Saturday 22nd March

Well here we are in Busan in the Republic of Korea another heavy industry centre with massive docks. We are some twenty-five minutes away from town by shuttle bus, not much chance of walking it then, so onto the shuttle bus we scuttled, well queued as everyone else had the same idea and we hadn’t given enough time for the early birds to fly the coup. Although I have spent about a week in Busan before, it was some 35 years ago and I’m afraid I can’t remember much, but one thing I’m sure about was that the underground had not been built because I was there as part of a consortium who were bidding for its construction. Well we didn’t win the contract and the underground has been built for many a year.

The city centre has an amalgam of far eastern elements. The markets are just as vibrant as many others but Korea, in many of its cities, has built underground markets. Busan’s underground malls are similar to Seoul’s, perhaps not quite as plush but just as effective in protecting against extremes of temperatures. This use of being underground is interesting because we saw in Brisbane that they put the traffic underground so the public could enjoy the outdoors without traffic. Here in Korea they reverse the system to protect the public from the outdoors, the lighting is such that you could easily imagine you are in a ground level mall.

Busan also has a massive fish market which was just as fascinating I took quite a few videos which I will try to upload in Hong Kong where I’m banking on some better links. But to give you some idea of the content, we watched in fascination as girls skinned live eels putting the still writhing ‘naked’ bodies in the pots for sale. Yep we got video, but everywhere in the market were live fish, crabs, lobsters, shellfish and molluscs. There was a lot to see but after a while we realised that a lot of it was more of the same. The markets were packed with locals though and the fast food stalls were going flat out dunking strange looking white blobs into hot fat which instantly turned into appetising golden crispy objects. Many of the people eating them were taking photos before tucking in (evidence maybe?). Anyway that really was all there is to see in Busan in a few short hours (unless you are into temples and we’ve heard one or two people say we are all templed out. As you probably know, this part of the world is rather over populated with the genre). So we clambered aboard our shuttle and made our way back on board, in time for a bite before nipping up into the commodores bar for a couple and to watch our departure, as the sun set. So just about a twelve hour whistle stop. Next port Shanghai.