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.

Accidently Climbed a Mountain

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Missing the opportunity to nap on the train, and with Laura feeling under the weather, we slept in till 10am!!!

I updated the blog, and slowly got ready to get a coffee and see if Laura thought she could make it through a day of touring, she was not. So we went back to the hotel and I went out to check out some castles and other various piles of rocks. I went to take the train to the Busan Castle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busanjinseong), but I went into the train station on the wrong side, and could not change directions without swiping out and subsequently having to pay to get back in, so I rode the train to the next station. This next station also did not let you change directions without paying, so I waited for the next train and went along to the next one, which did work. I eventually made my way there.

The fortress was built up during the Japanese invasions of the 1590s, it was mostly dismantled in during the Japanese occupation of the early 20th century to build the city around it. Currently it is a park in the neighborhood with all kinds of public exercise equipment. In the middle there is a picture of the light pole, all of the lightpoles had speakers in them, piping smooth jazz all throughout the park. I did make emergency use of the public toilet here, and while it was sub-optimal, it was far from the worst public toilet I have ever had an unwelcome shit at.

I then decided to head to the Jeungsan Japanese Castle, which I believe was a part of the same fortress that the previously mentioned castle was, the placards here were only in Korean so I am unsure what it was all about.

We have been primarily using Googlemaps to get around, as it has the transit system, and addresses/names in English. We also have Kakaomap, which is a korean mapping app, that we can copy+paste the googlemaps address in Korean into, to get accurate walking directions to get there. And Kakaomaps knows every road around here. Kakaomap described the walk from one to the other as only being 1.4km and one set of stairs, and this was my route to get up there...

And here is the view from the top

My fitbit had it clocked at close to 3 miles (4.8km) and 65 floors of stairs. Which means up the hill was equivelant to the Little Si hike in Washington. I then also used Kakaomaps to get me home, which included a walk through a very hilly neighborhood, where public roadways (which were really walkways) were well labeled, but very intimidating from a Westerners perspective. These routes appear to be the only access for many of the residences up here, I cannot imagine how they get appliances into these homes.

I did make my way to a bus stop, and luckily had exact change, because I am sure they would not have made change for me, if I stuffed a 10,000KRW note in there, that would have gotten me just as far as the 1550KRW that the ride actually cost.

Laura was ready to go get food, and we decided on a grilled skewer place.

Those first pics are a fried mozzarella stick, which came with sweet and sour sauce, or an approximation of ranch, and then the plate of other skewers from left to right; pork skin, apricots, chicken thigh with leeks, chicken gizzard, chicken breast with leeks, and chicken thigh with ttoekboki. The grilled apricots stole the show, they were surprisingly meaty, so they were either incredible well seasoned, or google translate misnamed them and they were some pork part, but they were bomb.

After this meal I was again stil hungry so we went to a Korean style Chinese spot and got

Basically Jajangmyeon, which is the slightly darker and sweeter Korean take on Zhajiangmian. I wanted something more filling that straight meat, or light soups (I do love my carbs) so this fit the bill nicely.

On the 3 block walk home we snagged some fried pastries

The long knot was the least chewy, the small ball was very gummy, and the big ball was basically the small ball, but filled with the smalls balls volume worth of red bean paste. All of them are subtly sweet (which after the sweeter noodles meant they didnt taste all that sweet at all) and texturely interesting. We also got a different kind of sweet pastry, but those are set aside for the morning, so they will be in tomorrows write up.

Standing Room Only

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Seems the travel has caught up to us, Laura was feeling not great last night, and we went home a little earlier than expected, which I dont begrudge as I was tired too. When waking up Laura was very phlegmy and her voice was gone. Today was planned to be a chill day of travel anyways, we can snooze on the train.

After checking out and leaving our baggage in a locker in the hotel, we finally stopped at a street food vendor on the street we were staying on for hotteok(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotteok). I got a sweet one

, that weas filled with honesy and sesame and pumpkin seeds. The honey inside was approaching fusion it was so hot, and Laura burned her tongue on the bite she took that wasnt just dough, it was so hot I didnt tase much of it, so I will have to try again later, we continued looking for some kind of ginseng miracle cure, and found this little one-hitter ginseng extract liquid.We also walked around a little market that we had actually walked around the last time we were here.

Which had these giraffe scultures on the roof.

We then headed to the coffeeshop we had been to twice before, but for fancy tea rather than cheap coffee. I got an omija and chamomile tea, and Laura got a grapefruit and honey earl grey. They were delicious, and a great way to chase the ginseng extract, because that stuff tasted like root water...

We wandered around a Buddhist temple that was across the street from our hotel.

We then went back to the hotel to claim our stuff and hopped the subway to the train station.

The Seoul (and later the Busan) trainstation was big, though not as mall-like as the train stations in Japan, it felt very much like a transient place, and not a desitnation for activities. The kiosks didnt take foreign cards so we had to wait in line for our ticket. At the front of the line, the ticketagent said they have no seats on trains, but you can still book tickets, and the next train with seats is at 22:42. So we got last minute standing room only tickets. At the ends of most cars they have jumpseats, and a loitering area, presumably for this very reason. Poking around online it also seems its not uncommon for people to sit in empty seats until the ticketed passenger boards at a later stop.

While it was a literal pain in the ass to not have a seat, we did end up communicating (speaking would be a generous descriptor) with a middle aged guy about how long we were in Seoul and where we were from, his son is in Connecticut, then another set of ladies got on and turned out, one of them spoke English, so we translated through her, and she was actually living in Renton, which is pretty funny.

When the train finally disgorged us in Busan we felt the very different vibe from Seoul. It is a little bit rougher, way more people smoking cigarettes, young people seemed to make up a larger portion of the population. We are staying at an allgedly 5-star hotel (it feels like a well done 4 star hotel, but I dont have much 5 star experience, so what do I know) that is owned by Lotte, the company that also owns malls and hypermarkets all over Asia. The mall that it is attached to is an ultra-high end mall, with all of the designer brands, and a curated food hall with brightly lit and very clean stalls. We ultimately did not eat here, as it felt too sterile. We went across the main street to what on my Kakao Maps is labeled as "Food Alley" In the Seomyeon area. Laura found a a noodle spot to try that was right there amongst all the restaurants and street food stalls, and bars. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Songjeong+3(sam)+dae+Gukbap/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x3568eb6fd0fbf783:0xe7a22678687305a5!8m2!3d35.1556069!4d129.0584849!16s%2Fg%2F1tt0n_yh?entry=ttu the place claims to be open 24 hours, and it has now been our agreed upon "final option" for when we are too hungry to make a decision. I got the Sundaeguk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundae_(sausage)) which is a blood sausage soup, the blood sausage is very light on the blood, there is a lot of glass noodle filler in there, but it keeps it light to go with the very light pork broth. Laura got the soup with pork slices. Same broth, just different meat.

We continued walking around the entertainment area until I realized I was still very hungry, so we stopped at another beer and chicken spot

This was a soy and black garlic sauce, that had a bite, but wasnt scary spicy, they also had a good selection of quality beers, to my surprise they had an Amber Lager that was definetly on par with a Riverwest Stein. We then went into the mall looking for more Gundam kits, and a travel size face cleanser. The gundam base had the same kit I saw at the other one in Seoul, but because I have already decided to inconvinience myself with 2 kits, Ill get a third...

We went home via a 7-11 grabbed some cough drops and ice cream (which waking up the next morning we totally forgot to eat...).