추석 in Busan: Part Trois

Qu'est-ce qu'il se passe?

I've been practicing my French skills with my fellow French interns :)


On the last day in Busan, we woke up late after raging the night before and checked out some touristy things. We went to central Busan. We grabbed some pastries and coffee at Paris Baguette cafe for breakfast (or lunch actually...) and headed to the subway to make our way down to central Busan. First stop: Jagalchi Fish Market. 

Busan would have fish markets of course since it is a port city. The streets leading up to the market had plenty of people selling fish.

fresh octopus

This stuff was definitely fresh. So fresh, the fish were still jumping in the buckets.

sweet jumping fish action shot, right?

like shooting fish in a barrel...

I have plenty of more fish pictures at www.joelmathew.net/photo.html if that's your thing. We finally made our way into the fish market...and this place was gigantic. The whole first floor was just like what we saw outside on the street, tons of people selling fish. The smell...was pretty revolting. The premise is that you can buy your fish on the first floor then go up to the second floor to eat the fish you bought. You can even cook it at your table. The whole second floor has tables for eating and people selling dried fish.

first floor

dried fish on second floor

buy your fish, cook it, eat with soju. sounds like a good lunch

cook the fish right at your table!

So after we had our fun at the fish market, we made our way to Busan tower. It was quite the view. Check out the pics.

Busan tower

You see that huge building right there? That is the Lotte Department store. This place is for ballers only. I walked in and immediately saw Armani on my left, Omega watches on my right, and a Salvatore Ferragamo store in front of me. This prompted me to think about how much I get paid per month and then proceeded to walk out the store.

the Jagalchi fish market is the building on the right with the glider looking roof

The structure with the columns in the mountains is the UN memorial cemetery honoring the lives lost during the Korean war. 

dragon action

So after the tower, we began to make our way to PIFF square, but there was a traditional play going on in honor of the Chuseok holiday.

I wasn't too sure what was going on because my Korean isn't up to par, but it was still cool to see and the music was pretty lively.

doin the stanky leg

We watched the play for a little bit then continued on our way to PIFF Square. PIFF actually stands for Pusan (same as Busan, b and p sounds are the same in Korean) International Film Festival. The film festival is actually taking place in mid-October, I wish I had enough time and money to go to Busan again and check it out. It was a really nice area as it had been renovated recently.

i really like this pic, it looks like the statue is trying to touch the sun

We actually strayed off the path to PIFF square as we had found the equivalent to NYC's Chinatown.

Alleyways full of knockoff items!!! It's always a fun trip to go to these kinds of places. It is actually better than NYC's Chinatown because the street vendors are out in full force since the Police doesn't really hassle them. The knockoffs looked pretty legit, but cheap quality of course. You can even get your dog a jacket here.

We wasted a good amount of our day here making our way from one end of the alley to another, but I can see a lot of people doing that. They even have full service restaurants on carts. 

The sun was starting to set so we decided to end our sightseeing at this temple nearby. Oh how I love stairs...

We made our way back to the motel and took an afternoon nap after walking all day. It was much needed. We woke up just in time to rage our last night in Busan. Since the weather felt great outside, we wanted to hit up the beach again. We went to Matt's other bar in Songjeong beach called the Blowfish.

They served American burgers! It has been such a long time since I had a legit burger. Props to Matt and the Blowfish. The Blowfish is actually in a prime location. Songjeong beach is actually north of Haeundae beach. Since Haeundae beach is a touristy beach, Songjeong doesn't get as much love. Better for us, since mostly surfers and locals come to Songjeong. Blowfish sits right by the beach with an outdoor patio. We had some Belgian beers and watched people shoot fireworks on the beach. Matt even put on the Falcons game for me on the TV. It was a chill night.

one of those lights is the Blowfish

After we hung out at Songjeong for a bit, we made our way back to the University area to rage once more. All the students were returning from their hometown since Chuseok holiday was ending. Koreans are very friendly and social so we met a ton of people. Another awesome night to add to the list. We made our way back to Suwon the next morning and our Chuseok holiday came to close since I slept all day Sunday. All of my pics from the trip can be found on my site.

Stay classy, San Diego.