Busan, Day 1 — The road liss traveled

Walking out of the train station in Busan was a harsh shock to the system! This is actually winter. It was cloudy, below freezing, and the wind was really whipping from over the ocean. It felt like 10-15 degrees. If it stays like this I’m going to have to buy some more clothes, a hoody and light puffy jacket are not gonna cut it! I made my way to a little guesthouse near the station, up on the 6th floor. Decent little place up on the 6th floor of an apartment building. It seemed to be all Koreans who stayed there, but unlike in Japan it was much easier to strike up a conversation, and people actually say Hi to you first sometimes! The guy I met in the lounge gave me a good recommendation for a nature walk in Busan and a girl who lives in Seoul gave me some trendy areas to check out when I got there. Nice.

For my first full day it was time have a nice stroll along the waterfront to the largest seafood market in the country, and one of the biggest in the world. The weather had improved to 40 and sunny, very manageable. No need to do any jacket shopping just yet. I crossed a bridge overlooking the port, which had probably 100 tugboats parked, plus lots of old looking ships and industrial equipment, nice looking high rises in the background. An old vs new juxtaposition. I took a detour to observe the ship-building. It felt like I was walking back into the 80’s or something, everything felt very dated, lots of rusting iron, chipped paint, big clunky structures, massive bolts, steel chains that looked like they weighed 100 tons. Some of the boats seemed like they could be from a Mad Max movie, or I suppose Water World with Kevin Costner might be a more fitting example! I liked it though. It did not feel like Japan.

The building with the bird wings is the fish market, surprisingly nice structure for a fish market!

As I kept going towards the fish market the buildings got noticeably nicer. I knew I was getting close when I stumbled into a small market area of ladies in thick jackets sitting around with buckets of fish in front of them, with little tables where’d they cut up the fish for their customers. It didn’t smell particularly nice.

The next building was the infamous Jagalchi market, and it was huge, and actually very nice looking. The first floor was just halls and halls of vendors, with electronic markers designating exactly which part of the market you were at. All the vendors wore bright knee length rubber boots and gloves up to their elbows. The fish weren’t just sitting there out in the open, they were all in tanks with bubbling water. Some filtration system I think, to help keep the fish alive, barely. People in Korea like to know that their fish are fresh! It also didn’t really smell much at all, which is pretty impressive for a massive seafood market! There were so many weird things that I could only guess what they were! A lot of it did not look appetizing. You could choose your selection and have one of the many restaurants on the 2nd floor cook it for you. Shockingly expensive though!

An octopus sits in a tray of sea penises

I opted to keep walking, and after the main section of the indoor market was the outdoor walking street market that seemed to go on and on forever. Just an insane amount of dead sea life in one place. The scale of it just did not seem sustainable. As a scuba diver, it did make me a bit sad, seeing so many beautiful underwater creatures taken out of their environment, the squids, octopus and cuttlefish especially. It did make for some interesting photos though. For lunch I stopped at the popular section of the street where there were lots of stalls that had pots of bubbling broth. I grabbed an open seat and chose the one that most people seemed to be eating, I wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but I’ll give it a try. It was liver! I can stomach some liver, but it’s really not my thing and I had massive chunks of it, I ate about half. Hmm, I shoulda ate at the 2nd floor of the fish market I guess.

After that it was onto Gamcheon cultural village, which was built mostly by refugees from the Korean War, a slum that sat in the hills, yet close enough to work in the port. In the early 2000’s it underwent a revitalization campaign to beautify it a bit, repainting the buildings and adding artwork and murals. As the #1 thing in tripadvisor in Busan it felt a bit underwhelming, but it was interesting enough to wander around the tiny alleyways and steep stairs. The residents were mostly older and many had trouble with all the steps. I felt bad for the residents having all these tourists wander around right outside their homes. There’s signs around saying to respect the residents privacy. Hopefully some of the tourism dollars generated goes back into the community.

I hopped on a bus to get down the hill and back into the city center to get to the top of the Busan Tower as the sun set. The views are nice, but I must say it might be the worst lookout tower I’ve ever been in for taking good photos. The glass panes have some sort of weird honeycomb inserts in them. At 6 pm the sign said there was a fireworks show, so I excitedly stuck around for that to take photos of the fireworks over the city skyline, but it turned out the fireworks display was the glass windows lighting up as an electronic firework display. So lame! That’s why the glass wasn’t completely see through! Aghghgh.

I didn’t mention it was Christmas Eve, so when I got back to the main strip, it was completely jammed with people making their way over to the giant lit up Christmas Tree. Like I said before, Koreans love Christmas! At some point the police cleared the street for a parade, complete with a live band playing Christmas tunes. Nice.

For dinner I made my way to the street food night market, which was a complete zoo, but I tried lots of new things!

Walking around at night, the tent restaurants were interesting. Koreans also have the tiny venue places.

The lovely looking (but dated) Commodore Hotel

Then when I was walking home, I passed a section called Texas Street. I had to see this! Would there be any Texas style beef brisket or BBQ pulled pork?! Definitely not! There was one American themed restaurant, but the majority of the street seemed to be mostly dead with closed Chinese and Russian restaurants plus a few neon-lighted hostess bars, staffed with Filipina girls calling you in. Hmmm. That was not what I was expecting for Texas Street! A very interesting day though.