Interesting encounters in Busan

A couple of days ago I was in Busan, which is the 2nd largest city in Korea. It's massive with lots of tall buildings and bussy streets; it's located on the East Sea; parts of it remind me a lot of Toronto.

I stayed at a new hostel, Zen Backpackers, which is in a cando appartment on the 29th floor ... the view and conditions here are awesome. June, the guy that owns this place is pretty cool ... very laid back. He used to work for Nike, but quit cause he didn't feel comfortable working for a company; so he travelled for a while and then came back recently to open this hostel.

For a couple of nights that I was there, there were few other travellers, so we hanged out a lot ... watching Korean movies at night and chatting beforehand. Turns out that June has been studyng some Korean traditional cultural things; he has been learning Fortune telling through a famous master in Busan, Acupuncture as part of Korean traditional medicine - turns out this is free to learn in class, one just needs to buy the books, and several other things.

Turns out all of those traditional things are based on the Yin and Yang philosophy, from Wikipedia; Yin is passive, dark, feminine, downward-seeking, and corresponds to the night ... whereas Yang is active, light, masculine, upward-seeking and corresponds to the daytime.

As he told me, even the food that is served in Korea has a balance that has come through the ages, even though most people today don't realize it (eg. chicken and kimchi is Yang, water and some vegetables are Yin). The fortune telling that he is learning is similarly based on those principles, not at all like the western psychics you may find in North America. Fortune telling is hugely popular in Korea ... you can see many tents and places offering Tarot card reading, and more sophisticated stuff.

June taught me about Chi, which is also based on Yin/Yang. I was able to push away a cigarette without touching it and make it roll on the table. It takes a little bit of practice, but after a couple of minutes I was able to do it more and more regularly; here is a video on someone potentially more advances (hopefully it's real :) )

He also showed me some Korean acupuncture; according to which, apparently, it was shown that points on your body correspond to points in your palm and thus you can apply accupuncture to areas of your palm and make some basic pain (eg. headache, stomach ache, soar throat, etc) go away. He has used it many times before with great success; fortunately for me, but unfortunately for my learning I didn't have any significant pain at the time.

He offered to read my fortune, but I refused as I'm quite sceptical and also a bit affraid of this at the moment.

I really like Korean movies, so watched a couple of movies with June; Memories of Murder - which I highly recommend and Secret Sunshine - which was OK and won some awards, but was not as interesting for me.

Impressions of South Korea

So, I've been in Korea for 5 days now and thus far I've been lucky to meet quite a few locals but mostly it has been through my past university acquaintances who are living here now.

Friendly Nature
I find the people here are very friendly and welcoming. I was walking along the market the other day, and decided to stop at a food stalls to eat this onion pancake ... so I sat down, there was only one spot next to a middle aged man. He was so friendly, he wanted to chat with me, but he didn't know any English, and despite me telling him that I didn't understand his Korean, he kept trying ... eventually we found some basic language with the use of signs :) ... he let me try a traditional alcoholic beverage called makgeolli. The people across the table were also very curiously looking at me, eventually one of them picked up a glass and said "cheers" ... at the end I was sooo full and I also couldn't finish the bottle of makgeolli, so I gave the remains to a group that was sitting across me ... they were very pleased and shook my hand on my way out.

A friend of Petru's, an acquittance from university, that I met today told me that if she knew that I, a new visitor, was in town she wouldn't have made plans with a friend later on, in order to show me around ... and on no notice, she joined us for a hike to the mountain ... I was amazed.

Safety and Trust
I have to say that I feel incredibly safe here; this might be the safest place I visited. The people are also very trusting ... the merchants at the food-stalls don't keep track of what you ate, you just tell them after you are done. Also, there were times where I went in the wrong direction in the subway and had to come out to change sides, but instead of the operator coming to question me to check if I had a ticket and asking me to explain, he just opened a door for me w/o asking anything. With so many people out drinking late at night, it's amazing that there is no observed damage or danger ... young people of all ages are out late.

Group Culture
Got to love the group culture! People here don't operate so much as individuals as they do in groups ... they study in groups, play online games as groups, go out in groups ... it's wonderful!

Memory of the past
Today, I was remembering how weirdly I used to look at Korean and Japanese food before I first tried it only 3 years ago ... I remember my Korean roomate in 2nd year university used to keep large jars of kimchi in the fridge ... to me that stuff looked scary; it was always red like blood and always left a big trail on the plates. It's strange, how my perspective has changed in such a short time. Today, I love both Korean and Japanese food ... and look forward to eating kimchi!

And so my explorations continue ... more impressions to come.

Arrived In Seoul

I made it to Seoul, but I'm running on practically no sleep in the last 36hrs.

Some quick observations

• Korean Air on the plane gives you disposable socks :), it's cool but I think right away you can tell the importance of foot hygiene in the culture?
  
• There were literally 7 Caucasian people on the plane and I ended up sitting next to one of them, what are the odds?
  
• I haven't seen many non Asian foreigners in the city yet, but it's still too early.
  
• The city reminds me a lot of Japan; Lots of little food shops, bright lights and accommodations with similar setup, leave your shoes outside.
  

Time for some zzzzz's for the little bee