Bringing the Mother around Korea (Day 2) [Busan]

Got up bright and early the next morning to head to Gamcheon Village. Put on my best (my only) pair of shoes and got ready for a long walk under the relentless sun but nevertheless it was my first time going there so I was excited. Took the Busan Metro Line 1 and got off at Toseong Station Exit 6 and changed to bus Seogu 2-2 (서구2-2). From there on it was just walking uphill, lugging my camera and backpack.

As it was a culture village, there were many beautiful sights and artifacts? or maybe art pieces that were on the walls. The entire place was spruced up to be really colorful and it was quite a sight to behold. There are actually people still living in those houses even though it has become a tourist attraction. I can imagine how disrupted the lives of the people there would be with all the foreigners coming in, speaking languages they do not understand and sometimes probably even destroying property.

Before you head all the way up to the peak, make sure you take a right turn to the observatory to take a photo of the entire culture village or else you might miss it. The way the entire village is shaped is that you most certainly would not go down the same way you went up, which means if you've missed it you would have to walk all the way back just to get a picture. The houses were actually built in this fashion so as to not block the houses behind.

Saw a really cute shop where they were selling tea leaves for different types of sicknesses or ailments. The lady gave us a lot of information and guidance on what was good for what types of people and my mum bought quite a few for friends and family back home. 

There were many different famous attractions in the culture village that you would probably know about, seeing that it's so famous, much to the point where there was a queue even to take photos. Neither my mum nor I were much into being photographed at those spots so I just took photos of other people posing, which was much better than waiting 30 minutes for a photo in my opinion.

Here was the famous statue in the culture village that people usually take photos with. You see it everywhere in people's display pictures, or when people visit the culture village. I, on the other hand, took one look at the queue, proceeded to snap a photo of other people and went on my way. Sure it's a huge deal, but when it becomes one of the many places that everyone does, it's no longer as special as it once was. Funnily enough, I still don't know the back story as to why it became so popular in the first place.

The weather was hot and I thought this would be a really nice and cold dessert so I got tricked into buying this "Dragon's Snack". This is basically cheap ass crackers that have liquid nitrogen in it to produce smoke when you're eating it through your mouth and nose to seem like you're a dragon. Though it just tasted really bad when the snack was frozen and it hurt your mouth a little but the fun part was blowing out cold smoke out of your nose and mouth.

Continued walking all the way till the end of the other side and we decided to head to a cafe to rest before going to our next few destinations. The weather was so hot that we were extremely reluctant to leave the cafe equipped with air-conditioning, seats and ice cool beverages. But we had to get a move on should we want to visit the sights of Busan before they all closed. The heat also killed our appetite and we ended up skipping lunch. 

Headed first to the Busan Jagalchi Market, which is basically Busan's fish market, one of the largest that distributes roughly 30% of all the seafood that South Korea consumes. Since it was a really big part of Busan's cultural heritage, I dedicated an entire post to it here: Busan Jagalchi Market.

Of course, when you go to a fish market, you definitely have to eat their seafood. Made a mistake of ordering their prawns as it was hella overpriced and it did not taste good. The grilled fish on the other hand was grilled to perfection; crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. On top of that, there were so many side dishes that we couldn't even finish our food. 10/10 on the fish though, seriously!

   

After a huge meal, we continued to walk to another 2 markets nearby called the Busan International Market and the Busan Tin-can Market. Yes, these 2 places are also some of Busan's more famous tourist hotspots and therefore I dedicated another post sole for those two areas. You can read more about it over here: Busan International Market & Tin-can Market. The international market is more for household products that are imported from different parts of the world, and the Tin-can market is famous for its FOOD.

Ate our fill, walked wherever we had to walk, decided to call it a night and took a cab back to the hotel where we rested our feet and awaited the next day where we were to go to the next destination: Gyeongju, the city of Korea's History, or how the Korean's call it: Museum City.