All about Busan

Life is going remarkably well. I've started clicking into the routine of working life, but teaching remains fun and challenging. I'm teaching six days a week but the hours are good and I still get enough time to leave the neighbourhood during the week.

There are quite a few scenic beaches in Busan, the most famous being Haeundae beach. Around the corner from Haeundae, within walking distance, is the Gwangali beach area which I think is equally as impressive. The area seems a little older but is still busy, with plenty of restaurants to eat at and large bars with good views of the surroundings.

The biggest feature of the area is the Gwangali bridge, a huge construction that runs across the harbour. It's the biggest bridge in Korea and runs for several kilometres. At night it lights up in different colours and they have firework shows on it for special occasions.

On the beaches of Korea you can also buy fireworks from street vendors. I was always excited by fireworks when I was younger, but back in Australia you need a special license to buy them and you can only use them on a specific night. Those sorts of laws are more relaxed over here, another example is that motorbike riders don't need to wear helmets at all.

Also in the area are undercover fish markets that sell a delightful range of apparently edible marine life. Everything is sold live, and the vendors really push you to make a purchase. Here's one lady I met, holding a live octopus for me to photograph. I'm a little freaked out by the concept of holding an octopus, but in the markets here the ladies pick up huge ones and have no qualms about wrenching the tentacles off their fingers.

That day my new Korean friend, Hyeju and I went to eat at a sushi restaurant. The prices are a little expensive but all the fish is plucked live from a tank. I still feel a little guilty about feeding on the recently deceased, but when I think about it I guess it's a little narrow minded because all my meat eating habits contribute to the death of something somewhere.

As a side dish they also gave us live octopus. They chop the octopus on a board and put it on a plate with sesame oil. The chopped tentacles writhe for a long time and the suction caps still work. I tried it after summoning enough digestive constitution and it was quite interesting. Foreign objects moving of their own accord in your mouth is a truly alien experience. I chewed fast.

I made a short video of the dish and uploaded it to Youtube for your perusal. You can view it here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=pmx2g-3fsrk

The view from the restaurant was nice. Virtually all of the places open are restaurants, bars or convenience stores. I'm hoping to go back sometime soon.

There was a really small amusement park in the area called Me World or something. It had a couple of rides in it like this one, but the place felt like it had seen it's heyday back in the eighties or something. Some of the sidestalls had prizes in them, but no attendants. There's a more modern amusement park in Busan somewhere but I haven't had a chance to see it yet.

On another weekend we went to Nampo-dong, an area where you can see the Jagalchi fish markets. These are the biggest fish markets in Korea and are worth a visit if you come down this way. The place smells very very fishy. I thought I knew what fishy smelled like, but this place redefined the scent for me.

The open stalls are mainly staffed by women who shout out their special prices in an interesting specific local dialect. You can buy live sea cucumbers, pilot whale meat and curious deep sea fish all pretty easily here. And they have plenty of octopus too, some of them were about a metre long. You can buy them alive at that size if you like wrestling with a mass of tentacles. The market ladies here seem to enjoy it.

This month they're having the annual Jagalchi Fish Festival here. Events include oyster opening races and live eel skinning competitions. There's a lot of festivals going on this month so I might not get to see all of them.

The surrounding harbour area is full of old and new boats. Some of them are rusty and look a little unseaworthy so it gives the place a little character.

The Nampo-dong markets nearby are huge and sell things in a similar way to the Namdaemun markets in Seoul. This is a specialty kim chi shop, where you can buy a huge variety of different pickled vegetables. Kim chi is served with nearly all traditional Korean meals and different shops have slightly different variations. I tend to think that the supermarket stuff is the best, so perhaps my kim chi instinct hasn't matured yet.

This is Busan tower, which was built in the seventies and overlooks the harbour area and surrounding districts. We visited it at night and it seemed more impressive than it would in the daytime.

The pagoda you could see in the previous picture houses this large town bell. It was financed by donations from the public and they ring it every new year. You can't ring it any other time because it has a padlock on the ringer. Not that I was entertaining such mischief.

At the top of the tower the windows were a little dirty but it was still a nice view. This is a shot of the harbour area, the biggest harbour in Korea and the third largest container harbour in the world.

And here are the busy shopping districts at night. We walked along some of these streets to reach the tower.

This is the millenium sculpture in the middle of a street intersection in Nampo-dong. You can sit on little stone seats around it and take in the atmosphere. Cars and people flow past like a bubbling creek and when you sit here it feels like you're strangely removed from it all.

Here is my new language exchange friend, Hyeju. One day I went up for a walk to the nearby university and asked the language department secretary if they had any language exchange programs going. She said no, but it sounded like an interesting idea. Hyeju is that secretary. We meet up every week now and she's slowly teaching me the language, while I'm telling her about various random things that I know about the world.

I still go out to bars with co-workers from time to time, but not as often as before. This is a bar called New York and it's one of our favourites. They do a fire spinning show on certain days and I'll try and get a video of it sometime.

Yesterday I went with some of my co-workers on a hike up a nearby mountain. We live about ten minutes away from it. Along the way you can see picnic areas and badminton courts. I'll probably buy some racquets soon. At the top there is a road lined with these flowers. It's a nice walk and has a European feel to it.

Because I'm teaching during the week, I only get out and about on the weekends so have less things to blog about. I'm starting to get over the novelty of being in Korea, but it's still a fascinating place. I'll try and keep an update at least once every two weeks.

So that's it for me this time. I leave you with this nice picture of the sign outside our local hairdresser. I hope you're all having a good time, wherever you may be. Seeyas!

Mt Keumjang

Here we find ourselves admiring the dazzling interior of the Haeundae Sfunz Cinema. I have been unable to work out what Sfunz means, or how to pronounce it. It's pretty though.

Last weekend we went out on a rather chilly day to visit Mount Keumjang, a popular destination for weekend walkers. At the base of the mountain in those huts there, they had some people dressed up in traditional Korean hanbok, playing drums and singing in a very distinct style. In older Korean music, there are some songs that are so difficult to sing that only a handful of people know how to perform them correctly. Such people are entitled 'intangible cultural assets'. I saw a documentary of them on tv.

The trees around Busan are changing colours and are very nice to look at, forming a patchwork quilt when observed from high above.

And here's me standing against a winter backdrop. That ninja guy in the black is Jef, busily documenting a photo library of the leaves. We were actually a lot colder than we appear.

We were soon faced with a dilemma. We could either hike for approximately 2 hours to reach the summit, or take a 5 minute cable car for approximately $3.

We found ourselves at the summit approximately $3 later. The ride up was nice, a little bumpy and a little crowded but we got some good views of the mountain.

The trees change to different colours during the winter but are a little more appreciable in real life. Maybe my camera was on the wrong setting again. Some of the yellow coloured trees are called 'Bank Trees'.

The view at the top was quite nice and not too hindered by the trees. You could see most of Busan, weaving in and out of the mountains. Far off in the distance is the Gwangali Bridge, which is hard to spot in this photo unless you know what to look for. It's a blip in the ocean left of the third green mound from the right.

There were plenty of different vantage points to look out from at the summit. We were able to see from the mountain ranges that we were on, to the ocean on the other side. I have no idea who that phoney tourist guy is.

Nearby was the Yaksu temple, built into the mountains. It had the typical serenity of a temple complex, except that a speaker was built into the mountain and was reciting buddhist verses in a deep voice. I am perplexed at how they carried all the building materials down the steep mountain path.

There were some nice ponds around the place with goldfish in them. I call this shot "Leaf on Water". The inspiration for the title hit me when I realised that there is a leaf and it happens to be on water.

This intricately carved totem was about 3 metres tall and had Korean and Chinese inscriptions carved into it. 'Totem' is probably not the correct terminology, but I like to use that word. As my old man always used to say, "You can never have too many totems". Actually I made that up. But anyway, there was some very skilled craftsmanship that went into the written inscriptions. It had all been done by hand and the spacing of the characters was perfect.

This bell didn't have a padlock on it, but I observed restraint and left it alone. It's more difficult than it seems.

Some more winter colours. This reminds me of the grapevine we used to have in our backyard.

As dusk approached, we found ourselves running a little behind time and scrambled back to the cable car area. The temple was only 200 metres away from it but the slope was very sleep and it took us about 15 minutes.

We ate dinner in an area that we hadn't seen much of before. The Busan University area was very busy for a Sunday night with lots of shops and restaurants open. We found our way to a Turkish restaurant that turned out to be superb. Food like falafel and shaslicks are a rarity in Korea, and thus are savoured and sought after with greater tenacity. By us, at least.

This is 'English Club', a social group set up by some university students for the purpose of practicing their English. They get together once a week and do various language exercises before heading out for dinner. We were introduced through some friends and have found their gatherings to be a good social occasion. Last weekend we played the popular Korean drinking game 'sam-yuk-ku'. It's worth practicing.

Also, our school branch has been going really well. Everyone gets along like friends and recently we won a 'best branch in Busan' award. So we got to eat lunch at The Outback Steakhouse, which is a franchise here specialising in 'Australian food'. I was mystified as to what Australian food may entail, so I analysed the menu eagerly. It turns out that Australians like to eat such delicacies as Queensland Burgers and Toowoomba Steaks.

The restaurant is pretty popular here in Korea and my chicken-shrimp pasta wasn't too bad a meal. This is one of our admin staff, Ji-Hae, smiling nicely for the camera. And for those who may be pondering, she is not my girlfriend.

We've started a new term this week, which means I have been teaching for 13 weeks. Overall it's been a fairly smooth ride, the younger students have a lot of energy though. During the 5 minute break they manage to visit the toilet, eat bags of chips, chat to each other in Korean and leave this graffiti on my board. Impressive.

And here is a model sentence written by one of the students in Jef's class. Jef wrote it on the board in the teacher's room because it never fails to amuse us. The topic was 'Telescopes and space'.

That's all for me this time! It's getting really cold here now... like fridge temperature, but life is going well. Next week I'm starting a second job, which is teaching English to some hospitality workers. Should be fun. Cya round.

Beomeosa Temple

Every so often you can get lucky enough to snap something that describes itself. This cosmo flower was sitting on the side of the path through the mountains near my apartment. I walk up them from time to time, although it is getting a little colder these days.

The weekends are usually spent noisily and we end up getting home early in the morning. It takes a couple of days for my body clock to adjust back to normal sleeping hours, so quite often on a Monday night I'll walk around my neighbourhood which is always very peaceful. This is what many of the streets look like at that time.

Last weekend we went to Beomeosa temple, one of the largest and well-known temples in Busan. It was fairly easy to get to from the subway, but still situated deep in the forest.

A lot of other people were there that day. Koreans like to buy all sorts of specialised hiking gear for their regular walks in the mountains. That guy you can see in the front is carrying a collapsible titanium walking stick.

The temple is built around a running stream that you can drink from at the top. This sort of scenery reminds me of the Morialta Falls back in good ol' Adelaide. We used to go walking there a lot, back in the day.

A short walk later and you arrive at the temple complex, surrounded by forest covered hills. The architecture in temples around Korea has many similarities, but each complex has a slightly different feel to it.

There were four of these intricately painted statues guarding the main entrance. They were about 3 metres high and are supposed to keep bad spirits away. I didn't chance upon any bad spirits, so they obviously do a good job.

There's usually a main temple that is a little bigger and more decorated than the others. Those stone steps lead to the main one in the Beomeosa complex. Smaller temples surround it and each has its own theme, such as fertility (which is the only example I can remember). Lots of young couples come to places like these when they are about to get married.

Fresh stream water runs into this carved rock that you can drink out of. The water is very cool and refreshing. The blue cups you can see are communal cups that you find at every such place. Everyone uses them without qualms about germs, something you wouldn't find in many western countries. I use them too, and I try to not think about how easily a single person with Herpes Simplex might infect dozens of people.

Korean Buddhism is a little more shamanistic than the philosophical kind I tend to hold in higher regard. The atmosphere in these places is very tranquil, and even though there are sounds from outside it tends to somehow dampen when you are inside. There are usually candles lit and incense burning.

During the big APEC summit a while ago, temples started offering 'temple-stay' programs where members of the general public can pay a small fee and live like a monk for a weekend or longer. You wake up when the monks wake up, help clean the temple and eat temple food. They also teach you how to meditate and live like they do. The program was so popular that it's still going now. It sounds like a really good idea so I might try it sometime.

This is a pine tree that looked nice so I took a photo of it.

Winter is coming and it's getting cold these days. Back in Australia, it never really dropped below 14 centigrade or so during the daytime. This year they're expecting snow down here. The trees have nice colours on them too, from deep reds to bright yellows.

On Sunday we decided to watch a movie at the Lotte department store. Unfortuneately it seemed that the whole of Korea had the same idea. It was really crowded but not so hard to get a ticket. We watched Guardian, with Kevin Costner in it. It was okay. I'm glad they don't dub the movies here, all the English ones are subtitled in Korean.

And here's what our legs look like when we go to the cinema. Those lights are a little more impressive in real life, just try to imagine them changing colour.

In convenience stores around Korea they always provide you with an instant noodle dining area. There's always a small benchtop, hot water service and a bin with a strainer in it so that you can just buy the noodles and eat them in the shop. I've done it once or twice and it's pretty cool. Here are some kids from the hood showing the blog viewers how it's done.

I thought it timely to show you a picture of what's in my fridge. In the bottom left there is some Homeplus kimchi. In the door there is some Australian Beqa cheese that you can buy pretty easily here and also a carton of thickened cream. Cream in Korea is hard to find, because they're not too big on dairy products. I bought it because I wanted to make spaghetti carbonara for my friend, which turned out well. On the left of the fridge is my bag of short grain rice and on top of the fridge is my new rice cooker called Liam. I named him that because the brand is Li-hom, which kinda sounds the same.

I've started cooking at home more because the eateries nearby get a little tired sometimes. Usually I cook Italian food, because it's refreshingly different from Korean cuisine. Korean food is good, but it doesn't vary a great deal. As someone else so eloquently put it: "Variety is the red pepper paste of life." You'll understand it after you live here a while.

Here's a shot out of the window of the local PC bang. Electrical poles in Korea are often an interesting concoction of wires and dangly bits. I've seen setups more intricate than this one.

Life in Korea is going very well. My language abilities are starting to pick up a bit after a long beginning. I still can't maintain a conversation, but I can describe things that I see or want at the level of a Korean 3 year old. But my pantomiming skills are very adept. Well, that is apart from today when I tried to describe the type of haircut I wanted to the hairdresser and ended up looking like a new recruit. Oh well, as the Koreans say "kege iseng i ya!" (that's life!).