The Korean Chronicles, Part Deux

I have been ran ragged and only two full days have passed since i have been here. Friday night we went to go get some pizza, which was basically corn and sauce and cheese... kinda gross, but a better alternative than many available options. I immediately went back to bed after eating to hibernate before the rest of my journey.

On saturday I woke up at around 7 am here and dragged my ass out of the concrete bed so i could get my shop on. In order to get anywhere, we have to take a bus for about 30 minutes that takes you to the subway station, and then about a 45 minute ride on the subway that takes you into the many towns of Busan. The subways, and especially subway station, is remarkably clean-- they take such pride in their public transportation.  the floors were  practically sparkling despite the thousands and thousands of people that are down there on a daily basis. There is no doubt i stick out like a sore thumb. People stare beyond belief at my pale skin and how tall I am, and kids are either terrified at the sight of us (especially my light hair) or so excited that they try to say hi by going "hehwroe! hehwroe!"


Speaking of kids, one of the most awesome things about Korea is the fact that instead of playgrounds, they have trampoline parks. Seeing these pretty much made my life.  How cool is this?

Anyways, I digress. So on saturday we went to Hadan and then to Sameyon where there is a gigantic underground shopping mall that connects all the subway stations. I found a cool brown bag that cost me a little less than about $15 and I absolutely love it, and have been carrying it ever since. There are tons of knock off bags but the problem is that a LV bag will have the same design and everything, but the letters will be MN or XM or something stupid like that. Then, when you find a nice knock-off, they are like $150 or $200... so it's quite the jump in price. I'm still on a hunt to find my mom a great bag while I'm here. We went up and down quite a bit stopping into all of the shops. I am used to being able to pick something up and look at it if i like it-- here, not so much.  Not only are all of the vendors about to pee their pants that an American is in their store, but apparently picking something up means you are very serious about buying it.  So every store that i have gone into I'm followed around (they practically have their head on my shoulder) and talked to in Korean trying to negotiate a price. Then if you dont buy anything they get a terrible attitude and i feel so guilty-- so im having to restrain myself from touching things. 

I also bought a relatively cheap watch here.. but what sold me on it is the fact that the brand is DuDu (obviously pronounced doo doo), so we have had a ball with that one.  "have you checked your doo doo yet? don't forget your doo doo is on the table over here.  i wonder if all doo doos are home made or some are factory produced? i only had to drop about 5 big ones for this doo doo." and etc. etc. I still wear it every day. What a great buy.

After we walked the underground for a bit, and went to an above ground department store called Lotte, the next stop was the fish market- I have never seen anything like it. I had to do everything within my power not to gag because the smell was so pungent. At least the French fish market had some sort of civility to it! There are just these clear boxes and buckets filled with water and everything you can imagine-- sting rays, eels, squid, sea worms that look remarkably like weiners, any fish you could imagine, etc.  You just pick the one you want (alive), and they pull it out and just chop it up while it's alive. While walking by we had fish guts sprayed on us because they were all having a hay day with preparing everything. Everyone kept asking us where we were from and if we wanted to try something. Ummm no. Another big thing here is they leave fish and squid and sardines out in the sun to shrivel up and dry and they chew on it all day like jerky. GROSS. 

After that we walked around town for a bit and saw a parade, took pictures of awesome buildings, looked at some of the street markets, etc.  There are just so many people everywhere that it's overwhelming.  Our last stop of the day was to go to Home Plus, which is like a Wal-Mart on steroids. It is about 5 stories and so big that you dont know what to do with yourself. We went there because that is the only place that they have average sized towels (most here dry off with a washcloth size towel... not happening for me) and some American food, such as cream cheese. At that point we had been walking non-stop through towns and up stairs and standing on subways for 11 hours and i was absolutely about to drop dead-- i was so close to pretty much drooling all over myself and losing basic motor skills, but luckily we walked by some barrels of fried insects including june bugs and the smell of that woke me right back up.

I went to sleep at about 9:30 that night after a long shower.

Sunday we woke up again and did it all over again, but this time we went to the world's largest department store in THE WORLD, Shinsegae.  It was 10 stories tall and had an amazing park and observation decks on the roof. it really is so beautiful here. the department store had such fine clothes, but they were so expensive, and if I were to live here permanently, the only shoe that I would be able to find in my size is a men's sneaker (not even exaggerating). The department store had every expensive designer you could possibly think of-- LV, Mieu Mieu, Prada, Chanel, etc. and the regular clothes there were also insanely expensive (the cheapest top i saw was 180,000 won (which is $180). The fashion trend here for women: a women's suit coat worn over a very short girly dress or skirt with heels and a desinger bag (esp the chanel quilted bags that have the gold chain). It's actually a very cute trend, especially for petite girls. Everyone wears heels here--they will wear them all day to shop, and everyone had them on at the airport with all that walking-- insane. The department store also had a huge ice rink so we grabbed starbucks and watched some skaters, but everyone kept coming up to the window where we were sitting and just staring at us rather than skating. 

Then we walked for about 45 minutes to the very famous Hyundai Beach (yes, as in the car), where we actually saw several other white people. It was so cool being at such a famous place in the world. The only people in bikinis were foreigners, since Asians are so concerned about having white skin. Just as there are tanning lotions and salons here in America, there are skin whitening creams and such in Asia. There was a wedding on a beach, and some cool restuarants and hotels and shops everywhere. It was weird that there was no beach culture, really. Everyone was still in city clothes and long sleeves to protect their skin. It's insanely expensive to live over there, so we walked the entire length of the beach then walked around all of the super expensive apartments and high rises, and even spotted some Trump towers. At this point we were starving and found a place right on the water called Van Gough's Terrace. We were hesitant to eat at an Italian food place in Korea, especially because every other meal i had had to that point was pretty nasty and so different, but we decided to go for it and split some fettucini alfredo. It was probably the most amazing fettucini ive had in my entire life.  We couldnt believe it. People were stopping to take pictures of us while we ate, so that was interesting.  Action shots, too-- they didn't ask us to pose or anything. After our meal we walked a shit-ton more until my feet were about to fall off, and finally found the subway station again, where i did some more underground shopping and then we finally went home and passed out.

Today since I am flying solo I dont want to be restricted to just this small little town, so I am determined to be a true traveler and attempt to navigate the bus and subway station on my own. It is so scary taking the bus and subway since absolutely nothing is in English, and very confusing, but I refuse to be couped up here all day, so im going for it. I know the two most important words: kam-sam-ney-da (thank you) and unil-my-yay-yo (how much is this?).

Here's to hoping that I won't get too lost...