Not much to say about today; we got up at a leisurely hour, breakfasted on lame donuts we bought last night, and walked a block to the light rail station. The airport was only a few stops away, and, it being just a small airport, simple to negotiate. The flight was short enough and thankfully not eventful.

I was glad to see the “Welcome Home” sign flash at the automated immigration checkpoint; Korea was fascinating, but stressful. Perhaps it was my imagination in most cases, but I often felt a a certain amount of tension in the air. Perhaps this is simply due to cultural ignorance and my lack of any knowledge of Korean. I’d like to go back someday, perhaps not any time soon, but if I do, I think I’d prefer to wander the streets of Pusan over those of Seoul, and not just because we were accosted in Seoul. I can’t offer any particular insights after simply traveling through (unlike many travel writers I’ve read); the Koreans seem a tough, resourceful people, somewhere apart, culturally speaking, from both Japan and China. There is deep animosity between them and the former; I wonder if it is at least partially because, while Japanese are careful to mask their passions in tradition, the Koreans pretty much just let it hang all out.  I could guess forever and never know.

in any case, I’m glad to be back home. Work starts again tomorrow. As grueling as travel can sometimes be, it was at least a brief respite from routine. I hope you enjoyed reading about the trip; I will get the video and photos up in due time, but for now I’m just bushed.

Up at half past five this morning, out the door of the hotel and in a taxi blowing past the remains of the famous gate whose incineration had half of Seoul in tears a while back, and walking past the frolicking homeless people in front of Seoul Station by six. The rude woman behind the counter informed us that every seat before noon had been purchased already on all trains to Pusan, so we bought standing tickets and hoped for empty seats. A pair of well-dressed, laughing Slovakians half-sprinted/half-danced past us several times on our way to the platform, where we found and then lost several seats as people boarded the high-speed train.

The journey was fairly quick, and though we stopped to play musical seats at several stations along the way, we mostly remained seated the whole time. Pusan was relatively warm, and we rushed to take the subway to the crowded bus station, full of people eager to see the newly blossoming cherry trees in Jinhae. The line looped around and around, and we munched on chicken burgers as we watched people cutting in line here and there in front and back of us. Every so often a man would run in and shout something, and several people would leave the line and follow him. I wondered if he was running a competing bus company and brazenly stealing passengers, but you’d think he’d steal customers who hadn’t yet bought their tickets.

When we got out on the curb, we  found that the people the man had been calling were actually those willing to stand in the bus aisle during the hour-long ride to Jinhae. As we drove past various buildings, I realized that most Korean apartments are basically the same, at least as far as outward appearances go; floor-length windows with railings  to keep the kids from falling out. I also figure that Korean people tend to drive like they walk, i.e. with some kind of vengeance. I suppose, however, that the system works well enough as long as everyone agrees to follow along.

The trees in Jinhae were mostly blooming, the formerly stark avenues wreathed in white. We walked back up the streets, marveling at the change from just a week ago, and had lunch at the same roadside stand; the food was still delicious, though we weren’t offered free soju this time. We then walked up to the train station and along the canal where everyone and his undigested dog was taking the same damn picture over and over. It was a bit silly, but there you have it. We walked up the canal, sometimes in the canal bed and sometimes along side, looking for what appeared in the guidebook to be a red bridge, but after traversing the entire thing, no red bridge appeared; I figure it was a Photoshop job. Some attendants were on hand to personally curse people who dared pick cherry blossoms, but there were too many. I saw all sorts of cameras, including a new Polaroid as well as a Rolleiflex. Not a Leica in sight, however, at least not a real one.

The weather was getting colder again as we snaked though the alleys past a public bath with its huge smokestack, and then across the bridge over the tracks. As I stood in the square in front of the station, waiting for Linda and Daphne to finish taking pictures of potted plants, I felt the trip coming to a close. Back at the bus station, the line was even longer than it had been in Pusan this morning, and we waited as the sun dipped lower and lower in the sky for our chance at a bus seat, finally boarding along with several shameless Westerners who jumped the line just at sunset, the white cherry blossoms turning blue in the dusk. I was bushed and tried to sleep on the ride back, but didn’t quite achieve unconsciousness due to the fact that I’m still fascinated with the new country that I’m about to leave and kept looking out the window at everything.

It seems that Koreans really enjoy taking the family out to a hotel for the weekend, as both of the ones near the bus station were full, as well as many of the love motels, which I found surprising until a family of four, including two small girls, came in to inquire about a room at the place we eventually found, the “SS” (not sure if they know the connotations; at least there aren’t any Nazi notes in the decor that I can see). It seems that Korea is not yet at the level of requiring business hotels; everything is either an expensive luxury hotel or a cheap, low-class love motel. Taiwan was like that at one point, long ago.

For all of its impressive development, Korea doesn’t exactly scream international; there’s not a great amount of English, Japanese or Chinese on signs. We went next door to e*mart, where they don’t seem to take non-Korean credit cards; we had to pay with cash. The motels don’t take credit cards either. The layout was the same as that of an American mall of not too long ago, but the products were pretty much what you’d find in a Wellcome back in Taiwan, more or less, or the equivalent here.

Now I’m back at the SS. The airport is two stops away via the light rail. Tomorrow we fly back to Taiwan.

Sleep did not come until late last night due to an insufficient supply of hot water at the hotel, which I am less and less able to recommend due to all the problems, such as a cockroach and the poor positioning of this computer for actual typing. I suspect it’s deliberate, in order to keep people from blogging here.

Gray, cold weather greeted us this morning after a breakfast of toast and cereal at the hotel. We took the subway to yet another market, the vast Jindong Market, far larger than anything in Taiwan, actually. There, as we waited for the light at an intersection, a couple of bags fell off a man’s scooter, stopping traffic. He crept back into the intersection on foot and bowed at the car behind his bags. The car then proceeded, in a most deliberate fashion, to run over the bags, leaving the man to clean up the mess of his former belongings.

We proceeded down the main road, which was lined with vendors. I was low on socks, so I decided to pick up a pair from a stall. A single pair was 2,000 won, so I picked one up and gave the money to the middle-aged woman vendor. She then grabbed another pair, put them in the bag with the first, and gave me 1,000 in change from the 5,000 I’d given her. She said something rather dismissive, and though I had no idea what, I could guess. I took the second pair out, put it back on the pile, and held my hand out. She looked offended and yelled at me. Chenbl put the first pair back on the stack and held out his hand, saying, “Forget it, then, give us our money back!” The woman yelled again, but grudgingly put the first pair back in the bag and gave me my 3,000 in change. What a bitch.

We continued to walk down the road, turning in to the market, which seemed to sell just about everything under the sun. We saw a locker full of what was obviously dog meat, and later on rounded a corner to find several well-groomed dogs in a crude cage. Some of them looked sick; all of them looked stolen. A man in black walked up and began talking to us. I figured he was trying to sell us something from his tone. I considered taking a shot of the dogs, but from a photographic standpoint it just wasn’t that interesting a scene, and I was also thinking there was something really wrong here. Daphne, however, raised her camera to take a shot, and the man raised his hand and gave her a violent shove.

Linda cried out, and Chenbl shouted, and the man didn’t continue to attack as we converged on him. Chenbl said, “I’m calling the police,” and pulled out his phone as if to make a call, and suddenly a man who had been sitting nearby was at our sides, speaking in Mandarin: “You really want to leave right away,” he said in a serious tone, and I figured that the man in black had “dealt” with such nosey tourists before. It felt wrong, and I wanted to deliberately take a shot just to see if he would attack me, but then again I didn’t know 1) what he was hiding in the way of weaponry and 2) how many friends he had within whistling distance. I followed the others back up the street, glaring at the man as I did so.

The series of incidents really put me off, well, everything for a bit after that. We took the subway back to the vicinity of our hotel and had a hotpot-esque lunch at Nouboo, where the waitress spoke Mandarin to us. She was from Jilin, in northeastern China, and therefore spoke both languages. The food was good but spicy. The weather had cleared up by this point, bright blue skies, but the cold wind remained. We walked through the trendy alleys, followed as always by a group of students seeminly on a field trip, to a nearby church, where the clicks of our shutters no doubt disturbed a few prayers; an M9 would have come in handy right about then.

I was still in a bad mood, so I suggested we try out Seoul’s Krispy Kreme doughnuts. The offerings are a bit different from the ones in Tokyo that I’ve sampled, harder, less sweet frosting, no chocolate- or kreme-filled doughnuts, and no free doughnuts fresh off the assembly line, but they were still far better than the atrocities committed by Mister Donut.

We took to the subway again, this time out to another part of town, the train traveling above the ground, allowing for nice views of this huge city, to meet another Korean friend of Chenbl’s. Linda and Daphne weren’t allowed out of the station due to insufficient funds on their cards, and Chenbl had vanished as he hates being late to anything (this is possibly my most unfortunate influence on him so far), so I took their cards over the turnstyle, went and added money, and then returned them so they could get out.

Mr. Hong was waiting for us in front of his apartment building; he took us upstairs through a series of gates, to his deluxe apartment in the sky. It was really very cool, big and spacious, with a separate fridge just for the family’s year-long supply of kimchi. We sat and talked about the various languages; his wife teaches Japanese, and his daughter’s English is excellent. Later he took us out for dinner that was also rather hotpot-esque, this time featuring pork spines (I think). Also delicious, and also a little spicy.

Tomorrow we have to get up terribly early and take the high-speed train back to Pusan, where we hope to (finally) see some cherry blossoms.

It was a hot night in the sauna’s sleeping room. Chenbl was in the special room for snorers. If I’d known better I would have chosen one of the cooler “oxygen rooms” downstairs. Alas, as it was I was up at 6:30am, all washed, scrubbed, blown and back out on the bright morning Seoul streets by 7. Chenbl gave the impression that he knew where he was going, and, like Wile E. himself, I fell for it once again, following him around until he asked someone where the hell the subway station from whence we’d come the last night was. 

We traveled to our hotel for the next two nights, a small Japanese-run joint, and stored our bags before taking the subway to another part of town, a part filled with markets to walk around. Eventually we happened upon a really old pagoda from 1453 that was apparently causing strange behavior in passersby, as people would come up and pray to it, recite a poem, or just stare at it for a while. As the figures of Monkey, Pigsy and the rest of the cast and crew of Journey to the West were inscribed upon it, I couldn’t really blame them.  

We then walked through the artsy Insadong Street area, full of foreigners and trendy restaurants, all the way to the Korea’s version of the forbidden city, which has been torn down and rebuilt many times throughout the nation’s history. We arrived just at the changing of the guards at the gate, the guards in question in full traditional regalia except for the decidedly non-period walkie-talkies in their belts. The palace itself was interesting in that the queen’s quarters were quite a bit nicer and bigger than those of the king, which made me wonder exactly who wore the pants in the kingdom. The saddest part was the complex where all of the forgotten consorts lived, just in case.

After retreating from the “Arirang” film out of fear that Chenbl’s snores would disturb the other viewers, we walked along a really lovely winding street lined with art galleries and the like, bordered by a steep hill. We had a lunch of noodles, then packed our stuff, got up, crossed the street, and had another delicious lunch. Police walked up and down the street in pairs every few minutes. The light was wonderful as the sun dipped towards the horizon, and we climbed the hill to walk around the alleys lined with old traditional Korean houses that have been restored, with bonsai trees in little yards, and in some cases carparks underneath. It looked lovely, but I wondered how those hills are in the icy winters.

Back down the hill and on the cave-like subway to the Seoul Tower, which is accessed via a furnicular and then a gondola before even reaching the base of the tower on the top of the mountain. It was busy, but the sights were impressive. Seoul really is an impressive city, from what little I’ve been able to see so far.

But we couldn’t linger too long, as we were having dinner with a Korean friend of Chenbl’s and said friend’s Chinese wife. Mr. Kim took us to a barbequed pork place where you have to put your coat in an airtight bag to keep your home from smelling like roasted pig flesh for the next two weeks. It was a loud, boisterous place, full of semi-drunk people toasting each other, a great atmosphere. Mr. Kim kept batting his wife gently across the face, saying things like, “My wife is terrible, she can’t even cook!’ Oh, the playful banter of lovebirds. We talked until late, and I’m downstairs at the hotel’s lone computer, typing this out before I go back and crash for the night.

The love hotel had plenty of amenities, I suppose, including a huge screen and partial Internet, but we didn’t trust the place enough to leave the wallpapered-over windows open. Consequently, we didn’t realize that the weather had turned nasty overnight until we walked out the front door the next morning, having told the clerk through the tiny window that we were leaving. The brightly lit edifices of the night before were now somber shadows in the misty weather.   

We walked through the rain and freezing wind to the nearby bus station, where there was no evidence of lockers to store our bags．We had breakfast at one of the station joints, adding in a couple of traditional red bean cookies while we waited for the weather to clear. I sat and watched the various transient figures you find in small-town bus stations, the nervous, overly made-up woman who is trying to hard to look respectable, the man who really wants a smoke, the bored conductor, etc.

Suddenly, bright light flooded in from outside; the rain had broken, and bright blue was scraping across the sky. I rushed out, almost taking pictures immediately of the most ordinary things just because the light was so welcome. But our real destination was a ways up the road: The Barrow Downs.

Or so I like to call it. In reality it’s not far off from Tolkein’s vision, as it is a group of huge mounds under which ancient kings were buried along with their treasures. Patches of bright light flashed across the yellow mounds and trees, creating glimpses of eerily beautiful scenery before everything went gray again. Here and there a tour group was gathered around a speaker explaining the history, but the place was empty for the most part.

I walked inside the mound that was open to visitors, through a tunnel into a large chamber, the smushed gold bracelets of the old king in a pit at the center, surrounded by lit swords and saddles for tiny horses. It kind of freaked me out; I wouldn’t want to be in there at night, alone or with hobbits.

Our train was leaving at 11am, though, so we piled in a taxi and took off for the station after only a short time. Outside the station stood a line of people taking orders from some kind of leader. They balked a bit when I took their photo as we rushed into the station, blown by the still-fierce wind. I wasted a bit of memory storage on the platform taking shots with the wrong settings, but fortunately realized my error by the time the train arrived, just after a long line of oil tankers slid into the other berth.

Sliding once again through the brown country on a train was very pleasant. I love train travel in a new (to me) country. We passed by rocky mountainsides, fields, factories, streams, and blue-roofed villages, each featuring at least one church spire and sometimes several. There was also a bit of wind-blown garbage along the way to our destination of Andong, where we discovered that the temperature had dropped at least a dozen degrees, leaving us cringing on the platform before finding refuge at a lunch at a place Chenbl found in his guidebook. The waitresses were greatly entertained by the pictures of their shop in the book; they gathered around and laughed and asked us questions that we couldn’t answer as we had no idea what they were saying for the most part.

After lunch we caught a local bus out of town along winding roads to Hahoe Village, a 600-year-old settlement located inside the bend of a river, surrounded by mountains. Before we got there, the bus driver stopped at an ancient academy facing the river, and we got out to have a look around while he took a break.

It was snowing. White flakes were pattering down on my wimpy little umbrella, which was quicky rendered useless by the freezing wind. I’m sure it was a fascinating old place, but all I wanted to do was get out of that shit and back on the relatively warm, snow-free bus.

Thus, I wasn’t in the most adventurous of moods when we were dropped off near Hahoe Village itself; I trudged into the wind up the hill cursing to myself as we looked for a place to stay the night. This was no easy task, as the only places that looked to be available were all empty and adorned with signs and phone numbers, useless as we had no phone service. The place was seemingly devoid of life, and the only person we could find in the first half hour was a woman who waved us away.

Eventually we happened upon a woman who was willing to let us stay at her place, but while the room she showed us was warm enough thanks to the Korean system of heating the undersides of their traditional houses, an old clock bonged out the time every 15 minutes…not the best sleep aid.

“The place also stinks,” I said to Chenbl. “Or is that your feet?”

“No, it’s her,” he said as the woman left the room and the odor lessened somewhat.

Linda and Daphne had found another place with clock-free, less odiferous rooms, fortunately, and we stowed our things in the old complex before heading out with our new landlord to a delicous dinner of Andong Chicken made by his mother. We ate it in a plastic-tent-fronted restaurant; nobody else seemed to be around, and it was no wonder; I couldn’t see anyone else being crazy enough to go all the way out there in that weather.

We had an old TV in our tiny room, but it had only four fuzzy channels, all Korean, so we hit the sack early. It was so cold out that we didn’t bother with showers, and pissed off the porch in the middle of the night rather than making the long journey to the outhouse. It was strange to sleep on a heated floor, almost like being slowly baked in an oven, though the air above was chill.

I woke early this morning after going to bed so early the night before; it was freezing out, Chenbl reported after pissing off the porch. Outside, the sun was just rising above the ridgeline into a clear, cloudless sky. We all wrapped ourselves up as well as we could against the chill and headed out to explore the part of the village we hadn’t seen the day before.

I walked though the utterly empty streets out to the solitary church, its spire a home to several jays, past many varieties of farm machinery, and down a lane where I came across an older Japanese man taking shots of the ally wall with his Nikon. We talked a bit in both English and Japanese, and it turned out that we runs a photo service in Fukuoka, a place I’d really like to visit someday.

A couple of alleys over, Chenbl had found a cow and its owner, a middle-aged Korean man who talked incessantly at us as though we understood him. He was shoveling the cow’s droppings up and pitching it them into a nearby field. Nearby a group of men were building a house in the traditional fashion using stones and mud. It was the outskirts of town, but it was the busiest part we’d seen yet. I also could have sworn I saw the village’s hidden flying saucer in a neighbor’s yard. 

The man with the cow was stacking firewood, and he basically told us to stop photographing him and take some shots of the wonderful stacking job he was doing.

Breakfast was at another hostel and consisted of rice, fish, tofu, etc. in another small heated room, after which we continued wandering. Tour groups and students appeared en masse at one point as the sun climbed, the interesting shadows disappearing. Our last point of interest was a huge old tree that is supposed to harbor the spirit of the village, and a group of elderly folks showed up just after we did, making speeches and bowing to the tree.

It was time to go, but before we could do so we had to partake of at least part of the local mask dance, which was preceded by a long speech in Korean. “Do you understand Korean at all?” I asked the Japanese photographer in Japanese. He said he didn’t.

The show consisted of rather low-brow humor, including two men in a cow suit, the rear one holding the cow’s penis and balls, with which he would periodically spray the audience, as well as a randy priest lusting after a woman peeing in the woods. When one actor wearing the mask of an old woman began begging from the audience, I leaned over and asked Chenbl what kind of money people were giving, as I couldn’t make it out. “Relax, just pretend like you’re photographing him and he won’t ask you for money,” he said.

As if on cue, the actor made a beeline for Chenbl and, camera or no, held out his hat. The next target was the photographer’s Japanese friend, who seemed not to realize that there was probably one more zero on the bill he handed over than he had intended, but I think the resulting hug from the actor might have clued him in.

Now it really was time to go, though, so we ducked out and onto a bus to the bus station, where we had lunch. I couldn’t resist the “chicken nuggets and coke combo”, which is actually both in the same cup, only separated by thin plastic, and fried dumplings.

I got a real kick out of writing the words, “On the bus to Seoul” in my notebook as we sped along the highway in comfort, though snow was on the ground in places along the way. Every song I played on my phone was wonderful, and I realized looking at the traffic that nobody here drives Japanese cars, or anything but Korean cars, actually. Perhaps they’re still in their 80’s Detroit phase, but I suspect the reason is that Korean cars have improved immensely since the 1980’s.

The sun got red and fat, skimming the treeline as we approach Seoul, following and then crossing the Han River into the city’s smoky skyline. Thankfully, the weather here isn’t as cold as I was expecting. I keep looking more closely at signs in Korean, as if it’s only Chinese characters that I don’t immediately recognize, before I realize that I really don’t have any hope of figuring them out as it’s just not a language I know at all.

We got on the subway, which is wide and sports an obvious history and is easy enough to navigate, only to find ourselves lost when we confronted the instructions to the sauna where we were hoping to spend the night. We did find it eventually thanks to three young samaritans, but it took about an hour longer than it should have. We had dinner at a 24-hour place in a well-kempt older building (always a good sign in my book), and then checked into the sauna, where I’m typing this in the computer room as my money runs out.

We’ll be in and around Seoul for the next two days, but I’m not entirely sure what the plan is; so far I’ve just been kind of going with it, and as that’s worked out well enough, I suppose I will just keep doing that.

It was out to the outskirts of Busan this fine morning, first on the metro, which rose above the ground for a lovely view of the city backed by mountains, and then back down again, followed by a short bus ride up into the hills to the Golden Spring Temple, a temple that was, appropriately enough, built over a spring that is supposed to have golden waters.

It is a lovely temple, or at least the few parts accessible are nice; much of it is still under repairs after one of the buildings collapsed a year or so ago, and the guidebooks have yet to mention this. Monks were walking around, fixing vending machines, etc., while groups of people prayed inside of clear plastic tents set up outside some of the temple buildings, many of which were painted in a pleasant array of blues. The weather was warmer, a few cherry blossoms had appeared, accompanied by a mix of sounds including tingling bells, monks chanting, and later on, the screeches of schoolgirls as the complex was invaded by groups on field trips.

The same bus took us back down the mountain, where a shirt vendor chatted with surprising success considering he spoke no English or Chinese, and we don’t speak any Korean. I suppose there’s more of a connection between the languages than I’d realized.

Next on the to-do list was change money, which turned out to be an exercise in realizing just how inefficient Korean banks are (the answer: quite). I sat outside a series of banks that couldn’t change NT dollars until we found one that could, and it still took forever for them to get around to it. Our luck changed, however, when we were informed at the high-speed rail station that we could get a discount if we were four traveling together and seated facing each other. We got some food for the 30-minute trip to Xingeongju, where we alighted to find ourselves alone on a fantastically designed, extremely empty platform. Outside, we thrust aside the advances of the taxi drivers, insisting on taking the bus out to Bulguksa Temple.

At first I thought the Bulguksa Temple would be a repeat of the morning’s temple experience, as parts of it were also cordoned off for repairs, and the interior was filled with raucous schoolchildren on field trips, all lining up to pet a golden pig statue in front of one of the temples. After they left, the place was deserted and forlorn, a little sad. Opening hours lasted until 6pm, but we lingered as the staff closed up the doors of the various temple buildings.

Then, as we were about to leave, a monk appeared, striding across the square, followed by another, and another. We followed them back inside, and saw them slipping into the main temple building, whose windows were now glowing red. A faint murmur issued from it. Another pair of monks, one rather burly and bespectacled, stood next to a large drum in the corner, looking at their watches. At a certain point, they began an elaborate drum piece, handing off the sticks to each others at intervals. Other monks were circling the statues in the squares, bowing at certain points. The drum monks finished their work and went over to play what looked like a huge fish as a gong rang sonorously from another temple building, and then they, too, opened the door into the red interior, from which the chanting was growing louder. I felt like I’d slipped into a Miyazaki movie, where the temple comes to life at night with all kinds of strange beings lingering just out of sight. It was great.

We weren’t kicked out, but gently reminded that we’d stayed way past closing time, and we walked down the dark path, back to the modern world, where we eventually found a bus heading back towards town. The driver had no idea what we were saying when we asked how much the fare was, just staring at us and bobbing his head to the music on the speakers, and when he let us off at the train station, he indicated that we didn’t have to pay. That was nice of him. In fact, everyone has been very nice to us. Except the bank people, who weren’t nice at all. Perhaps everyone else has been trying to make up for them.

It was splattering rain as we finished dinner at a pseudo-Italian place in town and set off in search of a hotel for the night. Geongju, for some reason, seems to be the love hotel capital of Korea, so we ended up in a place featuring quite a selection of movies with punny titles, but it will have to do.

The free breakfast at the Toyoko Inn in Busan consists of toast and various…things, Korean things I assume. Not bad, either.

We walked out into the clear, bright cold and took the metro to what Chenbl had assumed would be a bustling market, except that it wasn’t as it was a Sunday, we were told by a coffee shop waitress when we stopped in to ask. We walked the length of the empty street, and then decided to hit the countryside for some hot cherry blossom action.

We caught a bus at a a very new-looking station, and I spent the next two hours trying to look at the view, which was obstructed by poor window design, of brown fields and blue rooftops. The Koreans really, really like the color blue, which is one of my favorites as well, so no issues there.

We arrived at the town of Jinhae, known for its cherry blossoms and the Naval Academy, but there were no blossoms to be seen. We walked down the main street, which was lined with various stalls, to the main square, where a show was going on with people wearing traditional Korean regalia and waving swords in a cool fashion. There were also people jumping up and down on seesaws. I’m pretty sure part of that had something to do with the country’s history, but don’t quote me on that. We were approached several times by young people in white shirts wanting “just a little time in the tent over yonder”, which we declined less politely each time it was repeated. Some local military/police types were laying with a large, remote-control zeppelin.

With no cherry blossoms, we decided to tour the Naval academy grounds, as it was open to the public in celebration of its anniversary. After using the restrooms in the visitor’s center, I noted that one of the recruits was feasting on a very nice selection of Krispy Kreme, so there must be a store in Busan somewhere.

We took a bus inside the grounds and toured a replica of the “turtle boat”, which was built in the 16th century, was covered in spiked and had a wooden anchor that left me wondering how they ever stopped. There were also people in various costumes, including historical figures and animals that may or may not be historical.

One of the ships was open for touring, and it happened to be the same type of ship that Chenbl served on when was in the navy in Taiwan. We waited in line for a bit before boarding; it was interesting to walk around inside and out, including the bridge with its captain’s chair and everything. Parking that thing must be a nightmare. While were on board we observed a pretty neat bit of gun-throwing by a group on the dock.

Lunch was a delicious combination of some kind of corn patties and some kind of meat wrapped in carrot leaves at a small stand downtown. A group  soju salesmen were handing out free samples, so that went down the hatch as well. Delicious.

The trip back was much the same, except with less ventilation and more sunlight. We visited another really-not-happening market before taking a series of escalators up to the Busan Tower, where we watched the city slipping into its nighttime garb. As I took pictures with my lens up against the glass to ward off the glaring reflections that were the result of the ill-advided lighting up there, I was approached by a group of Russians. “Hello, friend, are you also Russian?” one of them asked me.

It has been a long time since I spoke in Russian, and about all I coud answer was, “Sorry,  I only speak a little Russian.” Meanwhile, one woman was having great difficulties shooting thrugh the windows with her flash and couldn’t seem to figure out what was wrong. The view was gorgeous despite the overdone lighting, and it was good to get a sense of the city’s layout. It’s a proper harbor city, and it knows it. While the first floors may resemble parts of Taiwan, the main difference is that things don’t deteriorate so quickly above the first floor.

Dinner was consumed sitting cross-legged, no mean feat for Chenbl, at a barbeque place downtown. This was also delicious, and I was again mistaken for a Russian. There are a lot of Russians here, after all.

Sorry this is so rough, but the Asus transformer pad m trying to type this on is just horrible and won’t let me look at what I’m typing, much less let me change it, so I’m afraid this will last until I get back. Tomorrow we’re going to go somewhere and possibly do something. I’ll let you know when I can.