This week marks our first expedition out of Seoul by way of trains.
First: Busan, home of the international film festival and beaches, mountains, cable cars, and umbrella spirits.
We arrived via the KTX, South Korea’s high-speed rail line. Trains in this country are so cheap it’s crazy – $50 nets you a comfortable seat on on the train for Busan from Seoul. The same trip would be at least twice that much if we were in Japan.
We stopped at a recommended restaurant from Trip Advisor – lots of good reviews in other languages, so I assumed it would be friendly to us whities who can only order beer and say hello, please, and thank you.
Wrong! Poor waitress. Our waitress was a good sport though, and after a little bit of confusion, we got our orders in. Google translate has saved our butts so many times, it’s a wonder anyone took a vacation without it before 😉
Embarrassed but full of food, we set out for Fort Geumjeong, located at the top of a nearby mountain. After a thirty-minute cab ride and winding up narrow city streets, we arrived at the park and the cable car.
The views of Busan below were pretty gorgeous, green mountains competing with white high-rise apartment buildings as far as we could see. As far as skyscraper architecture goes, the tall, white apartments make for some pretty boring skylines in both Seoul and Busan, but there are plenty of mountains here in Busan to spice things up a little.
So we make for the south gate of the fortress. Most of the signs are in English, Korean, and Japanese or Chinese (or all four), so we follow the signs.
Thanks to past language adventures, I figure out the word for South Gate in Korean, so when the other languages inevitably disappear from the signs, we should be good. We took a left down a path and started to run into areas of washed-out trail, and at one point, we run into a part where there is no path unless we jump across about three feet.
This doesn’t feel right, but we keep going anyway because we’ve just done a lot of down and aren’t too keen on going back up it again. The signs all said south gate was just .5 km away, but this feels a lot longer than .5km at this point.
The path twists up (whee) and we stumble upon a collection of houses in various states of disrepair, a few vending machines, and what looks like a probably functioning restaurant ten years ago.
There is nobody around – the place seems abandoned. Just as we turn away, accepting that we will have to go back up the horrible hill we just descended, we hear a little old lady with an umbrella calling out to us. Things are getting real Silent Hill, real fast! Our umbrellas are too flimsy to be used as weapons and we are all exhausted from trudging up and down the mountain. Plus, this is probably the spirit of invincible vengeful granny with umbrella, she’d chase us down and beat the tar out of us if she was really determined. We are doomed.
Silent Hill memories and death fears aside, we point up the hill and say today’s Korean word: “South Gate?” She nods and I assume she tells us it’s up the hill (assuming has worked really well for me so far), so we make for that way quickly before she can possess our bodies or trap us and kill us.
The path goes from wide trail to paved path and starts looking legitimate. Up, up, up, the trail winds – just what we wanted! More up.
Fortunately, we are greeted at the top by what we assume is the south gate. There are some signs around in several languages: Cable Car, to the left. South Gate Village, down the hill. South Gate Village? Oh, that’s where we went wrong…but I wasn’t totally wrong about the south gate bit!
The fortress itself was pretty neat. It was mainly comprised of hiking trails and feral kitties. We’re pretty sure Umbrella Granny and the hills could have taken care of any invaders anyway!
After walking around at the fort, we made our way back down the mountain, just in time to catch the last cable car.
Cabs here are crazy-cheap, so when we got back to the station, we caught a cab to Haeundae beach. 45 minutes in a cab, $12. Ah! We picked up some street food from the market on the way back from the hostel. It’s pretty lively at night, full of smells and sounds of food being cooked and stuff being sold. I picked up a corn dog, fresh kimchee dumplings, and a giant asian pear the size of my face. Dinner, and then we passed out immediately back at the hostel, hoping we don’t encounter South Gate Village in our sleep.
