Lost in Busan

My beautiful love motel, all for $45 a night
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After another easy bus ride to Busan, and an easy subway ride into town, I arrived at my lodgings for the 2 nights I am here at Busan - a beautiful love motel as recommended by Sean and Adrienne! I asked at the train station information centre (after I had spent a bit of time looking for it in the subway station - hey they are all trains to little old NZ girl me) and they called up the owners who came to pick me up.  I wasn't sure what the owners of a love motel would look like - but this lady looked more like a soccer mum than a madam!

Up and up and up and up - busan from the mountain
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I had a few hours to kill that afternoon so I hopped on the efficient subway system again out to Haeundae beach, which is a suburb of Busan.  The beach was nice, with alot of construction going on to make it into the Asian equivalent of Surfers, it must be manic in summer.  It was nice sitting there eating my hottok (deep fried pancake with melted brown sugar mixture in the middle - pure evil) and I had a wander around before heading back for an early night.

I saw an octopus trying to make a run for it ....

Me and the baby wall
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Yesterday (Tuesday) was a big day of site seeing - bear with me this might take a while!

I started out with a visit to the Jagalchi fish markets - on the subway again.  I got there too late to see all the real action of the fishing boats arriving (I wasn't up before 6) but it was fun anyway looking at all the fish, some alive, shell fish and other sea creatures for sale.  I saw an octopus trying to make a run for it from his container, I felt sorry that it was recaptured.

After this I walked around the international market, which sells everything in little narrow alleyways, keeping an eye on the skyline for the Busan tower which was my next stop.  I don't like taking the subway all the time in a new city - you never get a real feel for a city when you are always popping up in places, then going underground again to pop up somewhere else.  For this reason I went up the Tower to see all the city at once - it is pretty, reminiscent of Wellington as it is in a harbour built on hills.

Wall on mountain beside my mountain
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Then onto the subway again to go see the Geumyeongsanseong fortress.   This is a large series of walls (enclosing 8.7 square ks) that used to be a fortress for the defense of Busan against those pesky Japanese (it didn't work, they wrecked it). Also close is the Beomeosa temple, which is a bus ride away from the subway stop of the same name.  My plan was to hike to the fortress from the temple, then walk through the fortress to a cable car on the other side.

Beomeosa is like the other temples I have seen - though it did have a rugby goal post in its centre (ok, its a double flag pole).

Northgate finally!
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Then I started my hike up the mountain to the North Gate of the fortress, supposedly 1.6ks.  I set off, came to a fork in the path, and chose one.  After walking along for about 20mins on a ever decreasing track I figured that I may have chosen incorrectly.  This was further confirmed when I came up to a road - especially since there was a fence and barbed wire between me and the road.  Luckily there was a Keren sized hole in the barbed wire I could sneak through.

The sensible thing to do would have been to turn back, but i decided to go up the road to see if I could find another pathway.  I found a large path at the end of road, followed that up the hill, around and back down again, only to find a sign pointing back up the hill saying the North Gate was up there. I memorised the hangeul (Korean script) and went back up again, after already walking for about an hour the North Gate was not going to beat me!

Octopus escaping, they move real fast even out of water
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So up I went. And up, and up, and up.  By now I had been hiking for about 2.5 hours mostly uphill, was running out of water, and was tired but still I went up.  I didn't think that the North Gate was up there anymore, I just wanted to get to the top of this bloody mountain!

Near the top I saw a wall on a mountain a couple of peaks across, which I decided to take as a small success in my fortress hunt, and took a picture of it.  Soon I came across a bit of wall on my own mountain, so I took another arms stretch picture of myself sitting on the baby wall.  Around the next corner was railings, steps, lots of people, and a sign saying that the north gate was 500m away (in my newly learnt hanguel).  So the North Gate didn't defeat me after all!

All over Korea are restaurants where your dinner is swimming in tanks outside
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By this stage it was getting a bit late, so I scrapped my original plan of walking the 2 hours to the cable car and walked down the clearly marked, wide and signposted track to Beomeosa (how did I miss it??).  The track was quite steep, with many bolders that you had to pick your way down on, which was hard on the knees, so I was very glad to see Beomeosa again, and then the bus to take me to the subway.

After that adventure I treated myself to some Lotteria - Korean version of McDonalds but better - and another Hottok for dinner, yum.

This is what the path between Beomeosa and Northgate looks like - but this is a flat section.
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There are a couple more photos if you click on the "see more photos" link under the ones on this page.

Today I am off to Seoul - plenty more opportunities to get lost I am sure.