Korea – Busan

Here are some highlights of my trip to Busan recently. Being tropical folks, the cool breeze of Busan is a nice welcome.

Also to allay all fears of the non Korean speaking folks, the locals speak a pretty good smattering of English. Especially  the younger generation. And almost every sign has an English translation. Of course you get a nice pleasant surprise and encouraging smile when you attempt to converse in their local language.

Haeundae Beach – this place is packed during the school holidays.

Sand sculptures – Psy

Sand sculptures – Wife… i mean Hulk 😀

Falling for each other 😀

Yes, apparently the locals do not really like to go into direct sun light. So the beach is dotted with these.

Of course being an unguided trip, we decided to venture into the daily lives of the locals, hence we went to places like the wet markets, coffee stalls, eateries, etc.

This is a central location in the wet market, which actually turned out to be a “end of the day dumping ground” lol.

Yup, tons of garlic.

The wife deciding what to buy for dinner 🙂

This is an underground shopping mall that was connected to the market, which is actually very common in the country.

Every trip to Korea should have a hike up one of it’s famous peaks. And that is what we will do.

Today we are doing Mt Jangsan.

Before we start the hike.

An ice cream stall as we near the peak. The kind gentleman obliged us with a photo, actually Koreans are very shy and reserved folks.

Bumped into a church 3/4 the way up. It looks deserted, but fresh tracks around tells us this place actually had 2 or 3 vehicles earlier.

And of course, the place we were staying in. It goes by the name of Miss Egg Hotel. The place is fabulous to stay in. It is a guesthouse, and yes, we get to meet alot of travellers.

A special note, this hotel is really very conveniently located. It is just a few minutes away to the beach. And the train station is a stroll off in the other direction.

Add to that , when you step out, there are convenient stores. And next door is a 24 hr internet cafe, where you can do some printing as well.

Photo opportunity with the boss. Yes, this young chap owns the Egg Hotels!

Leaving a memorabilia. Ok my arts and craft a bit of rusty.

There is also a slew of local eateries around. Serving delicious local food of course. And a bar just a building away.

A local BBQ place. And the food is nice!

At night, Busan comes to another stage of liveliness.

Says “food from 500 won”, I think, but street corner stalls like this is common place in Busan. And the food not bad.

What we did was to select the pieces, and the owner will either microwave it up or fry it.

Once done, we dipped them into the sauces (black bowls) before eating.

At the end of the 3 days, we headed to Seoul… on Rail!

Ain’t this like a time machine?

Final call for Busan to Seoul 😀

A view of the exterior of the station.