Grad trip - Day 8

The jellyfish is back! This post is about my Day 8 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 9: http://jellyunderthesea.blogspot.sg/2017/05/grad-trip-day-9.html
Day 7: http://jellyunderthesea.blogspot.sg/2017/05/grad-trip-day-7.html

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Day 8: Saturday at Taejongdae Park

The neighbourhood of our accommodation facility continues to be appealing for a morning breather and walk, and that attracted me to get down for an early morning breakfast at a bright and sunny 6.30am. Since more of the stalls are closed, the best solution is to finish up a half-packet of walnut-red bean cakes, get a GS25 French toast and a Hershey’s cookies and cream drink. =D That drink is really special! In SG, we have all these chocolate / cookie drinks, milk, shakes, etc. This one tastes pleasantly sweet with a nice taste of milk and I feel that makes up a nice comfort drink! XD While having a nice breakfast, I wrote down the happenings of the previous day and watched the random customers coming in to buy snacks and cigarettes. The on-duty staff was a middle-aged guy, and he was busy packing the store and recycling the rubbish. The French toast (with ham, cheese and onion) remained rather cold (and scary) even though I followed the recommended time for the microwave, but became really hot to even touch after I threw in the sandwich for another 20 seconds. Such strange physics will never be understood by myself. =P 7am, it is time to set out for a walk at the Busan neighbourhood. The temperature is good, not too cold. =P Passed by some F&B shops that sells various kinds of teas (similar to ShareTea, but starting prices are higher such as $4+ for a normal medium milk tea), Korean food items such as kimbap, udon, kimbap (finally found a restaurant that sells items for cheap prices), bingsu, etc. The Seomyeon Medical Street is a decently long path that holds quite a lot of pharmacies, therapy centres and consultation clinics for those who have long term medical conditions and require medical attention, and well it looks kinda interested if not the fact that they are closed. =/ The walk is more of an experience that random genres of buildings can be clustered together in one place (library, medical, office, recreational) and that’s perfectly fine. =D SG buildings have a more refined clustering structure where buildings of rather different types will appear in different places. =P

The junction that appeared at the end of the medical street tunnel turned out to be another line 2 subway station, showing the close proximity between Seomyeon and this one (Buam) in a crowded area. The walk continues and this time many random shops appeared (e.g. e-cigarettes, Disney clothing), and a big building that is owned by LG. XD So Samsung and LG are Korean brands, and thus their products are supported heavily by their people. Our accommodations used a lot of these products for all kinds of appliances such as washers, fridges, TV. The current accommodation in Busan is like a Samsung home, only a few exceptions are LG, but definitely 100% Korean! =D The building is still closed as it was still early in the morning, but you could roughly see the items being sold on the first floor through the glass doors. After walking a bit more, I felt that it was a good time to go back but realised I am a bit lost. XD I brought the portable wifi with me, but decided to go against using it by challenging myself to go back to the facility through an alternative route WITHOUT any guide. It is not too difficult a task, and thus I walked into a small street that sorts of heads towards the accommodation facility direction… Nothing really fascinating about the small routes, except that some are really narrow and have weird slogans under the overpasses. After walking for about half an hour, I realised that I was back at the same place (recognised the street food at the corner) as the previous day! The most obvious thing to do? Just find a nearest subway station and warp back again. Ah, SY was still sleeping when I returned. =)

Day 8 is supposed to be a day of having street food, dedicating some time to visit facilities that sell food items and having an attraction in the middle of the day. At 11am, we set off to the Jagalchi Fish Market for a visit. Jagalchi Fish Market is a very large seafood wholesale market that has stalls both indoors (buildings) and outdoors (umbrella shelters), fantastic for people who would want to buy the different kinds of seafood in one place. =D Before the fish market that is near the water, the main streets of Jalgachi can be seen to be filled with food, fruits and vegetable stalls. That sorts of complete the ingredient shopping experience for most people. =P How convenient it is to have a wholesale market in the middle of a shopping area, imagine a proper market in the middle of Orchard. XD A significant difference between the fish market and the market of memory is the amount of space reserved for movement. The fish market walkway is very crammed (similar or narrower than SG markets) and thus a lot of squeezing is involved to walk from one point to another, under the comfort of the shelters. It is thus important not to hang around a stall for too long unless you want to buy something. The seafood are being labelled with small tags in a huge number of small baskets, however some of them do not have prices, so I guess maybe there is room for price haggling? XD Not all stalls sell raw food though, as some stalls do sell processed food such as fried fishcakes and plain buns similar to the Yong Tau Foo stalls in SG. SY mentioned the existence of fresh seafood restaurants in the fish market area, but he did not want to go inside the indoors area as there is a super strong fishy smell emitting from the inside. =P The visit to the market ended 20 minutes later, bringing us back to Nampo station and visiting the DAISO we missed 2 days ago. Similar to the one seen in COEX, not everything is at 2kW, but the large variety of random products across three floors still exist. There were sauces, kitchen products, disposable / recyclable travelling bags, etc. Doesn’t seem to be too different from the SG version.

Noon, the perfect time for some street food as lunch! We started to glance through the food items being offered at BIFF square, and have in mind some of our top few choices. Among the variety, there were stuff such as cup chicken, waffles, fishcakes, kimbap, coconut, meat sticks, ice-creams, churros, Japanese noodles, Chinese pancakes and dumplings, etc. Our first snack came from a stall that sells meat sticks and sausages. For some strange reason, there will consecutive stalls that sell the same items, but yet some of them are much emptier than others. We patronized the one that didn’t have any crowd, which I bought a long sausage with honey mustard sauce while SY bought a beef stick. The sausage is delicious! It is basically a non-cheese sausage with a slightly smoked flavour, a bit sweet and chewy on the inside, non-burnt on the outside with the juice kept intact, topped with a dressing of sweet honey mustard sauce. Probably because I was hungry, but I felt that the sausage can be classified as a comfort food when someone is down. =) A 3k won long sausage seems to be more worth it than some of our cheese sausages in SG. A very nice gesture about the food street culture is that once you have bought the stall’s item, you can actually camp near the shop area to have your food instead of squeezing with the main crowd, and the stall owners will help you to dispose of your sticks. How nice! I gave the ahjuma a thumbs up and she was quite happy to see my satisfaction. =D SY doesn’t seem to be too satisfied by his food though. 

The second item we had was an egg-cake in a cup, is there a proper name for this item? This egg pastry is done by baking an egg with some flour, topped with some cheese and a strip of bacon / other meat for a 2k won enjoyment. There’s a 1k version but has neither the cheese nor the bacon. The egg-cake is chewy and tasted a bit sweet, which was quite the opposite of what I had thought to be a slightly salty treat. Nevertheless the small amount of cheese made the top delicious to eat along with the bacon strips. These cakes were being baked over a hot pot of heat, and subsequently cut into many pieces before being placed in a cup with a sauce topping. SY mentioned that it is rather difficult to find proper egg items in Korea, and this could be one of the rare ones where eggs are being made the star of the dish. For the dessert, SY suggested having thai ice-cream rolls after knowing that I have never tried one of those in SG. The egg-cake and ice-cream rolls are sold under the same umbrella shelter, and we ordered the dish from the same young lady. The ice-cream must have been a much nicer than the egg-cakes as there was nobody ordering the egg-cake from the start to the end of queueing for the rolls. =P After being asked for two of my desired flavours (chocolate banana), the guy took a bit of each ingredient (the Nutella looks lesser than the amount I spread and only 10% of a banana is taken), mashed them and poured some liquid batter over. The compound will then start to harden, inviting the guy to quickly separate the contents and flip them to solidify the other side too. Finally, the compound will be flattened, separated into columns, rolled up and placed nicely in the cup. Maybe I had expected more of the rolls after knowing the hype of this sweet treat in SG, but seriously the rolls are not that fantastic. Indeed the rolls are kind of creamy, and the taste of Nutella and banana do exist, but that was not too strong, and I feel like I am just simply clearing tasteless cold rolls. These rolls do not seem like my kind of dessert, am I missing some key step in enjoying this item? =/ That sorts of concludes the food street lunch, leaving us a challenge to find a dustbin to throw away our used cups. XD More items could have been tried, but SY looks quite bored of trying out new items, so that sorts of conclude our food street lunch! 

The fine weather brought both of us to Taejongdae Park in the afternoon, taking the Busan public bus 30 to our location. Busan’s bus stops are quite cool in a sense that there is actually a speaker that makes random announcements such as safety and bus arrivals. I am happy with our own SG bus stops, some are even nice enough to even put the bus ETAs. =P The Busan streets are quite nice, we passed by some quieter shop houses, a water body that looks just like a trading port, schools, etc. 20+ minutes later, we arrived at our destination. I had actually thought we needed an hour to reach, but it seems like my estimation had gone way out of hand in a good way. =D This park is named after a king who spent his leisure time by practising archery on the cliffs, and thus the place naturally has some slopes for climbing. If a person is simply lazy, a tram service is available for those who wishes to proceed comfortably to the lighthouse or other mini attractions up the hills. Perhaps it’s a Saturday, the upslope entrance is filled with a lot of people, and the tram ride queue is simply way too ridiculous! Lazy to wait, we started to walk up the slope to explore the park, treating it as a nice exercise. :D The slope starts off to be gentle, and isn’t a tiring feat for an unfit person like me. =P At around 10 minutes later, we reached the first stop which is the entrance to the cliff. Interestingly enough, the park actually has a vanpool service that brings people up from the public bus stop area all the way to this part for 6kW. That’s not a very far distance in my opinion but yet at such a price… For those who played MapleStory before, does this remind you of the VIP taxis from the town to a slightly deep dungeon for ridiculous prices? =P If you are, then it means I am not the only one who felt that! XD

The air in this park is definitely much better than Yongdusan Park due to the directly proximity to the sea. It’s quite high up, and one has to climb all the way down to see the beach, the cliff walking path and some eateries below. SY does not feel like climbing back to the original path for a view at the bottom, and thus we stoned at the scenic view for quite a while, breathing in the fresh air of this town and soothing our eyes with the greeneries. =) A toilet is available near the viewing spot, which was located at quite a random spot in the trees, perhaps that was the concept of a tree toilet? =P We continued walking the uphill slope and subsequently reached a mini temple off the main route that looks super isolated and gives me an eerie feeling… It has an interior area which we didn’t enter, and a very silent dog at the exterior that did not bark but instead laid down quietly looking at the environment. =/ Continuing the climb, we reached the South Port Viewing Point at about 2.15pm (30 mins into the climb), and looked at the big sea depression. Tourists can choose to have some water from the nearby water coolers, which the sign stated that the source is tap water. How thoughtful of the management to state the source, now people can be sure that we are not drinking distilled salt water from directly below. =P SY enjoyed the walk and preferred a faster pace of walking, and thus he went quite ahead of me (while carrying his jacket in the open) while I lagged behind and took some photos for memories. Quite a number of tourists were heading in the same direction as us, either by walking the upslope while enjoying the scenery, or seated comfortably in the Park trams that ascended past us.

The upslope walk continues all the way to one of the main attractions of the park, the Observation Deck. This facility is considered a rest spot for tourists where people could either enjoy the sea breeze from an elevated height at the open air observatory level or take a quick bite from the bakery / small restaurant at the lower levels. We took a short visit to the convenience stall and I would say the structure is quite cool, it seems to be bigger than the normal ones (but with the prices being more expensive too), and a really long curved table just by the windows for those who see the sea view, and some other small rectangular ones that are further away. Seems to be an alternative relaxing place to have meals. I think SG’s attractions do not have much of these concepts in our convenience stores ya? The observatory level is naturally crowded with people, and wow it is indeed a really high view from above! A popular place for taking photos and videos, but more importantly one must breathe in the fresh air and listen to the sound of the waves and below. In a near distant lies a very small patch of land named Kettle Island, looks abandoned but probably got its name from a pole (?) sticking up in the land mass. After a short period at this attraction, we continued our walk, passing by a statue of a mother and two children. 

Much to my surprise, it turns out that the observatory deck isn’t the highest point of the park, and our walk continued to be an upslope version all the way to the park’s 2^nd main attraction, the Yeongdo Lighthouse. The path to that tower is quite elaborated, one has to climb down a flight of stairs (with some aquatic creatures info) to deviate away from the main nature path, pass a T junction that leads to the cliff areas, and walk a short wooden stair-path to the facility. One of the T junction route that leads to a relaxation area is closed for renovation, but that did not get in the way of the tourists. =) Along the way, there were many random statues such as seahorses, faces of past Korean warriors, etc. The lighthouse looks remarkably similar to an airport control tower, but that should make sense as people who worked in this facility should have a proper view of the sea. To recover our fatigue of climbing down the long flight of steps, we rested at the sitting area right in front of the lighthouse. Visitors could opt to walk a bit further down to enter the lighthouse and go all the way up for a scenic view of Taejongdae Park, but we chose not to due to our laziness. XD A short break of approximately 20 minutes, recalling memories of the grad trip, talking about what we are going to do when get back to SG, taking a picture for SH to see and eating the grapes chewy candy which SY did not finish. If there is such a place in SG with this view and some tables, I wouldn’t mind bringing my tutorials there to do. =P SY mentioned that he will probably crush and throw his tutorial sheet into the sea. XD I always have weird ideas for places to do your work that’s out of the norm (libraries, cafes, schools), and these are all hastily disapproved by SY. =/

At about 3.15pm, we left the lighthouse after the tiring stairs climbing. Thankfully that lighthouse was the highest point, and our journey changed to a downhill version. SY seemed kind of tired and so we walked quietly down and breathing in the fresh air for re-oxygenation. Nothing really interesting happened until SY noticed a rocky path that deviates from the main road (with exercise facilities on the side) and suggested that we explore the facility. I wasn’t very keen as the tree cover makes the place looks kind of dark, but decided to agree as SY rarely makes any constructive requests. The inner area consists of a temple for people to pray, and a monument that honours the soldiers that took part in the Korean War. The layout looks super traditional, and the air around there is very cold for strange reasons. A very quiet garden of stone statues and stacked rocks lies beside the dark quiet temple, which we did not step in for a walk. The area is extended though, as there is a long downhill that leads to other small temples (?) or other places. Both of us were not keen on that option, and we decided to go back. A tree-covered downhill walk, and nothing really fascinating other than taking a quick water break at the benches in the middle of nowhere. I am quite thankful that we chose to follow the tram travelling direction of looking at the attractions first through an uphill walk and followed by a resting downhill trail. The other direction of the cycle seems to be a bit out of place. We would have been tired enough to even have mood to enjoy the scenery after walking continuously from the bottom to the top of the park. =P Near 4pm, we finally arrived at the starting point! ^^ The tram queue is super crowded as usual, and thus we dropped the idea of taking 1 round with the tram and left the park. The park seems to value the habit of recycling, as they show the amount of time needed to degrade various items environment. Recycling should be a main part of Koreans’ lives huh? =) With that, goodbye Taejongdae Park!

We were technically done for the day, and thus I suggested visiting the Gamcheon Cultural Village that is accessible from Busan Line 1. SY disliked the idea of climbing up and down the traditional residential areas and just wanted to go back. That’s a spoiler, but oh well. =/ He made it up by suggesting that we get a small snack at Nampo before going back. I got myself a circular Honey Butter Churros (2kW) which tasted quite salty probably due to the butter, and wasn’t sweet as I had expected. Quite a weird taste, but then again I never had such a flavour of churros in my entire life. All along I had the impression that churros are long sticks of sweet dough, topped with cinnamon, spices and sugar. Seems like that is a specific-flavour of churros and does not generalize to the churros population. XD SY had no idea what he wanted, and ended up going back empty-handed after his search for waffles without cream failed. Why didn’t he get a meat stick is a mystery to me. We rested at the accommodation facility until dinner, with SY playing his phone / watching animes while I watched TV (Gaussian Normalization / Koreans travelling in Thailand) and documenting the day’s activities. Laundry was also done, facilitating the packing before we moved out from Busan the next day.

At 7pm, we searched a nice place for our dinner. I was fine with almost anything, but SY seemed to be a bit bored of the meals. That resulted in us walking around the market of memory, various streets and roads for a good half an hour before SY recommended that we had bibimbap at a quiet restaurant. The decorations, layout and lighting in that restaurant is definitely not as good as the others we have seen in the past 7 days, as the area is small and most of diners will be required to face a mirrored wall for their meals. That was not a problem though, as the hospitality and smile by the ahjuma made up for it. =) We ordered a bibimbap each, and I took out a packet of almond seaweed bought the other time to go with the meal. =P The food arrived shortly after, and we were asked to self-serve the kimchi (the only side dish) to an amount we desire. Apparently the kimchi are all stored in a plastic tuppleware, and diners could simply pass around that box to whoever that wants more kimchi. That kimchi is really spicy, and SY cleared most of it. The bibimbap is served in a metal bowl, with seaweed, various vegetables, bean paste and a fried egg (so much for no egg dishes in Korea =P ). Even though the bibimbap has no meat, the dish is simply amazing! A refreshing fresh vegetable meal without any heatiness, with nicely cooked rice, and the bean paste tasted sweet and decent! The proper way of eating bibimbap is to mix everything together (hence the name mixed rice), but I was happy enough to eat it like a bento. =P The soup is not bad, although that suspiciously tasted like bean soup. The serving is rather decent, as we both thought that we were given a big serving that was worth 4k wons each. In the end the total bill turned out to be 7k wons. After stepping out of the restaurant, we decided to give a 1k tip for the food and service. So I took the 1k tip, presented to the ahjuma and commented that the bibimbap was delicious. She kept on smiling, signalled that there is not a need and said a lot of Korean words. I have absolutely no idea on what she is saying and just pushed the money a bit more towards her and said that it’s alright. Alright, she finally took it and said thank you. Her husband smiled and acknowledged too. That was a simple but absolutely heartwarming dinner! =D

SY is not really full, and suggested that we end of the day with a hot dog. I was quite surprised by his suggestion as he did not like hot dogs, but I am definitely with it. So we went back to the same shop, and I got myself a stuffed-mozzarella hot dog, while SY got himself a normal hot dog. This time, I added more sauce to my food item to prevent being questioned for adding a miserable amount of toppings, and agreed for some sugar on my hot dog as that is their recommended way of eating. The young lady said some Korean words and I had no idea on what she was saying until she asked po-jang-hae? AHA! That’s the Takeaway term right? :D Reminded of the takeaway confusion that happened in Jeju, I happily nodded and said yes. XD Ya la, that term is still used frequently in Korea instead of the English-counterpart. The staff seemed to be a bit confused on why I was so happy about that term, and asked SY if we were from a different country, and SY said we are from Singapore. They smiled and wished us a pleasant journey as we left the shop. Our evening plan was to have a night walk around Busan after dinner, but that seemed to be not really a good idea as our meal was late. >.< I guessed the food-hunting walk should suffice. SY seemed happy to go back early and nua. =/ Oh well, we had an early evening of packing and a 2^nd round of dinner clearing up all the unfinished food bought in Busan. That consisted of a ridiculous amount of strawberries (I had 28 of them) for some super digestion. =P 

A nice afternoon of walking, a perfect day of food items, and the enjoyment of the last night in Busan, marking the end of an amazing day 8. :)

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If you would like to read more about my experiences, you may click on the links below. :)

Day 9: http://jellyunderthesea.blogspot.sg/2017/05/grad-trip-day-9.html
Day 7: http://jellyunderthesea.blogspot.sg/2017/05/grad-trip-day-7.html