Busan Observatory, Geumjeong Sanseong Fortress and Food Poisoning!!

24 hours after my last post, our meal from our TaLK trip to Juwangsan Park decided to make a violent exit from my body in the form of 5 days of food poisoning resulting in a massive fever, being bed-stricken and not eating anything except nibbles of the b.r.a.t. diet (bananas, rice, apples and toast). I should have, WOULD have stayed home except that I cannot miss any more days of class and if fellow teachers suspected I was ill, I would have been hustled to an E.R. to get tested for Swine flu (on MY dime-$200!!) quicker than I could blink. So, Teacher Katy did not move from her chair for an entire week of class. It sucked, but I survived.

Last weekend was our planned trip to Jeju island, but due to my illness and Shaina deciding that she didn't want to go after all, we ended up doing another weekend in Busan. Unfortunately, I was still fairly ill, and a weekend full of hiking in the freezing weather has left me with a bad cold. I leave for Alaska on December 16th to spend Christmas with Ian, so I am trying like Hell to get decently healthy before I board that plane for 27 hours of traveling.

As for Busan, it was mind-numbingly cold. Busan is a coastal city and is the second largest city next to Seoul, meaning it's enormous and constantly struggling with it's "second city syndrome" and trying to one up Seoul. When you look at a tourist map of Busan, every inch of the city is titled as "historic site" this and "cultural heritage" site that. I don't know about you, but a fish market does not make the cut as a cultural heritage site in my book.

When we arrived at Busan, we staked out a love hotel to dump all of our bags. We chose the "Camus Motel", which was pleasingly swanky for a love hotel. Internet, a full-sized bed and a hobbit-sized bathtub! We were tickled that it was only 50,000 a night but the owner let us know that we couldn't come back to the hotel until nighttime because that's when "business" begins... 0.0

The bathroom door. A nice change since they are usually just completely see-through.

My hips could barely squish down into the tub but OH! How delicious it was to take a bath. I think I marinated for near an hour before donning my complimentary robe and collapsing onto the bed.

A mirror above the bed....
Amanda, enjoying the high-speed internet. Love hotels are good for so many laughs because you are constantly reminded in small ways that the room is designed for a very specific clientele (young couples who have no place to go because they still live at home!) For example, I was surfing the channels on tv when I bumped a button that suddenly projected the computer screen onto the tv's massive flat screen. Let your mind wander.


Shaina, Eunice and Amanda were vibing some lunch, so we headed to one of the fish markets to haggle for some sashimi. I passed on the meal for obvious reasons and ended up eating tangerines and a bag of salted almonds to be safe. Busan's fish market smelled particularly pungent after my week, so I passed on all the samples of raw fish that the vendors kept shoving at me, slipping around on their black rubber gloves.


You can amuse yourself for hours watching the live octopus tanks. Despite the mesh coverings
lining the rim of the bowl, octopus are excellent escape artists. This guy switched bowls about five times before plopping down onto the asphalt for a mad dash to the water. I guess a "mad dash" for an octopus is still pretty slow, so he was caught easily enough by a very elderly man who had been munching on the Korean version of a twinkie. The man tossed the twinkie on his lap, grabbed the octopus with the same bare hand and tossed him back into the bowl before he continued eating. Yuck!


After lunch, we decided to head to the furthest tip of Busan city, known as the "observatory point". After a winding, hair-raising bus ride along seaside cliffs we arrived at a park that was set up along the ocean. just when we thought we would have to walk all the way up a mountain to get to the observatory tower, a bright green, yellow and orange train drove up to he entrance. It was similar to the shuttles that take you to and from the entrance of an amusement park. So, we hopped on for 1,500 won and rode the train to the observation tower for a breathtaking view of the white-capped water and sun-drenched cliffs below.

At the observatory. I believe the needle is pointing to Japan.

You may have to enlarge this photo to see them, but there are several ajumma (elderly Korean women) on the cliffs, peddling their catch of the day. You can climb down the treacherous rocky paths to where these women are situated and eat the freshest seafood of your life for whatever price you manage to haggle down to (and it's ALWAYS cheap). I think I might laugh at the guy working the seafood counter at the grocery store when he tells me the seafood is really fresh.

Only in Korea can you climb around slippery cliffs at sunset, buffeted so hard with the wind that you almost fall over into the water completely unsupervised.

Shaina and Amanda, soaking up the scenery. We all perched on the rocks, shivering and watching the massive ships heading out to sea, glinting in the sunlight. It was fantastic.

I snapped this moments before loading into the bus that would take us back to the center of Busan city. Korea is a beautiful country, and I will miss the sight of mountains on the horizon dearly when I return home.

That night, we all wanted something HOT to eat! What better than traditional Korean winter fare: soup! So we stopped into a Korean restaurant and ordered 2 dinners a piece and all paid less than 6 dollars for the entire meal. I ordered spicy tofu and pepper soup and tuna bibimbap (rice with shredded vegetables and spicy chili paste). We all shared bowl after bowl of miso soup and shredded seaweed with sesame oil too. It was a feast fit for royalty. That night, Shaina and Eunice decided to go out drinking while Amanda and I stayed in to get to bed at a decent hour. I didn't want my Sunday to be ruined from lack of sleep, which turned out to be the right decision because Amanda and I had a wonderful adventure the next day.
Sunday morning at Dunkin Donuts. It's not the Dunkin Donuts you know in love in the states. Korean Dunkin Donuts serves creations like the "kimchi croquette", which is a garlic roll stuffed with spicy cabbage and anchovy paste. How about pairing that with your coffee?


I realized that I have been in Korea for nearly half a year and I have not taken many photos of all the squat toilet signs I've encountered. In Korea, the typical bathroom usually has a row of all squat toilets and a single "Western" toilet, usually reserved for mom's with little kids or handicapped people. Squat toilets free up faster, so it's usually the toilet of choice if you are in a rush, but that doesn't mean Westerners are as adept at the kimchi squat. I have seen so many foreigners with suspect wet spots around the bottoms of their pants where misfires occurred.
Jay, my mentor teacher, has mentioned a fortress in Busan to me several times, saying that it would be worth a trip. So, Amanda and I rallied on Sunday and took the subway to the end of the line as far North as it would go. Once off the subway, we took the most terrifying and nauseating bus ride of our lives up a winding mountain PATH (you can't call that thing a road..) to the top where we were dropped off. Geumjeong Sanseong Fortress is massive and loops around several bordering mountains. The walls are ancient but mostly intact, and you could spend days hiking to each gate. We hiked to the South gate and wanted to call it a day soon after just because it was so strenuous.
South gate
This crazy volleyball/kickball hybrid sport that Koreans love to play.

Eating lunch along the ancient fortress wall. This photo was taken at around 1:30 p.m. and every Korean we passed along the way was halfway loaded with Soju already. Drinking culture is huge here!
We decided to ride the cable car down the mountain because the scenery was too beautiful to pass up. Unfortunately, we were corralled in with about 20 drunk, old Korean men and women who were playing grab ass and acting more juvenile than teenagers. Amanda and I were horrified and amused to see all these old men and women pinching each other's butts and exchanging casual kisses the whole ride down. The cable car reeked of soju and it was incredibly awkward to be the only two foreigners around but we won't soon forget the experience.

Once we were back in town, Amanda and I decided to go back to the same restaurant where we ate dinner just because the owners were so friendly. We drank gallons of miso soup while we relaxed indoors (waiting for Shaina and Eunice to meet up with us so we could take the train back to Daegu). The owners packaged our dinners up to go, and we got back to Daegu around 10p.m.