We awoke today feeling pretty rested, having let ourselves sleep in just a bit to heal from the tough day yesterday. We have a few good days in Busan planned out, but with some bad weather in the forecast during our stay, we have decided to be flexible. We plotted out all of our desired destinations in Google Maps so that we can see the rough locations and clusters of places. Busan is huge, so this is definitely necessary so we aren’t spending most of our days traveling. It seemed like weather was roughest today out of all of our time in Busan, so we planned mostly indoor activities. We got ready, locked our stuff up and tidied the room, and headed out
We wanted a small bite, so we hit a bimimbop restaurant not far from the hotel. We shared one of the standard bimimbop bowls, and it wasn’t long until the food started coming out. They brought out loads of interesting sides, including spiced radishes (?), kimchi, another fermented unknown vegetable, and fried fry (piles of tiny baby fish). The server brought a beautiful bimimbop bowl topped with a nicely fried egg, and we went ahead and split it up into our bowls and started piling on the sauces. It was really tasty, but the bowl wasn’t much more special than some of the Korean restaurants we’ve had in America. The real winner… was the sides. Every one of the sides has different textures and flavor profiles, some spicy and some sweet. We enjoyed eating them alone as well as putting some in bites of our bimimbop to change the flavor.
We finished up and next went to a covered market/arcade that we had heard good things about and thought may be similar to the markets in Japan. We got there and were in for a little bit of a surprise. This was a massive market, absolutely full of people. Vendors took up every available space, often with their groceries on the ground on cardboard or in small bowls sitting on the ground. This was almost exclusively raw fish and vegetables. We were really intrigued by the food options, but it was a little difficult navigating. As opposed to Japan where people don’t really like encroaching on personal bubbles (maybe accidentally bumped into 2 people total in 17 days?), people will run into you like a freight train in South Korea. Additionally, standing in front of stalls long without purchasing is considered especially rude as you take up walking space and prevent potential sales (as compared to our experience on Japan). It is also frowned upon to take photos of vendors and their products, so we avoided this unless specifically given permission. This means thay we did more fly-by looking, mostly avoiding pedestrians, scooters driving through, and avoiding stepping on peoples’ products. We were absolutely the only tourists in this market at this time, so we clearly stumbled upon a local spot. It was also extremely warm in here with so many bodies. By the time we got through and found an exit, we were definitely starting to get sweaty. In the way out, we heard sirens and saw a few police interrogating someone driving a small truck full of groceries he was selling. We didn’t quite know what was going on, but they seemed interested in the groceries, so we wondered if he was trying to sell without a permit or something.
With this area relatively exhausted, we hopped on the train to go to the Centum City mall. This is the largest mall in Busan, apparently the first department store in all of Korea, and holds the Guiness World Record for largest department store in the world! We arrive and can’t even begin to understand the massive size. It turns out there are 14 massive floors including an ice skating rink, driving range, movie theater, and hundreds upon hundreds of restaurants and shops. We walked around for a few hours, looking at both Korean brands as well as some of the highest end luxury stores we know of: Prada, Gucci, Cartier, Yves Saint Laurent, Swarovski, Rolex, Patek Philippe, Hermes, and dozens of others that we probably are too poor to have even heard of. Caitlyn couldn’t control herself with all of these stores and products and went a little crazy, but whatever makes her happy! She splurged a bit, grabbing a single bathbomb for the large tub in our hotel for later. David tries to control her, but one man can only do so much. We also grabbed a small cheese tart from a vendor, which was super good and reminiscent of the cheese tarts we tried in Chinatown Manhattan with the Blumberg family.
After finishing looking at stores, we decided to purchase tickets for SpaLand. A massive Jjimjilbang (Korean public bath house) complex inside the mall, with multiple floors full of saunas, steam rooms, cold rooms, relaxation zones, massage chairs, nail treatments and personal massages, and even a huge outdoor area with textured walking areas and dozens of stone footwells with different temperatures and infusions sourced from hotsprings below. We walked in and purchased two tickets – only $15 USD/person for 4 hours. It also came with a ticket for 3 free hardboiled eggs in one of their restauranrs. We walked up and into the main area to see that we each had a separate shoe locker first, as everyone is meant to go barefoot. After placing our shoes in, it locks and gives us an individual key. After this, we go to a counter where an impressive woman instantly visually sizes you and hands you a pair of baggy sauna pants and a baggy shirt. We each walked to our separate locker rooms, David nervous to figure out how it worked here. Pretty quickly he realized that there is no nudity shyness. Everyone was walking around completely nude, talking with friends and joking, seemingly unaware that no one had clothes off. David quickly changed into his sauna clothes, not quite that brave, and walked back to the main area to meet Caitlyn. We tried every single room, each varying in temperature and theme, avoiding the sauna as that felt a bit too hot for us. David’s favorite was either the cold room or the outdoor area. Caitlyn liked the outdoor area as well as the massage chair (David liked it too!). The massage chair was a small upcharge, but came out to less than $2USD for 15 minutes and was very worth it. We spent a lot of time in the outdoor area working on our feet, stepping on the pebbles, stones, and small logs to work out our feet. We didn’t even realize how sore our feet were with averaging about 9.5 miles walked a day in japan (just under 160 miles total), and definitely appreciated this feature. We checked out the restaurants in the complex before deciding we did everything and would head out. At this point, we came to a decision. The men’s and women’s room each have a large public shower area and large gender-separated pool areas for lounging. David wasn’t brave enough to embrace the buff at the onsen in Japan (while Caitlyn dove right in), but would he shower off after hours and hours of sharing public features at the spa? We went our separate ways, and decided to meet up in the main area after (possibly) showering off and putting our street clothes back on. This was the moment. David took a deep breath and decided to embrace this culture. He got to his locker, fully disrobed, and made the short walk (which felt forever) to the shower area. It was a lot more comfortable than his nerves made him feel like, as this is completely unheard of in America. It was a good experience overall and we are both glad we did SpaLand and embraced this aspect of Korean culture (aside from the hardboiled eggs everyone seemed to love – we wanted to save room for Korean dishes. They literally brought trays of dozens and sat on the ground in the hot rooms just eating eggs).
Feeling clean and refreshed, we checked out the last bit of the mall we wanted to see. After finishing up, we did go back to the food court and shared a kimchi dumpling, a spicy shrimp dumpling, a meat dumpling, and a fried squid dumpling. Both of our favorites was the kimchi, but Caitlyn also liked the spicy shrimp and David liked the meat dumpling. We went back put and grabbed the subway line headed back towards home.
It was a warm and humid night, and while were itching to get to our own private shower, we knew we would get sweaty after if we wanted to get back out, so we decided to just stay out and enjoy the evening. Getting to the fun area in the perimeter of our hotel, we passed a place called “rainbow beer”. Caitlyn was a bit skeptical, especially as we weren’t quite ready to eat and in our experience many places like you to order food as well. David felt that it looked promising, seeing a man sitting alone with a drink and without food, and offering that even if it’s a bit of a dive, good priced beer is good priced beer! We walked in and there was only one table of a few friends aside from the man sitting alone. We are quickly seated, and Caitlyn decides on a soju while David does the math on the 3 beer sizes. The biggest one seems to offer a lot of beer for only $15 USD, and we wanted to just chill and drink for a while, so he picked the large. We call our server over using the call button at our table (kind of common in Japan, but almost exclusively used in Korea). Caitlyn places her order and David points to the large beer. The waitresses eyes get huge and she goes “for YOU?!? BIG!!”. We say we are planning on sharing it some, which she says “okay okay” and goes to the kitchen area just off to the side. We hear a lot of commotion, see a lot of flashing LED lights, and eventually see what looks like smoke coming from the tap area. She emerges holding a large pitcher with some type of smoke billowing out of the top. We check the menu again with our translate apps and realize that this is 3 liters of beer and they cool it with dry ice at the bottom, producing dry ice smoke. They add LED lighting in the pitcher to add to the effect, making an impressive display. It was a little daunting, but this is typically Cass, a light beer, and we were going to sit and share for a few hours. Over time, the restaurant/bar fills up and we get to finally witness some of the famous Korean drinking culture. Friends laying back bottle after bottle of soju, laughing and joking, clinging their glasses and soaking in valuable time with good friends.
We eventually finish our drinks and realize that we wanted more food than sharing a few dumplings hours back at centum. Luckily, right in David’s view across the street was clearly a Korean fried chicken place, made obvious by the giant cartoon chicken on their sign. We stop in and pick between regular chicken, soy sauce fried chicken, spicy, and garlic. We chose garlic, waited for our food to come out. We expected maybe a few small pieces, but out comes the most massive platter of chicken either of us had ever seen. AND THE SERVER HAD SEEMED SURPRISED WE ONLY ORDERED ONE SMALL PORTION. This was well over 1 whole chicken’s worth of meat. We did our best to chow down as the Koreans around us did – holding a piece in the chopsticks and eating off of that. This is incredibly difficult, with us dropping the chicken left and right. We eventually resorted to quickly picking pieces up by hand and eating what we could. We somehow finished just about all of the food, and with our stomachs about to burst, we make the walk back. We grab some coffees for tomorrow from the convenience store and got back to the room. Caitlyn was eager to put the bath bomb to work, so she worked on that while David sat and wrote some of the blog out. A bath and shower down, we got in bed and relaxed for a few before going to sleep.
David’s thoughts of the day: I’m not sure why, but chopsticks here are not rounded, but flattened. This seems practical, as the longer edges would be able to clamp down on food with more surface area, but in reality that does not work and usually causes way more food fumbles than rounded chopsticks. Also, chopsticks are all metal here, which I can see a benefit as far as cleaning, but they are much heavier and took a little getting used to. Also also, the Korean language feels a lot more difficult than Japanese for me. I have been trying to learn the same two phrases (thank you, hello) since arriving and I still find myself struggling and having to double check before every potential interaction.
Caitlyn’s thoughts of the day: the portion sizes in Korea are MASSIVE. While we were at the mall, we were walking by people in the food court who seemed to have a family size portion of noodles, stir fry, soup etc. for each individual person. We have been sharing one meal between the two of us, and leave each restaurant stuffed!
Steps walked: 14,119
Miles walked: 6.79
Bluming Travelers 