South Korea Day 5: Baseball, coastal walks and more spam

Becks and me at the start of the Igidae coastal walk

On our only full day in Busan we decided to check out the Igidae coastal walk which is on the eastern side of Busan.

Leaving our hotel we avoided the expensive French chain bakeries that had caught us out the day before at Seoul station and went for an independent looking bakery to pick up a few snacks. The bakeries in South Korea and Japan were always a bit of a lottery, you'd pick something up that for all the world looked savoury and then was filled with sweet red bean paste!

Fuelled up we caught the underground to Namcheon and then walked through a dull residential across to the start of the coastal walk.

Suspension bridges on the coastal walk

On the walk we got a few reminders that the typhoon that had hit the day before where some large waves must have pounded the coastline. We drifted for an hour along the coastal path and then turned round and retraced our steps. We didn't see any other western tourists on the walk, but there were a few locals out for a walk. Some looked like quite serious retired exercisers who I suspect do the walk regularly.

Housing blocks in Busan

On the walk back to the underground station I took the above picture of a coupe of residential tower blocks. One of the things I'll remember about Korea is the scores of identical residential tower blocks that we saw. The bigger numbers painted on the side of the blocks are the only way that you could distinguish one from another.

Before jumping onto the metro we stopped in an attractive looking Gimpab shop for a snack. They didn't have an English menu so we pointed at a couple of safe looking choices, but like last night we were served spam!

More spam gimbap

 In my research of Korean before we left home, a visit to the baseball came up as a must do (along with buying new glasses). The internet was full of warning stories about sell out games and the tantalising prospect of being able to take your own pizzas into the stadium to eat while you enjoyed the game.

We made a beeline for the ticket office as soon as we arrived at the stadium but needn't have worried because the ground wasn't even a tenth full. My Korean wasn't up to much and we accidentally ended up with tickets for the away fans section, the LG Twins.

Outside of the Lotte Giants stadium

Tickets secured we headed to the club shop so that I could buy myself a baseball gap and then we went in search of the promised pizza. We couldn't find the shop I'd read about on the internet so instead ended up buying a couple of pizzas from a restaurant in a local shopping centre. I also bought a can of beer from the 7 Eleven. They changed the rules this season to stop allowing you to bring your own cans into the stadium so they helpfully pour your beer into plastic cups for you instead.

Baseball action

In all honesty the games was pretty dreary. The most excitement was coming from the Lotte Giants fan zone. We were going to move seats to enjoy the atmosphere, but then the LG Twins scored a run and the fan zone went eerily quiet. Why not cheer on your team to help them come back from behind?

I have to admit we left before the end of the game. Chased out by one of the people in a nearby seat who was eating some rather whiffy dried squid.

South Korea Day 4: Heading for a typhoon and a little bit of spam

Gare du Nord or Seoul Station? 

Our day started with a trip back to Seoul Station (anyone would think we were train spotters we were spending so much time there) in order to catch our train down to Busan. 

We'd seen quite a few French style bakeries while we'd been walking round Seoul so decided to pop into Paris Baguette to grab some breakfast for the train. I picked a roll, beautifully shaped like a mini batard and Becks bought a roll and an orange juice. As we left the store I slowly realised we'd spent £15 on two bread rolls and a juice!

My roll was quite nice. A French batard would be crunchy and sour while this was quite soft and fluffy with only a mild sourness. The soft roll was definitely the preferred style across Korea and Japan.

We were the onto the TGV for our trip down to Busan. Little did we know that we were heading towards a typhoon that had struck the southern end of Korean overnight. A couple of hours into the journey we came to a halt at a station for around an hour. There didn't seem to much information being handed out and our Korean wasn't really up to understanding what announcements there were. Kindly a couple of the other passengers helped us understand that there was a landslide further up the line and we'd be taken one more station on the train and where buses would meet us.

There were TV cameras waiting for us at the final station (I did my best to get into shot). Luckily Becks was a bit more on the ball than I was as we headed for the buses, picking up on the difference between a bus to Busan and another to Usan.

The Busan Tower

Once we'd belatedly made it to our hotel we decided to head out for a walk as the sun was setting to see a little of Busan. We climbed up the steps from our hotel to Yongdusan Park, home of the Busan Tower above. The park wasn't too exciting, but it did help us get orientated. We saw quite a few branches down in the park which gave us further clues to the typhoon which had swept in the day before.

Our dinner stop

We left the park via the northern side and found ourselves in a fashion district, which wasn't ideal when we were looking for an early dinner - our first meal since breakfast on the train - and there weren't any restaurants to be seen.

We drifted around for a while and then found the lone café above. It looked a little rough around the edges, but I was straving so we headed in. Luckily they had a single English menu to give to us. We ordered some steamed dumplings, a bowl of noodle soup and some gimbap which I hadn't heard of before, but Becks told me was a traditional Korean dish.

The dumplings were really tasty, but the other two dishes were less memorable. The gimbap contained spam and that definitely wasn't advertised on the menu.....

We continued our wonder round Busan after dinner, of course heading straight into the restaurant district which was only 5 - 10 mins walk away. We also did a bit more Christmas gift shopping for the family.

Before heading back to our hotel we popped into the big Lotte Department stall. We grabbed an ice cream and then because I was still hungry I bought a bulgogi burger from the local rival to McDonald's, Lotteria. Sadly it wasn't particularly special.

Fuelled up, we watched the largest indoor fountain in the world and followed signs up to the roof terrace on top of the department store. Sadly it was closed following the typhoon so we drifted back through the store and then home to our hotel.

A few random Korea observations:
- There are lots of public loos, which is great as a tourist
- There are barely any litter bins
- Don't assume that two lines will be anywhere close at a transport interchange. They love a long tunnel
- Shops love to cluster together in clusters so you find fashion, cosmetic and restaurant districts where there won't be any other shops.

Seoul Day 3: New glasses and hordes of riot police

New glasses

One thing that came up in my very limited research of Korea before our holiday was that a new pair of glasses was a great thing to buy, so on our third morning we headed to Davich Optical to see if we could get a new pair (I'd had my prescription done in the UK a couple of days before leaving).

They were set up perfectly for the tourist with sales assistants that spoke English and the cheap frames all lined up for those of us looking for a bargain. I bought two pairs and got a pair I already had with me reglazed. Becks also bought a couple of pairs. On top of already cheap prices they also gave us a couple of extra discounts on top. We easily saved a couple of hundred pounds compared to shopping in the UK.

Outside the shop they had an ultrasonic glasses cleaner on the pavement that was free for anyone to use. I didn't have any glasses on my at this stage, but Becks cleaned a pair and I threw in my camera filters. The machine was awesome and we were pleased to find another one later on in our trip in Tokyo.

Statue on the approach to the Royal Palace

We'd read conflicting advice on which day the Royal Palace was closed but we decided to head in that direction to see if would get lucky and be able to have a look round the palace. On the approach to the palace is a 500m long boulevard which has a large central space down the middle filled with fountains, statues and grassed areas which made a pleasant amble. 

At the start of the boulevard was also an ongoing vigil by the relatives of those lost in the 2014 ferry disaster. It is clearly an emotional subject for many. 

The gates to the Royal Palace 

When we arrived at the palace it was indeed shut for the day, but it gave me the opportunity to get an almost pedestrian free / traffic free shot of the main gate.

With the palace shut we decided to head to the nearby Insadong district we'd visited the day before on our walking tour. With the public holiday over it was much less oppressive and we could amble along and enjoy some of the shops. We bought a few Christmas presents for people in cool little arts complex that we'd walk through the previously, but not stopped at the day before.

We sat and watched the world go by for a while sitting on the steps in a square at the southern end of Insadong. While we were sitting on the steps we started hearing a few whistles and then megaphones and slowly a protest rally emerged on the main road not too far from where we were sitting.

Knowing full well that the standard Foreign Office advice in these situations is to make yourself scarce, we decided that the only reasonable thing to do was to head straight for it!

Riot police galore

Our Korean being less than perfect we aren't 100% sure what the march was about, but we think it was related to workers rights. Our brief impressions of Korea so far was of a very peaceful, orderly and respectful society and the march seemed to conform to those expectations. Yes it was quite loud, but it definitely wasn't in any way threatening. 

What was quite shocking was the absolutely vast number of police attending the march, they must have outnumbered the protesters by quite a high factor. Having trouble walking down the pavements due to the number of people we bailed into the side streets only to find battalions of police lined up in the side street. It seemed totally out or proportion*.

Again ignoring foreign office advice I took a few sneaky shots of the police.

The old and new town halls

Breaking away from the protest we started drifting in the direction of city hall and found ourselves outside of the old city hall which is now a library. We decided to head inside for a look around and spent a pleasant half hour looking around the top floor. Sadly as we'd arrived after sunset the roof terrace was closed.

BBQ action

We needed to pick up our glasses before the shop shut at 9pm so started to make our way in that direction and found ourselves in a street of BBQ restaurant joints. I decided upon a completely random looking joint that was quite busy with locals but looked a bit rough around the edges.

We clearly weren't trusted to know what we were doing so the waiters regularly came across to silently take over from our cooking efforts. I was hoping that Korean BBQ would be awesome, bit sadly it was an average experience.

Coals for the BBQ heating outside of the restaurant

On leave the restaurant we collected our new glasses on the way back to our hotel. Cheap glasses and opticians that are open until 9pm!


*I'd read an article in the Economist that morning which said that despite being a democracy public protests weren't really tolerated in Korea. Recently two protesters had been killed by police using a water cannon and it was generating a national debate.

Seoul Day 1, South Korea

We arrived in Seoul at just after 7am with a long looking day ahead of us that we needed to power through in an attempt to jump straight onto South Korean time. We took one of the airport limousine buses from the airport to our hotel which turned out to be a really efficient way to get into the city, the bus virtually dropped us at our hotel door and was almost as luxurious as the business class seats on the plane! Although sadly there was no complimentary glass of bubbles....

We arrived at the TMark Hotel in Myeongdong both hoping that we'd be able to check straight into our room, but unsurprisingly, that wasn't possible at 9am so we left our bags and after a quick freshen up headed out for the day.

We set out in the direction of the main train station, walking through the fashionable Myeongdong district, which seems to be the shopping hub of the city with lots of modern and funky buildings. The area had a very international vibe, but the vast majority of brands were Korean.

Leaving Myeongdong behind we made our way over to Seoul station to pick up our tickets for the train journey down to Busan we'd be making in a couple of days time. We'd made two attempts to book tickets from the UK and weren't sure if either of them had worked, but there was one set of tickets ready for us to collect. Hopefully we only get charged once to!

We seemed to get stuck in Seoul station for a good few hours. First we had a drink ( I decided to go local with a coffee in a can) and then we headed into the Lotte department store which was attached to the station. Everything in the department store was very expensive. We didn't go in any other clothes shops while in Korean so I'm not sure if this was normal pricing of Lotte is particularly high end.

Leaving the department store we spied the entrance to the supermarket so popped in there for a look round too. The shop was a bit reminiscent of a French hypermarche with lots of food and non-food items for sale, in addition to a couple of counters where you could sit down and have lunch. There were lots of free samples on offer at the end of various aisles. We tried a tea type drink that was very nice.

When I've visited a Thai supermarket the fruit and veg section has been full of unidentifiable ingredients, but I was surprised to see in Korea that I could name almost everything.

When we left the supermarket it was absolutely tipping it down so we dived back into the train station to have some lunch at one of the restaurants there. I had a bulgogi. It was perfectly nice, but nothing exceptional.

Once the rain had subsided we headed to the Seoul Museum of History. On the airport bus we'd noticed quite a lot of public art and we passed lots more on our way up to the museum. We later learned that companies are required to place some art outside of their buildings.

Most of the museum passed me by in a jet lagged haze as I could barely keep my eyes open at this stage of the day. I however do remember that the museums contained lots of models including the one in the photo above of Seoul city which was pretty cool.

Right next door to the palace is the Gyeonghuigung palace. Virtually empty of people we were able to wander round the palace more of less by ourselves. There are no rooms to go into or artifacts to see, but the building was pretty interesting to look round.

Leaving the palace we walked across the city back to our hotel briefly stopping at tourist information along the way. We had a shower in our hotel room and rested for a while, but before we both fell asleep we dragged ourselves out for dinner. Becks had found some good reviews of a local KFC (Korean Fried Chicken) place. We didn't manage to find the restaurant she'd read about and ended up in another KFC place instead.

Miraculously after being awake for close to 30hrs we managed to stay up just past 10pm.