We just spent a few days in Busan, what a remarkable place.

We need to go back to get a fuller sense of the city, of course, but my first impression was very positive.

Easy three hour KTX bullet train ride down there. I was a bit surprised that the train was two minutes late on the return....the horror

The city is on the southeastern coast pressed in between some really impressive mountains. Crowded streets of course, and endless markets in all directions. We saw no Americans in our limited time there, but we did see many Russians. I was interested to see that there was almost as much signage in Japanese as in English.





This is me and agi down by the fishing docks.



Busan is definitely a rawer place than Seoul with a very appealing vibe. People were very friendly to us, and excessively so to the Lil Buddha, who was greeted absolutely everywhere she went and carried proudly by a great many little old Korean ladies. Often without us being asked--she was just wrenched from our hands and paraded around with many smiles and exclamations. One woman on the street ran up and pressed a 1000 won note into her hand. (for the college fund. With the falling dollar, this could add up).

One thing I definitely noticed in Busan is the absolutely huge number of people with gold teeth.

A major attraction of Busan is also one of its major industries-- sea food. The Jalgachi market is the biggest fish market in Asia and it is incredible. There are blocks of women (almost exlusively women) selling fish in little stands. There was also a large modern glass building that had sellers standing in front of tanks with live sea creatures of all descriptions, water running constantly through the tanks onto the floor. It was among the most visually stunning places to walk around, brightly lit and amazingly colorful. Of course I neglected to take pictures inside.

There is also another building with stands for eating, also with water running everywhere. Kind of waterworldesque.

Here are some pictures of the outdoor market.










This amused me--octopus trying to escape (the video is sideways for some reason):


There were a few stands selling other kinds of creatures. Here is a watery bin filled with pigheads. That guy is cleaning the feet in the background.



In town the commercial area is at least as dense as Seoul.

Like elsewhere in Korea, the street space is captured by women creating little restaurants on stools around their carts. Here was a nice dry one on a crowded street in the pouring rain:




I was struck by this Buddhist temple utterly surrounded by stores. The back was actually all stores, just this gate in



But get inside the temple compound and it was peaceful and beautiful like they all are:





We also went to the mountains north of town to some impressive Buddhist temples. One of them, Beomesa, is a famous one in a stunning place in some steep mountains. They were having services so I didn't take any pictures of the temple proper, though did get this nice shot of Lark and Skye standing above the rooftops.



We walked a few kilometers up the mountain road to get to the temple (though we took a bus down and found out there was a much easier way to go) and on the way lucked into finding this little Buddhist temple. Unlike the historic ones we have visited, this looked like it was just carved out of the woods and would not have been out of place in Central America, tin roof and all.



What struck us most was the Buddha statue there.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CHAOS WASHING MACHINES