Booked a spontaneous Cherry Blossom Tour, and even with the rain, had a lovely time in a couple scenic spots. As much as I hate bus tours, this one was actually quite pleasant and lovely.
- Immigration and Getting Off the Ship
- The Tour
- Busan Riverside Park
- Views from Ship
- Humans. The Worst.
- Food
- Vibe Check
- Feedback
Photo Gallery: https://pics.mattichan.com/-uwc115
Immigration and Getting Off the Ship
Immigration
Because I’m getting off in Seoul and skipping Beijing, I needed to go through Immigration in our first port in South Korea. They had told us to get there bright and early at 7am so that we would meet with immigration and get cleared before the rest of the ship could be let off as well.
We all got there, and we waited about an hour, and the immigration officer still hadn’t shown up. Eventually they did show up, kinda just waved us all through, and then told us they needed to escort us off the ship. We all followed them down, and then when we got to the clearance line, instead of taking us to immigration officers, they just had us wait behind everyone else that they had let off the ship now, and told us just to join the queue and merge into the line.
So instead of being “first” to get cleared and having to wake up early, we were essentially the last ones off the ship. The hour and a half cushion that I had planned to get to the tour was dwindling at this point.
Navigation
To get to the pick up point, I had tried to find a route last night on Google Maps to find that there was basically nothing in terms of route information (car and walking are all blanked out). After some googling, I stumbled on this interesting reddit post.
Apparently, the South Korea government won’t let them store geo data, so there’s no route planning through Google Maps.
Ended up downloading a couple other apps to get to the pickup point (Naver Maps and Kakao Maps).
Since Mom and Nate had gotten off early since they didn’t have to go through the immigration debacle, they had made it to the pickup before I had, which was good. Beautiful views of the city as I walked through the terminal to the pickup point though, and was helpful to have Nate’s pin on Google Maps as a reference point to chase.
Got to the pickup point with about a minute to spare, and got a WhatsApp message that the pickup guide was running late cause there was crazy traffic. All good, had time to relax a little (in the rain) while we waited, but good to decompress from the frantic trek to the pickup point.
The Tour
Got from the pickup point to the bus after a short ride. Apparently they pick people up from a different directions in the city and then converge into one point for the bus. Pretty smart and efficient. We got on the bus to find that it was a dual language tour (bilingual might not be accurately describing it), there were two guides, one for chinese speakers and one for english speakers. They would tell us stuff in english, then pass the mic to the other guide who would say the same thing in chinese (I assume…I can’t understand mandarin).
Gyeonghwa Station
Took about an hour to get out to our first stop at an old railroad station. The train no longer runs, so we had a great time just wandering around with the awesome views of cherry blossoms everywhere. We got pretty lucky, they were telling us that we were right at peak season for Busan, last year the cherry blossoms came a week earlier, so this year they started the festival a week early, and last week, there was nothing to see even though the festival had started. We got full bloom, and with the rain, got to see them being bombarded by the rain and they were all going to fall off throughout the day and over night.
Also really enjoyed not just the lines of the train tracks, but the views with all the umbrellas out, not as photo props but because people needed them. Gave a lovely scene, especially the ones from way back, zoomed down the train tracks.
We had about an hour, so I wandered both pretty far down the tracks to get some nice people-less photos, and then also around the town a little bit (including almost wandering into a school).
Jehwangsan Mountain
Next stop, we went to a nice mountain that had a little tram to take us up to the top, but instead we decided to just walk since they said it was about 100 steps.
Mountain Hike
The hike wasn’t too bad, we got some nice views as we walked, and it was pretty quiet, and not a ton of people, so we got to just enjoy some nature and see the city / town from above.
Tower and Views
At the top, we were all wandering on our own, but somehow all ended up climbing all the stairs to get to the top of the tower (well I assume everyone else walked, but I guess they could’ve taken the elevator). Lovely views from even higher as well.
Park
As we came down from the tower, I started to descend the mountain, but ended up accidentally going down the wrong side of the mountain. Ended up stumbling into a little park. I was going to keep going, but it dawned on me that I might be coming down the other side of the mountain and then I’d be trapped and have to go around the mountain to get back to the bus, so I went back up after wandering a bit. Really nice park though, and no one was around at all, so it was quite peaceful.
I asked later, and all those rings are actually hula hoops that people can just take and use for exercise. I found it fascinating, because I feel like in the states, if someone put something like that in a park without securing it, it would be gone in about a day, but different culture and respect for community and communal use items I suppose….really nice.
Hike Back Down the Mountain
Got back up, and went down the right side of the mountain, while doing a short little side hike as I went down to see some more flowers and nature.
Yeojwacheon Stream
We met up with the guide, and instead of taking the bus, she told us just to walk down two more streets to the stream as traffic and parking was a little crazy. We ended up walking about 5 minutes to the stream and really just enjoyed the festival that they put on. Really long, nice view down the river (we didn’t make it all the way down in the hour that we had). Each section has a different setup and some artsy installations and views, etc. I assume that at night some of those things are lit up as well, but I quite enjoyed myself, especially with the little bit of rain coming down and adding a little bit of extra element to the photos.
Interesting Sculptures…
I’m a child. But also, I have no words.
Proof We Were There
We did take a few selfies, and you can tell, it was definitely wet…
Photos of Nate and Mom
Food
There was definitely some tasty food around, but I was also preoccupied with taking photos. We did split a couple mochi wrapped strawberries and they were SO good, like mind-blowingly good. Was very tempted to get some meat too, but Nate and Mom ended up getting some food, and I finished off some tteok-bokki.
Jinhae City
As we were walking around the mountain and the stream, we got to wander a bit around the city of Jinhae as well, which was actually quite lovely itself as well.
Drop Off and End of Tour
Took an hour to get back to Busan, and mostly slept on the bus, trying to also dry off and not die from hypothermia. We got dropped back by the station which was really convenient for us, and we had about 2 hours before all onboard time.
As I got off, one of the chinese speaking tourists on the bus ran into me and knocked the phone out of my hand and my screen protector on the front shattered and chipped (as well as some dents and scratches…but whatever that’s cosmetic). They didn’t even turn to say sorry or anything, they just kept walking off. Thankfully my actual screen is intact, but I’m annoyed cause I literally JUST got the screen protector replaced in Hong Kong, and I’m not sure where I can find another on the trip.
Walked around a bit around the Train Station to see if there were any cell phone stores or anything I could find that would have a screen protector. I find a store, but the guy in there was kinda rude and was like NO, we don’t have any screen protectors — even though I could see them on the rack literally right behind him. I assume he meant that there weren’t any for my phone, but was just kind of a frustrating interaction.
Busan Riverside Park
I bailed on trying to find a screen protector, and briefly considered scavenging for some food, but we had so little time, and I figured I’d just go back to the ship to eat. I moseyed my way back to the ship, knowing that there was a pretty big park on the way back that I had seen when I was leaving the ship this morning.
Had a great time just kind of decompressing from the day (and the annoying person who ran into me), and wandered the park for about an hour, since there was no one else in the park, and just took a bunch of photos with the rain and the beautiful lines everywhere.
Views from Ship
Got back on the ship and took a few panoramic photos that I stitched together after. It really was a beautiful day (I love a nice rainy day).
Humans. The Worst.
Throughout the day, I noticed all sorts of people leaving stuff around instead of just freaking cleaning up after themselves. Just….annoying.
Food
Back on the ship, got some dinner before settling down to start some editing of photos. I also had taken about 1800 photos, so knew I wasn’t going to get through them all today. Just selected the first pass at the photos to post, and I’ll go back through the rest when I have time.
Vibe Check
3 parts joy
2 parts anger – immigration and annoying people who run into you and don’t apologize — and break stuff
Feedback
Leave a comment or question if you have any thoughts! Anything you want to know about as we go around the world? Any things you want to share as feedback, or any images that particularly spoke to you. I’ll try to read all of them as time permits!
Matti 
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