First on the list was finding some accommodation, and after my last stay I knew exactly where I wanted to go. We made our way to the rather luxurious Dejavu Hotel and spent a good half an hour soaking in the air conditioning, queen sized bed, giant TV and double bath before heading out to our real first stop (in terms of my tour-guide responsibilities) - Gwangalli Beach.
"Hold on a minute," you may be thinking to yourselves. "We thought you wanted him to leave with more than just a tan."
The beach, while quite lovely, was not the reason for our visit to the area. From the beach front, there is a beautiful view of Gwangan "Diamond" Bridge, nicknamed Diamond Bridge because of the way that it lights up at night with shimmering lights in ever-changing colours. There is also a wonderful view from the beach front of what I assume was Haeundai (the other beach area) which was lit up like Vegas with neon lights showering every building and what I was determined (but Grant didn't believe) was a Ferris Wheel doing the rounds. The Gwangalli Beach area is also, according to some friends of mine, the best place in Busan for restaurants, clubs and pubs. And so we walked along the beach front, took in some wonderful views, some decent Italian food and wandered the side-streets lined with pebbled and lit-up gutters (they looked more like beautiful streams than anything else) before heading back to the hotel nice and early - we were tired out from the bus ride and the walking and had a long day ahead of us, after all!

Waking up at eight o'clock on Saturday took a ridiculous amount of effort. I think that I have become far too comfortable sleeping in over the last month and am not used to early morning wake-ups anymore. But eight o'clock it had to be if we were going to fit everything in! Though the first stop of the day was supposed to be the Forty Steps (or the Sa-ship Gyedan in Korean), on exiting the subway, I discovered that the directions I had looked up were wrong. We quickly found a map of the area and discovered that we were in fact far closer to what was supposed to be our second stop, Busan Tower, so we decided to make our way there instead. After climbing a steep hill and many a step, we found ourselves at the bottom of the tower, sweating profusely despite our showers ten minutes earlier thanks to the ridiculous heat and humidity. We walked into the air conditioned building and elevatored up 120 meters to the top of the tower where we were delighted to find not only wonderful views of the city, but also a stronger air conditioner - I don't quite know which we were happier about. After taking in the view and the icy coldness for as long as we dared, we made our way back to the park surrounding the tower, where I played a traditional Korean throwing game before we decided to try and find the Forty Steps once more.

The Forty Steps were not easy to find. We wandered down the streets, my wonderful Busan map in hand, getting thoroughly lost until a Korean man approached us and walked us in the right direction. The Forty Steps and the area surrounding it were renovated a number of years ago and restored to the condition they were in after the Korean War. This basically means that the streets are cobbled rather than tarred, the lamposts are wooden and there are a number of bronze statues scattered about the area. While the history surrounding the area was certainly interesting, the area itself was rather boring and so, after a photo-opportunity on the steps and a stop into the nearby (air conditioned) convenience store for a drink, we made our way to the next area.

Next on our list was supposed to be a famous Korean market place that stretched from Napo-dong subway station to the fish market in Jagalchi, but we opted out of it because of the heat and decided to make our way straight to the fish market by subway. After a brief break from the schedule for a non-fishy lunch, we made our way into the market place and were surrounded by all the different fishes in bowls and tanks, alive and dried, all waiting to be sold. We did some looking around and had just made our way into the restaurant area to do some more looking when one of the fish tried to make its untimely escape. It was quickly caught, of course, and the man who caught it held it up for us, a gleam in his eye, asking if we wanted to try it. It would be an experience, we decided, and the fish had obviously chosen us. We would do it. We sat down at the table and were brought the side-dishes while the fish was being prepared for our consumption. As the fresh sashimi was placed on our table, we suddenly realised that neither of us had bothered to ask how much it was going to cost. We shrugged the thought aside though, figuring that a couple of pieces of sushi couldn't be that much, and even if it was a little more than it was worth, it was still an experience worth paying for. We made our way through the sashimi, which I wasn't too fond of, and got up to pay.
"Aniyo," the man bellowed, gesturing for us to sit down.
"Oh my God," I whispered. "There's more."
The horror in Grant's eyes showed me that he felt the same way. We were both stuffed! We hadn't anticipated this meal and had already eaten a full lunch before hand. Plus, more meant that it was going to be more expensive! But what could we do? We didn't want to offend the man who had gone through so much effort to prepare the dish and we didn't want the fish to have been killed for nothing. We sat back down and waited, our stomachs moaning as we tried to squeeze everything down to make room for more. The next course came, this one far more to my taste than the overly-chewy sashimi, and together we managed to eat our way through a little more than half of it before giving in to our complaining stomachs and getting up to pay the bill, which ended up being double what we had expected. Kicking ourselves, we made our way a little further down the fish market before deciding that neither of us wanted to look at another fish and heading towards the harbour.

Taejongdae was our next destination with its fairly easy hiking trails and its wonderful view - on a clear day, it is said that you can see one of the Japanese islands from the Observatory. But after looking at the map and realising how long it would take us to get there, thinking of our already aching feet and imagining how sweaty we would be by the end of it, we decided that walking there was not an option. Instead, we decided to take a ferry around the island and take in the views from the sea. And so we made our way to the harbour and bought ourselves a couple of tickets for the ferry that traveled between Napo-dong and Haeundai Beach. As we were waiting to board the ferry, we made a new friend, Mr Lee, who started talking to us in fairly good English about our jobs, South Africa, the weather, baseball and any other subject that came to mind. He became fast friends with Grant, and messaged baseball caps, baseballs and ten rand notes were passed between them before the trip was over. I got to see Taejongdae from the boat as I had hoped, though the smog prevented us from seeing the Japanese island, and the other side of Gwangan Bridge (it was indeed a Ferris Wheel that I had seen the night before) as well as numerous other sights including lighthouses and scenic views of the city before we came to a stop at Haeundai Beach and made an unplanned stop at the aquarium. After wandering around there for a couple of hours, we made our way back to the hotel for a brief freshen up before heading out for a night on the town.

We had done our research and had decided that Seomyeon was where it was happening in terms of Western bars. We even found one that sounded decent for dinner and wrote down the directions, expecting someone there to tell us the best place to go next. We arrived outside O'Briens only to find it deserted. O'Briens, it turned out, had moved. We started walking around, but quickly got lost in the maze of skyscrapers and could find no Western Bars and, worse still, no restaurants. By 10pm we had just about given up, when I spotted a pub in the distance that looked vaguely decent, but by the time we were finished eating, neither of us was in much of a partying mood, so we made our way back to the hotel once again for an early night.

Sunday morning started with a phonecall from one of my friends who never stops talking, and so by the time I hung up the phone, it was 9:30, an hour later than we had intended to wake up and half an hour before we were supposed to check out. We bundled up our belongings as quickly as we could, throwing a number of things into my handbag much to my shoulder's dismay, and were out by 10:30, a little later than we would have liked but not too disastrous. With our backpacks safely stored in a locker at the subway station, we made our way to our last destination - Haedong Yong-gungsa, a Korean temple that is uniquely located next to the sea. It would be my first temple visit, and I was my usual trigger-happy self, dying to capture as many pictures as I could. Unfortunately, we had limited space on the memory card, and I was only allowed 150 photos - a limit that weighed on my shoulders with every squeeze of the trigger and twist of the focus. It may seem like a lot, but consider that in one day I took 450 photos. That should tell you just how much of a limit 150 placed on me. Even though I had been told that there were better temples to visit, once we arrived and were greeted by the calming sound of the waves and the beautiful statues, shrines and buildings, I was immediately reassured that this was the right place for my first temple visit. We strolled between the statues, me clicking away of course, had our pictures taken beside the giant golden Buddha, rubbed the stone Buddha's belly for luck and thew coins from a bridge, aiming at the bowls that some of the statues held. Grant and I have different interpretations about what the bowls mean - I believe that each statue had a specific significance (health, wealth, happiness, etc.), and if you hit the one that you were aiming for, you would be granted luck in all of your future endeavours of that kind; Grant believes that if you get the coin in any bowl, you can make a wish - but whatever the symbolism behind the act was, it was interesting and fun, and the Koreans had a good time watching us attempt it. We then caught a taxi to the nearest subway station, went and got our bags and headed to the bus station, getting the soonest bus we could. The bus ride back was also an interesting one, as Grant made another Korean friend. The man sitting next to us, who we later came to know as Kim Eung-jo, started chatting away, practicing his broken English, and I became the translator converting his broken English into something that Grant would understand. And so we arrived back in Cheongju with bags fuller than we had left with, experiences under our belts and two new Korean friends.