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.

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.

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.

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.

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.