On Baby A's birthday, the c-section surgery went as planned. I walked into the OR around 9:30am and was pushed out around 2 hours later. W was instructed to wait outside while the team was getting me prepared for anesthesia. He then got invited to come in and sat next to me while the team worked on getting Baby A out of me 😂. W was a good DJ and Baby A was born while Taylor Swift's Shake It Off was being played. So...did I feel any pain during this life-changing surgery? No, I didn't. I had a spinal block. I never felt any type of pain during the surgery. Getting the anesthesia injected - however - was the most uncomfortable part of the surgery. There was a lot of pressure. I felt my back being pulled or pushed, or something. It just felt very uncomfortable, not painful, but very uncomfortable. It was also hard to try leaning toward the source of that uncomfortableness. Learning to relax while being uncomfortable was a very hard thing to do. But it was necessary. Once it...
On our second day in Busan, we woke up early (8am on vacation is pretty early!) only to find water leaking from the ceiling of our room!! There was already a puddle of water on the floor (between the bath area and the sleeping area). It turned out it rained all night the night before (we heard nothing! Slept through a rainstorm lol) and the water coming down from the ceiling was actually...rainwater! We talked with the hotel receptionist and they offered to switch us to another room but the soonest they could get a room ready for us was at least hours away. So we thanked them for the offer but chose to stay in the room. The receptionist told us they would do what they could to patch things up and kept on apologizing until we walked out of the hotel lobby.
The first place we headed to was the subway station. Similar to Seoul's subway stations, the underground was (and I dare to say still is) home to many little shops and mom & pop stores. We stopped by a clothing shop that was apparently having a closeout sale. All clothes including jackets, wool coats, silk dresses, and accessories like shoes and belts were 4900 kwon, equivalent to less than 5 bucks each. I had to go in and take a look at what the shop had to offer lol! There were many clothes in store, though we didn't get anything there.
We had breakfast at a what we called "tempura shop" (we didn't know the name of the store). The shop had trays of fish cakes, tempuras, and tempura-like items. There was a huge pot of oden soup next to the cash register. Turned out soup's complimentary for all customers. We got 2 crab-filled tempura items for breakfast. The cashier heated these up for us with...a microwave? It tasted delicious, though! Complimentary oden soup was very comforting (served in plastic cups slightly bigger than a typical shot cup in the states).
With our bellies full and warm, we headed to Jagalchi Market. For a Sunday morning, we didn't feel like it was crowded. Lots of different kinds of living seafood for sure!
We walked around the market like typical tourists...just looked around and updated our knowledge about sea creatures we didn't know existed before...some had English translation, some had Chinese translation, some had Japanese translation etc. We looked around and walked out without buying any living organism. We knew about the popular dining option at Jagalchi Market - customers buy living seafood on floor 1 and the staff will prepare and cook for you on floor 2 so you can enjoy them when they're at their freshest. We decided to have lunch elsewhere. Another buffet place, but a much better one than the one we had the night before!
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| Sometime in the near future I'll share our experience at this seafood buffet restaurant called "OASE" because we think this was very well worth a visit. We were there for...around 2 hours? 😎 Our bellies were definitely overjoyed with the amount of seafood (along with other delicious dishes) we had! |
The next item on our checklist for the day was Haeundae. Haeundae is a coastal district in South Korea. It's home to annual Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) and a famous beach - Haeundae Beach. The area is very well developed with many skyscrapers and residential high rises. It's popular in Korean media because many K-dramas have done filming here. In 2009, a disaster movie "Haeundae" was released "(released under "Tidal Wave" in the states) which used Haeundae as a setting for the movie. I think that was one of the first Korean movies I've seen!
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| On the way to the beach we came across different "lighting structures." One of them was this "tunnel of hearts." |
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| It's been a while since we got this close to the ocean! Of course the oceanfront was collllld in December but we had fun walking on the beach and making memory there. By the way, the sunset here was gorgeous! |
After it got dark, we followed Google Map to get to The Bay 101. The plan was to have a long evening walk there and have dinner afterwards then walk back to the metro. And boy, it got chilly very fast! We spent over an hour walking at night and soaked in Haeundae. I enjoyed the night view of the city, though deep down, I also wished there were more "pop-up juice stands" along the streets around Bay 101 because I got very thirsty and only saw a bar at Bay 101...okay I could also bring my own drink 😂. Then, we headed toward Dongbaek Station and had dinner near the station.
The view was incredible. I think it's worth taking a long walk after sunset in Haeundae, though thinking back it's like one of those things that I think we'd only do it once in a lifetime 😌
We had shabu shabu for dinner at a department store. It was yummy. I also got a freshly squeezed juice after that (I loved getting freshly squeezed juise in Korea lol delicious, nutritious, and so affordable when comparing to where we live)
W wanted coffee afterwards so he got his cup. We also each had a warm dessert bread (don't know what they're called?) just before heading back to the station. One dessert bread was filled with red beans. The other was filled with sweet yam. We both agreed the sweet yam was the winner of the two 💗
The department store also a dancing water (or dancing waterfall) with water dropping off from the ceiling.
When we got back to the hotel we actually forgot about the leaking situation we had that morning. It wasn't until we opened the door to our room that we realized "oh yeah! is the ceiling still leaking?" And to our surprise, it wasn't! The hotel staff had placed a bucket under where the leak was taking place. The bucket was about 1/4 full when we saw it. No more rain that night, so we saw no more leak!
Then the next day came, aka time to head back to Seoul 🚅
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| I had decided to stop wearing glasses for a while and it was becoming annoying to have to use my scarf to wrap the glasses for protection when we were on the move (because I forgot to bring the cover for my glasses from home). So, to remedy that situation...we went on a glasses cover hunt about 2 hours before check-out. By luck, we found a small glasses shop! I think it was the first time someone had asked the store owner (or manager/staff) whether they sold just the case or not because the old guy looked confused and triple checked with me "just the case?" I showed the staff my glasses and used body language (thumb ok, ok sign)+ Google translate to show "yes, just the case" 😂 He went to a drawer and took out the plastic yellow/white case pictured above. He handed it to me and I asked how much for this? The guy tilted his head, and then picked up a calculator from his desk and pressed "1000" on it and showed it to me. I understood what that meant. 1000 Korean won (about USD$1). I gave him a 1000 bill then he bowed to me and said thank you in Korean and English. We then waved at each other as we walked out of the shop. When I'm traveling I love using body language to communicate little things just like this "case shopping" experience - regardless the language we're familiar with, humans have an innate kindness to each other :) |
For breakfast that day, we got some bread from a pastry shop nearby the glasses shop. W and I each got a cup of coffee (about $2). It was on the sweet side, a bit too sweet. We walked around the area for more than an hour then headed back to the hotel.
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| Lunch at Busan Train Station. The soup was ok, the pork belly wasn't bad but was...hmm...kinda too dry. I actually wrote in my journal that night complaining about the meat being too dry and that the sauce had saved it lol...I was snobby that day 👿 |
The ride back to Seoul seemed shorter than the ride to Busan. Following Google Map, we got to our last hotel (LASSA) of the trip without issues.
💗CM
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