Busan 2019, Day 3
For our final full day in Busan, we wanted to walk around the famous beach area of Haeundae. But before we headed to the beach, we took a side trip from Busan station to see Haedong Yonggungsa Temple, which is one of the few buddhist temples in the South Korea that’s located on the beach. Usually, temples are built high up in the mountains, which typically means a ton of stairs to climb. But since this temple is on the beach, it was a really easy walk from the bus stop. However, our short trip on the bus from the train station to the temple stop was the start of an unexpected journey for the day.
So I’ll start by saying that whenever I visit any East Asian country, I’m usually mistaken as someone who is either from the country, or at the very least, speaks the language. And whenever I’m approached by someone who starts speaking to me, I usually respond with a blank stare or confusion, which is normally a good enough signal to the speaker that I don’t speak the language.
Anyway, on this bus trip, Nick and I were standing in the aisle because all the seats were taken. Sitting in one of the seats next to me was an old woman, and at one point during the trip, she pokes me and starts speaking to me, and I’m like, ‘Sorry, I don’t speak Korean.’ But apparently she didn’t hear me, or understand me, and being that Korea (and many other Asian countries) has a culture of respecting your elders, she was quite offended by my actions. Fortunately for me, the person standing in front of me overheard what she asked me and helped her with her request, which was for me to shut the vent that was blowing air above her. He also told her that I’m not Korean, which helped her understand why I wasn’t able to help her. He then turned to us and asked us where we’re from, and we tell him that we’re visiting from Seattle. His eyes immediately light up, because he lived in the area as a child for a few years, and was happy to meet someone from the area. He introduces himself as Jihoon, and we tell him that we’re going to visit Yonggungsa Temple, and he asks if he can accompany us since he was going that direction anyway and had no plans for the day, so we said sure!
Jihoon’s from Busan, and his family lives there, but at the time we were in South Korea, he was studying at one of the universities in Seoul and happened to be visiting Busan for a short period of time. I believe he told us that his dad was a guest lecturer, or visiting professor, at the University of Washington when he was a child, which is when he had lived in the area.
Back to our trip, we walk with Jihoon to the entrance of the temple:
It was something like 90 degrees, with extremely high humidity that day, so seeing the entrance to the temple, without a gazillion stairs going up was a huge relief. After a short walk down some stairs, the path opened up to an amazing view of the temple grounds:
It wasn’t as large as some of the other temples, but you can’t beat the location next to the water. We continued to walk around, taking photos of some of the beautiful structures there:
We continued our day by getting back on the bus, and returning to the Busan station, and this time walking towards the beach. But we were getting a bit hungry at this point, so we asked Jihoon if he knew of any good places for lunch. After some discussion, we hit up a local Korean BBQ place, which wasn’t amazing, but it was there, so it worked for us:
We then headed down the main street towards the water to see the famous Haeundae Beach. When we reached the ocean, I was impressed with the size of the beach, and apparently we were there during the off-season because it was very empty. According to some Google image searches, this is what Haeundae looks like during the busy part of the summer:
Image Source: Visit Korea
In contrast, this is what we saw:
It was quite peaceful to just stroll along the vast swaths of open sand and hearing the waves gently crash onto the beach. After a few minutes of wandering, Jihoon then suggested that we visit some nearby parks, so we started heading there.
When we arrived, Jihoon told us that as a child, his father would drop him off at the park and tell him to run around and get some exercise because he was fat. Being Asian, I don’t think he was exaggerating this story; it’s completely believable to me. I’m amazed he didn’t have any PTSD when we entered the park, so I guess it wasn’t too traumatizing for him.
There were some cool sculptures along the way, and an amazing cliffside walk with great views of the water and of Haeundae:
It was on this part of our walk that Jihoon asks us ‘so are you two roommates?’ We’ve spent about 3-4 hours with him up to this point, so we just assumed he knew we were a couple, but I guess it wasn’t too obvious. Anyway, Nick replies to him that we’re married, and Jihoon then looked at me with a mildly shocked expression. Knowing that South Korean culture hasn’t really accepted the LGBTQ community with open arms, I was initially concerned that Jihoon might be upset. But he smiled, and then asked ‘are there a lot of you in Seattle?’ and in my head I’m thinking ‘Well, there must be more of us in Seattle than here in Busan,’ which is shocking considering that Busan has a population of around 3.4 million people. I think we genuinely surprised him, but he didn’t seem too bothered by us, and we continued on to the next thing that I wanted to see, the Shinsegae Department Store.
Now, I love to shop, but I really wanted to go here because it’s the largest department store in the world at over 3 million square feet, and I just wanted to know what being in that large of a store would be like. In the US, shopping malls have lost their popularity, but OMG, they’re one of the biggest attractions in Asia. I felt bad dragging Jihoon through all of the mall, so I restrained myself and suggested that we walk through some floors, just so we can get a sense of the massive size of the entire complex. As we were walking up and down floors, and through walkways to other parts of the mall, we saw signs for a golf driving range, a massive spa, a theater, and an outdoor park. I saw the park on the map being located on the 7th floor or something like that, so I wanted to check it out and see the view from up there. What we didn’t expect, was that the park had a dinosaur theme to it, but past that was a nice grassy area with views of the rest of the surrounding area:
We went back into the mall and walked around for a short bit before Jihoon got a call from a nearby library. Apparently he left his stuff there for the day and needed to go pick it up, so it was time to say goodbye, and for us thank him for showing us his hometown.
Before we headed back to our hotel, we wanted to check out the nearby BIFF (Busan International Film Festival) Square. The building looked cool, and there were some nice sculptures in the plaza:
It was getting to be early evening at this point, so we headed to the hotel for the night. This would be our last night in South Korea, but we definitely want to visit again. Tomorrow, Tokyo!!!