Since I forgot to upload pictures from the first time we went, here's a shot of my well-balanced, highly nutritious meal. You were all curious, no?
I've got a choux cream puff, some sort of chocolate-dipped, whipped cream-filled cone, a veggie quesadilla (with too much pepper and onion for my taste)... and a bottle of organic orange juice. It was tasty and inexpensive, which are both very good things in my book.
Before I get into the shots from our current trip, I remembered a little anecdote I forgot to share with you earlier. Saturday night, we were on the subway, heading to Haeundae where we were going to dinner (I believe), just minding our own business and talking quietly among ourselves, when this Korean guy, probably in his early 40s and obviously on his way home from work, comes up to us and looks at Cinnamon and says "Are you from Canada?" She explained that no, she was from America, as we all were. The guy seemed rather shocked by this, then looked over at Liz and said something to the effect of, "She looks like she's Indian." And with that, he simply walked away. It was honestly the most puzzling, utterly random thing we experienced while we were there.
Now, back to the current story.
After getting some much needed rest, we packed up all our things and made the 20-minute subway ride to Jungang-don station, which is the closest stop to the ferry terminal. We knew they had coin lockers there, so after scrambling to put together 900 won out of nothing but 100 won coins (because the locker wouldn't take anything else.... and of course there was nowhere nearby to get change for a bill) we shoved all of our luggage in there, with the exception of our umbrellas, which were too big. With our 20lbs of extra baggage stowed away, we headed to Nampodong (one stop over) for breakfast at Paris Baguette once more. So this Paris Baguette is a large bakery where you pick up a tray and a pair of tongs upon entering and put whatever you'd like to eat on your tray. There's a huge assortment of things to choose from--from huge chunks of plain toast and bagels to donuts, mini pizzas, and entire loaves of French bread.
They also have an assortment of pre-packaged cookies and little cakes (for gifts), salads and sandwiches, and a case full of very elaborate birthday and special occasion cakes. And it's all very reasonably priced.
We bought our food and went upstairs to the little seating area to eat, which is where I took all these picture.
And that would explain why the pictures of the treats in this case are all from really weird angles (namely the back of the case instead of the front).
We sat and chatted for a while after finishing our food, until it started getting close to the time Ashley needed to be at work. We made a quick stop at the pharmacy to get some motion sickness medicine, since we weren't about to take any chances with the ferry this time. In Korea, any kind of medicine, from aspirin to dramamine, must be purchased directly from a pharmacist. You don't need a prescription, but you can't find that stuff in a drugstore (because they don't have drugstores). You just tell the pharmacist what you need, and he or she will give it to you. For 2000 won (roughly $2), we got two chewable tablets, and we were once again on our way.
Back at Jungang-dong, we parted ways with Ashley and Liz, picked up our bags, and headed to the ferry terminal. It was extremely windy and cold, even despite the three layers of clothing I had on. Once there, we had trouble locating the ticket counter for the Beetle. We only saw ones for different ferries, so we went to the little information kiosk to ask the guy there where we were supposed to check in. And that's where things went sour.
The man told us the Beetle check-in counter was on the second floor... but it was not running today because of high waves. However, he let us know there was one ferry, the Camellia Liner, that was running, and that we could take it instead.
Clearly, this was not the news we wanted to hear. It was about 1pm, and we were expecting to be on a ferry at 2:30 in order to get back to Fukuoka, Japan by 5:25. We had a hotel room booked for that night and I was very much looking forward to spending the night in a hotel--something we have never done in all our time in Japan. The fact that the ferry was not running threw a huge wrench in those plans. But we took things in stride and stood in line at the Camellia counter. It was a very slow-moving line, but we finally made it to the one agent that was working. She didn't speak much English, but we showed her our Beetle tickets and tried to explain that we were told we could take this ferry. The lady just shook her head, told us where the Beetle counter was located, and told us she didn't know anything about it.
Now very aggravated, we decided to go up to the Beetle counter and ask them what our options were, since they should know better than the other people we had talked to thus far. Naturally, there was no line there, so we walked up, showed the lady our tickets and asked her what we could do. She gave us two options. We could either be re-booked on the ferry the next day or go downstairs and purchase new tickets on the Camellia Liner, and when we reached Japan, they would refund our original Beetle tickets.
Having no place to stay in Korea, we chose the second option and headed back downstairs to wait in line at the Camellia counter once again. This time, we told the ticket agent we wanted to purchase a ticket, hopefully for a twin room. But of course, since quite a bit of time had elapsed between our trips to the counter, there were no twin rooms available. Apparently they couldn't just give us a bigger room for only the two of us, so she called out to the people in line and found a Japanese girl (probably in her late 20s, early 30s) who also needed a room, so we got to room with her. For what it's worth, I think the ticket agent was much nicer to her than she was to us, probably because the girl at the counter spoke both Japanese and Korean, but only very little English. But we got our tickets (for roughly the same price as the Beetle ones, which was good) and thus finally had a way back to Japan.
The only problem was it was an overnight ferry, which left Busan at 10:30pm and arrived in Fukuoka at 7:00am. That, of course, meant we had no need for our hotel in Fukuoka. And, as it was currently about 2:30pm, we had a good five hours to wait before we could even board the boat. This one, seeing as it has actual rooms on board, is a much bigger boat than the Beetle ferry. It's sort of like a mini cruise ship. It has a restaurant, karaoke rooms, and a public bath on board. So we figured that since it was a bigger ship, we wouldn't be able to feel the waves nearly as much as we did on the smaller ferry, and we were counting on it to be a much smoother ride than our trip over, especially since we had to spend 9 hours on the boat.
We spent a little time stealing the terminal's wifi, trying to see what was near the terminal so we could get something to eat. Obviously, we were going to be hungry before 7pm rolled around. However, as luck would have it (and you know luck was not on our side today), there was absolutely nothing within walking distance but a Starbucks. Not even a McDonald's. There was a convenience store between the port and the subway station, so we gathered all our belongings once more and made the trek back out in the cold and the wind to pick up something to eat from there. It was a very small place and didn't have a whole lot of options, but we made do with a sandwich and some snacks for later.
Then we played the waiting game.
There were a lot of people downstairs (most of them were old Korean ladies in a tour group), so we decided to wait upstairs where there were fewer people. The only problem was the place did not have heat. It was a big, round room with vaulted ceilings, and all they had to heat it was a group of little heaters in the very center. Let me tell you, the heat did not stray far from the area immediately in front of them. We were freezing. Cinnamon even put on another scarf, and we were still cold. We figured that if the employees working at the little gift/food kiosks in the upstairs area were wearing winter jackets, it was much, much too cold. It didn't help that as our departure time grew nearer (and there was another ferry going to Shimonoseki, Japan that boarded about an hour ahead of ours) and the room filled with people, a lot of them decided to go outside to the terrace to smoke. Unfortunately, we were sitting next to the door to the outside, so every time someone went out or came in--despite there being another door on the other side of the row of seats where we were sitting--it sent a cold blast of wind over us. Cinnamon was most displeased, as was I.
Finally, it came time for us to board. We hung back a while to let more people go ahead of us (the line was very long), then finally went through the gates. Once through, we had to go through airport-like security where they screen your bags and make you go through a metal detector. After that, you get one last chance to purchase duty-free goods before you head on board the boat. Since there was nothing we had to buy, we boarded the boat and found our room on the third floor. Of course, just as in a hotel, you need a key for your room, so I went down to information to get ours. There were quite a few other people there getting their keys, so I showed the lady at the desk my ticket, expecting her to give me the room key. However, she simply said something to me in Korean (which I obviously didn't understand), then basically mimed how to open a door like I was the stupidest person in the world. Aggravated, I stomped back upstairs only to find out our Japanese roommate had already gotten the key. At least I wouldn't have to go back down there and deal with the information desk again. So now, let's take you on a tour of our room!
Here we are right inside the door, in the tiny genkan area (where you put your shoes). Apparently this was a Japanese style room, which wasn't what we were expecting. That meant tatami mat floors and futons.
To the left of the door is the tiny vanity/sink area, with slippers to use in the room and around the ship (just not outside on the deck). The bathroom itself was down the hall.
In this picture, I'm standing just inside, by the sink, looking into the room. We've got all three of our futons laid out on the floor already.
This is along the left wall, where the TV is. We didn't get many channels or very good reception. And when our roommate tried to use it, the batteries in the remote died. Just one more thing on our long list of things that didn't go right for us that day.
Lastly, once you look past the huge pods with lifeboats and the rain-splattered windowpane, you get an only mostly obstructed view of Busan. Around 9pm, once we were all settled in to our room, Cinnamon decided to head to bed, and our roommate was doing the same. There was still an hour before the boat actually departed, we had taken our motion sickness medicine, and we could hardly feel the boat moving at all, so we figured we'd be fine.
Not so much.
Just as soon as the boat started pulling out of the port and heading out to open water, we could instantly feel it roll from side to side. It wasn't the same kind of motion as the Beetle, it was more of a slow rock back and forth, though it was rather pronounced. It made just walking down the hall to the bathroom pretty tricky. Thanks to that, it made it a little hard for me to get to sleep. That, coupled with the fact that the futon I was lying on wasn't very cushy, and I didn't get much in the way of sleep that night. However, that ends our story for today. I'm sure you're dying to find out what happened once we got back to Japan. Well you're going to have to wait until next time!
(In case you're wondering why this post is titled "Japan Doesn't Want To Let Us Go" rather than "Korea Doesn't Want to Let Us Go", that's because we wouldn't have had these problems leaving Korea if we had never left Japan. Therefore, this was clearly a sign from Japan that we shouldn't try to leave. ...Or something like that).
I'm back for part two of our last full day in Korea. Please check below for the first part of the day. I had to split it up because there were so many pictures. So once again, here's Haeundae beach.
Okay, well first here are Cinnamon and Ashley on the steps leading to the beach. Notice how cold they look. We were waiting for Liz to come meet up with us before we continued our excursion.
Despite the look of the clouds, it didn't actually rain. There were some waves, though! And lots and lots of seagulls. (And people feeding said seagulls).
The beach was very rocky when you walked down a little ways. And yet we saw several people out there on the rocks looking like they were about to have a picnic. I thought they were absolutely crazy.
Here's what 20x zoom will get you. Now you can see the lighthouse hiding there up on the rocks! I rather like this picture.
A little way down the boardwalk (at the same place where we took that 2-shot of us in the last post) is this statue of a mermaid out in the water. I think there's a story behind it, but I'm sorry to say I don't remember what it was.
It was about then that my camera started giving me the "low battery" warning, so I was forced to cut my picture-taking short. It's fine really, as there wasn't a whole lot else to take pictures of. But we were freezing and starting to get hungry, so we left the beach for the warmth of a shopping mall.
But I didn't stop taking pictures entirely. I knew my camera could still eke out a few more before it finally called it quits. So I did what I do best and took a picture of these camellias! And, much to Cinnamon's relief, I only snapped one picture and not 20. Therefore, I'm very happy it turned out!
On the walk to the mall, we spotted this while crossing the street. Seriously? South Korea has a Bennigan's? Even America hardly has those! It was completely bizarre to see one here.
Keeping with the trend of seemingly out of place American restaurant chains, just down the street there was a Papa John's. They don't even have those in Japan. Domino's and Pizza Hut yes, but no Papa John's.
Finally, we made it to the mall, where we met up with Ashley's friend and co-worker, Luna (or Lu Na? I'm not sure), who spoke very good English. Cinnamon and I bought a couple little trinkets (earrings and an adorable dinosaur phone strap set) from a store there, and I bought a CD for Michael at a bookstore in the basement. Afterward, it was back to the subway to head to Gwangalli Beach for dinner at a burger place called Breeze Burn's.
The burgers were a bit on the expensive side (compared to some of the other places we ate at in Korea), but they were really big and really filling. And if you ordered the one I did, very messy. But they were tasty, and I think that was the only place we went that actually gave you ice with your drink.
We ate in the little upstairs area way in the back. This picture was taken near the front entrance while we were checking out.
Cinnamon is happy and full (and kind of creepy). She's good at that kind of look.
Outside and across the street was the bay (at least I think that's what it was) and a pretty bridge whose lights change color at night.
I did the best I could to keep my pictures from being too blurry, but my camera was having a tough time of it, in part because the batteries were nearly dead. I had to prop it on a little cement... bench-thing to keep things from getting out of hand. Therefore, I don't have too many usable pictures.
As you can see, they were doing some sort of construction work nearby, and having my camera so low to the ground meant you got a lot of construction dirt in the frame. But the alternative was... not so pretty. The buildings were nearly unrecognizable. This was the best I could do.
This one turned out marginally better. But after that, I decided to call it quits for real because I was cold. Ashley and Liz went next door to Breeze Burn's, to a place called Angel something to get some hot coffee for our trek back to the subway station. We had the option to go to a ferris wheel by the bay, but it was already after 9pm, and Cinnamon and I were just absolutely beat, so we chose to just go back to Ashley's pad and chill. After all, we had to get up the next morning and take that lovely ferry back to Japan, so we wanted to be well rested.
And that, my friends, is going to be a long and rage-filled story. You'll love it!
True to my word (and a little late due to sickness and a severe case of jet-lag), I have returned to begin finishing up the last leg of our trip. As you may remember (and if you don't, please read the previous post), we are still in Korea. In fact, it is our last day there. And thus begins our March 7th.
Our day began in Nampodong, which is a relatively trendy shopping area. We went to a bakery called Paris Baguette for breakfast. (There are pictures, but I forgot to upload them. Don't worry, we went there the following day, so there will be pictures next time). After that, we did a little bit of shopping.
The weather was still cloudy, windy and cold, but at least it wasn't raining this time!
Both Cinnamon and this guy were very happy about that! But I suspect that guy would've been happy regardless of the weather. We walked through this market area made up of tons of little shops and street vendors selling everything from clothing and accessories to food and toiletries. It wasn't too busy because we went relatively early in the day when some places were still opening up shop. But while we were walking, we actually saw a few peeks of sunlight, which was pretty welcome after the past few days. During our time there, Ashley bought some sunglasses and a t-shirt, and Cinnamon bought a very sought-after CD of a popular Korean girl group called 2NE1. Their CDs had always been sold out wherever we went--even in Japan! For those of you interested, here's one of their videos:
Once we had made our purchases, we walked over to Busan Tower.
It's pretty high up just walking up to it, so we had to take a good 5 or 6 escalators to get to it. They had a nice little garden area out in front, which probably would have looked prettier in any season but winter.
For some reason, there was this big... gas mask nearby. Not quite sure what the significance of it was, but we took our picture with it nonetheless. Why pass up such a unique opportunity?
Nearby was this huge gong. Ashley tells us they ring it 108 times for the new year. Why 108? None of us have the answer, sorry.
There was also a pretty nifty dragon statue at the bottom of the tower. As usual, we didn't actually go up the tower because we're cheap. How many towers have we passed up now? I think this makes five.
After touring the area around the tower, we made our way back to the center of Nampodong and went to pick up a little snack before doing some more shopping. Ashley thought we should try something called "hoddeok", which she described as a kind of fried pancake filled with cinnamon sugar. It sounded pretty appealing (and the fact that it was hot was pretty appealing, too), so we sought out a vendor and found one with little problem.
We got in line with the seven or so other people who were waiting while they made them. And this lady (who was working with the two other ladies running this whole operation) decided she needed to play "line moderator" and kept pushing me out of the way of... absolutely nothing. She just kept pushing me to move left for no apparent reason. She did this twice! I was pretty ticked off at her. There was no reason for her to be so forceful about it.
Cinnamon was kind enough to take a picture of her so you wouldn't all think I was crazy or something. She looks like a mean lady, doesn't she?
After she stopped shoving me out of the way, I was able to enjoy the "entertainment" coming from the building next to us. I have no idea what this place actually was, but there were two girls standing out on the balcony dancing. One of them didn't look like she was really into it at all, and I can't imagine they weren't cold standing out there in their miniskirts!
But finally, we got our hoddeok!
Ashley tells us they prepared these a different way than what she's used to. Once it was finished frying, they broke it open and sprinkled in a mixture of cinnamon sugar and pumpkin seeds. Normally they don't do anything to it after frying. I thought it was still pretty tasty, but Cinnamon was less than impressed with hers. She didn't get much in the way of cinnamon sugar, so hers just had a somewhat greasy, fried dough taste. That's unfortunate.
We did a little more shopping in the area before we decided to head to Haeundae (Hay-un-day) to see this "Swiss Family Robinson" bridge that Ashley had told us about. It was at Haeundae Beach, which as you may have predicted, was cold and windy. The problem with traveling in the winter is that when I'm doing things outside in 40-something degree weather (with a windchill in the 30s), I'm reluctant to take my camera out to snap pictures because my hands are much happier in my pockets where they're somewhat shielded from the elements. So all the pictures in this post were taken by Cinnamon. Including these last two:
Here we are at the beach! We're on a little boardwalk overlooking the water, and about halfway to this infamous bridge.
And there it is! It was a wooden swinging bridge, which was kind of fun to walk across.
This concludes the post of pictures I swiped from Cinnamon. The next post will be all my pictures, and will include more shots of this beach, which was actually quite pretty. And it will finish up our last full day in Korea. Stay tuned!
Well hello there, everyone. Hope you all had a good White Day. I can assure you I'm not slacking off here, we've just been very busy these past few days. I know I still have a week's worth of things to post about, and I know I'm not going to get through all of them before we leave on Wednesday. However, I am determined to make it through the whole trip this time, so please bear with me and continue reading until the end!
Now, without further ado, here's more Korea! Our day started entirely too early (9am) considering we had gotten to bed so late the previous night. We took a bus to Busan Station (I believe), where we met up with her friend, Liz, so we could hop on the "Korail" train to Gyeongju. The train wasn't what I was expecting at all. Instead of a long, quick, electric model like I'm used to, it was this big, hulking, 4-car diesel monstrosity. However, it looked pretty similar to a Japanese train on the inside, and the ride was smooth.
Don't we look happy for being so tired? It was about an hour and a half's ride to Bulguksa, where we were going to visit a big, famous temple. So we got off the train and started walking toward the temple. ...About 20 minutes into this, we discovered we were getting nowhere, so we hailed a taxi and were very glad we did, as it would've easily taken us another hour to reach our destination by foot!
Here I am at the beginning of our journey. You can definitely tell it's winter. It felt like it, too! Must've only been in the low to mid-40s, with drizzle and wind. Not a very good day to be outside.
This, obviously, would be the outside of the temple.
Ashley assures us this is a very popular picture spot, here in front of the arch. We just decided to go with it and let her snap this photo.
The underside of the eaves were painted with very intricate and brightly colored details. It must have taken an immense amount of time to do all that!
When you look through the hole in this statue at just the right angle, it looks like the Buddha from inside the hall is looking at you.
These are the stairs we had to climb to get to the other parts of the temple. The steps themselves were very short/shallow, too, which makes it very difficult for anyone whose feet are bigger than, say, a size 5 to climb up! (I even had some trouble and my feet are 7.5).
The view from the top of the stairs is nice, though. As you can see, there's a lot more of that painting going on in the eaves of that building, too.
I'm not really sure what purpose these stones served, but this entire section was covered with stacks of them. Some were topped with a won coin, too.
This was on the other side of the stone stacks. I'm not sure what it was used for, but I'm guessing there used to be statues there in that cordoned off area.
Ashley said it's good luck to rub the boar, so naturally I thought I'd give it a shot... while making the dumbest face possible. I apologize for that.
Since it was starting to rain harder and it was very cold, we left the temple and headed down to the bottom of the hill in search for some place to eat. Within just a few minutes, we happened upon a place serving bibimbap, which was good, seeing as that's what Ashley wanted us to try! This particular place was serving up the "dolsot" version (as noted in the wikipedia article).
The place itself was very tiny and seemed to be run by only 3 older ladies, but they were nice enough. It did feel a little odd, though, as after being there for about 10 minutes, the only two other tables of patrons left, so we were literally the only people in the restaurant.
As per Korean tradition, we started our meal with all kinds of side dishes--kimchi, some sort of marinated peppers, tofu, seaweed, a bunch of other stuff I don't know, and a kind of Korean pancake. It seems to be similar to Japan's "okonomiyaki", which is basically a thin batter cooked on a griddle with all kinds of vegetables and sometimes meat or fish mixed in. This particular one had octopus in it. Mmm~
There's Liz and Ashley! (As you can see, not a single other person in the place).
Isn't it nice occasionally seeing us without our jackets on? We promise we actually change what we wear underneath them--though sometimes it's hard to tell. (Also, I'd just like to note that I'm wearing a tank top and a long sleeve shirt underneath my sweater, and with my jacket, scarf and hat on, I was still cold!
It's already half gone, but here's the bibimbap. When they serve it in the pot, it's extremely hot. It comes with a raw egg cracked on top, and the pot is so hot that it instantly fries the egg as you stir it in with the rice. Also, if you don't stir it often enough, the rice will stick together on the bottom and get brown and crispy, so I had to eat it without taking a picture first. Sorry.
As you may have noticed, we have even more side dishes now--two soups have been added to the mix.
Once we had eaten our fill, we took another taxi to the nearby folk craft village to look for souvenirs. Even though it was a Saturday, there were hardly any people out, probably because the weather was so bad. Regardless, we all walked away with something new! I got a new little silk bag for my camera, Ashley bought some necklaces, Liz got a bracelet, and Cinnamon bought something for a friend.
We were pretty tired after that, so we took the bus back to Gyeongju station and made the hour and a half trip back to Busan. We had some time to kill before dinner, seeing as none of us were hungry yet, so we went to Centum City. It was a very nice, very new shopping area attached to the station. Apparently, Shinsegae, which is located there, is the largest department store in the world. And it was very busy!
While we were there, we went to a big book store looking for a CD for Cinnamon, but unfortunately, they were all sold out. Popular group! In the end, we left with nothing, and decided to finally go eat. For that, I'm pretty sure we went to Haeundae station.
This was a pretty nice place, and it was set up like a little village. There were all these different little houses with seating areas inside, and in the middle was the kitchen area, with all these people outside doing various things--washing dishes, cleaning grills, bringing food to and fro. On the menu this time was more bulgogi!
This time around, everyone got their very own tray of side dishes! And in case you were wondering, that bottle next to the grill doesn't contain alcohol, it contains barley water. That seems to be the norm when it comes to free beverages in Korea.
This particular type of grill seemed very strange to me. I can't fathom why you'd have the slits in the grill on the dome part, rather than on the bottom, where you'd think you would want to catch the grease/fat as it drips. Because of this design, every so often, a server would come and take the entire grill part away and exchange it for a new, clean one. Not exactly the most convenient method.
After dinner, we went back home, as we were all pretty tired from our long day. Up next is Nampo-dong and Haeundae/Gwangalli Beach (yes, beach)!
