Busan, part VII - Gamcheon Cultural Village and Lotte Department Store

8 or so in the morning, pre people, with the office lights still darkened, is my favourite time in the office. It's a bubble of serene, undulated, heavenly bliss in a world of cacophony and phonies and phone calls and paperwork and papier maches and shouting and whining and complaining and griping and human woes.

I will sit here, I whispered to myself, as always, and I will savour the taste of my black coffee and think a bit about life and where this is all going. I had a slightly depressing conversation with Pris last night. I like her a lot, but, you know - my life is what I make of it, nothing more, nothing less. She reminded me of how fast the years and days and months go by, how it's like a race against time, and for a moment I agreed with her, but then I remembered what I was doing this time last year and how I'd spent the past 12 months, and what I was doing two years ago this time, and then three years ago, and I thought - no - you're wrong - it's not been going by that fast. I have crammed more living, intentionally and/or otherwise, into the past few years than most people have. I've grown a lot in those past years, and I'm a little older now, but far more comfortable with who I am than I ever was in my very early twenties. I've met countless people and gone to so many different countries and had so many different experiences. I've fallen in love with people, and been fallen in love with. I have madly adored people, and had people madly adore me. I've smelt the damp muddy smell of thunderstorms in Prague and Krakow and I've gotten drunk on too many occasions with wonderful people and fallen asleep in the hostel living room, and woken up the next day dazed and parched and feeling like heaven and hell. I've sat in numerous buses and watched the alpines roll away beneath me and the Austrian sun that Mozart gazed upon, rise above me as I left the city whence he was born.

Gamcheon. There was a main road which seemed to lead down to the Tsushima Strait, and I was under the impression that if I followed that road, I would be able to see the sea.

You can distinctly see the sea in the distance here

Again, the sea in the distance, which was where I was trying to get to

I walked down. It was very steep, and extremely hot, and after about 10 minutes of walking I completely lost sight of the sea, and began to rethink my plans, however it was far too steep for me to retrace my steps back to the Gamcheon village bus station, so I walked to the other side of the road and caught a bus there back to Toseong and returned to Nampo, again, and returned to nice comfy air-conditioned Lotte Department Store to do some more shopping for the fam.

My weekend in Busan is drawing to a close and that makes me quite happy.

One more entry to go. I might do a wrapup but not sure if I will. There's not a whole lot to say about Busan that hasn't already been said. Europe this sure ain't but of course. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Europe has been and always will be, the great love of my life. I didn't meet anyone interesting in Busan this time round, just a bunch of boring and unattractive Taiwanese older women. Same questions, same old answers, same predictable fucking process. Isn't that the case more and more as you grow older? I remember Europe last autumn, another lifetime away. There were so many lost people there on the road. No, you will not find yourself by travelling. Travelling is an end, not a means. You will not magically find the formula to the secret of life just by being a pseudo hippy and staying in cheap hostels and going to hostel raves and wearing harem pants and shit. In Noel Gallagher's words, you can't keep having the same fucking conversation in the kitchen about David Icke and pyramids and shit. For fuck's sake I'm only in my mid twenties, why does it feel like I'm so much older? When you're younger you look at the world with a fresher pair of eyes.

Busan, part III - Lotte Department Store and Jagalchi Fish Market

Lotte Department Store and Jagalchi Fish Market. The department store was like any old department store in Taipei, but I went anyway because it was right next to my hostel plus I wanted to get some food for the fam and buy myself some coffee. Kafija. I've noticed that in SK, they tend to have these giant, monopolizing companies that basically run everything - at Beommil I think it was, there was a Hyundai mall and I was a bit surprised because Hyundai has always been a car manufacturer to me. Obviously I don't know enough about SK.

I took the metro to Jagalchi, which was only one stop from my metro, but I had that one day pass so figured I might as well. I found the fish market without too much difficulty - basically I just followed the smell of the sea and the way the wind was blowing from - and saw it, a long, covered market filled with vendors and hawkers in a scene so similar to my home country that it felt as if I had fallen into a portal and was now in a parallel universe equivalent of my home country, except that everyone spoke Korean.

I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed Jagalchi fish market far, far more than I was expecting to. I wandered along market in a sort of happy daze. The sun was quite bright but it wasn't hot, and the wind from the Tsushima Strait was clean and slightly salty and extremely refreshing. I strolled at a leisurely pace, stopping to look at the squids, the octopuses (is that even a word?; apparently so because google spellcheck hasn't underlined it in red) and the clams and all the other sea creatures who were happy as a clam, with no idea of the grisly fate that awaited them.

I raised my head and saw Gamcheon Cultural Village in front of me in the distance, and the lazy voice at the back of my mind said - well, if you can see it from here then there's really no need to go and see it in person. I decided to see how I felt about that later, and to go along with the flow, because it's my own damn holiday and I'm going to do exactly as I damn well please and there's nothing no one can do about that so there.

What made me really happy about the fish market was that I got to see some actual 'Beondegi (번데기)', silkworm pupae soup, in person. At first I thought that Kim Jaejoong was joking when he talked about this, then he posted a real picture of it, and then I saw it in person, and no I did not try it at all because it looks like cockroaches and there's no way I'm eating something that looks like cockroaches, be it steamed or fried or boiled or broiled.

Beondegi 번데기 - silkworm pupae

After reading reviews about that, I think I made the right choice not to eat them.

More to come.