So, the second part of our long weekend away saw us head back to the coastal city of Busan. We had the chance in the evening to visit the famous Jagalchi fish market. While it's fascinating to see so many different kinds of fish, the fact that they're swimming around in plastic crates for the rest of their short lives left me feeling rather melancholy (see pictures below). Not so melancholy, however, that I couldn't go for some fresh sashimi for dinner. We asked a lady about getting a small sashimi meal as a taster. She immediately reached into a tank and pulled out a smallish flatfish, which looked at us and gulped air mournfully. I was all for chopping it up and dipping the pieces in some chilli sauce, but Shannon decided that she couldn't look her dinner in the eye and then eat it with a clear conscience, and so went to McDonald's instead.
The following day the hereto excellent weather turned, and we woke up to steady drizzle. This didn't bother us too much, as we were going to be spending most of the day inside and underwater. The main event of our trip was a dive in the shark tank at the Busan aquarium. As the dive is open to non-qualified divers, we spent the morning being trained by Michael, our annoyingly world-weary dive instructor. He was funny though, to give him his due, though you suspected he had had quite a few chances to hone his diving spiel. He did seem to know what he was doing though, which was reassuring.
The prospect of diving with sharks didn't really fill me with dread. Particularly not the shark aspect of it at least, but breathing underwater is actually quite nerve-racking, especially when I was trying to remember what all of the hand signals I had been taught meant and worrying about my regulator falling out as my jaw was sore from where a student kicked a ball in my face during a game of futsal (accidentally, I think). There was also the usual pressure of trying not to look an utter fool when trying something new, all of which led to a decent sized knot in my stomach.
Once we had got down to the bottom of the tank I relaxed a little. It really was quite peaceful, and the sharks seemed to barely even notice our presence. The same couldn't be said for the people in the perspex tunnel running through the tank, to whom we were a star attraction. We spent a long time at the bottom waving to small Korean children looking at us. I also spent a long time taking the photos you see below. The quality isn't so good, as my camera was in a waterproof bag which stopped me using the flash, but hopefully they give you the idea at least.
After the dive we took some time out from the aquarium to eat a late lunch at an Indian restaurant just across the road from the aquarium. While it was definitely not the best Indian I've ever had, it was very satisfying to get some curry in, particularly after sharing a tank with (incredibly docile) man-eating predators for an afternoon. After that we headed back in to the aquarium for a look around at some of the other exhibits, pictured below.
That pretty much concluded our trip to Busan. We hung out a little in the evening and ended up in a record store, where I spotted the little gem below. Seems that there are no lengths that Koreans won't go to to educate their kids. The following day we hopped on the KTX "bullet train" back to Seoul. This turned out to be a little disappointing. While it does reach the reasonably impressive speed of 310km/h, it does it with a great deal of rattling and fuss, and the carriages are nowhere near as nice as those in Japan. All in all, not a great train ride, and (sorry Korean readers) not a patch on the Japanese trains.
That's it for another blog post. There should be a few more on the way soon. I'm nearing the end of the semester here so things are winding down a little and I have some more time, though most of it will be spent planning next semester. Still, I have some more interesting photos to post up, so expect them in the next week or so.See you soon.
A
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