Accidently Climbed a Mountain

20112023

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

19112023

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...).

Unsecret Garden

18/11/2023

We got another latte for the walk to the Changdeokgung Palace (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changdeokgung), which is the number two palace behind the Gyeongbokgung Palace which we saw last time (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyeongbokgung).

The Korean Palaces and many upperclass homes had underfloor heating, where fires would be maintained on the perimeter of the structures "half basement" and the smoke would be vented around under the floor and out the chimney, example can be seen here.

We did have a guided tour through the Secret Garden, which included info about the unguided portion of the palace. Fall time had some beutiful Korean Maples in change, which apparently was a bad thing to the Joseon peoples, they say the changing colors of the trees as treasonous, so they planted almost exclusively evergreen trees, all of the deciduous trees are from during or after the Japanese occupation.

After the palace we went to a Ramyun spot, to warm up from the cold morning tour.

It is a Korean take on Japanese Ramen, often times spicy, I got the spicy ramen with sausage, the sausage being hotdogs sliced on the bias, and laura got the less spicy regular bowl. Both were exactly what we needed to get on with our day. We wandered around what I think was a university/theater district as there were a bunch of halls and theaters, and young adults about. We kinda shopped for shoes, because as ever when I go on international vacations I struggle with shodding my feet. Before leaving home we went all the way to the Bellevue mall, (which was a great contrast to malls over here, it is clearly the Seattle-areas' premier malls, and it was nothing compared to the mall we went to the other day), and were unable to find anything that I found agreeable. My general purpose shoes are on their last legs, and will survive this trip, but will need immediate replacement if I cant find anything here.

We have noticed that Dad Shoes are all the rage over here, like cool, hip young people are wearing New Balance 550s, and apparently the Discovery Channel has a line of clothes and shoes, I was ready to buy some basic black Asics, and they had my size, but only in Extra-Wides.

We then decided to cross the river to the Gangnam area to the South (yes, that Gangnam). Gangnam is the rich swanky neighborhood, and it felt slightly less buzzy busy over there, there were a few more German manufactured cars (as opposed to the ubiquitous Hyundai/Kia elsewhere), and the apartment buildings looked a little less shabby.

We first went to the Kukje Electronics shelter to find an older run exclusive gundam kit that I missed in the states. The place felt like a building in Akihabara Japan, a bunch of floors of appliances and electronics, and then on the top a bunch of little shops and stalls selling anime paraphernalia, mostly vinyl figurines, but I found one guy that had a tiny stall with teetering stacks of gundam kits, and on a bottom tucked away corner they had the kit that I have been looking for for several months now, and a few dollars cheaper than online. Now that I had decided to purchase something I knew I was inconveniencing ourselves for packing, so I figured, the additional inconvenience of another kit would be negligable, I got another kit I never expected to have because online prices are 105USD and up. The guy mentioned several times that it was very high price, when I finally got him to tell me, it was 2/3rds the online prices. I scoffed and just told him to swipe my card...I am thinking now maybe he wanted me to haggle?

We found a taproom for one of the local microbreweries and had a few beers, then went to another taproom that had snacks and self-serve beers. Something in the taps was wonky because half the pour would be foam, and the way the tap-to-pay system worked there wasnt time to let the head settle and finish the pour, anyways beer snobbery aside, all of them were good, and representative of what they claimed to be ie the Belgian tasted like a Belgian and the ESB an ESB. The food they had was very interesting

Nachos and Fried Milk

The Nachos were just tortilla chips, and a cheese sauce that tasted like Kraft MacnCheese cheese, and we were hoping that the fried milk was cheese curds, but it was fried sweet cream? I have no idea how they did it, but it was the consistancy of custard, and a little less sweet.

After some more beers we went to a Pork focused Korean Barbecue Spot, they had no english menu, so the guy just ordered for us, ultimately we had pork neck, pork belly and something else we didnt hear properly, maybe shoulder?

They showed us how to eat it with all the accompanyments, namely wrapping things in leaves.

There was garlic slices in sesame oil, pickled mustard leaves, salt, wasabi, a sambal like thing, and leaves that we couldn't readily identify.

We headed home with intentions to drop off our stuff and go out again, but between missing our stop on the train, and the relative long rides, we were too beat head back out after getting home, so ultimately went to sleep.