The Port City of Busan, South Korea

Dear Friends and Family

We took a train 3hrs from Seoul to the far southern port city of Busan, South Korea. Busan has great infrastructure, clean, wide sidewalks and streets, and a much more relaxed, friendly population. It is also much more colorful than Seoul or Inchon, with their mostly white or gray buildings. It’s busy and crowded but lacks the frantic intensity and aloofness of Seoul. The atmosphere here is brisk, cheerful and respectful. When they bow to you out of respect, you feel their sincerity. We also think the locals are more used to tourists.

The port itself is impressive, with boats, ships, fisherman, and street art. We had a great view of the port from our hotel’s 18th floor. The nearby Jalgachi fish market is the largest fish market in the world. We were surprised how clean the fish market was. Also, the market didn’t smell fishy! We saw some really cool live fish, waiting to become someone’s sushi dinner! There were flat fish that blend into the sand at the bottom of the ocean. Both eyes were on the same side of it’s head! There were restaurants where people chose the food they ate from fish tanks. Bruce picked out his own plate of fresh oysters. There is also wide variety of dried fish for sale in bags and boxes.

Latte Mall is near the fish market. It is one of the largest malls we’ve ever seen. It rises 9 stories above ground and 5 stories underground. There’s a water show set on a stage in the center of the mall. Fountains shoot up to the beat of loud music and colorful changing lights, while a stream of rain falls from the ceiling in circular patterns. A grocery store in the mall sold 10 chicken eggs for $5 USD! We can understand why they’re not on the breakfast menu in our hotels! We accessed the subway from the underground levels of Latte. We also had to go underground to cross the wide city streets because there are very few crosswalks. In fact, from the sidewalk, we had to walk down 56 steps to reach the subway.

Above ground, we found several neighborhood markets. We were looking for a good, inexpensive restaurant, but Bruce found himself shanghied into eating from a food cart at one of these markets. As Bruce peered into the action, a young man handed him a pair of tongs and a piece of tempura sweet potato to sample. He placed an order for seafood and vegetable tempura. Meanwhile, Linda ordered pork dumplings and spring onion pancakes, a local specialty, from the next cart over. Bruce joined her, somehow finding himself eating with 2 sets of serving tongs. As he ate, the cart lady gave him the evil eye. He thought she was angry about where he was eating. In fact, Bruce had accidentally swiped the cook’s serving tongs from the other food cart. He returned the tongs to the first cart lady who acted indignant and offered him a fork. To these people, Bruce seemed like the stereotypical Caucasian who could not handle chopsticks, while, of course, he can. Everyone laughed when Bruce used chopsticks to finish his meal.

There is a movie neighborhood in Busan with a museum, a tour of different movie scene locations, an International Film Festival, footprints of the stars, and other movie related tourist lures. More than a dozen Korean movies have been filmed in Busan. The streets are lined with arches that light up at night and filled with shopping stalls and food carts. Fish cake on a stick is a popular specialty.

There’s a “Book Street” that is lined with bookstores on both sides. The stores contain book cases and stacks of books, mostly in Korean, piled everywhere. Linda was lucky enough to find a shop with a small selection in English.

We spent a couple of hours in the nearby Busan Modern History Museum, which focused on Japanese imperialism in Korea. We joined a huge crowd that was watching a drawbridge open to allow ships through. It is only raises once a day at 2 pm. Professional photographers were offering pictures with the bridge in the background. There was music blaring. People were on the ships waving to the crowd like celebrities. 😁 On the way back to our hotel, we stumbled upon a pretty street lined with cherry blossoms.We hope to see more of them after we ferry across the Sea of Japan to Fukuoka.

We’ll write again from Japan. Hope you are well. Love, BnL

Author: bnlmos

We are a retired couple, together nearly 35 years, who love International travel. Having a "blog" is brand new to us, so have patience as we do our best to keep in touch with our friends and family. Please feel free to comment on this blog or contact us via personal email. brucemos@hotmail.com View all posts by bnlmos