Busan

Busan is the second biggest city in South Korea - and that I found out by looking it up. South Korea is not that well-known in the UK and most of my knowledge, as ever, comes from sport and usually football. Luckily, I also know a little about gaming^[1] in South Korea but I cannot see how this could be in any way useful. South Korea hosted the first Olympics (Summer, obviously the Winter ones aren’t real) that I can remember in 1988 and also hosted the first ever shared World Cup with Japan in 2002. As a result, the cities of Seoul (Olympic host city) and Daegu (was a city that I could only assume England played in, but actually they did not -it must have had an impressive stadium) are lodged in my mind. As it happens, I do know Busan from holding a film festival (BIFF is an Asia focused film festival) but not much more. A lack of knowledge can usually be overcome with a search for some knowledge so I looked it up. And there it was, amongst other things - Busan is the second biggest city in South Korea and has a ferry service to Japan. Who needs more knowledge than that?

Hong Kong airport is stuck out in the middle of the sea and this allows it to run, without causing problems^[2] , as a 24hr airport so I got a flight to Busan departing at 2am and arriving at about 6am. This was going to be the start of a run of early morning starts, as I had planned it, but that is very much my style so I was^[3] ready for it.

Busan reminded me a lot of Japan initially although this was probably due to my limited frames of reference. I landed in daylight, which was nice and then took the metro to the hotel. I love getting the metros in new cities but it was not the most convenient of journeys although I was going to a fairly central location - it was very close to Busan station.

Once I got to the hotel to drop my bags off, they told me that I could check in too, which I was very surprised at so early in the morning but I was not going to complain. I dropped my bags in the room and thought I’d have a bit of a lie down for a rest. And then had a bit of a nap - which was not my plan as the nap stretched on a little longer than I wanted. A lot longer and it was afternoon once I was up.

Eventually, the nap was abated and I stepped out. I had noticed that there was a “hop-on” around the city bus service which seemed like a good way of seeing things and getting off to interesting points. I got out a little late so there were not so many buses left to go but I got one (more a coach) and we were driven around.

Busan felt remarkably industrial to me and I was actually a little shocked at the scale of it. The area around the train station was a fairly standard, pedestrianised area but once we got moving on the bus there were mainly big highways for lots of traffic and the scale did not feel particularly human. It was quite overwhelming in a way as it felt like we were on the way to somewhere rather than at a destination itself. In a way, we were on our way somewhere as the bus took us some distance away from the train station over a couple of bridges via the port areas to another part of the city for sightseeing, but was there anything to actually sightsee? Busan has a number of beaches around the city so the first place I stopped was Haeundae Beach to have a little walk along the sandy beach. It was a pretty cloudy day so it was actually quite pleasant to walk but it was also, effectively, a large high-rise area too. I don't really know what to do on beaches so I didn't stay very long and got on another bus to the area around the Museum of Modern Art which I didn't enter but walked around. It wasn't particularly interesting and the scale of Busan really struck me. It really lacked intimacy although some of the sculptures were quite nice. From there, I took the bus to the UN Memorial (to the Korean War) park. This was a pleasant place to walk around and, inside, felt somewhat human in scale but it wasn't particularly memorable.

One of the famous^[4] aspects of Busan is that it has a very active port area with good connections to other countries, such as Japan, to allow it to trade easily. Busan has a huge container port but the best thing for me as a tourist that a port like this gives is fish.

Near the sea, Jagalchi Fish Market is a popular spot to have fresh fish so I thought it would be a good place to eat dinner. Heading there at night on foot, it was far quieter than I expected and it seemed that many of the stalls in the covered market were closed. Even so, some were open so I found one and tried to make myself understood. Busan, being so close to Japan, has many Japanese speakers too to cater for the tourists but the elderly staff that were still present were not apparently bilingual. In fact, they kind of gave the air of not necessarily being monolingual either. They were, however, welcoming and tried very hard to explain what they sold and how I should order one of their platters which was reasonably priced and quite tasty. A lot of the fish available was served raw and there was a big hot pot to cook the other bits which the ladies in the restaurant showed me how to use. I was pretty pleased with the meal and would definitely recommend a visit for both the atmosphere of the fish market and the food itself.

The second day was one to enjoy the cityscape and although the weather was not ideal, I wasn't about to spend the day indoors.

A little bit of research suggested the coast might offer a nice walk so I made my way to () which felt like it was designed for a lot of people. I'd guess on sunny weekends that it would be a full and fun kind of place. Maybe it could still be fun when it wasn't sunny. As ever, you always need an exit strategy and I had booked my train out of Busan for the evening to arrive in Seoul at night so I knew my constraints. On my way to this park around the lighthouse, I decided to take the bus as this would be another adventure of sorts but walked part of the way.

The weather did not make it the most pleasant of walks but I walked around the Busan Tower park (Yongdusan Park) nonetheless. It was quiet and there was (potentially) a good view from the park itself but visibility wasn’t great. I wandered around and through BIFF plaza to the bus and then onto the Yeongdo Lighthouse. It was a local bus, and not brilliantly signposted (for me, anyway) so I worked out where to disembark from checking my location on Google Maps.

It was actually really quite empty around the walk to the lighthouse and I saw only a few people. I quite enjoyed that fact for this morning. It was grey, wet and windy but that felt totally appropriate for the area around a lighthouse. It was pretty photogenic, anyway.

I made my way, next, to Gamcheon Cultural Village, a steeply situated “village” within Busan that looked colourful and enticing. Well, in the photos taken in sunshine, anyway. This wasn’t massively far from the area that my bus had returned to so I made my way there. It felt out of the way and as I walked, I got the feeling of a local community that was a bit isolated in spite of proximity and good connections. As it got steeper, it felt like an area that wasn’t the same as Busan. Again, it was not a busy place and it felt a little deserted. It made me wonder if it was on the tourist trail and how different it must be with throngs of people. It was a pretty little place but not enough to take me into the evening so I made my way to Gwangalli Beach before my train to Seoul.

I was never great at managing the flow of time and I spent a little too long at the beach (having lost something there…) doing not much except looking out to the Sea of Japan. That meant I got to my hotel a bit later than I wanted to in order to collect my luggage. I’m not really sure why I do this to myself.

I rushed to the train station in order to get my ticket - I was cutting it very fine and had to run with my luggage which was not the easiest thing to do with asthma. I did make it to the counter and the staff kindly showed me exactly where to go so that I could run straight onto the train - just in time. Well, I thought it was just in time but the train did not start moving as expected. In fact, it stayed there for quite some time and I was very confused. I was so confused that I had my confused face on and so asked a less confused Korean girl why we were stationary. She giggled with her friend and responded that she did not understand me. Then she whipped out her phone (of course she did not, she had it in her hand already like any self-respecting Korean girl) and showed me a map of Korea and said some stuff that I did not understand. She then looked to the theoretically useful Google translate (this is a lot better than it used to be and it is better than Yahoo was in 2003 [link]) but I could not work it out - the pair of them tried - which I appreciated and then another man came and spoke to me in English and explained that there had been an earthquake so the train was not going to move. My confused face became one of concern (it may have retained a little of the confusion too - I think that part of my facial expression was always there) as he explained that the train would not be going to Seoul tonight and that I could try and find another way later. An option, but one that I did not really have so I spoke to another person and they told me that we would be going later - but we had the option of trying to find another way ourselves. I am a big fan of high-speed travel but, once we started moving, I realised that we had been speed limited as a result of the earthquake and we would not be travelling at the expected 300 kph. Seoul is not close and we had departed late so I had no real sense of when we would arrive and what to do when I got there. I knew I would at least be arriving in Seoul’s centre though - surely that would be easy…

I arrived in Seoul at 2am.

<sup>1. I do not actually know much about gaming in South Korea but I understand that they have a rabid fanbase for some PC games and there is a market for watching them played at a high level. I am not sure that I have ever, knowingly, played a Korean video game -they are a curio to me in all honesty.↩
2. The other way of not causing problems, especially in the Middle East, is to not particularly care about the problems caused by the noise of night flights and so ignore them. This is much easier in countries that are not exactly democratic.↩
3. I wasn’t that ready for it. I was tired and there was only really one way to resolve that.↩
4. well, you know… better known.↩</sup>

Hong Kong stopover

I think Hong Kong Airport is a marvel of design really - it is so remarkably unremarkable. In transportation, I think there are two schools of thought with the design of airports where it is either a destination in itself or it is merely a staging post and I think Hong Kong airport goes for the latter. This does not mean that it is not architecturally interesting but it just doesn't get in the way - it feels transparent. As I was staying somewhere^[1] on the island, I took the train to my quarters to drop my luggage and attempted to make something of the evening. The train station in the airport is very much integrated into the airport exit and so I bought my ticket and made my way. Unremarkable.

Hong Kong island is connected to the mainland in countless ways but the most historic is the Star Ferry which continues to cross even though it is no longer the most convenient way to travel for most. My travels are rarely about convenience but this time, briefly, it would be and I took the MTR across to Kowloon for some dinner and a walk along the main road and to some night markets. I did go to the ferry terminal and make a crossing on the way back to the island though - this was an integral part of the trip.
Hong Kong is unmistakably Chinese but when I first came all those years ago, I laboured under the misapprehension that it would be terribly English around these parts. With a nod to the (recent at the time) colonial past, I had breezily assumed that English would be very easily used and looked forward to being a little more comfortable in getting around than I had been. I was wrong. Repeatedly. As I wandered around Kowloon looking for something to eat, the neon was bright, the people were plentiful and I very much knew that I was in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong of both imagination and memory.

The next day was my only truly unbroken day in Hong Kong so I decided to try to see a bit more of the territory than I had before and one thing that I had not done in Hong Kong before was to see the slightly less urban parts. Hong Kong island itself is an intriguing geographical point stuck where it is and is not really that well suited to the mass development that it has undergone compared to other places. I would not go as far as saying that there are unspoiled areas of the island but the Shek O Country Park does afford the opportunity to do some hiking with pretty convenient transport available. I won't lie that the end of the line status was also appealing, of course. So the MTR to the end of the line took me to, of course again, a shopping centre that I got a bit lost in before I found my way out to the path to the park. the park was not brilliantly signposted and did involve a walk through a visually interesting elevated cemetery (or Ossarium) which was suitably grey for the weather. The park had a relatively well-known path called the Dragon's Back which I decided to walk. There were not too many people there on a wet weekday so I rather enjoyed it to myself with only a podcast^[2] or two for company. The walk was pretty fun although the variable weather did mean that I found myself getting a little wet - but then also drying out fairly quickly. There were some other people walking but very few and I only bumped into them at designated viewpoints. The variable weather also meant that I could see some of the same landscapes with quite different views which was a bit of a bonus. The park itself is quite green and to see out to all the other islands is definitely a thing worth doing.
I made my way to the exit and waited at the bus stop and checked the timetable - the buses did not seem particularly frequent. Not long after a minivan came beeping along the road quite rapidly and then stopping at the bus stop also quite rapidly. The door opened and the driver motioned to come in. I said in English that I was waiting for whichever bus I had seen on the bus stop sign and he motioned again to get on. I did, but I did not pay a fee and was told, in English, "later". I should have been wary. I was a bit wary. There were other people on the bus and they looked like they didn't know each other so I felt like it was probably OK.
The minibus picked up speed and I wondered whether it was going to be OK. The other passengers seemed fine and I saw a big led display number stuck at the front shooting up in value - this must have been the speed of the minibus. It felt a lot faster down the hill along a semi-winding road in a minibus though but that speed indicator, strangely enough, made me feel much safer as looking out of the window really did not...
Fortunately, the bus ended up exactly where I wanted to go - back to the end of the line and I paid a small fee to the bus driver to get off (he was effectively holding me hostage).
The end of the line is also the beginning, of course, and I had wanted to ride the rails from one end to another (I wasn't really going to go to the other end, but pretty close). After a spot of lunch and a quick look around the harbour and park, I settled onto the tram on the top deck. There aren't many places to get a double deck tram and it seemed a great way to soak in the city's atmosphere while still moving toward where I was meant to be in the evening.

The trip takes about 90 mins and does show quite a variety of communities from the less salubrious outskirts to the central portion of the city home to global commercial entities. The connection between them, other than the tramline, of course, is that they are all densely populated.
A quick skip across the water took me back to Kowloon where I was due to meet a friend outside the mosque.
This friend had recently moved to the city and seemed to be in that first flush of excitement and intrigue which is always a little intoxicating to be around. We made our way to, and through, the unknown to go to a dim sum place. A lot of Chinese food is pretty piggy so I really was not convinced that this would be a fruitful journey but we went to this shop which had been recommended for them. They had rather sweet scraps of paper that they'd given by the mosque requesting halal and no pig which would protect and enable them to go somewhere safe in the knowledge that it would be OK. It was not OK. Having waited for about half an hour to be seated, we looked at the menu and carefully decided on the options as we were hurried by the staff, in true Hong Kong style. The selections seemed pretty solid but once my friend handed over her little scrap of paper, the waitress became a little annoyed. She took our pencil and crossed off all the things that were not halal - basically the whole menu. Disappointed, we walked out to try and find another place. I wasn't in control so I didn't really mind but I'm sort of used to sniffing out somewhere interesting but my friend was much more hung up on a recommended restaurant or something that felt known. We eventually found somewhere but I don't remember it well. It was fine. Absolutely fine.
It was nice to see my friend that had recently moved. She seemed well and excited to have made the move to a new country and alive with the opportunity but a little stressed, also, with the burdens of choice. They had not yet moved into their own place and were staying in a temporary apartment while they worked out the city. I guess that is pretty exciting.
After dinner, I returned over the water - it was a lovely evening and I thought it wise to take the star ferry which gave a lovely view as we were crossing.
The weather was not going to hold out over the few days so I knew I needed something undercover. I sort of knew that. But I also knew I wanted to see things so I made my way to Kowloon and encountered an astonishing downpour. The rain was truly torrential and that made it a sight to behold. I got very wet, but at the same time, quite enjoyed the visual splendour of Hong Kong Bay in these conditions - I'd not seen anything like it before.

Like a fool, in that rain, I decided to make my way to Lan Tau Island, via boat, which is home to a huge Buddha. It was popular with tourists and so did still have quite a few visitors but it was not teeming with them. It was, however, teeming with water. From the boat, I got a bus to the Buddha which was not exactly full of people.
The area around the Buddha, Ngong Ping village, has been made a little more tourist friendly by making much of it appear to be a theme park version of the olden times - a little like Spirited Away. The Buddha itself is breathtaking and there are plenty of other small sights to see including many statues and a Monastery - all worth a few moments of your time.
The cable car took me back to a train station so it was fairly easy to get back to "Central". I had a flight to Busan early in the morning/late at night but my "host" was also returning so we thought it would be nice to meet up for dinner. I went back to get my stuff sorted and pack it off at the city air terminal (always a great idea) before dinner which was at a Cantonese restaurant. My friend was supposed to be coming to Japan too so we did a little catching up and also confirmed what we were doing (my plans had changed a bit after the ferry cancellation). It was short but sweet before I departed for the airport - which is barely even worth remarking on. My flight to Busan was at 2am - so I would arrive early but would it be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?

CLICK HERE FOR (many) HONG KONG PHOTOS

<sup>1. I was staying at a friend's place while the friend was not, rather strangely.↩
2. In these situations, I find good podcasts to be the perfect companion as they are both interesting and easily interruptible which is not often a combination that you get with humans.↩</sup>

Before Hong Kong

One of my favourite places in London is the Barbican centre and I can’t help but feel that part of the reason may just be because it is so unpopular with most people - the desire to be contrary. It was designed to be modern, forward facing and almost self contained with a mixed use design encompassing residential in amongst commercial and cultural space. It is a remarkable space for being simultaneously foreboding yet welcoming to all that enter. And, although it cannot have been the first time I went there, I remember feeling a great sense of nostalgia with my first memories of regularly visiting in the late 2000‘s - but it was a nostalgia for Hong Kong.

The Barbican and Hong Kong feel interconnected with each other due to a great, overarching sense of planning from the same ethos and a similar timeframe. I don’t know if it actually was the case, but the densification and social idealism in creating both seems the case.

I first visited Hong Kong in 2005 as a stopover when I went to Bangladesh^[1] and I stayed for a short while but did a lot of walking and travel - this may, possibly, have been where I started my template of travel^[2]. Needless to say, I got lost regularly with enjoyment and gay abandon. My memories of that particular trip are of staying in Kowloon and enjoying the night atmosphere and the neon lights and signs. In fact, I decided to get the bus from Kowloon to the airport just to enjoy the top deck journey through the bright lights.

The second visit was only a few years later to meet someone. It was a different trip with company and my two strongest memories are of how boring I found gambling in the casinos in nearby Macau and how massively frustrating I found the city layout when I wanted to walk somewhere and there would always be a shopping centre in the way.

On the basis of the two previous trips, I felt that any further visits to Hong Kong would have to be for stopovers only - and this is what I told my friend that I was originally supposed to visit.

In the spirit of the densification so prevalent in Hong Kong, I have decided to densify my trip from inception and am flying on a work evening and leaving direct from my office (which is in the Kings Cross area). The rush hour journey across London on the Piccadilly is always a great start to a holiday...

As I started the journey, I received some news about a later part of my journey - or my planned journey. As I mentioned in my pre-trip post, I was hoping to travel from Busan in South Korea to Fukuoka in Japan on a boat and had even gone to the trouble of booking it - which is a rarity for me. what I thought was booked was not booked and I was informed that my booking had not been made and that there were no longer any more spaces on the boat or any other boats that day or the day after. This was not great news and so I had think of what else to do whilst travelling to Heathrow. Thinking is not really my kind of thing so this was less than ideal - at least I had time to think about it on the way to Hong Kong.

In order to plan my trips, I use a “grid” that has four columns representing morning, afternoon, evening, night and then rows for each day so that I can work out where I will be each day and plot it on the grid. I think more granularity than those four portions to the day complicates the process. I find it quite useful but it does end up quite a puzzle sometimes trying to piece together a trip out of finite ingredients. I would have to consult the grid to see how to fit the detour in. You’ve got to have a system (below is a simplified version).

One of the benefits of the airlines forming so many alliances is that the ticketing possibilities are massively increased so my Air France ticket is actually Air France to Hong Kong and KLM on my return from Japan. The flight on Air France entailed a change at CDG but this was fairly short followed by the flight to Hong Kong on an Airbus A380^[3]. I was pleased with this aircraft (having only been on a few before on Emirates when travelling via Dubai) and did actually check before booking.

A late departure and the time difference meant that I’d be settled in Hong Kong itself in the evening so it would feel a little like a full day travelling. Or a full night seeing as it was in the dark and the shutters stayed down for most of the flight. I was pretty fortunate with the flight as I chose seats at the back and few others did so I ended up with a section of three on my own. the flight itself was wonderfully unremarkable except starting with a particularly lovely safety video which is apparently tres chic which I enjoyed tremendously.

<sup>1. This trip sticks in the memory as I travelled from Japan to Bangladesh via Hong Kong and so it is one of the rare opportunities for me to pass through airport customs and security using the three languages that I can (could) actively use.↩
2. I also remember taking my luggage and leaving it at the airport in Hong Kong to avoid carrying it around. I don’t think I would have considered that as an idea until I lived in Japan and saw the convenience of coin lockers, but it is something that I search for these days and makes a lot of travel much, much easier.↩
3. Who could have thought that European cooperation could be so productive? What a long time ago the idealism of the Concorde and Airbus projects seem now.↩</sup>

An Oriental [Limited] Express

Like so many stories, this probably starts in Nando's.
I lived in Japan for 3 years and in many ways, they were possibly the most formative years of my adulthood^[1] as they felt like a time of both renewal and excitement even though I didn't really have anything to renew. Much of this is besides the point - that three years allowed me to create more friends and acquaintances than is apparently normal for adults and, although many have fallen by the wayside due mainly to the attrition of time, I count myself fortunate enough to have retained contact^[2] with a decent number of them. Whilst assisting one of these friends with some passport application issues and reminiscing away, I suddenly felt that Japan was a place to visit again - without a wedding to attend to.

As it happened, another friend of mine moved away to Hong Kong and I said, as I am wont to do, that I would come and visit at some point. And at that point, I would go elsewhere too as Hong Kong doesn't seem to have enough for my tastes on holiday for a lengthy stay (are those enough qualifiers so that I don’t get shot down?).
And so, two ideas coalesced into one with potential to be a nice shared trip of about two weeks - into Hong Kong and then out of Japan (Kansai International being preferred) and it was in the gaps that, the bit in between, intrigue could flourish.

As it happened, my friend was unavailable in Hong Kong after booking, and so I was at a loose end. And over lunch at work, I wondered how that loose end could be tied up - where would be an interesting stopover? Often, the way that I think about the gaps in between is by considering the surface travel opportunities - basically the question is “which train lines are connected?” This was not fruitful for Hong Kong starts, yet it sparked a thought and I decided that the knot could be Korea. South Korea.

So I consulted my virtual Rolodex to see whether people I knew had any advice about South Korea. Surprisingly, quite a few of my acquaintances had been so I was able to harvest some interesting stories which were enough to make my decision. Well, part of my decision about locations but not about timings or details. That comes later, if at all. The skeleton plan becomes:
London - Hong Kong - South Korea - Japan - London

Hong Kong SAR
Hong Kong is a place I have visited a couple of times and I found it hugely frustrating in the past which is why I had not really had a particular desire to go back. It strikes me as a good place for a stopover as it is different enough to most places but not big enough (for me) to enjoy for a long period of time. Yet some of my later travels, most notably to Singapore (which I have described in the past as similar to a Hong Kong without the charm), have made me feel a nostalgia for the memories of Hong Kong and so I am keener on this than I was before. At the very least, Hong Kong is particularly photogenic.

South Korea
I had not been to South Korea and much of my knowledge of the country would be old-fashioned and coloured by my past in Japan. In the early 00‘s, Japan went through something of a “Korean boom” where many aspects of Korean culture became fashionable and popular ranging from the food to the television dramas. I may never have got into the dramas (they looked a little too melodramatic for my taste) but the food was very popular with my taste buds with a nice mixture of spice, heat and tang.

As it stands, I am not entirely sure of where to go within the country but I would like to visit Seoul^[3], the DMZ and am aiming to take a boat to Japan via Busan. It is in the gaps, that excitement may lie.

Japan
I’m a big fan of Japan generally have enjoyed travelling around there a few times. This means that there are not so any major locations that i have not been so I imagine there will be some retread but I am happy to do so. One of the best things about Japan is the incredible rail infrastructure with fast, regular connections throughout the country and this is something that i will be looking to use as much as possible. There are a few choices for where the boat from Korea goes to, and I am presently leaning to Fukuoka^[4] where I do not think I have been. From there, I need to get to Osaka and Kyoto at some point within ten days so that leaves a lot of opportunity for travel and even, potentially, for socialising - though this seems out of character.

Well, those are the plans, now to see how the reality merges with the plans. If anybody else would like to add to my list of ideas, please feel free to comment below.

<sup>1. This only really means that they were more formative than University - a time that I didn't particularly enjoy. I didn't really dislike those years either but I spent a lot of time wondering what the fuss was about. Maybe, in hindsight, they were my most formative years of all.↩
2. Presently this often means little more than being invited to weddings due to the complexities of modern life.↩
3. I have been very fortunate in that when asking around, a friend’s family used to live in Seoul and they have provided me with a list of place to see, places to go and places to eat.↩
4. The three letter codes for this trip would be PUS-FUK which I rather like.↩</sup>