Dr. Fish nibbling at my feet (Busan, South Korea)

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(Day 187 on the road)I arrived at the southern tip of South Korea, at the port city of Busan, in the early hours of the morning from Japan. Immigration was extremely fast; I was the third person off the boat and was in Korea less than 5 minutes later. Not bad at all, my dear friends at the Korean immigration!

Busan, meanwhile, turned out to be pretty unimpressive. Being the second biggest city in South Korea, it was lively and nice, but nothing spectacular. I spent the first day wandering around the beachfront and doing laundry and sampling the street food on offer. It was nice to be back in a country that offers street food - I loved the street food in China and missed it just as much in Japan, so it felt good to be snacking again. The second day, I visited the reputedly biggest spa of Asia. It was pretty big, had numerous pools including a cherry-bath along with some saunas, but to be honest, I had seen much bigger ones in China. So I can pretty confidently say that this claim is exaggerated.

What made the visit special however was something that they called "Dr. Fish": These are basically a few hundred tiny fish in a small foot basin, and as soon as you put your feet into the basin the fish start nibbling at your feet, biting off the dead skin. It is a very strange sensation having maybe one hundred little fish chewing at your feet, but I got used to it after a while. I stopped after twenty minutes though, not sure how far these little fish would actually go in eating my feet away.

In the evening, I took an express KTX train to Seoul (between 250 and 300 km/h most of the time, cool). And I was so happy to see that the Korean train attendants also bow when they enter or leave a train carriage. I had grown quite fond of this extremely funny sight in Japan, so it is great to see this tradition alive and kicking in Korea as well!

Next stop: Seoul (South Korea).



To view my photos, have a look at pictures.beiske.com. And to read the full account of my journey, have a look at the complete book about my trip at Amazon (and most other online book shops).

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Comments

[anonymous]

where was the doctor fish cafe