C room. So we took the bus down. And oh, what a ride.

First, it was like a party bus, with ajummas and grandmas! They were so lively and talkative, and very friendly. Totally awesome. Second, the bus driver was like, I'm-gonna-drive-as-fast-as-I-can-down-this-mountain. Joyce said that the grandmas and ajummas were all complaining about the bus. I'm not sure how she understood them, but somethings don't need language to explain!

It seriously felt like an amusement park ride the hugs the curve at a 3G pressure except you're standing up, not strapped in, and only have things to hold onto lest you crash into someone else. Dude, all the ajummas and grandmas were standing as well. Craziness!

After the bus ride, we went to the famous Jagalchi Fish Market, where you can pick the seafood you want and they cook it for you.

I think the open market just intimidated me a lot because of not knowing what I'm picking.... I think my mom would have been much better at this. There were a lot of things I wanted to try.... octopus fried rice, baked shellfish, seafood stew, sashimi.... but they were all expensive and needed at least two people to finish the dish. So we just settled on one, the seafood stew, and called it a day.

It was good, but not as what we expected. Maybe being Chinese people, we expected the stew to be a lot thicker, but this was pretty much just boiled seafood with some flavors. We should have gotten a more spicier version because the spiciness was barely there. But overall, it was a good experience.

We walked around the area some more and found all these street vendors selling all kinds of street food.

We saw this hodeok that is filled with nuts, which Joyce said is famous in Busan, so we tried it (there were at least 10 people selling the exact same thing).

It was pretty good.... and then we saw this hodeok place that had soooo many people lined up. I think it's because some famous person ate it there before and they just used it to advertise their food.

I then saw some oden in some of the stalls and decided to try it. It was good, but I was super full...

And then the last thing we ate for the day was this red bean porridge. Again, being Chinese people, you have certain expectation of how food should taste based on previous experiences of similar food... and when it's not the same, an eyebrow goes up.

This red bean porridge, to us, tasted a little salty? We've only tasted red bean porridge that was sweet... at the most I've tasted one that has some orange peel flavor with some other stuff that I could consider a bit "salty", but that's more of a Cantonese stuff that I don't usually eat and can be acceptable at times... but this one was so strange that we both ate thinking that it is just a culture shock.

We walked back and I saw a store with doll picking machine (what are those called anyways?!), and decided to just at least try it once. Man, I feel like this is totally rigged! The claws have no grip at all! They basically just conform to whatever shape you put them on, and slip right off since it was loose to begin with.

Boo to fake machines!

I was gonna buy some peaches to try, since this is their peach season... but they all come in large boxes at the grocery store. However, Joyce found this cabbage that is bigger than their head!

Lastly, some pictures of seafood we've never seen and scary food.

Joyce said these huge octopi are scary.... and their eyes are really big.

These are bugs! And they were moving too! There was another stall that sold a cooked version of this... Ahhh.... This is definitely one of those things that if you didn't grow up eating it, you are scared to try it when you're older.

And then this mystery thing. It was still moving and has a hole that opens and closes.... looks gross..

Yeesh!

I'm quite sad that we didn't get to accomplish the other stuff in Busan.... but I think I'm just not a very courageous traveler at all. I was too scared to order things when I couldn't communicate with them well, and don't know how things should be done. Sigh, it might have been better if a Busan person just took us around in general.

Final thoughts about Busan vs. Seoul:

- Definitely lots more older people actively on the street. It is very noticeable that the subway and streets have more older people in general, and which, we feel, really calms down the society. Older people with their older traditions and ideas, really sets a good foundation for the society, making it seem like there is order to everything.

- My friends kept telling us that Busan Namja (namja = men) are so much taller and better dressed/looking. Umm... we feel that they are pretty much the same as Seoul namja. Maybe because we didn't get to walk around Seomyeon at night time to see how these people look like, but the ones we've seen so far, pretty much look the same.

- People smoke more in the open in Busan. We saw a lot of "smoking zone" designated for smokers in Seoul, where they had to congregate in a small enclosed area to smoke (it really like smoking prison), but there wasn't anything like that in Busan, so people just smoked outside, or as they walk. It makes it seem more like a rural area when people smoke in public.

- Busan pace is in general a lot slower. I don't find myself always in a jousting position when walking towards other pedestrians, or try to push another person to get ahead. People actually seem to notice other people on the street instead of only themselves. I've become quite scared of the "girls with red lips" (the general fashion trend in Korea) because they became the status symbol of "I don't care about you; just about me" to me. So when I see them, I just try to avoid them. There were more of those girls in Seoul than Busan.

- It is hotter in Busan... but I'm not sure if it's just the weather the past few days, or it has always been the case because it's more southern.

Overall, Busan has been a good change of pace to everything. The winner today has to be the ajummas and grandmas though. They were seriously the most down to earn and laid back people, who are just living the life. The ajummas know what's up. When we don't know where to go in a place, we just follow them, because they know what's up.

Time to sleep (again).... to get ready for another long day tomorrow....