Busan, part I - Seomyeon, Dongbaek and Gwangali Beach

Gwangali beach, firmly in my top three

It is positively amazing what 7 hours of solid sleep can do. In other news, it does look like I've gotten a bit brown from the sun and that makes me a bit frustrated, but honestly, I've been sunburnt before. When I was in Romania I practically turned into a block of cinder. Same goes for Barcelone, actually. Ah well, it is what it is. I'll turn back into my usual porcelain skinned self eventually.

Busan. I found my hostel, found a great place to change my money (it is far cheaper to change money here than it is in Taiwan, and you have to convert your money to USD to get the best rate), sat in the hostel a bit, and tried, unsuccessfully, to charge my phone. When it became obvious that I wasn't really getting anywhere, I threw up my hands and conceded defeat, and headed out. At this point it was already about 6pm and I was starving, as I hadn't had anything to eat the entire day aside from black coffee and black soy bean milk at about 8 in the morning.

I walked out to Nampo metro station, which was conveniently located RIGHT next to my hostel - by design, of course. That was basically the entire reason why I picked that hostel. When you're on the road, time is key, and you don't want to do anymore walking than you have to.

Korean street food

A Korean 7-11

I'd made a bucket list of all the restaurants and food I wanted to go to, but what I hadn't accounted for was how hard it was to locate these restaurants. I must have listed about 7 of them, and only managed to find one. I suppose it was good exercise doing all that walking around, and a lot of walking around I did, too.

It's only 10am but already I'm exhausted. I'm fed up with a lot of people at work to be honest. Even a phone call from one of the colleagues I like better isn't enough to recharge my depleted batteries. I probably need to think twice about going on a weekend sprint in the future. Then again this is what you live for, isn't it? What was it that Milton said - 'Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.' To amend his words, it's nice to feel exhausted, to feel that heady sensation of living, to feel the blood and adrenaline coursing through your veins, to bleed when you draw blood, to look into a mirror and see a reflection.

I went to Seomyeon to find Korean hotpot, and after walking around for about half hour and not finding the restaurant, bought some banana milk and decided to grab any old pork rice soup because I was famished. I went into a shop which looked fairly nice, and it started out so well too. A middle aged (I'm tempted to say old, because anyone over the age of 35 is old to me, but people will be offended if I write that, so I'm going to go with middle aged) Korean man sitting at another table was watching me eat, and he gestured wildly whenever I ate, in a bid to tell me how to eat it the correct way. I thought it was pretty nice of him - I guess he was trying to help - but in retrospect, it really wasn't any of his business. Anyway, he shouted for the restaurant owner, another middle aged woman, to come, and she came and grabbed a spoon and tasted my soup without asking, then whisked away the soup and brought it back and tasted it some more, with her spoon which she had already used several times. I then watched, extremely revolted, as she STIRRED MY SOUP WITH HER USED SPOON. Honestly, it grosses me out just thinking about it. I still finished it all, though, because I was so hungry, and this is a lesson I need to remember: don't go travelling on an empty stomach because you'll end up ravenous and desperate and you'll eat anything that comes your way, even pork rice stew with Korean spit.

I've included the restaurant below for future reference, and to warn away weary travellers.

After this I went to Dongbaek, as I'd read on the internet that there was a nice waterfront bar called The Bay 101. Suffice it to say that I was less than impressed: the view was a rather small port inlet, not the main sea; it was teeming with people and I don't like crowds, plus there was a minimum spend cutoff of 70,000 krw. Sorry not sorry but I'm not spending 70k won on a tequila sunrise.

Dongbaek

I walked back to the metro station and went to Gwangali beach, and fell in love - with the beach, I mean. Easily one of my favourite places in Busan. My top three are Gwangali Beach and its waterfront bars, Jagalchi fish market and the Nampo-Jagalchi boardwalk, and Gamcheon, and if I ever revisit Busan this is where you'll find me.

This is what I came for.

As always, a White Russian because that's my go-to drink, which will always, always remind me of that night I sailed from Stockholm to Helsinki, and that perfect measure of hope and despair.

To be continued.