I make my noodles the way I like my noodles, and only an ajumma will tell me otherwise

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Departure day, our return flight was planned for 2000 with the hopes to do some things during the day, which ends of being kind of a mixed back. My getting to airports on time anxiety kind of colors the whole day, but in this case having a whole 10+ waking hours before the flight we were actually able to get out and see some stuff.

The second hotel in Seoul was labeled as a 3-Star hotel, but had great reviews, the pictures looked fine, and we have stayed at other 3 star hotels (namely in Japan) that were just fine, this Hotel Nafore was not. Firstly, its tucked deep back in an old industrial neighborhood.

which was fine for us, but a less adventerous Western travelly may not be comfortable with. The lobby was fine, and the staff was friendly, but when we got into our room the first night it was very hot, like 80F+ in the room, there was also boot prints on the walls. The heat we figured could just be turned off/down in that first night, and the boot prints were under the finish of the wood. While less an indicator of cleanliness, it did imply the amount of attention to detail/concern for presentation went into the construction/finishing of the rooms. And comparing our hotel room, to the pictures on the website, we believe we got the not-recently-updated rooms. After literally sweating through the first night (its november in Seoul, it was in the mid 40Fs all night) we complained about the heat and the front desk showed us the Air Conditioning is operated via the TV Remote...OK...I have some ethical issues with blasting AC in the wintertime when we could just turn the heat off, but I think the place had in floor heating (as mentioned before https://danswritingsonnonsense.blogspot.com/2016/11/consorts-and-calendars.html) that was probably controlled at the entire floor/building level. Over the course of the night the automatic light in the entryway of our room (meaning IN our room) would randomly turn on off throughout the night. We woke up on that second day and investigated moving to a new hotel. All of the hotels in the area were either booked up or very expensive (like 300USD+/night), we also tapped the concierge number on the back of our Chase Sapphire Reserve card* so we resolved to stay at the place, armed with the knowledge of at least how to cool the room. On the second night I went down stairs to talk to the front desk regarding the light, but the night guy was clearly the night guy that knew very little about the job, he gave my about 5 feet of electrical tape and scissors to try and cover the light. This did not work. So the next day when the best English speaker was on duty we brought him to our room, and he turned the light to "always off" (I would point out that I also flipped the switch on the base of the light fixture and it seemed to do nothing, I guess he knew to cheat the switch by setting it to a middle position). So ultimately it was only our last night that we got any good sleep in. I mention all of this only because it cemented a lesson for Laura and I; if we both have a gut feeling about a place upon walking in, start complaining immediately. I think if we had, before opening our bags, gone to the desk asked for a different room we may have had a more pleasant experience, or stepped up our dilligence to find a new place.

With that rant out of the way, the rest of our day.

we elected to go over to the Bukchon Hanok Village (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukchon_Hanok_Village) which we had been in before, and was nearby enough to not stress us out about being too far from the hotel. The

The area has many sturctures that have been around for the last 100+ years, many have been beautifully maintained. As typical of us, we stopped to get coffees, Laura went to a little espresso bar, and holding to my earlier declaration to only get the elaborate drink did not get anything from this spot, because nothing was exotic enough. And I am so glad I did,

I dont often evangelize for a specific product on this blog, and I do not get anything for you clicking their links but this place had butter cream coffee, check out their insta for promo pics of the drinks as my pic didnt show the layers https://www.instagram.com/halff_coffeeroasters/
It was one of the most decadent things I have ever had, the cream was so fine, but still thick, was butterscotch-y, but a little biscoff-y.

After walking and coffeeing we were pretty hungry, we went to Mukshidonna in Samcheongdong (which is the neighborhood surrounding the old timey village).

I am unsure what this style of stew/soup is called, it is not really Korean "Army Stew" but its not shabu shabu/hot pot. The broth and ingredients are brought out not-hot (though unsure if raw) and the hotplate in your table brings it up to temp. This spot specializes in the tteokbokki in the broth. You get to choose if you want regular, spicy or seafood broth, then choose the type of noodle, and meat goes into it. We got spicy, beef, "chewy" noodles, and extra ramen noodled (yes the instant kind). I prefer my instant ramen very slightly underdone, and as such, I began pulling some noodles into my bowl to eat, and the lady running the place yelled at me, and gave me the crossed-hands no no no no no, and put my noodles back in the broth and poked around the pot for a few seconds and went off to service another customer. And then about 25 seconds later gave us the OK to eat. I am sure foreigner make plenty of mistakes in there (I mean, we already made some cuilinary mistakes on the trip) so I don't begrudge her forcing me to cook my noodles beyond my preference...

We then walked back to our hotel, through the neighborhood we were previously staying in. We chose to do this because we were certain there was a grocery store that carried the ginseng extract for a fair price that we could bring back as gifts. All of the tourist spots that sold those kinds of products were marked up pretty aggressively. On the way to said grocery store we stopped in the little local makers market, and now being a midafternoon Saturday we found some really cool stuff. We got a tshirt and poster from a shop selling from TimidTales collective (https://www.instagram.com/timidtales_creativestudio/) and from another cool artist (will update with insta link later, a significant proportion of my readers will soon be recieving gifts from this artist, and I dont want to ruin the surprise), Laura got some traditional Korean crafts too.

Retrieving our things from the hotel, we started our trek to the airport, via subway, and then special airport subway and then feet, we got to the airport with plenty of time to get dinner at the lounge our fancy travel cards get access to.

We drank probably 7 glasses beer (admittedly 330ml) between us, and tried most of the things out of the buffet. Considering this was "free" to us, all of the food was pretty good, If we had paied for lounge access, I dont think it would be worth the 40USD/person entrance fee. We got onto our flight, and 9.5 hours later we arrived in Seattle at 1230. Which as you may recall was basically 7.5 hours before we left. With the fancy travel cards, we got the renewal fees reimbursed for Global Entry, which puts you in the short line for customs (kind of like what TSA Pre-Check used to be). Mine was approved within hours, but Laura is still awaiting judgement. I dont fully understand way, but customs in the new international terminal at SEA was a shitshow. Despite all of the lanes being open, the line was probably 3 hours long? Like well beyond the zig-zagging line dividers, they had personnel snaking the line around the baggage claims. While in line (and throughout the international terminal) the loudspeaker was advertising Mobile Passport Control App for US citizens. Laura downloaded that while in line, and scanned her passport, and answered the same 4 questions that the CBP agent would have asked, and she got to go to the MPC line, where the CBP agent asked for clarification on her "yes" answer about having food, and she was through. My Global Entry CPB officer asked more questions, but also sent me on my way after 30 seconds of interaction.

I did make it home with the Nuruk

The Makgeolli starter is here, and I will begin experiments next weekend. We were in our home by 1400.

I will try to go back through this trips posts and include links to restaurants that we ate at.

* I have feelings about upper-end travel credit cards, one of the services that comes with the 400USD+ annual fee associated with these cards is access to a travel concierge service, in the case of the CSR the Visa Infinite services. I had suspicions that the number on the back of the card has access to almost nothing that I dont already have access to, and in most cases would have less knowledge of the places I am visting than I gained through my pre-travel research (for example offering someone in a hotel in Rosemont and calling in Chicago), and this experience cemented my opnions. I love the travel rewards that come with these cards, especially in the first year when getting sign-up bonuses, but it gets very hard for me to justify a 595USD annual fee when your travel portal prices or availability (including cash/points back) doesnt beat aggregators and hotel/airline/etc direct prices or availability, and your concierge services need as much prep time to properly service me as I need to service myself. I also have specific (free-to-play) credit cards in my wallet that optimizes rewards across my spending categories such that I only use these cards for travel purposes.
I recognize many may not want to, or have the time to do the kind of research (or credit card churning) that I do, in which case, spend those big bucks to get a solid product.

Not Alvin, but a chipmunk nonetheless

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We woke up a little late, because I stayed up too late fighting the automated hallway light that turned on at random asw we tried to go to bed. We decided to check out the Lotte (yes like the mall, and the previous hotel we were at) World Folk Museum, which is near the Olynmpic Stadium, I belive the entire facility was built to help educate visitors that came for the Olympics on Korean history. That being said, this place (and an aquarium) were anchored to a giant mall with additionally a themepark adjacent, complete with not-disney mascot

. The museum itself was clearly geared towards kids, which is great, because our understanding of Korean history was that of an elementary Korean child. Most exhibits had English in the plaquard. The centerpiece of the museum was a huge 1/50th layout of the Joseon era Gyeongbokgung palace, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyeongbokgung as well as other little dioramas of what life was like at the time.

The exhibits walked through the history of the Korean peninsula starting in the Bronze age, and moving to the Iron Age with the Three Kingdoms and then onto the Joseon dynasties. It was very well done, if a little aged and worn, being built 25 years go it deserves a cleaning and refresh. But it is totally worth a wander.

We then walked through the enormous monument to capitalism to get to a Korean Barbecue spot. We were basically the only ones in there and the server babysat us through the meal cooking the pork neck, razor-thin beef sirloin strips, and the pork loin for us.

Everyone there was super nice, even though it appeared we were cutting into their bid afternoon break time. (https://www.google.com/maps/place/SODAMJUNG/data=!4m10!1m2!2m1!1ssodamjong!3m6!1s0x357ca5746da52197:0x321e8ad66f34c284!8m2!3d37.5136318!4d127.1082052!15sCglzb2RhbWpvbmeSAQ9tZWF0X3Jlc3RhdXJhbnTgAQA!16s%2Fg%2F11c7t7cl37?entry=ttu).

We walked back through the mall to go to the Seoul Sky Tower (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotte_World_Tower). For a not small amount of money you get to wait in lines and eventually take an elevator up to the 117 floor to then do some observing and buying overpriced coffees and drinks in the 123 floor lounge. We were smart enough to get the Lounge Package, which was an extra 10,000KRW on the ticket price, the lounge had drinks starting at 13,000KRW to include small Heinekins for like 20,000KRW! We happened to be there just before sunset so we held out seats for 45 minutes waiting for sunset.

Here the tower can be seen from the ground floor inside the mall.

The observation floors are some 480M tall, making them the highest thing in the area so you have great unobstructed views of the city. Seeing Seoul from this vantage really imparts the sense of scale. In that photo there are hundreds of spectacularly large apartment buildings, complexes of a dozen 1000+ unit buildings to house the 25+ million people that live in Seoul.

We then made out way back through the mall to take the train home.

Getting home we opened that bottle of fancy Makgeolli we sampled at the Busan train station, on the roof of our hotel to have a few glasses, but it is hovering around freezin here, so a few turned into 1. We went back to our room to research where to eat for dinner, and settled on a Tibetan Restaurant.

. Everything was significantly less spicy than what we have had before, though I think this was more authentically Tibetan, as it had less Indian influence than most of the Himalayan restaurants in the US/UK. The hardy noodle soups were exactly what we needed in the cool weather, and Ill be honest I was starting to suffer carb withdrawal, the last several meals were korean barbecue or what is effectively stirfry, no rice, or noodles or bread in sight, the dilicious Uszbek bread had cleared my system and I needed more complex carbs. The restaurant also had Tibetan Rice Wine, probably because of the widespread appreciation for Makgeolli here in Korea. It had a much higher ABV than the commercial Makgeolli we had been having, and tasted alot rougher. Given the special note on the menue to ask if they had any available, I think this batch was made by the staff, and not a big brewing/distilling operation.

We stopped at 7-11 for snacks on the way home, and now I am finishing this blog post, to have some sweets before bed.

I haven't met a Makgeolli I didn't Like

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We have learned we shouldn't go from a 5 star place directly to a 3 star place, we arent above staying at a 3 star place, but the contrast is abrupt when we come from the swank that is a 5 star hotel. Our hotel here is akin to the lesser of the hotels we stayed in the last time we toured Asia, 7+ years ago when we had less money. So, the place is ok, we didnt understand that turning the heat down didnt necessarily make the room cooler, we had to use the TV remote to operate the air conditioning, and the in floor heating was up to the whims of the entire floor/building automated sytems, the fact that it was 80 degrees while trying to sleep, on a 3 star bed, meant we had a not great sleep. Also at various points the auto-on lights tripped (Laura is convinced it is a ghost, I think it is Chinesium electronics) on and forced us out of bed to turn off lights. so we woke up ready to try and find a new hotel, honestly this spot was so inexpensive, if we paid the same rate for the next hotel it would still be in our budget, so we literally walked to other hotels in the area and asked for vacancies, there were none...

We also called the concierge services on the back of our upper-mid tier travel cards (rant incoming).

The last time Laura and I took any significant vacation was on my way out of the Army, the big 10 week travel around Asia (dig through the blog, youll find it), and we both got seperate Chase Sapphire Reserve cards, and given the travel, and my myopic attention to detail, left us ahead of the credit card companies. However, then, and basically through my whole life I have put little value in the concierge services associeted with these "high end cards" I am pretty good and planning travel and finding deals, and outsourcing that effort might have value if they can do it faster/cheaper than I can. BUT after today, my suspicions have been confirmed. Atleast when it comes to Visa Infinite, they have access to nothing that I dont have access to, they cannot search any better than I can, and chances are, any specific service rep that you get on the phone knows less about the parcticular country/city/district than I do, and ultimately calling them is a waste of my time. Maybe the ultra-high end services associated with invite only (looking at you AMEX) cards, but anything us plebs can get isnt going to beat what you can do with a little gumption (that being said if you dont want to put any gumption in, I suppose they can do things you are unwilling to do, which I will judge you for, but again who the fuck am i? do what you want). ANYWAYS I HAVE GOTTEN WILDLY OFF TOPIC.

The hotel we were in was not great, last minute booking somewhere else was prohibitvely expensive, we complained, and left the AC blasting all day so now things are maybe ok. We went to start our day proper.

I havent entirely figured out why, but there is a sizable Central Asian expat population here in Seoul. Big enough for Seoul to have Mongol Town. We went to the Mongol town to go to an Uzbek Restaurant

THe first dish is a Udon type noodle stir fried with beef and peppers and peprika, we also got some cumin beef dumplings, and a rice soup with peprika and small meat balls, we also got a little bread, which is the first time we have had bread since leaving the states.All of them wer delicious, and actually spicier than much of the other Korean foods we have had. We then walked through the Myeongdong shopping areas, which were absolutely bananans.

These pictures really dont do the area justice. There are a half dozen malls that are all 5+ stories, the old school shopping areas are literlaly miles long. The indoor pictures are from a single line of stalls that was 2 floors of over 700 linear meters of shops. Just stall after stall of hats, and jackets and socks. I suppose if I had an interpreter I could have gotten a suit and then later gotten in tailored for me for around 50USD, but we werent really here to shop, we were here to be stimulated beyond reason with capitalism.

Last night, while drunken, we discussed making Makgeolli at home, because this stuff is probably my favorite alcoholic product. US hyper-pro pasteurization regulations makes import or mass production of makgeolli impossible, as it is a "raw" fermented product, so the only way to get it as good as it is here, is to make it myself. So I started poking around, and like most fermented product you need a yeast starter, and the thing that makes makgeolli is Nuruk, which is a wheat/rice mash that kickstarts the process, it can be found online for not too much monies, but I thought it would be fun to try and source here. So we went to Gyeongdong Market (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyeongdong_Market) which is probably the last remaining old school open air market in Seoul. There were no other discernable foreigners here. This place has the largest selection of traditional herbs and the makgeolli blogs said this is the place to find stuff to put in your recipe.

It looks like effective chaos, there are people everywhere, with vendors yelling, and people bargaining left and right, theres always more than one vender selling whatever you are looking for so there appears to be haggling abound. A few meters into the place laura spotted the pucks of Nuruk and, I am ashamed to say I didnt negotiate for it, the little old lady was so nice, and the base price was so low, I just paid 5000KRW for what I think is an 850-1000g puck of Nuruk and a packet of yeast (that may or may not be necessary) to make some rice wine back in Seattle next week, I hope to perfect a batch by the holidays (given that it is a fast ferment of only 7-10 days I should iterate to something tolerable by christmas. I hope I can get through US customs with it.

We headed back to the hotel to dump the precious cargo.

(that is my own ziplock bag, it came home from the market in a loose black plastic bag, the kind you would bring home from the bodega, except the puck of nuruk was just open to the air, unsealed. Anwyays, the AC running all day brought the temp down in the room, so we headed back out to the Myeongdong area.

Once we got to the area, we realized we had indeed been here before (again, Ill leave that to you to dig through past posts, im drunk, and dont care to facilitate your journey beyond making you read this post). Myeongdong is the place to go for K-Beauty products, there are hundreds of cosmetics shops, with several of the same brand in the area. We found some Joseon Beauty products that Laura wanted to try to encourage some honey skin (I dont fully understand what honey skin is, but I know I shouldnt describe it as "being extra shiny"), we then meandered about the very bustling streets with the most foreigners we have yet seen, and ultimately settled on a restaurant because they had an exhaustive makgeolli list. We got a bottle, and a hot plate of stir fried pork

The rice wine and pork went so well together, it is almost as if the cuisine has 500 years of co-development alongside the booze. I have also pictured both of the makgeolli we tried at this place. The first bottle had actual short grain rice floating in there, not enough to provide a real textural difference, but they were in there, and the second had a lot of "body" making it super smooth.

From here we went to the 7.8 Makgeoli place we tried to hit last night, we got in and sat down, getting the recommended makgeoli and "snack"

The was a tteokbokki in cream sauce, and the other snack there was given "on the house" because the chef recognized us from the nightbefore, it was a 4 cheese fried shitaake, meaning the mushroom was turned upside down, filled with 3 types of cheese, breaded, fried, and then finished with a shredded cheese on the serving plate, and WOW it definetly helped us to drink an additional 4 bottles of mokgeolli tonight. Also, the space was intimate enough for the general manager/owner guy to just decide he wanted to open bottles for himeself, and then provide samples to whoever was around.

Pictured are the 3 bottles we drank at the restaurant, and here is the one we got for takeaway, and I managed to drink while writing this and the previous post.

That was one of the samples, it had yuzu infusion giving it a slight citrus flavor. Anyways, we stumbled our way along the canal to get to our hotel, where we still had the AC running (despite it being late november in Seoul, its supposed to be 36F tomorrow, and we are still running the AC all night to fight the very aggressive heating in the building), drank said Yuzu Makgeoilli, and I wrote this and previous post while laura fought a losing battle with sleep.

I have no intention of proof reading this, so I apologize in advance for errors, but my readers are very intelligent and will be fully capable of decoding my ramblings.

Countdown to Doomsday, but not how you think.

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We knew we would be travelling back to Seoul today, and we pre-booked out ticket so we didnt get stuck standing on the train. We booked a train for 1420, which gave us enough time to wake up late, pack and get out of the hotel, but still do something of note in Busan. We alked up to the Busan Citizens Park, which is a park on the grounds of an old US Military base, which itself was built onto the Japanese Army base during the first half of the 20th century occupation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busan_Citizens_Park) It is a large park, in which it is easy to forget you are in a bustling megalopolis of 20+ million people. They also have a very sobering piece of art reminding us how far away we are from irreversible climate catastgrophe (https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20221228000491) as of the time of our visit we had 5 years and 243 days until global temperatures rose enough to alter human life as we know it, so thats chill to have in the park.

Given that a belligernt nation some 50 miles north is constantly threatening nuclear annihilation of the nation, and the United States, you would think we would feel the threat of holocaust more accutely, but really it was seeing this clock counting down the slow, seemingly uncontested end of current human civilization to put the feeling of doom in me.

After a meander around the park we headed to the train station.

While there I did grab a cup of chicken and tteokboki for a cool 4000KRW, it was exactly the kind of quick snack I wanted before the train ride, poorly heated food, slathered in sauce, that was made at some indeterminate point in the paste by this lady talking on the phone barely acknowledging my existence, all told it was tasty. Also upon entering the train station we got hooked by a lady giving Makgeolli samples, and subsequently bought a bottle of specialty rice wine, that we have yet to drink (even as I write this late night a whole day late, but we are opening a different bottle of Makgeolli, so maybe by the end of my catching up on blog posts, Ill have a quick review on it...). We also grabbed a few Busan local beers to drink on the train.

we loaded the train, sat in our seats and made use of an outlet to charge our WIFI dongle, battery and phones. For most of the train ride we alternated between looking out the window and mindlessly scrolling our phones. The train got is back to Seoul at 1700ish, we took the subway to our hotel neighborhood. Upon exiting the subway in the Myeongdong/Euljiro neighborhood it felt very much like the Hutongs in China. Very much a working neighborhood, that has not been scrubbed for tourists. I think I stated earlier we have been using Kakao as a mapping app, so it had no issues getting us to our hotel, but it took us through lesser (by foreigners) travelled streets. This neighborhood appears to have been a bustling industrial supply area, with a bunch of print/engraving shops and construction supply stores. We havent seen any other foreigners in the area. This is the up and coming hipster neighborhood with a bunch of breweries and experimental restaurants. Which follows a familiar pattern as to what we are used to; depressed post-industrial neighborhoods struggle, hipsters need cheap rent for their housing/business ventures, they start taking over industrial spaces, locals get upset their neighborhood is being gentrified, but really like the increase in property values, hipsters attain success, and then the neighborhood becomes too expensive for the new artsy types so they move to another area. Myeongdong/Euljiro feels like its right in the middle of that cycle: there are new restaurants (that will get a description shortly) and breweries, but still cottage industry mom and pop (mostly pop) shops doing speciality engravings for employee 20th anniversary appreciation pins. Some googling took me to Eulji Darak (https://www.instagram.com/euljidarak/) a Italian-Korean fusion restaurant tucked into an old workers drinking district. The area felt kinda like what I imagine Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood did in the 1950s, there were bars everywhere that clearly served the blue collar workers, getting them drunk after their overly long/hard shifts, and before going home and doing whatever they did to their wives/kids to set them up to fuck up their kids (ie late Gen Xers and Millenials), meaning there were still bars that served only one kind of inexpensive beer, and one kind of inexpensive snack (the most popular snack being a salty dried fish snack which would also fit the Milwaukee workingmans palate)

Anyways we went to Eulji Darak and their food was spectacular, not necessarily the most novel bites, but probably the most well executed food we have had in Korea.

The first plate was a ragu spaghetti, with a dollup of whipped cream on it. Which sounds crazy, but I have had plenty of Italian dishes that have a spoonfull of ricotta ontop of a meaty/spicy sauce. Really, imagine a spicy Ragu with Ricotta, but through the lense of someone that uses gochujang and sweet cream. The second dish was a creamy sauce on big noodles and pork neck, with a raw egg on top, again, imagine a carbonara through an east asian lens. Both weere excellently executed.

After dinner we went to a brewery that was established by a european that had some good beers on their menu, and then went to Another brewery that I believe was run by a native Korean and had some other good beers on the menu, and a better vibe. We then headed out to trek across the neighborhood to check out a Makgeoli speacilty place, but as we pulled up they said they were cvlosing. We were ready to go home at that point, so it wasnt a big deal, but we got about 10m away when the chef ran out and gave us an apology bottly of makgeolli for our troubles.

We managed to finish this bottle on the 1km walk home.

I am da lil drunk, and cynical writing this, so feel free to ignore my opinions leaking into the monologue here, but then again, if you didnt want my writings on nonsense, why are you here?

Laura won't let me title this the way I want so: We had a nice day at the waterfront!

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Laura woke up feeling much better so we elected to head to Haeundae area, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haeundae_Beach) we snagged a coffee from one of the myriad coffee shops around here. After my regular latte yesterday, I resovled to always get whatever crazy drink the shop is pushing, so today laura got a Dolce Latte, and I got an iced latte with Heath crumbled on top, just the wafer part of the heath bar, it was really good. The subway got us down to Haeundae area which is the beach/coast area, the Busan Port is so that was neat seeing where some of the containers of salmon we see at work end up going to. We sat down on a banch by the water and was immediately approached by a guy that was very excited to practice his English. Ashton told us about his living in New York and Las Vegas for a while, and his family that lives in New York and Texas, asked us what we have seen and what we have eaten here in Korea. He told us he loved eating at Jack in the Box and Whataburger when he was in the US. Which...makes sense...the US is the origin for that kind of fast food genre, the varying cuisines across the United States, and the prevalence of immigrant cuisines, means the uniquely american food experience is had at Wendys. As someone that loves food, it is a little disheartening though. We did eat the other batch of pastries throughout this conversation though. One was a red bean paste bun, that was very tasty, another was red bean and whipped cream which was even better, there was quite alot of whipped cream, and we of course had no napkins, the final one was a matcha green tea mochi pastry with red bean paste, which was probably the best, very dense and filling but very good. South Korea at large, and Busan in particular is working to make Haeundae Beach an international tourist destination, and they have retrofitted a rail line to be a tourist train line, with an above grade tram. The tram takes you at tree level about 2km down the coast.

There are beautiful views of the city and the water. There is a rather isolated part of town at the end of the tram with restaurants and cafes. We walked a little further and cought the tourist train line back to the origin point.

From there we went for some cold noodles, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naengmyeon). Right outside the subway station we needed to go to to get back to our hotel area was this place that had good reviews, and was excellent. No frils, they had 4 things on the menu; Regular Cold Soup, Cold Spicy Noodles, Cold Seafood Soup, and Steamed Dumplings.

The cold soup was initially unsettling, I am not used to slurping up noodles that come out of a (literally) icy soup, but it was very refreshing, and also allowed for the appreciation of all the flavors immediately. As opposed to my usual soup interaction; immediately burning my tongue to the point I cannot taste anything, and then waiting 8 minutes and eating lukewarm soup.

We also starting noticing gaggles of Americans, and realized they were probably servicemembers being released on Thanksgiving leave. Wow were they obviously servicemembers, roving in groups of 4-7, going to pizza places, while the well represented the United States, I dont think they were good representatives of the United States. We took the train home and went to craft Brewery, that mostly had imports, we drank a Golden Ale and a Pilsner from two seperate Korean craft breweries whose names escape me at the moment. We followed that with another local brewern Han's Brews, we got a Pale and the Pilsner.
All of these beers have been pretty good, its clear the craft brew scene is still developing, and I am happy to pay more to support the industry. At most restaurants we can get a domestic 1L beer for 3,000-4,000KRW (2.30-3.10 USD), but these craft beers are anywhere from 5,900-8,0000KRW (4.60-6.20USD) for a 400mL pour.

By now we had brewpub hopped our way closer to our hotel, and the cool hipster neighborhood surrounding it and there were more tufts of American soldier floating about. I did see at least a glimmer of hope in US servicemembers abroad as we passed a group on the stairs from the underground. The snatch of their conversation was "...its almost like they are annoyed we are here..." and as we turned the corner Laura and I were like "yeah bud, thats because they are" (I have just now googled this, and it looks like an aircraft carrier just got here as a show of force probably in response to the North Koreans launching the satellite in the coming days, which means these are seamen and not soldiers, so I feel slightly less responsible for them being obnoxious Americans, they wouldnt be my responsibility of I hadnt hung up the uniform). We got bibimbap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibimbap) that was solidly OK, but quick and inexpensive.

We wanted to get off the streets, and not catch any broad stroke labels alongside the other Americans out n about in the bar district.

Given that this is a rather light day to write about, I will take this time to once again talk about the extreme differences of life here vs major cities in the US. Things are SO dense, the mass transit is quick, clean, inexpensive and ubiquitous. The subway stations are often malls unto themselves with small shops and food vendors, and because the competition amongst them is so great, every food stall is good, because the sub par ones dont survive.

This is a photo down one of the hallways of the underground shopping mall here in the Seomyoen neighborhood of Busan, and there are at least 3 others in Busan, and I dont know how many in Seoul, nonetheless in Daegu or Incheon of the other cities in the country. And ehre is a picture of the above ground of that same area.

There is just so much to see, smell, and eat here.