Grad trip - Day 7

The jellyfish is back! This post is about my Day 7 out of the 12 days grad trip in South Korea! ^^

It is a long post, but if you are interested to read about my experience, please do so. :)

Day 8: http://jellyunderthesea.blogspot.sg/2017/05/grad-trip-day-8.html
Day 6: http://jellyunderthesea.blogspot.sg/2017/05/grad-trip-day-6.html

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Day 7: Busan Aquarium Day

A good morning to Busan on a bright and beautiful Friday morning. =) While SY is still sleeping, I took the idea of going out for a morning walk before SY is awake, and set off to see the Busan area in the early morning. With my cap and jacket on, I set off to walk around the morning market at 7.30am. The market is very near the accommodation facility, and is really big in my opinion! The markets are structured in a way such that different varieties of ingredients are placed in different areas of the building. For every area, the stalls are all placed place in parallel sides, with a 1-lane road for vehicles in the middle. Thus if a supplier / collector would like to drive in and order some items, he could do it with great convenience. Since kimchi is a representable food in Korea, white cabbage is definitely abundant in the market and can be found in almost every vegetable stall. =D The market is very busy in the morning, and the road could attract a lot of honking if there is a vehicle blocking the way. In the meat section, there is a lot of meat and seafood being sold. Unlike SG markets, the area is surprisingly cleaner and drier (the smell is still there though). Some dried food such as mushrooms and spices were also sold there. The market is called the Market of Memory for unknown reasons. Is that supposed to be a market from the past? XD I actually intended to walk back to the accommodation facility right after the market visit, but realised that I was lost and have no idea where was I, until I saw an underground shopping entrance and thus went inside, hoping that I could at least find Seomyeon station. That was a good choice! =D I went through the underground of closed shops (mostly fashion) all the way back to Seomyeon. Apparently this underground shopping tunnel connects several train stations together, and thus people who only have to travel 1 or 2 stations could simply walk in here, saving some money along the way. After exiting the correct way, I bought a fresh cheese toast with egg, ham and onion from a bakery that has just opened for business (8am). 2k+ won, absolutely worth it. =D

SY woke up later than usual, but it’s alright since we are not rushing for time. At about 9.45am, we set off for the Busan Aquarium located near Haehundae station (10+ stops from our accommodation facility). Busan subway jingle is very different from Seoul, and I find them quite nice too! After quite a while of riding, we reached the station and proceed to walk to the aquarium. The road is undergoing some construction and thus the traffic is quite messy. More small food shops (not really cheap) and fast food along the way, but we didn’t have any of it. On the corner of a junction, there holds an area with LOTS of claw machines! It’s damn cool! The only thing bad is that there was nobody inside playing. After my bad experience in the Jeju Mini Land, I skipped playing with any of them. =P The end of the road features the beautiful white sand Haeundae beach. What greeted us was an array of beautiful sand-sculptures that were mostly undergoing construction. Not sure what they are for, but they definitely looked more professional and are protected by a barrier. What happens if there is a sudden heavy downpour? Nobody knows. The Busan Aquarium (SEA Life) is right on the edge of the beach, and so we entered. At first, I thought the entrance is going to be rather big and grand, but it turns out otherwise. We queued for a while, and paid for our tickets at 29kW each. Among all the attractions I have planned, this is the most expensive one and is considered a definite outlier as compared to the others. XD After getting the entrance tickets, we entered the facility through a down escalator. The staff told us that an entrance ticket granted us to have a photo taking session, so we gave a slight smile to the camera. =P

The aquarium seems to be a slightly dark area, with a temperature cosy enough for the visitors and the marine life residing in that facility. Are aquariums supposed to be this dark? I actually expected some bright place with exhibits similar to style like the Wisma Atria Aquarium 10 years ago, but it seems like I am wrong. XD The area of every exhibit is scaled to the size of the marine creatures, and so you can see all kinds of different sizes sea life in a themed area. The first area features some of the tropical creatures, and so there were tropical fishes, piranhas, stingrays, pirarucus, etc. SY seems very fascinated by those bigger creatures. For me I am like, hmm ok that’s a fish, ah alright that’s another fish. Just like the Botanic Gardens, there is seriously so many different species of fish and so it is unwise to just simply label every fish as the freshwater / sweater type. XD The highlight of this area is the penguin exhibit, where there is an elaborated design of rocks and water. That is supposedly big as it features the penguin feeding show. Since we were near to 11.30, we camped around that area by looking at other exhibits first. The aquarium was not quiet though as a beautiful Friday like that attracted various childcare to hold an excursion for the kids. =P The children’s enthusiasm are definitely higher as they point at various creatures and shouting random Korean words, such great learning energy should be preserved! :D At 11.30, the show started and a staff came to deliver the presentation by entertaining the kids, alongside with another staff dressing up as a gigantic penguin. =D How cute is that! The accustomed penguins also started to zoom across the waters to and fro, attracting laugher and cheers from the kids. It is a bit of a spoiler that we do not understand what the staff is saying in Korean, but nevertheless we continued to be entertained by watching the penguins. =) Minutes into the show, the feeding staff appeared in the exhibit with a bucket of fish, and OMG the penguins are amazing! Usually, we would expect that the zookeeper will throw a decent amount of food, and the animals will start to scamper for the food. Over there, the penguins will QUEUE up for the food, literally! So they get in a line, the staff hands over a food item (probably small fish), it goes off and then the next penguin steps up and receives the food with its cute hands. =P While the queue is not empty, the first penguin in the queue will receive the food, and then it will be de-queued. Did the penguins do a small bow when they receive their food? It would be cute if they had. <3 The penguin show must be really nice, to the extent that some kids even cut across out front view by climbing the rocks, only to be taken down by their kindergarden teachers. XD After looking at the feeding, we left the area and proceeded to the next section. I tried to wave around in front of the visual sensor to see the movements of an emperor penguin, ah didn’t work that well. Shall we dance with the emperor penguins? XD

The second part of the aquarium features a conservation awareness campaign. It is a small dark area showing photos of past conservation efforts by SEA Life staff, information boards of certain species becoming extinct or has died due to illegal poaching. There are activities for kids such as mini-games, interactive models to show the creature saving-freeing process, etc. A kid coloured a dolphin hideously but had forgotten to free it, Jeff completed the favour by throwing it out of the screen, and that’s saved. =P After that conservation part, there’s another small part that showcases the turtles which the aquarium has kept, followed by a mini rock pool where you can actually put your hands inside and feel the creatures! There were small starfishes, hermit crabs, etc. I didn’t touch them, but rather took some photographs and left. A staff is there to watch over the exhibit and introduce these creatures. The aquarium also provides a ride on the water where people could sit on a small boat and look down at the creatures swimming directly below them for a price of 7kW. SY is not very keen on the ride (limited travelling area), and thus we skipped it. I actually thought that the boat goes around the whole aquarium, but that does not seem to be the case. =/

Going down another escalator, we visited the third part of the aquarium that features the “night SEA Life”, where creatures can be seen due to their natural glow-in-the-dark nature such as jellyfishes. While SY started to walk around the exhibit, I was pretty amazed by the “night beach walk” feature where you get to see the ripple effect when you step on the “sea water”. It feels kind of realistic, and is definitely romantic if this kind of scene actually happens in real life. XD The area indeed has a large number of jellyfishes, but they seem to be of a different colour due to the lights being shone on them. An octopus was also shown, but it looked extremely sian and nua at the side of the tank. I feel puzzled by the rubiks cubes being placed in the tank with it. Is there any lin between an octopus and puzzle solving? O.o Probably it is trying to illustrate the point that a person solving a rubik’s cube is like an octopus with many hands. LOL ok that is a lousy guess! XD What I like about this area is that there are a bit more interactive items to play with instead of just looking at the creatures swimming about. There is a VR zone where people could wear some glasses, and walked around as if they are in the water. Once again, an unenthusiastic SY suggested that we skipped it. -_- A “touch screen” wall shows the type of creatures that live in the depths of the water, and something about fishes being baits for sea predators. O_O What else? Ah, there is an arc where after you walk through a sensor in a certain direction, there will be a visual wave appearing in the air. Kudos to the small visual effect! It is really damn cool! :D

Then here it comes, the heart of the aquarium! The fourth part features a variety of large creatures such as sharks, stingrays, gigantic fishes, etc. A tall pink colour tank of various sea plantations and related creatures welcomes us, but it seemed like a really popular spot for photo-taking. So we just took a look and went off. Nothing too magnificent about it actually. A mini gift shop is also there for people who wish to purchase some merchandise on the spot. We sat near a gigantic tank near the stingrays, watching them swim around and weaving in and out of other fishes. The glass must be extremely thick to support such water pressure. =P Nearing to 12+, we passed by a stingray feeding show. That was extremely crowded as many people were still standing behind the curved seating area. 2 staff were the emcees, and once again we could not understand what they were saying. All the children are happily cheering and laughing though, it must be an entertaining show. XD The aquarium also built an underground water tunnel that is similar to the one in the Underwater World 15 years back, except that there is no travellator. Benches are offered to visitors for a rest while looking at the creatures above and around you. If the lighting was brighter and there were tables, I wouldn’t mind bring tutorials here to do. Such a nice environment! =P Before exiting the aquarium, I requested to go another round as I had dedicated some time to taking photos and thus not enjoyed fully. SY granted the request and we went through the place for one more round. =D The maintenance cost of the place must be damn high, with all the temperature regulators, water purifiers, glasses and food for the creatures. I wonder how on earth does the staff takes care of the large creatures. Won’t they find the job dangerous? Kudos to their skills. =)

After leaving the underground tunnel, we reached a bonus exhibition spot that highlights the importance of camouflaging in the marine world. I played around with the visual-interactive exhibits by waving my hands to discover hidden fishes. There’s another one which allows me to blend in with the surroundings, and so after being in the hidden state, only my cap appears in the screen, but the rest of my body and hoodie cannot be seen on the screen. How cool is that! =D WIth that, we ended the tour around the aquarium and proceeded to the gift shop. It is a rather large gift shop, but with nobody customers inside. I bought a few souvenirs (whales and keychains) for memory sake, and we proceed to have some dessert before lunch. The bingsu sold in SG is considered quite delicious, and thus Korea should be better right? So we visited an ice-cream shop which features all kinds of ice-cream, smoothies, bingsus, sundaes, blizzards, etc. We got ourselves a small pat-bingsu which turned out to be a total disappointment. =/ Well it is not really shaved ice, but rather some normal ice flakes like the ones we have in our SG dessert shops. The toppings are not so bad, with cornflakes, red beans, canned tropical fruits. Ok la, it cost about 3k+ wons, I guess we shouldn’t complain too much about the quality ya? From that experience, we aimed to find another proper Bingsu for the remaining of the trip! :D I planned to visit the aquarium for a longer time, but I think the kids crowd and the lack of reading the information boards brought our trip much shorter than expected.

Shortly after, we left the aquarium and proceeded to find some lunch. At 1.45pm, SY found a Korean shop which he was quite interested in. The restaurant turned off the air conditioner as the air outside is cooling enough, and we sat at one of the random tables nearer to the window. The waiter is a young guy and unlike all the other hospitality we have received for the past meals, he doesn’t smile at all! The greetings are still there though (without a bow), and we were like woah ok. Emo guy. >.< There was a lunch set promotion where a main dish was at 6kW each, and we both went for the army stew. I originally wanted some omelette fried rice, but decided against it as the army stew looks not bad too. ^^ So while the chefs were preparing, we helped ourselves to the side dishes at a dedicated corner “self-bar”. The side dishes look very nice (much nicer than the ginseng chicken one)! There were beansprouts, chopped lettuce, spring onions, caramelized pickles, sour pickles and roasted sesame dressing! XD Naturally, I had a lot of the lettuce and sesame dressing as the taste is sweet. =P Nothing was wrong until we realized that the spoons were missing and we started searching the restaurant’s common area for the cutleries, and that is when the emo guy came to our table, open the side drawer near SY and pointed to us that the spoons were there. That is simply amazing, he knew what we were looking for without us telling him directly! Again, he did not smile and simply gave a nod to us, airing an aura of coolness around him. 8) Our army stew came thereafter, and we started digging in. It’s a standard army stew of sausages, ham, luncheon meat, baked beans, rice cake, kimchi and cheese. Ok, it is not bad. The cheese made the stew much saltier towards the end, but overall it is nice enough, the food is chewy. SY also ordered a special mixed rice where the aim is to hand-make your own rice balls (not kimbap rolls). So how is this done? First, the ingredients and rice will have to be mixed really well. Apparently the key to having sticky rice balls is that there is a genuine mix of items as a biased distribution of ingredients will allow the rice ball to easily crumble. Second, scope up a correct mixture with your hands (with gloves of course), and that has to be rubbed to allow the rice to stick together to a greater extent. Third, the mixture has to be shaped into a ball and hopefully as round as possible. My first few balls were alright, and I gave some of my creations to SY. In the end, we sort of giving up making the balls and just ate from the mixture directly as the taste is already good enough. :D That’s a very nice lunch, and we gave 1k tip to the waiter, and he looked extremely stunned when he received the extra money. He still didn’t smile, but wished us to have a pleasant journey ahead. That’s an amazing guy, I guess he don’t receive tips because he doesn’t smile, not because his service is bad. =P

After the lunch, we proceeded to visit Centum City at 2.45pm. Apparently that location has a super big department store and it turns out that the honour still remains with Lotte. That place is huge! The lowest shopping level is at B2 (with carparks to B5), and it extends up all the way to the 10^th floor! The building has its usual shopping items like clothes, shoes, etc. However, it also has extra stuff like books, cinemas, playground facilities all under the Lotte brand! Some common items are expensive such as eggs, they must be organic or something special as 10 of them cost 8350 wons. >.< The usual tidbits, sauces and spices in any supermarkets. We walked up the various floors but passed by them rather quickly as we did not intend to buy anything there. At the cinema level, we saw various posters of Korean movies, some being international (Boss Baby) while some are obviously Korean love stories. A movie ticket cost something like 11k, and SY doesn’t seem to be interested in watching one. =/ The self-buying system is interesting as you can choose your seats, see the price, declare the cards / codes you have for discounts, and then get the tickets instantly. SG cinemas may have implemented those already, but I don’t use it often. Before going up to the rooftop, a girl with a donation box approached us, and spoke some Korean to us. After SY told her we are not Koreans, she asked if we could speak English and oh well, there’s no escaping the fate of a simple donation! We gave 1k each, and were quite thankful we didn’t say anything bad in English. =P Actually I didn’t notice that she was calling us, until SY stopped when the girl called her oppa. There’s such a cute term! When the girls called out oppa in Korean shows, the guys will naturally be happy~ If the girl called me oppa, I think my heart will also melt, hahaha. XD (If SH calls me oppa, wa heart melt totally =P but too bad luh, it’s weird to call your boyfriend as oppa XD) The rooftop has some kids’ playground, several small fish tanks, some animal statues, a small pond and figurines (the yellow one looks like a Bumblebee, SY’s favourite transformer). A very cool item is the showcase of a small-scaled flying device that was used in the past, with the cogs and gears shown to present the design. SY applied his MAE skills to analyse the design and explain how the parts worked together, damn cool. =D

Nearer to 4pm, we went to visit other buildings near the Lotte Mall. BEXCO (Busan Exhibition and Convention Center) is a place we passed by and each architecture looks really big! There were only 2 buildings there, but each of them should be like approximately twice the size of each SG Expo hall. We cannot go inside as the doors and gates were closed though. =/ The bridges and roads passing by BEXCO led us to the Busan Museum Of Art, with art paintings and figures along the way. We were wondering how artists actually manage to sell some paintings (that are hideously ugly) at ridiculously high prices. Do the buyers really appreciate them or is it merely a gesture of showing off? A hypothesis was that the descriptions are the ones that increase the price of the items, and we tried our skills out on some of the extremely simple items. It is much more difficult than we thought, and SY had a really tough time to smoke something out. That was simply hilarious. XD The Busan MOA is a small white building with some artistic sculptures on the exterior area, a very pleasant place for resting. The interior is not that fantastic though, as a lot of floors are undergoing construction and one of the floor requires a paid ticket to go in. We walked into the paid area by accident, only to be told by the curator that it was restricted and she apologized for the inconvenience. =/ We went to the only floor (on the top level) and saw some paintings that commemorate a 100-year old artist (that is dead?). Most of the artwork are abstract, and I simply could not get the meaning no matter how hard I tried. =/ An example would be a ship, with a pole in the middle that represents an abstract idea. How complicated. Nearer to the exit of the MOA, the open-area galleries feature the artwork of kids on their impression of Busan in 2030. I must admit some drawings are really nice (and even more informative than proper artists), most gave an idea that Busan is going to be highly developed, well equipped with technology, automated society, while some highlighted the importance of protecting the environment or the consequence will be a polluted future. That’s what I call a simple but good artwork, a picture speaks a thousand words. =D We then sat outside the MOA to rest and chatted about our school education as we are talking about kids, and talked about some of the policies that could be improved for future generations.

Nearing to the evening, we visited the Gwangan beach to see the sunset. It turns out that we had too much time (we reached there at 6.15) and SY doesn’t feel like walking any further. We found a nice spot near the junction and rested down there. The proximity between the urban area and the beach is literally just on the opposite side of the road. Since it is a Friday evening, it is a common sight to see couples and families hanging out there, having picnic mats under the open sun or the shelters. SY mentioned that the Korea culture for school students is to work hard on Mondays to Thursdays and then rest completely / partially on Fridays, effectively compressing the work week to have a pseudo day off. I find that concept pretty cool, but come to think of it many students in NTU have also planned their timetable in a way so that there is a day off. =) For slightly more than an hour, we chatted about a lot of random stuff (e.g. Is living in Seoul better than Busan?), played with our phones and observed the people walking past. A good thing is that there is no need for a jacket as that area is not really cold. ^^ If the air there was as cold as the one in COEX, I will leave immediately. =P Nearer to 7.10, the sky starts to get a bit darker, and the lights came in about 10 minutes later. There are purely normal white lights, but the lighting effect on this beautiful arc makes it really pleasant to view against a body of water. As time goes by, the metropolitan city starts to light up, night buskers start to share their musical art, and a random boat starts to set off firecrackers. An amazing sunset. ^^ SY seemed to like the view too, and took some photos on his own. Glad the beach viewing made up for SY’s Han River disappointment in some way. =)

I initially planned for a BBQ during the 5^th evening of Jeju after the hiking trip but SY doesn’t seem to have the mood for that the other time. As such, SY suggested having BBQ on the very evening and I agreed to it. Dinners on Friday evening can be very crowded especially in such a crowded area. Nevertheless, we managed to get a seat at the back of the restaurant seated beside a table of ahjumas. The ahjumas were nice and said hello when we walked in, thus we simply smiled and bowed at them. =) The BBQ style in Busan is very different from the ones in SG. In SG, our BBQ are all in buffet style where you just take whatever amount you want and you will still pay that full price. This is unlike Korea where you order the portion you want, and pay the proportional amount too. Although SY likes meat, he does not seem to be really familiar with the words on the menu and thus I took out my KLP notebook and guide for a reference. The waiter (a bit plump and cute) patiently waited for our order, and we ended up ordering 3 servings of pork belly after knowing that chicken isn’t an option in the restaurant (how strange is that). The ahjumas asked us where we were from, which SY replied Singapore and they went like oh… Singapore! Not sure if they have heard of this small country before, but they certainly gave us another approving smile after hearing the reply. =D Shortly after, the side dishes were served and that was a simply enormous amount of vegetables! We have things like seaweed, garlic, fruit salad, brown radishes, a big plate of western style coleslaw-salad, some onions, green chilli, etc. I think a person can be full just by eating all the vegetables. =P The meat came thereafter, and the waiter helped us to cut the meal and placed them on the cooking pan. Nothing too interesting about the BBQ, except that when the ahjumas (6 of them) were taking a photo, I accidentally looked towards their direction and thought that it would be funny to just photobomb for once. True enough, they laughed and looked at our side after viewing their photo. XD I didn’t disturb their next take though. The pork belly tasted ok, not too burnt as we took them off before they get crispier which also led to a juicer taste. It is quite boring to eat just pork belly, but I guess the vegetables and white rice made up for it. For some strange reason, they do not have water in the restaurant, but rather beer is the drink that goes along with the meat. That’s fine with us as we had more than enough on our table (the water will make the meal fuller), I ate more meat in that dinner as compared to the sum of meat for quite a lot of meals in Korea! Come to think of it, I ate much more vegetables in Korea than what I usually do in SG. Even SH does not eat that much of vegetables for her daily diet. =P At about 8.45pm, we left feeling satisfied and paid up a total of 26kW. The ahjumas said a goodbye with a bow after I left the table, which I politely bowed back and said goodbye too. How nice of these ladies to say greetings to a foreigner. =) This kind of treatment will almost never happen in SG. =/ We went back to the accommodation facility thereafter for a night’s rest, and I had a large amount of strawberries and orange juice to neutralise the meaty effect from the dinner. It’s a really exciting day 7 and I really enjoyed myself on a day in Busan. XD