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Beach in the rain and a strange city (Busan part 2)

Adventures, travelling in Korea, ,

The second part of Sunday’s trip to Busan was a little different. After visiting the 40 steps and Jagalchi Fish Market, I was determined also to accomplish my original and slightly less tourist-y objective in coming to Busan: to see the sea (less tourist-y in that the urge afflicts me whether I live by the sea or not).

I took the subway back to the Busan Station stop and then went to find a bus. Buses are a much better way to see a city than subways. A subway allows you to get from place to place quickly, but you don’t really get a sense of what the city looks like. A large part of my exploring has been done from the windows city buses. That said, buses in strange cities can be a little intimidating, not least because you don’t know small but remarkably important things like what how much the bus fare will be, which stop to get off at and how long it will take to get to that stop (which is particularly important when the announcements are in incomprehensible Korean). Luckily, a bit of guesswork and tiny scraps of information gathered from the internet can help. I didn’t know how much the bus would cost but I surmised, correctly, that the price of a fare was unlikely to be more than about 2000 won.

Across the road from the subway station, I finally found the right bus stop. While I waited, I spotted a little Korean restaurant and was very tempted to stop and get Mandoo for lunch, but I wasn’t sure how often the buses ran, so I decided to wait until I reached Gwangalli Beach.

The world through the window of a bus on a rainy Sunday afternoon is a strange place. Because buses are the way many ordinary people commute – as opposed to a tourist thing – they travel through places where tourists wouldn’t normally go. I watched Busan pass by. All the cities that I have seen overseas before have felt vaguely familiar. Either they’ve been a lot like places I know well, or they have seemed to combine elements of those places.  This city felt different.

Perhaps it begins with the fact that Busan station opens into an area which feels like, and is, a port-city CBD. Instead of the tourist centres in other Korean cities, this one felt like an ordinary, working city. In spite of the obligatory statuary and bits and pieces clearly put up as a gesture to the tourists, this is a place where people rush about getting on with their business. There was someone preaching in the busy square as all the people hurried by. The people waiting for buses were determined and impatient. The subways were full of ordinariness, without the veneer of modern tourist-pleasing. The working port had cranes moving containers about. The fish market was full of locals, not foreigners. I felt somewhat out of place and no-one looked at me with the kindly eyes of people who see you as a source of foreign money. The place felt gritty.

On the bus, the occasional announcement was in English but most were in Korean, with a dialect or an accent I found difficult to understand. The places we passed were city places. There was beautiful graffiti on some of the walls. People with umbrellas and children and shopping hurried down busy streets. Cars wove in and out of traffic jams. The whole places seemed to be in motion – a strange, real motion that I haven’t seen for a while. The people on the bus looked normal. That sounds so strange when I write it, but that was the sense I got. Sitting on that bus, passing through the city, I felt like Busan was real. It’s odd how sometimes a contrast brings into sharp light what you didn’t realise you were feeling about another place. Being there, Daegu suddenly seemed artificial, like a place that was carefully constructed to fit into certain boxes. All the tourist places in Daegu, all the parks and sights, the artificial lake (Suseong Lake), all seemed somehow sanitised. This place (Busan) didn’t feel like that. Even Seoul, although it is very different, felt when I was there like it was a little bit magical, almost like being in a specially prepared bubble. Busan just felt real.

And a real city has problems. I saw areas where the houses weren’t well maintained and hotels that were run-down and obviously dodgy. I noticed city-centre pavements starting to crack and flowerbeds that weren’t perfectly weeded. Near the station and from the bus window, I saw people who looked confused and who didn’t seem altogether there. And even what looked like one or two begging. There was graffiti on some of the walls. There were shops and what looked like actual shopping centres. I found myself thinking two things.

Firstly, this was a city that hadn’t been planned and controlled – it was a place that had grown and developed naturally, with all the messiness and ordinariness that goes it. Secondly, that this city was not trying to hide what it is. It’s a city without veneer and pretense. That surprised me, I suppose because what I have seen so far of Korea have been places that, now that I think about it, seemed to be cleaned up and made to look pretty and modern – perhaps for foreigners, but more likely to cling to the idea of Korea as a truly modern country without all those messy developing-world problems.

I was surprised by my reaction. My reactions. I found myself feeling a little melancholy that the veneer might not run deep. I know, if I’m honest with myself, that there are things very wrong in Korea and I guess I had a sense that it was all pretense, but it was nice to be able to pretend for a bit. Busan was like a bubble bursting, or perhaps just like being offered the option to see the world outside the bubble.

Even when I was wandering around the 40 steps and visiting the fish market, Busan didn’t feel 100% safe. I don’t mean that in a negative sense. Feeling completely safe isn’t real. The sense of this being a real place with real problems was like waking up from some sort of fantasy-world dream and returning to reality. Everyone misses the illusion of perfection when the dream is gone, but too long in that dream or that bubble stops being fun, stops being good. It drives you a little mad. The cold wind of morning, or in this case the pouring rain of Busan, is refreshing, even if it means a return to the real, unpretty facts.

All this swirled in my head as I sat on the bus trying to hear the announcements, in the vain hope of not missing my stop, and watching the rain begin to fall. After a while, I decided that we must surely have gone far enough but I still couldn’t understand any of the announcements, so I got off the bus to find a route-map to read. My rudimentary knowledge of written Korean is thankfully sufficient for me to figure out (given enough time) things like bus route-maps. I established that I was two stops early and got onto the next bus to come along. Once I finally reached the stop that the random internet site had suggested, I got off and walked (in now pouring rain) along the road. And then along another road. And another. I am quite glad that I have a reasonable sense of direction, and that I’ve known enough beach-front cities to know that the tall hotels are probably right on the shore (and therefore to walk towards them), or I imagine I might still be wandering around this suburb of Busan.

The beach was beautiful. This is not to say that it in any way rivals the beaches back home (in SA), but I’d been desperately wanting to see the sea for so long and it’s a proper sand beach. I walked along for a while, just breathing in the rain and the sea air and looking at the water and sand. I had hoped to find a Korean restaurant along the beach to have a (by now very) late lunch. Unfortunately all the Korean places appeared to be closed so, after rejecting a KFC and a Starbucks, I settled on a burger place that looked – based on their lack of ability to use English correctly – like it probably wasn’t all foreigners.

The waitress tried several times to convince me that I’d be happier inside instead of on the covered veranda overlooking the sea. I gently refused – much to her chagrin – and stayed firmly rooted to the chair I’d chosen. It wasn’t a particularly exciting lunch – burger, ‘fries’ and a coke – but the view of the beach in the rain was exceptional.

I love beaches in wet weather, perhaps even more than in sunshine. There is something so beautifully empty and lonely about walking along a beach in the rain. This time, my life was complicated a little by the fact that I also wanted to take pictures. In the interests of staying dry, I have recently procured a water-proof jacket and my backpack has a built-in waterproof cover, so I didn’t bother bringing an umbrella. This, it turns out, was a mistake, not because I got wet, but because taking pictures became impossible during the rather heavy rain. After a while, I put the camera away and just walked.

The buildings along this waterfront felt a little bit like Sea-point or Camps Bay – bars and restaurants and huge hotels, all with some sort of sea-theme or serving some specific type of food or entertainment to differentiate them from one another. This beachfront must be packed and crazy in mid-summer. On a a rainy late-autumn day, it was fairly empty.

Not entirely empty. There were couples wandering along, huddled under umbrellas. And fishermen launching a boat. There were lone souls rushing along trying to stay dry. When the rain let up, there were jet-skiers and three children playing at the water’s edge.

The beach didn’t have any proper waves but the occasional ripple was enough to create the sound – that sound of the sea the permeates my dreams and makes me feel at home, even though I’ve never lived at the beach. Seagulls cried overhead and sat, miserably damp, in rows on the beach in the rain. The sea was blue-grey, stretching to the shore or the rocky-edge on three sides of the little bay. On the fourth side, the sea stretched to the horizon –  the open space that makes me love the sea – but there was also a huge, long bridge stretching right across it. The bridge was pretty. I like bridges and this one was attractive. I didn’t realise how huge it was until I looked through a couple of view-finder things on the shore and realised that it was a double-storey bridge – with one direction of traffic passing across the top layer of the bridge and the other on the lower layer. Huge trucks scuttled across this massive structure. I watched clouds rolling in from far out to sea beyond the bridge.

On the far side of the little bay, there were rows of blocks of flats, each one marked with a primary colour, screaming their purpose as holiday flats to all the world. I felt at home here in this beach-front world in the rain. I’m not good at tourist beaches when they’re packed with people partying their summer away, but I’m quite fond of them in the rain.

Eventually, with a last look at Gwangalli Beach, just as a stray ray of sunlight lit up the water and the bridge, I took a bus back to the station and the KTX back to Daegu.

Shopping and rain

Daegu, , ,

I went shopping the other day. So far in Korea, I haven’t really ventured further than my corner store, a little superette-type place down the road and the bakeries (there are three different Paris Baguette stores within easy walking distance of my flat, one on the way from the bus stop home). On Wednesday, I decided that it was time to venture a little further. Also, I had run out of paper and not having paper is a problem. So I headed down the road to have a look around. It looked like rain so I took an umbrella. I’ve been using an umbrella belonging to my boss since I got here – which he very kindly lent me on the first day, as soon as he discovered that I didn’t have one. It’s a little cumbersome but the promise of rain here tends to be fulfilled, so I took it anyway.

First stop was the department store. I have known that the store was there since soon after I arrived. It’s a large, pale pink, multi-storey monstrosity that says it is a department store (in English). Also the bus stop where I get the bus for work every day is just outside. I was particularly interested because I’m not particularly familiar with the department store concept. It’s something that never really took off in South Africa. I spent a little time wandering around trying to find the right entrance. Eventually I found an entrance and decided I should just go in there. I’m used to shops that clearly indicate where you should go in with large signs and security guards. This is a just a foyer area leading directly onto the make-up and perfume floor, usually hidden in South African stores behind other clothes and several more security people. Once inside, I was unsure of what do to next, so I headed directly for the elevator – following the woman in front of me. At the top of the escalator was a reassuringly English sign saying ‘youth casual’. I figured that probably didn’t apply to me so I headed up another floor and found the ladies’-wear floor, containing a staggering number of areas of clothes and shoes and handbags, each dedicated to a different designer or brand. I saw a name that looked vaguely familiar (Benneton, I think) and slipped quickly between rows of exquisite (and expensive-looking) shirts and jackets to look around – and attempt to blend in. I’m also looking for a pair of open sandals to wear in the oppressive heat and a handbag that is slightly more water-proof and a little less hippie-looking than mine, so there was method to the madness. Wandering around that floor for a while, I found myself somewhat disappointed. I didn’t actually try anything on, or even look at sizes, but every single item of clothing I saw seemed to be adorned with frills and lacy bits and odd patterns. I tend to wear fairly plain clothes, choosing to make an impression with colour rather than frills, so the idea that I might not be able to find anything here that isn’t frilly doesn’t thrill me. I wondered, vaguely and fleetingly, if it might have something to do with different body shapes – Korean women tend to be shorter, for example.

After a while, I headed up another level and found the ladies formal and work-wear floor, most of which seemed, to be honest, to be more of the same. Except for one thing that caught my eye – a stunning, shapely little black cocktail dress that I would love to own, in the M&S section, weirdly. It really is pretty and I may well just go back and see if it’s still there once I get paid. Until then (and possibly after then – I haven’t actually done the conversions yet) it is a little more than I’m willing to spend on a dress that I don’t currently have any opportunity to wear at 99,000 won. Sometimes I feel a little as if I’m living in Zim-currency-hell here. I also meandered onto the men’s- and golf-wear floor. At first I misread the sign and thought it said men’s golf wear, so I was a little surprised to see suits. Visions of South Korean men (and women once I saw the mannequins) wandering golf courses in suits. It appears women have two floors (excluding the youth floor) but men only get half a floor. Definitely gender discrimination right there. There is also a floor of house stuff – linen, fine china, cutlery and appliances. I may be visiting there soon. I currently have a non-fitted sheet for my bed and it’s beginning to drive me mad.

After wandering around looking (I’m sure) completely lost for a while, I decided to head out. I did find a music, movies, toys and kiddies’ books and clothes floor but couldn’t seem to find an exam pad. One of the greatest frustrations of being in a completely foreign place is not knowing where to find ordinary things. I’m used to having a stationers just down the road or at the nearest mall for the more complicated and high-quality stationary and, really, being able to get pretty much anything else at the supermarket. It appears they don’t have those kinds of supermarkets here. Or at least I haven’t found any yet. The ones they do have resemble far more closely 7-11 Friendlys than Pick ‘n Pays. Although, I think even the Friendlys in SA stock paper and pens.

On my way out of the shop, I looked around the sale section on the first floor and was hugely disheartened because all of the shoes and bags were, frankly, unattractive. I don’t ask a lot of shoes and bags – just that they’re functional and at least a little bit attractive. And plain – less of the buttons and bows is preferable. I’m hoping I was just overwhelmed and there really are some pretty ones here. There is also a Body Shop section. A little odd for Body Shop to be lumped in with Gucci and all the Yardleys and Revlons, but good to know they’re around – at least they’re familiar. On the way out of the door, in the foyer area, there was a table filled with umbrellas and a sales-girl (seriously, she must still be in high-school) trying to sell them. I was already carrying an umbrella but it’s a terribly large and clumsy one, so I stopped to have a look. The sales-person was quick to see a potential sale and rushed to show me a purple one with spots on it, which I assume she thought would suit me. I would have preferred something a little less… well… girly, but I just didn’t have the language to argue with her and it is one of those wonderfully convenient umbrellas that folds up to fit into a handbag, so I simply asked her to show me how big it was when opened (with gestures and facial expressions – but she got it) and then decided I’d take it. At which point, I wondered how to ask how much it cost. She must have noticed my confusion because she showed me a nice, clear label with the price (in numbers I could understand) and then took my money right there. So I now have a nice, lilac-purple, spotty umbrella, which fits snugly into my handbag.

On the way home, in desperation because I really do like to have paper to write on, I stopped into a little shop literally three doors down the road. I’ve noticed it before and it has things like picture books and paint and crinkle-paper so I thought I’d check it out, on the off-chance that they were a stationers, as well as a kids’-pocket-money-spending/art-supply place (they are across the road from an elementary school and a middle school and next door to a one-room after-school art academy). They certainly didn’t have a huge collection but I was (finally) able to find a book with blank pages. So, I now have paper to write on. I was helped by a sweet, if rather overenthusiastic, older lady who doesn’t speak a word of English. As I don’t speak a word of Korean, and I really didn’t understand her gestures, I wasn’t quite sure how we’d manage. I looked around at one point for a till (because it’s normally easiest to take the thing you’re buying to a till where they can ring it up and then look at the numbers) and saw with dismay that there wasn’t one. The book also didn’t have a price on it. Eventually I just opened my wallet and she must have understood because she pointed to a 1000 won note and nodded emphatically. Somewhat relieved, I headed home.

In the past two days, I’ve used the book plenty and been quite glad that I did buy a convenient and useful umbrella. It’s been raining a lot. On both Thursday and Friday mornings, it looked exactly like a cold, miserable Cape Town Winter morning – complete with rain alternating between beating down and drizzling and clouds drooping over the mountains like a teenage rapper’s jeans. It has been exactly the kind of weather that makes you want to do nothing but curl up on the couch with a book and a blanket and a good glass of rich, spicy red wine. I’ve spent many hours (while the kids are completing tasks) watching the rain fall outside my classroom window.

The only problem with this situation is that it’s also hot. It’s the kind of overpowering, all-consuming warm weather that fills me with the desire to spend marvellous afternoons drinking ice-cold beer in pretty beer gardens. Which results in some instinct-collision: I keep finding myself longing to curl up under a blanket with an ice-cold beer, or to sit in a beautiful beer garden with a glass of red wine and a book. It is very confusing.

I’m hoping next week might be a little lighter on the rain. I’m currently working mornings instead of evenings (much to my chagrin) because the kids are on summer vacation. This means that some days I’m done by early afternoon, providing lots of time to wander around and explore a little. I am even considering, if I have the time and inclination, trying to find my way to Downtown, where sock and shoe streets are apparently located. Assuming it doesn’t keep raining. And that I’m not suddenly told I’m teaching more classes.