Busan 2019, Day 1
After spending a few nights in Seoul, it was time for us to head off to our next destination: Busan. While we took the Train to Busan, we had a fairly uneventful trip, which was a very good thing. We also got extremely lucky with the timing of our departure. On the day that we were leaving, a strong typhoon was about to hit Seoul. It had already caused several flight cancellations out of Incheon, as well as other logistic nightmares with regards to transportation. In fact, as we were checking out, I overheard the man next to me asking if the hotel had any rooms available for another day because their flight was cancelled, but the hotel was fully booked. We, however, were able to get on our train as scheduled, and spent the entire time during the typhoon in the train.
The train ride was about 3 hours, so when we arrived in Busan, it was early afternoon there. We took the local subway to our hotel, Lotte Hotel Busan, which we didn’t realize was attached to the Lotte department store. I should have known that the Lotte company was huge because I’ve seen their name as sponsors of various sports tournaments, but it didn’t dawn on me how large they were. The train stop for our hotel took us to an underground area that eventually connected to the Lotte department store, but we weren’t sure where the hotel was, even though we were following signs for it. Nick eventually asked someone in the department store itself how to get to the hotel, and she directed us through some small hallway, that took us through the expensive shopping area of the store (Prada, Gucci, Hermes, etc.), and finally an escalator that goes up to the hotel lobby. We seriously would have still been wandering the store had she not given us directions…
After checking-in to the hotel, it was roughly 2:00, so we still had a lot of time left in the day to go sight-seeing. However, it was raining, and most of the things we wanted to see involved being outside for a large period of time. So we looked around a map and noticed that we were within walking distance of Busan Citizens Park. We knew nothing about this park, but because there was a free museum in the park that explained its history, we learned quite a bit about it while we were there (I have subsequently forgotten almost all of it).
It turns out, prior to August 2006, it was the site of Camp Hialeah, a US army camp that was created a few years before the start of the Korean War. When control of the area was returned to Busan, they turned it into a large park, but some of the military structures remained:
We only walked through about 1/3 of the park, so we missed a large portion of it, but it was starting to rain again, and we didn’t have an umbrella, so we headed back to the hotel to stay dry.
Once the weather cleared up, we decided to head to Jagalchi Market. The main attraction there is the large fish market, and since we never went to the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, we figured we should see one fish market in Asia. Busan is located on the ocean, and based on the sheer number of seafood that is available to purchase, fishing appears to be an extremely large industry:
There were probably over a hundred stalls in the market itself, but outside the market, in the alleys, were even more vendors selling various seafood. If we ever need to buy fish while in Busan, we definitely know where to go.
We then headed away from the water and into the heart of Nampo. One place Nick wanted to see was an alley of bookstores, which seemed like a unique thing to see. It’s tucked away behind one of the main streets, but it’s completely lined with tiny bookstores offering books on various subjects. We questioned the usefulness of some of the books though, such as a manual on using Windows 98, or something similar to that:
We were starting to get hungry, but before we headed to find some food, we wanted to walk through another large market, and it was crazy. It was close to closing time for many of the vendors, but based on the ones who were still open, it seemed like you could find anything and everything in this market:
There were many clothing and accessory stores, a few stores selling cookware, and some stores selling snacks. There was even a section dedicated to lights, and not just lamps and chandeliers, there were stores selling LED light strips. Even though it was close to dusk outside, inside, I definitely needed my sunglasses to shield myself from the visual onslaught of LEDs everywhere. Amazingly, we managed to get out of there without me buying some random thing to take home; I call that an accomplishment.
The last thing we wanted to do was to eat some fish cake, because Busan is known for having the best fish cake in the country. There were many vendors, so it was hard to choose which one to go to, so we went to one that looked nice from the outside, and we weren’t disappointed. There were various fish cake items that you could grab and put on your tray, and then pay for at the end when you’re done choosing your items. We weren’t extremely hungry, so we only got a few items, including a fried fish cake skewer filled with hot dog and mochi:
It was delicious, and a great way to end our time in Nampo. We needed to get some rest because the next day, we were going on a day trip to Gyeongju.