Exchange Day 84 - Happy birthday!

I woke up feeling a teeny weeny grumpy today because of my project meeting that was scheduled right smack in the middle of the day. It sucks when such things happen as my whole day is basically wasted since I can't do much before or after the meeting, although I don't really have much things to do.

Breakfast was walnut rye bread with strawberry jam from PB! I regret not listening to my heart and buying the fluffy white bread because now I'm forced to endure this boring bread for another two breakfasts. The crust was dry and there were no crunchy bits of walnut inside the bread. At least the bread's thick. I love thick toasts.

The trees in school are all turning red and soon they'll all be bald! I should feel bad for the poor trees but I can't help but feel excited to see botak trees. Trees in Singapore are evergreen since we have sunny weather all year round so we don't get much of a chance to see them turn yellow, red and bald.

I finally had a very satisfying lunch of rice and many side dishes in my favourite cafeteria near school! Although I'm always awkward when I'm eating there (I feel like everyone's judging me for eating alone), I always finish all my food. I've eaten there for almost five times now and I still find it extremely delicious!

The young couple who was sitting beside me barely touched their side dishes and they only finished half of their rice! Why do they even step into the cafeteria if they're not hungry in the first place? I get really upset when I see people wasting their food because I feel that they're not being appreciative of the people who prepare the food. Also if everyone starts wasting food, restaurants and cafeterias will start serving smaller portions at the same price and food indirectly becomes more expensive!

I ordered bean paste stew for 3,500W and it's a little different from the ones I've had elsewhere as it's spicier. In a typical bean paste stew, you can find pieces of leek, cabbage, tofu and zucchini.

Today's project meeting turned out much more productive than expected but we're still meeting tomorrow to practise giving our presentation. I was hoping that we wouldn't have to meet tomorrow but I guess I should help my groupmates with their scripts as we'll be presenting in English, which my groupmates aren't fluent in.

I had 삼겹살 for dinner today, in (secret) celebration of my friend's twenty-first birthday, at Palsaik in Nampo-dong. Palsaik is best known for their eight-coloured fatty pork meat, which is basically fatty pork marinated in eight different sauces. 삼겹살 in Korean directly translates to 'three layered meat' and is usually barbequed and eaten wrapped in leafy vegetables. 

We ordered the Eight Colours set for 30,000W and it was good for four! The fatty pork came in this neatly classified tray that tells you the various flavours in the four most common languages used in Korea.

Other than the pork, each table is also entitled to a steaming pot of spicy seafood soup, when finished could be swapped for a pot of fried rice for a small fee.

Honestly, all the different pork tasted the same to me once barbequed and I couldn't really tell which was which. I gobbled them down hungrily regardless and I was surprised that I didn't pick out the fatty parts of the meat. Usually I do that, but I somehow forgot this time round.

After the meal, we headed to the Twosome Place for dessert, where we sprang a Chocolate Truffle cake on the very surprised birthday girl. We took a lot of mandatory selcas (but none directly featuring the cake) before heartily tucking into the decadent dessert.

The excited us who couldn't wait to tuck in.

Since there were only four of us, we each had to finish a quarter of the cake, which wasn't a difficult task actually. The cake was very rich (flimsy plastic knives would not be able to slice the cake) but not cloyingly sweet. The chocolate chiffon melted in my mouth and the lavish layer of truffle caressed my throat, rendering me speechless as I went back for more.

My sister and I both agree that I need help with food vocabulary as I seem to have exhausted mine.

Twosome Place is a dessert cafe that is better known for their luxurious cakes and chocolates, although they do serve the usual coffee and drinks. Although its name is suggestively exclusive, I believe solo diners will not be rejected from patronising the shop. I haven't tried going there alone though, but I will soon. Today's trip has left me asking for more of their yummy desserts.

xoxo, ❀

Exchange Day 79 - A day of surprises

I woke up late today so I couldn't have breakfast at the dormitory cafeteria but thankfully my room mate gave me some waffle biscuits the night before so I didn't have to eat nothing for breakfast! I think I'll have to start stocking up although it probably means that I'm going to more of a hermit.

On a random note, sometimes I wish I can wake up not caring about how I look and what I should be looking like. I really want to be happy with myself and I know that some things cannot be forced but I just can't stop comparing myself to others.

I went out for lunch though I didn't eat at a fancy restaurant! I wanted something satisfying like caifan with lots of small dishes but I ended up walking into a noodle shop because it said it sold well-being food. I'm a sucker for health foods and I thought well maybe there'd be disgustingly healthy dishes that I've never tried before (I love trying new things), but it was just like any other noodle shop with the exception of two items on its menu - mung bean soup noodles and noodles in red bean paste.

I was so intrigued by the idea of handmade noodles in a sweet red bean soup I hastily ordered it, to the delight of the boss, and sat down at an empty table, patiently waiting for my meal. While I was waiting for my food, the boss, who was idling, started handing out Jeju oranges to the customers in the shop. The orange looked really pretty and tasty although I'm not a big fan of citrus fruit. I prefer orange in the form of tea.

Soon after, my food came! Honestly it looked really boring but what else could I have been expecting when the name of the dish states so clearly what it was. The bowl was steaming hot, which was comforting in the cold but I realised I'm too much of an impulsive kid to enjoy hot noodles. I preferred something cooler that I could stuff heartily down my throat and feel its goodness filling up my entire mouth.

I love kimchi radish and the radish here were the largest I have seen by far!

Smooth handmade noodles in a hot red bean broth.

I thought the red bean soup would be sweet but not only was it not the least bit sweet, it even tasted a little salty. My wish for something special and unique came true, but I wasn't satisfied at all by the meal even though it did fill up my very hungry tummy.

So when I reached school, I bought a packet of crackers from the school welfare shop, something I've been eyeing for very long but I didn't feel tempted enough to actually buy it. It's called POP and resembled popcorn chicken, which I think was what it was really modeled after. There are two flavours - Spicy Chicken and Hot Chicken - I'm not sure what's the difference but I think Hot is spicier than Spicy. I bought Spicy but I think I could have had challenged Hot because Spicy wasn't the least bit spicy.

I've been experimenting with food photography these few days. I really like close up shots of food!

POP was satisfying so I didn't feel too sad about my miserable lunch.

I had dinner at Midarae again, it's a Japanese restaurant located right outside the street leading down from the main entrance of Dong A Hadan campus. The last time I went there I was really disappointed by their sashimi so this time I thought I'd try something new.

True enough, you can almost never go wrong with tonkatsu, especially when you have cheese and 고구마 (sweet potato) in it. It's by far the crispiest I've ever eaten in Korea and bonus points for not coating my mouth with grease like most fried food. The salad was fresh and not soaked in dressing and the fluffy rice tasted great with the furikake. The tiny hashbrowns were also fried to perfection and two were just right.

My favourite part of the tonkatsu had to be the sweet and fragrant goguma paste!

I tried to take a good photo of the stringy cheese but I ended up pulling them all out into a huge cheese ball.

It's been long since I had tonkatsu with that familiar sweet sauce and I'm not sure where I've eaten it before but it really brought back memories of my childhood. Normally I don't eat the same thing twice if I can help it, but I think I might make an exception for this. :')

xoxo, ❀

Exchange Day 78 - Cheapskate no more

Breakfast was a purple sweet potato rice cake that I bought from the station yesterday and a huge banana! I bought the bananas from a truck near the station too and they were really cheap (and delicious) at six for 3,000W. The banana I had was a little tart though, perhaps I should wait a while more before I devour the rest.

I was a sloth the entire morning but I can't help myself. I thought if I refrained from storing food in my room, I would go out more often because I had to eat but I guess I didn't know myself well enough. It's so true how they say that when you go on exchange you learn something new about yourself every day. I always thought that hunger was my achille's heel and I'd brave fire and water to eat, but I guess I was more resilient than I thought.

Thankfully for my tummy, us poor students have to attend classes whether we like it or not, so I headed out although I very much preferred loafing in the warm comforts of my room. I usually eat the same old things around school so that I'll be in time for the free shuttle bus but today, I am a changed woman.

I resisted my cheapskate urges and walked all the way to the subway station in the chills, determined to eat some good food for a change. Since I wasn't familiar with the area, I decided to just go for the first restaurant I saw and that was how I ended up in Outback Steakhouse. Prices at Outback Steakhouse are outrageous for the average Joe and you won't find anything lower than 10,000W (apart from drinks) in the standard menu. It would be cheaper to order a combo to split amongst friends but expect to spend an average of at least 25,000W per person.

However, luckily for single diners, they do have heavily discounted set meals from 12:00 to 17:00 every weekday, which I would say still isn't cheap but was very worth the price. These set meals start from 10,250W and are split into various price ranges to suit customers of all budgets. For each price range, there would be an option of a pasta, salad or steak. Since I was intent on being lavish, I ordered a Carribean Steak Salad for 19,250W, part of the middle-range courses.

(clockwise) Sweet rye bread with butter, Carribean steak salad, strawberry ade and cream of corn soup.

Each set meal entitles the diner to a main course, fruit ade of his choice, bread and butter, a bowl of soup and a cup of Outback Steakhouse's home-brewed coffee. For the health-conscious, the ade can be upgraded to a cup of healthier fruit juice for a small fee of 1,100W. Coffee is served after the meal but I opted out since I didn't like coffee.

The portion of soup was generous and I'm grateful that it was heartier than the effortless Campbell concoction.

I was given a choice between cream of mushroom and cream of corn, and naturally I chose the one that wasn't so common but I'm not sure if these soups are seasonal or kept fixed on the menu.

I was expecting the ade to be a cheap ripoff of a flavoured soft drink but it turned out more like fresh juice with fizz!

It's fun when you get the bread served on a chopping board and you have the liberty to slice your own bread but I didn't like that both the butter and the bread were so sweet they felt sugared.

The highlight of my meal, look at those juicy cubes of steak!

The salad was really flavourful, perhaps a little too much I would say. I like my greens raw and fresh but the ones in the salad were drenched in salad cream and spicy salsa and that was after they had been marinated in olive oil. I felt that this took the whole point out of eating a salad as I might as well have been eating a steak with all the trimmings. The fried crisps added a bit of crunch to the salad, which would have been great had the calorie count not already been skyrocketed by the excessive dressing. The beef cubes singlehandedly salvaged the salad and I have to say I didn't regret my order. They were succulent and not overdone, with an even distribution of meat and tendon. Amazing.

Dinner was at DB Roll, a cafe in the basement level of the Dong-A Bumin campus. I had been wanting to eat their tempura ever since I saw my classmate having it that day and now I finally have my chance! The tempura (튀기) comes in a set of standard 4pc or premium 6pc, and since I wanted hot 오뎅 (oden) as well to warm my freezing self, I took the standard set for 2,000W. The difference between the two sets, other than the quantity, was an absence of tempura prawn, which was only available in the premium set.

(left) Oden and (right) tempura.

Normally I won't order this as I don't like its plain taste but the one here was umami and it helped warm me up!

There's a variety of fried sweet potato, yam, dumpling and kimbab. Too delicious!

The weather's really cold now and I'm starting to miss sunny Singapore so much. I have come to realise that as much as I hate getting a tan, I cannot live without the warm embrace of the Sun, which is probably why I will never be a fair maiden.

xoxo, ❀

Exchange Day 77 - Waffle

Breakfast wasn't much of a spectacle today, I scoffed down some waffle biscuits and that was it. You can imagine how starving I was when I finally went down the mountain for food. Every time I go down to study, I bring a lot of books with me that are bulky and heavy so I try not to bring my laptop along. Because of that, I normally finish everything I need to do on my laptop before I go down and that seriously takes a very long time.

I wanted to try a cafe different from yesterday's but the new cafe I went to rejected me for they had no more available cabins for lone customers. Why do you even need to split your cafe into cabins and fine, I'll leave.

So I had nowhere else to go, Cafe Bene was teeming with people and the other smaller cafes were closed (most of them), leaving me with no choice but no go back to Angel-in-us. So embarrassing I actually chose the exact same seat, but I don't think the staff remembers. I found out that they had those huge waffles that I was craving for so I ordered a plain waffle and a cup of strawberry tea for my overdued lunch.

Look at all these books, how to still bring my laptop along?

After an excruciating wait of ten minutes, my food was ready! The smell of the waffles drifted throughout the entire cafe as it was cooking, tempting me to go on a rage before the waffles were ready to be served. How I have missed that familiar scent! I'm surprised by my ability to pause for pictures despite being so hungry I could devour two horses.

A plain waffle costs 6,000W and comes with blueberry jam and frosted sugar. The strawberry tea cost 4,200W.

The waffle was soft on the inside and crispy on the outside, and absolutely delicious when paired with the blueberry jam. I took at least ten pictures before settling on this, I think if I took anymore I would have rampaged on the spot.

The tea was really fragrant, I felt like I was in a strawberry garden but tastes just like normal black tea. I recommend ordering hot drinks if you're planning to stay for long, because you can ask for refills of hot water and that gives you better value for money!

My friend came down early to meet me for dinner so I wasn't able to do much (partly because I spent so much time eating and doing nothing). I regret lugging those books down. We had no idea where we wanted to go for dinner so we decided to be adventurous and hopped on the next bus that came along.

The bus brought us to the Busan Station, where we found a Pyongyang (North Korean anybody?) cafeteria while we were navigating through its back alleys. We ordered a 따로 국밥 (pork soup and rice) to split so that we could afford to eat more at other places later. 국밥 usually comes with the rice already in the soup itself, but for people like me who are resistant to the idea of eating wet rice, 따로 국밥 is best for you as the rice and soup are served separately for the diner to mix at his own discretion. 따로 means 'separate' in Korean and is useful to ask for separate bills when dining with friends too.

The pork soup was kind of bland initially, but that's because you have to mix in the chives and shrimp paste that came along in the side dishes. It's up to the individual how much he wants to add in, but I'd recommend throwing the whole lot in as it makes the soup much more flavourful. Chives also boost the fibre count of the meal, which is really important if you don't eat the kimchi. There's essentially no more fibre.

Exchange Day 76 - Fastfood and cafe hopping

Look at the pretty and red leaves on the way down the mountain! Autumn is indeed here!

Today is a 혼자있어부산 (alone in Busan) day, otherwise known as HIP day. I've coined a new term for such a day so it doesn't sound so pathetic and readers who are interested in traveling in Busan alone can find my blog posts easily. Actually, I'm supposed to be doing my homework but I feel so restless I decided doing trivial things would be more productive.

My professors have finally realised halfway through the semester that we students have not been doing enough so they conspired to bombard us with assignments all at once. Although it's nice that I finally feel like a student instead of a tourist, since I'm only left with one more month till exchange ends, I can't be bound by my academic obligations! They couldn't have picked a better time than now to start.

Enough about them. So like all previous HIP days (which weren't really HIP days as they weren't given a name yet), my blog entry will be about places in Busan that I've tried and tested that are okay to visit alone. I'm currently sitting in the Dong A University branch of Angel-in-us Coffee, a franchise cafe that proclaims they serve the world's best coffee. I wouldn't know since I don't drink coffee, but I've tried their lemonade previously and it was really refreshing!

Angel-in-us Coffee can easily be recognised by its angelic mascot (pun intended) and is one of the few ubiquitous brands of cafes around. There's at least one outlet in every big departmental store and for all you k-drama fangirls (or boys) out there, Angel-in-us is fronted by the face of prettyboy Kim Soo Hyun.

Poor Kim Soo Hyun is waiting for you to join him at the cafe!

I'd say that cafes in general are good places to frequent when you're alone and like in most parts of the world, you can find people hanging out in groups or just chilling alone here. I don't have the habit of chilling in cafes back in Singapore but I think this is one thing that might change when I go back.

I'd suggest to pick a window seat if you're alone! It feels good to have something to look at when you're bored of what you're doing, be it studying or reading a book or typing away at your computer!

My drink of the day is 핫국화차, which I'm guessing is hot osmanthus tea.

Okay a quick check on Google Translate tells me I'm wrong. It's not osmanthus, it's chrysanthemum. I'd hate to think that I actually paid 4,000W for chrysanthemum tea but this has a light fragrance and isn't sweet so I like it. It helps too that it has a cooling effect and helps neutralise the heatiness from lunch.

My room here has a magnetic effect that prevents me from stepping out of the room, even to get food, which is a feat in itself. I woke up around nine today and breakfast was a measly sweet potato fish bread that I bought yesterday night from the convenience store, knowing that I'll probably lounge in my room the whole day.

So I was really really hungry (cue giddy spells) by noon but I couldn't bring myself to go out until I finished the blog entry that was for yesterday. So a few hours past just like that and when I finally stepped out, it was 15:00. I swear I would have fainted in my room had I left any later. I did 30 lunges in the room and my world started to spin.

Lunch was fast food, I wanted to have Mom's Touch again but I was too abashed to step in so I had Lotteria across the street instead. Although I haven't tried the McDonalds here, I wanted to have shaker fries so I decided to go to Lotteria. The McDonalds here doesn't have shaker fries. I ordered a shrimp burger and was so stunned by a question the staff asked I forgot all about shaker fries. I think she was trying to ask me if I wanted to upsize my meal, which I couldn't understand but she did it for me anyway. I ended up throwing half of my fries and almost all my cola away. The burger was pretty tasty though.

The set meal cost me 6,200W, which is a crazy price I'll most probably not pay in Singapore for McDonalds and I regret my decision even before I got back to my seat. I keep making lousy food choices these few days what is wrong with me! I haven't been exercising so I attribute it to that, but I'm too lazy to keep my mind active with exercise. What a vicious cycle.

I realised after that shaker fries only cost 1,000W so I could have just gotten a burger and a packet of shaker fries for less than 5,000W since I didn't drink soda and having a drink wouldn't matter to me. Moping about my folly didn't make the meal less tasty than it already was, but I did scoff everything down faster than usual.

Hopefully dinner will be better later! I'm going to have barley rice later with my friend! The imo cannot reject me now since I brought a friend. (cackles) I'll update the post again after dinner!

edit/
The shop wasn't open for business today... I guess the auntie somehow managed to have the last laugh sigh. Since we couldn't eat barley rice, we decided to try a new restaurant so we went to Vongole Pasta and Pizza on the other side of the street.

Stepping inside the restaurant revealed a homely and well-decorated loft, very different from what I was expecting as we trudged up the dubious flight of stairs that led to the place. I was really impressed by the tree in the middle of the restaurant where messages of previous diners were hung splendidly on its branches. Closer inspection left us a little discouraged as most of the diners were couples but we did see another pair of friends, which was great.

We tried very hard to slowly decide what to eat, but looking at the limited choices they have, it wasn't much of a decision so we took our order in a jiffy. If you have a party of more than one, I'd like to recommend that you order something from the pasta menu and another from the pizza menu such that you can have the best of both worlds. The pasta portion wasn't big so the pizza sort of helped to make up for it too.

It was really sweet of the restaurant to give complimentary croissants and marshmallows as appetisers while we wait for our food, but we wondered what would have happened if we came alone since everything was dished out in pairs.

The garlic croissants were delicious but slightly sweeter than your average garlic toast.

Roasting marshmallows over a candle light probably helps make your date more romantic unless you burn your marshmallows or set them on fire like us.

The food came in less than fifteen minutes, which was great because we were both starving and it helped take attention away from the awkward silence in the restaurant.

(left) Creamy vongole pasta and (right) margherita thin-crust pizza. 

You can choose to have your pastas cooked spicy or not and since I didn't take spicy, we chose not to have it spicy but their menu recommends having it spiced. I love creamy pasta and this one was not too bad although it would have been better was there more sauce.

They had five pizza options and out of the five, three were sweet. The other one was spicy so we chose a tomato-based margherita pizza, which was kind of disappointing as there wasn't much flavour to it. But I liked the thin crust!

After the meal, the restaurant surprised us with a complimentary dessert of vanilla and chocolate ice cream topped with sugary syrup and sweetened cornflakes. Talk about diabetes. I appreciate that they gave two scoops of ice cream instead of one big one (you would think that they'll make you share everything), so that the couple could secretly mark their food territory even in the midst of this lovey-dovey sharing. Well I don't know about the others, but personally I'd be upset if my boyfriend ate my share of the ice cream.

We paid a total of 14,500W for the meal and it wasn't too bad considering the type of food we ate so I'd say that this restaurant is worth a try, but I'd recommend that you come with friends so that you get to try more for the same price.

xoxo, ❀

Exchange Day 75 - In search of persimmons and tea

I saw this online brochure not long ago about an Apple Festival that'll be happening in November in Cheongsung, a city out of Busan. Other than juicy big red apples, the brochure promised hands-on activities such as apple picking and apple pie making. My friend and I both loved apples and were craving for some farm experience, so we were both really keen on going there for a short trip.

We searched online for ways to get to Cheongsung from Busan and found out that there were only two available buses everyday - one at an ungodly 07:40 (ungodly because the bus terminal is two hours away from our dormitory) and the other at 13:20. As if this wasn't troubling enough, there were no direct buses back and the only way to get back was through a complicated series of walking and a total of three bus transfers. Reluctant as we were, we had to cancel our Cheongsung plans.

Since all the Singaporean exchange students will be going away this weekend, my friend and I (the sole survivors) decided that we have to go out too and we began furiously planning an adventure into the wee hours of last night. After much painful searching, we finally found another village that supposedly had a Daebong Persimmon Festival in Hadong, Gyeongsangnam-dong. Well, if we couldn't have apples, I guess persimmons were better than nothing at all.

To get to Hadong, we had to take an inter-city bus from Seobu Bus Terminal in Sasang, which was on Line 2 of the Busan Metro. There's a bus to Hadong from the Terminal once every hour with the first bus at 8:00 and the last bus at 19:00. Standard tickets are priced at 11,100W for a single trip and we bought tickets to the 13:00 bus. Since we had some time to spare, we decided to grab lunch at the food court.

There was a wide selection of food at the food court and they even had gelato and Manchurian cuisine. We met another friend on our way and since there were three of us, we ordered two large sets to share. Like all the other food courts in Korea, we got our meal tickets from the counter and waited for our number to be called on the TV monitor before picking up our food. Lunch was really delicious and cost only 13,500W for everything!

You wait for your receipt number to be called, then proceed to the respective stalls to collect your food.

(clockwise) Bean paste noodles, bean paste fried rice, fried prawns in sweet chili, spicy seafood noodle.

'Jjajang' in Korean refers to a salty black bean paste, so jjajangmyeon and jjajangbab are both variations of the bean paste dish, with one using noodles and the other using rice. The bean paste noodles (짜장면) tasted like the ones in the homely cafeterias I've eaten but the bean paste fried rice (짜장밥) was really out of this world. I haven't tried any bean paste fried rice from the local cafeterias though but this one was really delicious! The bean paste wasn't too salty and actually I could have just eaten the fried rice on its own, although the bean paste was a pleasant addition to the rice.

There were seven fried prawns in total so each of us could have at least two of those tasty morsels, which made me really happy. The chili sauce wasn't too spicy and the dish was really appetising! The spicy seafood noodle (짬뻥) on the other hand was much spicier and tasted a little like tom yam soup. I'd recommend this to people who want to try 짬뼝 but cannot take spicy food well. The ones in local cafeterias are much much spicier so this is a good gauge of your tolerance level.

Seafood yaki udon, which came with a raw salad and miso soup.

Udon's always satisfying and I've been wanting to try yaki udon (stir-fried udon noodles) for so long now and I'm glad I finally got my chance! Thank you for not ruining my impression of yaki udon and making my first experience wonderful! The udon was springy and the sauce was really tasty although it had a spicy aftertaste. The salad tasted like air and should be eaten with the vinegarette but I like eating air. (pun intended)

After a quick lunch, we boarded the bus and were off for our adventure! The bus ride to Hadong took a total of two and a half hours but along the way we chatted merrily and were bespectacled by the awesome scenery so time passed really quickly. A kind lady sitting at the seats adjacent to ours gave us a tangerine for no reason at all (we didn't even talk to her, she's so nice!), which reaffirmed my belief that the world is a bed of a roses. In deep appreciation, we ate the tangerine immediately and it was a juicy treat.

Our bus was waiting for us at Gate Number 8. Buses (and trains) here do leave right on time, so be sure to be early! I feel like I'm at the airport going away on a trip. Cheap thrill. 

Unlike the KTX, the bus conductor will check your tickets so be sure not to lose it.

Look at all that leg space! 

Getting to Hadong was just part one of getting to our destination. From the Hadong Bus Terminal, we had to take another shuttle bus into the Agyang Village. There's a timetable at the ticketing counter that tells you the schedules of the buses but you could also just ask the staff if you can speak a little Korean.

The Hadong Bus Terminal ticketing counter. The big timetable at the top tells you the schedules of the inter-city buses and the smaller ones pasted on the glass windows tell you more about local shuttle buses.

Our bus wasn't due for another half an hour so we decided to explore the vicinity. Almost every house in this neighbourhood had a persimmon tree grown in its backyard so we were convinced that our destination was near. We were gaping at the houses and their trees when we saw an ahjussi harvesting his crops. I greeted him in response to his friendly smile and he gave us a persimmon from his tree, which I shamelessly and elatedly accepted. It felt like a big overripe tomato in my hands and the whole journey I held it so cautiously like a newborn for every klutzy move might not only bruise it but result in a messy explosion.

Before this, the only persimmons I have ever seen were neatly packed into cartons in the local supermarket. I'm living the scenes in the storybooks now!

A daebong persimmon from the generous ahjussi!

After another half an hour ride, we finally reached the Agyang Village! The bus ride was a comical one as the bus stewardess (yes you heard right) and bus driver overwhelmed us with their overzealous welcome and we were embarrassed when we realised we had to buy a ticket for the bus ride, which we didn't. We ended up paying in cash, which amounted to 1,500W per person.

Along the way we saw an abundance of persimmon trees, which we plotted to steal from if we could make our way back and beautiful marshes which glittered under the sun. Our objective was to join the Persimmon Festival at the village and also try its local delicacy, a type of clam that can only be found in the marshes of their local river. Other than persimmons, the village is also well-known for its green tea and tourists also go there to visit the Hwagae Street Market, Choe Champan House of Pyeongsa-ri, Ssanggyesa Temple and the Maeam Dawon Tea Garden.

As Murphy would have it, we couldn't find our way to any of the above attractions but we did stumble upon a traditional teahouse, where we enjoyed some very fragrant black tea. (later as I'm writing this post, I found out that this teahouse was the Maeam Dawon Tea Garden so we didn't actually go home achieving nothing)

A golden tree near an elementary school.

It says right there "The Maeam Tea Culture Center" but we didn't know that it was a tourist attraction as the place looked uninhabited.

Being inquisitive tourists, we walked right in anyway. 

The tea leaf garden-plantations of the Maeam Center.

The alfresco area of the Maeam teahouse, which would have been great during Spring.

The front of the Maeam Teahouse.

Tea is available at 2,000W per person in the teahouse from 10:00 to 18:00.

The teahouse owner, thinking that we were Korean, told us that the Tea Museum was closed for repairs but we were free to have some tea in his teahouse in very fluent Korean. Thankfully his English-speaking Korean friend realised his folly and explained what he said in English we could understand. The owner was very embarrassed when he realised that we were foreigners much to our amusement.

One of my friends was from London and how could we pass up the chance to have tea when we're travelling with an English friend? So we enthusiastically accepted the teahouse owner's invitation to have tea and my friend was really pleased by our accidental discovery as the tea served resembled her English tea back home. We had an amazing afternoon tea chatting and munching pretzel snacks (that another friend brought), pretending to be English (just me) in the serenity of the tea fields and mountains.

The indoors of the teahouse.

Visitors who really like the tea served can buy tea leaves back as a souvenir.

Where we sat. The teahouse owner was apologetic that his teahouse was really small, but we were so amazed by the decorations inside.

A traditional room where tea cultural experience activities might have been held.

Our black tea! The teahouse owner had to help us as we didn't know the proper procedures for serving tea but we realised that there wasn't anything fanciful or special to it. We could have just done it ourselves.

Buses didn't come around the village that often and we were afraid that we would miss our bus back to Busan so we decided to head back towards Hadong early since we couldn't find anything else to do at the Agyang Village. Coincidentally, we boarded the bus that brought us to the village with the enthusiastic bus driver and bus stewardess and they semi-dragged us on board the bus. We found out that the 1,500W we paid previously was for a round trip so the trip back to Hadong was free! It was really funny how the bus driver exclaimed in bits of English that the ride was free and we didn't have to pay, while the bus stewardess (very) warmly welcomed us back on the bus.

Hungry for a good dinner, we headed towards the Hadong Marketplace in search for local fare. We found many bakeries and fast food outlets before we reached the Marketplace but we were determined to not to bow down to commercial joints especially since our itinerary failed badly, so we weaved in and out of the streets looking for local cafeterias.

At long last we managed to find a street of small restaurants and we settled on one that sounded most bustling and popular. We asked if we could go in and have a seat but the shoplady started waving her hands flaccidly and animating her movements with Pokemon sounds. If we were in a pokemon battle, she would have KO'ed us. "Shop Lady used Confusion. It was super effective!"

Befuddled by her advances, we stepped right in and we soon found out what she was so expressively trying to tell us. This video tells all.

Although our dinner was highly barbaric, cruel and disgusting, it was unforgivably delicious. The other customers in the restaurant, apparently high on soju, were boisterous and so friendly that we felt at home almost immediately. They gave us food from their tables and we had so much fun conversing and laughing as if the language barrier didn't exist at all.

Through numerous confirmations with the shoplady and searches on the Internet, I found out that our dinner was actually 언장어 (frozen eels) cooked live in a tantalising hot sauce. Their shape looked like eels to me but I thought eels had eyes and all they had were suckers so I didn't dare to be sure. From my previous experiences with unagi, they didn't taste anything like eels, they had the chewiness of octopus tentacles and really just looked like some sort of alien life form to me. In retrospection, I wouldn't be surprised if the shoplady revealed herself to be a half-alien with tentacles for feet.

Where I watched my food die right before my eyes, and I ate it.

The shoplady was the pretty lady in blue and we found out that the remaining customers were all single moms who owned shops along this street.

After our dinner, we took a photo with the remaining customers and the shoplady and bade farewell to our newfound friends with sincere hugs and well wishes. The bus ride home, although so long I took three naps, felt warm and blissful. :')

xoxo, ❀