The Busan Diaries: DayII
Busan |
The next day started real early as I made
my way out jumping on top of sleeping Koreans. The rain gods didn’t seem to be
favoring the travelers but I did manage to stay dry with a makeshift umbrella I
bought at the store. I wanted a nice view of the ocean while enjoying my
breakfast and after much looking in the rain, found out a beer/chicken place with
a misplaced beach view which oddly had fried rice on their menu. Very interesting
indeed.
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Finding Nemo |
Ideas were popping up as quickly as the
tummy was getting filled up and I decided to make use of one of these discount
coupons I had. For a Nepali who hardly got to see the sea, let alone sea
animals, going to an aquarium seemed to be as exotic as it could get. I remember
watching these creatures like a kid in a candy store, sampling and savoring
every bit of flavor that was oozing out from behind those transparent glass
walls. I guess my favorite memories of the place includes the otter feeding,
the hyper, on drugs dolphin who kept moving in clockwise circles in top speed (and
made everyone’s head turn accordingly) and the very slow-mow chill sharks who
all seem to not care about a rather tasty Indian delight at the other end of
the glass. When I say Indian, I mean actual Indians and not me. There were
these bunch of them who kept asking me where the exit was which almost made me
feel as if I was their guide.
Give me break, will you?
Having now woken vodka, I made my way to,
apparently, the biggest departmental store in the world; The Shinsegae Departmental
store at Centum City. It covers a mind boggling 293,905m2 of space
equivalent to an area covered by 41 football fields. That’s something isn’t it?
You need an indoor taxi to go around in that space.
“Hey Ajashi, can you take me to the nearest
H&M store please?”
While I did get my hands on a couple of T’s
at H&M without having to board an imaginary one, I wasn’t there for that. Supposedly
the 4D hall was amongst the attractions that made the most noise on the
internet and so I thought I should give these moving seats and water sprays a
try.
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I would have preferred to watch this instead |
But like all important attractions, they had
one last seat remaining. Since it was obvious that two people couldn’t fit in
one, we decided to choose a more traditional 2D movie which we later regretted watching.
badly. It was perhaps the worst of the worst of the worst movies we had ever laid
our eyes on, with the story swinging from one point to other overdosed by over
acting with tons of other bull shit on the side menu. Having to think about it,
all those horrible nepali and hindi movies that I have spent not-so-quality-time
on all those years feels surprisingly better now. Zero Theorem is highly,
highly recommended because every movie you watch from then on is going to feel
amazingly better.
HQ: got better as the afternoon wearied out |
Post-horrible-movie-hangover needed some
time to recover, so we headed back to beaches of Gwangan again, opting to re-initiate
code PUB CRAWL but a lazy one instead. The newly opened HQ was a bit difficult
to find but once we got ourselves locked on it, it wasn't long before we were
sitting down beside this gorgeous view of the beach, the sea and the famous
busan bridge(not sure what’s it called). Dare I say it rivaled the same
laidback experience I had at riverside Shanghai when I just sat down besides
good company, drinking good brew and devouring the scene ahead. Exactly what I had
imagined my trip to be.
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stamina boys! |
After the busan boys (this guy and the
other guy), joined the table as well, we decided that it was finally time to
try some of busan’s famous cuisine. The eel-like delicacy was a local hit here
(the boys kept saying it was good for stamina. And then they kept adding it was
for boys. You get what I mean) and I could really see why. The meat(?) was almost soft and buttery, and with a helping of typical BBQ servings, the whole experience
was as good as it could get.
With that done, we focused on witnessing
what the beach had to offer. And there was tons of it. You could either sit
down with a bottle of makalli and anju and get a close up view of the bridge or
sit down watch a musical or watch a live, rather impressive acoustic
performance. We did it all except for that part where the makalli and anju was
conspicuously missing.
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Galmegi Brewing Company |
But things were not over just yet. We still
had to check out Galmegi’s new outlet and after some searching, ended up with a
square table with perhaps the best brew in Busan. The CEO and headbrewer was
even kind enough to show around the brewery where you couldn’t help but smell
all the chocolaty malt they had been wanting to use on their next batch of
driftwood porter.
Of course, my worries now turned to finding
a place to spend the night in and after saying my goodbyes to the busanites, I went
straight to Spa Land at Centum City. Having heard so much about it, and rated
highly as a must-have-experience in Busan, it made sense to at least dip into
what they had to offer. Unfortunately for me, I missed out on the point that
they actually closed at midnight and so had to drag my ass back to the beach
where I found a round the clock sauna to get some rest. It was a rather old one
but I had to catch the train to Seoul in the next four hours anyways.
And before I knew it, I was back to my
report writing ways at the lab.
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