G & I arrived in Busan at 8.30 a.m., 14th August; having left KL at 1 a.m. that morning. We took the train to our hotel, with much help from the friendly locals.
We stayed at the Grand Motel, which ironically, is not grand AT ALL. We had a lot of trouble finding it, dragging our suitcases in the heavy drizzle that had started on our way to Nampo station. Something was wrong with the map, so we looked in the wrong direction as we came to a crossroad at the back lane. Headed up a hill (by escalator) and then had to pull our luggage down a flight of steps back to where we were 10 minutes earlier. The rain didn't help, and the steep incline forced me to control my luggage from zooming off while balancing on heels and holding an umbrella. We were lucky the owner of the place saw us looking around and asked if we were looking for Grand Motel.
We went in to a staircase and up a lift to the reception area on the 4th floor. If she hadn't been there, we would have spent much much longer looking for the place. I later realised they didn't even have a big sign that wrote the name in Roman letters!! I only made out the name written in Hangul on the second day. Lucky for us, the rooms were clean despite the shabby exterior. The bathroom fittings looked like the were from the 60s, but it's CLEAN. The towels were a bit of a joke, though.
I thought the Ojakgyo brothers had the small towels only for washing their face in the morning. However, we discovered that in most Korean hotels, they only supplied those small Good Morning towels for bathing too! We had like 6 per room, so there was enough. A bit weird not having a towel to wrap around you after showering.
Somehow the scale of the place was smaller than I had imagined from looking at maps because Jagalchi Market, which I imagined to be miles away, was actually right across the street from our hotel! A park which we initially didn't want to explore, was just up the street. Basically all the way up the escalators that we had taken that morning.
A quest to find local SIM cards took us to an underground marketplace connected to the subway station. Actually that was all we managed on day one, because after checking in to our rooms, taking a shower, resting (for all of 15 minutes), we just walked from one place to another to find a place that sold SIM cards. It was rather frustrating, really. Then the shopkeeper took forever to activate the SIMs, due to some complication with the systems. In the end, we had to take out our local SIMs and store them away because the Korean number wouldn't work properly otherwise. We were glad to have it, though, because it made communication so much easier. The data was ever so useful for looking up maps and getting directions to places.
Coming back, we walked down the shopping area trying to get to Jagalchi and find food. Somehow we walked all the way down to Jagalchi station, which was rather far down the road. Found food at the fish market and later walked around taking photos of people and the rather fascinating array of seafood sold.
Eventually we crossed the road to the shopping district and looked around the night market. We were already full, so we went for coffee to warm up and get out of the drizzle that had started again. Went up the hill to Busan Tower. We actually went UP the tower and took photos from there but I much preferred the park below. We went back just before midnight and rested for the next day.
We stayed at the Grand Motel, which ironically, is not grand AT ALL. We had a lot of trouble finding it, dragging our suitcases in the heavy drizzle that had started on our way to Nampo station. Something was wrong with the map, so we looked in the wrong direction as we came to a crossroad at the back lane. Headed up a hill (by escalator) and then had to pull our luggage down a flight of steps back to where we were 10 minutes earlier. The rain didn't help, and the steep incline forced me to control my luggage from zooming off while balancing on heels and holding an umbrella. We were lucky the owner of the place saw us looking around and asked if we were looking for Grand Motel.
We went in to a staircase and up a lift to the reception area on the 4th floor. If she hadn't been there, we would have spent much much longer looking for the place. I later realised they didn't even have a big sign that wrote the name in Roman letters!! I only made out the name written in Hangul on the second day. Lucky for us, the rooms were clean despite the shabby exterior. The bathroom fittings looked like the were from the 60s, but it's CLEAN. The towels were a bit of a joke, though.
I thought the Ojakgyo brothers had the small towels only for washing their face in the morning. However, we discovered that in most Korean hotels, they only supplied those small Good Morning towels for bathing too! We had like 6 per room, so there was enough. A bit weird not having a towel to wrap around you after showering.
Somehow the scale of the place was smaller than I had imagined from looking at maps because Jagalchi Market, which I imagined to be miles away, was actually right across the street from our hotel! A park which we initially didn't want to explore, was just up the street. Basically all the way up the escalators that we had taken that morning.
A quest to find local SIM cards took us to an underground marketplace connected to the subway station. Actually that was all we managed on day one, because after checking in to our rooms, taking a shower, resting (for all of 15 minutes), we just walked from one place to another to find a place that sold SIM cards. It was rather frustrating, really. Then the shopkeeper took forever to activate the SIMs, due to some complication with the systems. In the end, we had to take out our local SIMs and store them away because the Korean number wouldn't work properly otherwise. We were glad to have it, though, because it made communication so much easier. The data was ever so useful for looking up maps and getting directions to places.
Coming back, we walked down the shopping area trying to get to Jagalchi and find food. Somehow we walked all the way down to Jagalchi station, which was rather far down the road. Found food at the fish market and later walked around taking photos of people and the rather fascinating array of seafood sold.
Eventually we crossed the road to the shopping district and looked around the night market. We were already full, so we went for coffee to warm up and get out of the drizzle that had started again. Went up the hill to Busan Tower. We actually went UP the tower and took photos from there but I much preferred the park below. We went back just before midnight and rested for the next day.
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