Kristin Reporting!
We unfortunately lost an hour last night because we are heading east towards Japan. We went to bed "early", but because of the time change we didn't get enough sleep. Seven and a half hours isn't too bad though.
We got up at 7:30AM for our 8:00AM meeting time. D was smart and had ordered breakfast rolls for us to eat this morning. We scarfed them down and headed to the meeting point which today was in the Queen's Room of the Queen Elizabeth.
The first thing D noticed was that his phone does not work in South Korea! It is just too old or lacks something that is necessary to work on the network system. My phone worked like a charm!
We were sent in groups through South Korea's customs control, and then loaded onto the buses.
It was a 50 minute drive to our first stop: Haedongyonggungsa Temple. We chose this tour specifically to see this temple which was built on a sea cliff. It seemed particularly picturesque.
[Davin Interjection: I can’t handle these Korean names. Five syllables for a name is just too many! Maybe it’s actually a combination of words that actually means something in Korean, so it’s easier to remember?]
When we arrived, we walked down a street lined with food vendors. They were setting up for the day. Most of their food involved frying various kinds of seafood, and they had fish and squid on display.
At the end of the stalls we walked past stone statues of humanoid representations of the zodiac animals with animal heads. We were amused to see a stone pagoda shrine to "Travel Safety". Apparently, Taxi Drivers and other frequent drivers can pray there for safety on the road and to avoid tickets!
Down a few more stairways the seaside temple came into view. It was very nice. Unfortunately, they hadn't taken down the framework for their festival lanterns. They use ugly metal poles to hang them, and it made the entire complex look like it was under construction. There was actually some construction going on in one part of the temple. The poles made it impossible to take many good pictures. Overall, they really ruined the beauty of the place. It was still impressive and a nice place to visit– it just could have been better!
We were so involved in looking around the temple that we had to run back to the bus! We actually had no idea where we were going next– it had simply been too long since we’d booked the tour!
The bus took us to a park which was also the location of the APEC Conference building. We were able to walk through this room where 21 countries that border the Pacific used to meet to discuss foreign policy. The building is now only rarely used. This location also had a very nice picturesque view back towards the city of Busan and its large bridge.
We headed back to the bus. The next stop was lunch at a 4 star hotel. It was a buffet style lunch of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese food. There were also some international foods, like fried chicken. The food was okay, but the hotel wasn't really set up to be a buffet, so the food had all cooled off. So, unfortunately our lunch was only luke-warm.
The final stop was the Jamalchi Fish Market. It is apparently world famous. It was quite interesting. The fish are all kept alive until they are picked out by the customer, and the tanks seemed really clean. We thought the whole thing was very sad though as the fish seemed healthy and beautiful and they would all soon be dead. There were some really cute octopuses too!
[Davin Interjection: Koreans seem to eat the weirdest food of just about anywhere we’ve seen. In addition to all different types of fish, they also had fried manta rays and fried octopus tentacles for sale! You’d even see those in their shopping markets on carts! I sort of regret not trying a bundle of fried tentacles, just for the experience, but at the time it did not seem very appealing! Maybe next time!]
We were then given 50 minutes to explore the tourist market area that was across the street from the fish market. We roamed the streets of stalls and admired all the junk that was being sold– suitcases, CDs, DVDs, kitschy jewelry etc. What we saw nothing of were postcards– except bundles containing collections of K-Pop artists!
I used my phone to search for good places to buy postcards in South Korea. A forum advised us to go to the Busan Tower. It turned out that we were only 10 minutes from the Busan Tower! So, we headed that way. On the way, we found a Tourist Information Office and popped inside to ask them for their recommendations. They said the same thing, "Busan Tower", and pointed us in the right direction.
We found the escalator up to Busan Tower. When we got to the top, it looked like a temple with a tower at the top. No sign of a shopping area. Puzzled we kept heading up towards the tower, and that's where we found that the store is at the foot of the tower. It is a temple of tourism! We found a bundle of postcards of Busan that included one of Haedongyongungsa Temple! We booked it back to the bus in order to make the meeting time.
[Davin Interjection: I guess there are some advantages to being young and in good shape. This is the second time today we ended up having to run!]
We were happy to find that we weren't the last ones back to the bus. We settled in for the ride back to the ship.
As we walked into the port, we saw a sign that advertised that the National Maritime Museum was free, and it was right next to the port. So, we decided to walk over and check it out.
The best thing about the National Maritime Museum was that it was FREE! It was a decent museum but we weren't sure we'd be happy if we'd had to pay for it. There was a nice aquarium with fish and a green sea turtle. We got a great view of the turtle. There were several other smaller aquariums with interesting tropical fish. There was a touch pool for kids.
I was amused to see that the women's bathroom had a mini-urinal, sink and mirror for little boys to use the bathroom in the same restroom as their mothers. I asked D if the men's had the same setup and he said it did. I thought that was pretty cool!
Next we noticed a pool of water which had what I named a "Robo-Koi" swimming around in it. It was a very sophisticated robotic fish. I told D that this is what our mom needs for her pond! I wouldn't mind having some Robo-Koi!
The rest of the museum was about the history of fishing, the invention and history of Korean boats, the special Joseon Tongsinsa diplomatic missions to Japan, and the various methods of modern fishing. The displays and signs were all very interesting.
Satisfied that we'd read and absorbed enough, we decided to try to find a grocery store to see if we could buy any chips and salsa. There weren't any obvious choices nearby, so we picked what looked like a convenience store on Google Maps and headed off to find it.
Our path first took us through some sort of maritime school, where we came across a pool for training to use emergency life boats. At this time of day the school was nearly abandoned, and we only encountered a handful of people walking around the grounds.
This walk took us through a residential area and past an elementary school. This walk was interesting in and of itself. It was nice and peaceful. When we arrived at our destination, there wasn't a convenience store there at all. However, one block before we arrived at our destination we had hiked to the top of a hill and before us in all its glory was: A Pizza Hut!
There was a convenience store next to the Pizza Hut. We checked it out and found some bags called "Corn Chips" but they looked strange. We bought three bags of them anyway. We opened one outside and tried it, it wasn't good... but maybe salsa would make them better. We also bought a coke to share with our pizza dinner.
At the Pizza Hut, we tried to order a pineapple-tomato pizza but the cashier spoke no English. The menu didn't have a "custom" pizza option at all, and we didn’t know how to ask for it (if it was even possible), so we made due with the pre-made options. We chose a Hawaiian and a Korean Style Something.
We did a video recording of the eating experience. At first we liked the Korean Style Pizza, but then some disgusting sweet flavor or seafood flavor overwhelmed me and I felt nauseous eating it. D slowly grew tired of it too. Overall, we enjoyed our pizza and liked trying the local pizza even if we didn't like it in the end.
[Davin Interjection: The Korean variation of Pizza Hut was quite different from what we experienced elsewhere. In addition to having weird Korean variants, the Hawaiian pizza also seemed to be severely lacking in sauce. Unfortunately, this meant it was not as good as it otherwise would have been. The Korean pizza we purchased was odd. At first I really liked it, but by the end I couldn’t stand to eat anymore of it. There was some strange sauce or something on it that gave it an annoying flavor.]
Next door to the Pizza Hut was a Baskin Robbins. We checked out the flavors but they were all different compared to back home, so we decided to forgo ice cream.
We had thirty minutes left to get back to the ship, luckily it was all downhill! We were also freezing now that the sun had gone down, so we were motivated to get back to the ship ASAP! Despite some initial concerns, we made it back with plenty of time to spare.
Unfortunately, this is a back to back port day. So we need to get as much rest as we can because we are going out to explore again tomorrow!
Next Stop: Jeju-do, South Korea
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