cerealjoe | Busan: hills, parks and buildings. (Reply)

As the French say, let's give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar... pretty much the only reason I had heard about Busan before ever getting the guide to Korea is ZE:A's Dongjun and Maknae Rebellion. I did tell you that my references in terms of Korean culture were unbeatable, didn't I?

So this Dongjun is apparently from Busan and on the show they kept on mentioning that he had an accent and that he was outspoken or something of the sort. Since then I've always imagined Busan to be the Korean equivalent to Osaka... or well, Marseille. And let me tell you, Busan does deserve that title. Just driving into town from the airport was incredible. There are hills, there are tons of buildings, there is fish, etc.

Yesterday I went to the local park where they have a trolley kind of thing going to the top. This adventure is to be in the "kids don't travel like Gali because it's bound to end badly one day" category. A short description of I keep on pushing my luck...

In this park also there are some flowers. As everywhere else there were tons of people exercising. It's no wonder to me now that there is such an emphasis on these "beastly idols", it seems there are exercising grounds and people exercising everywhere... yet they don't seem all that fit. Maybe they're just exercising to be able to eat more (hint: that's pretty much my philosophy in life these days).

There were turtles everywhere. I concluded that they must be Discworld fans. Especially because the statues are always carrying something, clearly it's a reference to the Great A'Tuin.

At first I really wanted to walk up to the top of the hill but the maps of the park did not make sense and after getting lost a few times I just gave up and took the trolley thing to the top.

Once again, it was a rather cloudy day. It started raining in late afternoon.

At the top, like at the bottom, the markings were all in Korean except for some random signs that pointed in weird directions. I knew how to write "south gate" in Hangul but couldn't see it anywhere. I figured that this was bound to bring me somewhere.

All over the place they had these colourful umbrellas and tiny shops. Most were closed and rather run down.

The 150m sign brought me to a temple. There are many of them everywhere around here. Actually there seem to be an unhealthy amount of religious places in this city... at night you can see a cross on almost every street and there enough temples for one to go to a different one each week.

Eventually I made it to the south gate and the "fortress". Yeah, the book told the truth, it's just a wall.

The gate itself is marked with a proper building of sorts.

There I saw some signs that read "East Gate 2.5km" and I figured I'd give it a try. This is where the adventure started because I realised I had no clue on how one gets down to the bottom of the hill. I had hoped that the main trail that goes next to the trolley-lift will be clearly marked, it wasn't the case.

I followed this road.

I saw many hikers going up the hill, if that's the crowd on a weekday I can only imagine just how busy it is on during the week-end.

Right. Now to the "don't travel like Gali". I went up that hill without a proper map and kind of hoped for the best when picking which way to come down. The end was happy, eventually I came to a bigger road and there was a bus stop and the bus came about five minutes later and it went to a place I knew. In retrospect it really could have been much worse as in I didn't know that there would be a bigger road close by. I only kind of knew that from the North Gate it was about 4km to a temple from where there is a bus. I suppose the number of people going up the hill kind of gave away the fact that there must be something rather close by... and worst case I always make sure to have enough cash on me for a longer(ish) cab ride just in case.

Tout est bien qui finit bien and now if ever you're coming to Busan you'll know that it's possible to come back down from the hill in reasonable time. And that's it. I guess that was a rather lame story.

Time to start packing... and I have yet to find proper postcards to send out.