Fish any one?

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Tuesday-Day Eleven Busan South Korea
A huge harbour complex greeted us prior to breakfast this morning, the third largest port in the world. Mountains on all sides, a mixture of commercial and high density housing crowded between very new port facilities.

Docking at 8am today we were informed previously that if you weren't taking a tour you would need a taxi into Busan which would cost around 7200Won.
We were pleasantly surprised to find shuttle buses.
Armed with a map, and a plan to see the UN Memorial cemetery we joined the throng of people waiting for shuttles, tours and taxis and quickly decided to give this a miss and go to the Maritime Museum which was within the terminal area.
But on our way there we saw a shuttle bus with the door open and no one on board so we followed another couple and went and sat down. We felt quite guilty about queue jumping but the line up of the 100's of people waiting in the sun was not looking very appealing. And within 10minutes we were on our way to the city, being dropped off at The Phoenix Hotel.

Directly over the road looked interesting with an English sign beckoning us to visit the fish market. And so we stumbled into Jagalchi Market a four level fish market right on the harbour, with all manner of live and dried products from the sea. Crabs, fish of all shapes and sizes, prawns, slugs, eels, and other unidentified products in aerated fish tanks, made a colourful display with women busy shucking, peeling, scaling and preparing the fish.
Upstairs were a multitude of small restaurants, most with seating on the floor with a very low table.

Surrounding this area were markets selling all manner of other products, from veges to plastic toys. Very much reminiscent of China with bargaining expected.

And in the middle of all this was a coffee shop, a little slice of serenity and civility in the madness.

Crossing back over the road we found Gwangbok-ro shopping street. This is the designer label end of the shopping, complete with all the big fast food names, but in the middle of the two roads there was a middle alleyway of restaurants and tiny shops.
Quite by random we chose an upstairs restaurant and hoped for a picture menu.
The menu indicated a table full of little dishes for 8000 Won, and we tried to ask if it was Ok for 2 of us to share this and we asked for 1 other main dish and a bottle of beer. And what came out was 2 lots of the little dishes, 2 bottles of beer and 1 main dish. And free wifi, our third connection only in the entire trip.

Wifi and Internet is available on board but at a cost of 75c per minute and with a 25 minute delay in actually downloading anything, totally not worth using unless you really have to.

The table was full of little dishes of the most incredible variety of food from dried seaweed, a big sardine, a seafood/tofu broth, dried fish, kimchi, a plate of various green leaves used for wrapping up your little dish contents, and various other unnamed and unidentifiable food. The taste ranged from sweet to sour to bitter and spicy and everything in between. And 3 Hite beers to wash them down. Grand total was 32,000 Won which is about $32.

Grabbing a taxi back we had 8000Won left which we were told was more than enough to get to the port again.
On our map we had a handy sentence, “take me to the cruise ship" in Korean but the fellow knew the word cruise ship when we said it.
Traffic was very heavy and we crawled along with the taxi straddling 2 lanes of traffic at times, driving conditions just like China.

To my dismay the fare was 9,000Won and all we could do was show him the 8000 and indicate we had nothing left. That must look so pathetic when we have stepped off something like our ship, but it was the truth. He waved for us to get out of the cab and he sped away, no doubt with stories of the westerners who are rich and mean.

Right near the cruise terminal buildings is the magnificent Maritime Museum. A very new complex, with floors 3 &4 devoted to all that was sailing both recreational, scientific, past and present throughout the world. There is a huge interactive section for children with a touch tank and other fun things to play with, and all for free.

Our last sail away today, with drummers and the usual farewell of waving and streamers.

The Schooner Bar hosts all the trivial pursuit as well as today's Mandarin class with Kevin (his English name).
We learnt to count, as well as using the hand signs for the numbers that they use in China plus basic conversation phrases.

Tonight we are actually going to a show which is a Beatles tribute. 7pm session for us, by 9pm we are almost too tired to do anything; our big day of walking here and there with both of us nursing foot injuries is taking a toll on our stamina.

What a great show, really authentic reproductions of the top hits of the Beatles, 4 guys who almost looked like them, played the instruments of the day like them, and sang and spoke complete with Liverpool accents. They started with Hard Day’s Night, progressed to Sergeant Peppers, and finished with a huge Hey Jude sing-along and then came back for an encore Twist and shout with all of us up dancing. Easy way to get a standing ovation!!!

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