Busan in South Korea

We've been back a whole 3 weeks. It was a busy 3 weeks, with Andrea hosting another successful conference, and various reports due or events held from my side. However, not one to resist a chance for yet another vacation, we've gone to South Korea for 6 days (since china has a long national holiday at the beginning of October).

Last year we spent about 5 days in Tokyo for a friend's wedding; this trip would be Hannah's second to another part of Asia, and time for a family holiday without the extended family! Anyway, the first couple days were in Busan, on the South-East corner of South Korea. The whole trip has been somewhat last minute, but has had a semblance of planning involved. For example, we booked our hotel from the Beijing airport lounge, which was better than nothing i suppose. We read a guide book on the bus into town to work out what to do, and had no idea how long we'd spend in Busan. It turned out it would be 2 nights.

Torn between taking the buggy or the child carrier backpack we took both. So the first day we used the buggy and went up to the beaches: Haeundae, which has a nice little market and was to play host to the Busan International Film Festival (on the beach) that was being set-up whilst we were there, and Gwangan, which has a lot of coffee shops and bars. In fact South Korea is full of coffee shops absolutely everywhere. It also has a lot of white and silver cars (unlike China where everyone goes black) which are mostly Korean brands of course, apart from the high-end ones. It has wonderful shopping, and wi-fi everywhere.

We have some issues with Korean food though. Breakfast is fine, since there are a lot of bread shops along with the coffee shops, but Andrea doesn't eat seafood, and most Korean dishes are seafood, or come with seafood. Then there's the actual Korean dishes: some soups/stews, some BBQ meat, and a lot of small dishes that involve Kimchee. So for lunch one day we had Bimibab, Kimchee stew and the Korean egg pancake. That went down well, and Hannah likes her eggs as well as rice (in the Bimibab). For dinner we went for a meat BBQ though it was fairly expensive. Some of the Kimchee side dishes were ok. Another day we were hiking so bought a sandwich and, for dinner, searched for Korean noodles and ended up at a Vietnamese noodle place.

The second biggest problem we have (apart from having to avoid fish) is not reading Korean and there is a dearth of English signs/menus anywhere in Korea, and no-one speaks English. And there are no photos in restaurants (China often has photos). In fact most restaurants only have 5 items on a menu, which is written, in Korean, on a wall, along with prices. It makes it hard to work out what a restaurant sells!

Busan's subway system is excellent and we made good use of it. The second day we took the backpack (not the buggy) and went up to Beomeosa, a famous and decent temple, and then hiked up to the remains of Geumjeong Fortress and along its walls for a few hours. It was a fairly tough climb at the beginning but was then a wonderful walk gently downhill with great views of Busan squeezed between the hills and the sea. Hannah did some walking, mostly whilst kicking some pine cones, or searching for flowers. In the afternoon we stopped off at the beach again (the best way to keep a young child entertained) before going back to the hotel to get changed and switch to the buggy.

We then checked out Chinatown and the downtown shopping area including Gukje Market which has excellent shopping and some interesting snack food items (Koreans also quite like their deep fried sea food). Food markets in Korea are pretty interesting - very clean. I can't work out where the flies are... maybe all in China! We also saw the bright lights and retail side of South Korea.

In fact South Koreans not only have good shopping, they also have good fashion taste and in particular seem to like practical clothing. There's not as much high heels as other Asian nations, and a lot of sports clothing and sneakers/trainers. In fact most women seem to wear bright colored trainers, while anyone that is remotely walking or hiking gets kitted out in the full gear with shoes, trousers, shirts, jackets, backpacks, poles, hats and all sorts. All branded, all professional hiking gear. Even if they are only walking up some stairs near a temple, but especially so for a few hours walk in the hills. None of them, especially the women, would dream of wearing a regular t-shirt. It has to be a special material, bright yellow, and have hundreds of pockets and things. And the older the person, the more hiking gear they try to wear! At least the country seems fairly fit.

We've fairly quickly managed a routine with Hannah and it seems to work, though she's not always eating healthily since she tends to stick to bread, rice and noodles! We do make sure she gets some fruit and some juice to mix it up a bit, and of course the required milk in the evening and morning. She's having a great time, getting a lot of attention as usual, and managing just fine.