The Fish Market, then off to Hong Kong.

The next morning, Andrew, Chris and myself sat around in the hostel talking and sharing stories and jokes until lunchtime. We all had very different lives, but plenty of places we could connect through our experiences as westerners in Korea.

June recommended a really good Korean restaurant "The best in this neighbourhood, maybe second best in Busan, yeah?" just around the corner from the hotel, and we went there. We were greeted by this really remarkable (and mildly unnerving) statue. I'm not sure what the message is supposed to be? Our pig is so tender you can eat it with your fingers, perhaps? I dunno.

Inside, we ordered Dulsot Bibimbap (that's Bibimbap serving in a piping hot stone pot about 1 inch thick). It continues to cook long after it reaches your table, and it is the tastiest damn thing. A raw egg is thrown in just before it is brought to you, and when you mix it, the egg cooks and all the flavours of egg and vegetables and rice combine into a really wonderful meal.

Over lunch, we took pictures (Chris on the left, Andrew on the right) and discussed food policies. Chris was the most tentative of the group, trying sushi and other foods, but staying away from the more experimental and exotic dishes. I fell in the mmiddle, ready and eager to try Dog and Horse and whatever else crossed my path, but drawing the line at living things. Andrew was the most extreme. As he put it "I'm at the top o' the food chain. Why shouldn't I eat whatever?"

The place where we differed was over living sushi. The Japanese and Koreans prize freshness to an extreme, so much so that in many good Sushi restaurants you can order your fish or squid brought to your table alive, at which point the chef carefully cuts it so that you can eat it while it remains living, thus ensuring that it is as fresh as possible.

I argue that this is cruelty. I don't have a moral objection to killing and eating an animal for food, but I do argue that we have a moral imperative to minimize that animal's suffering--we're going to eat it, the least we can do is give it a decent death. As such, having an animal carefully cut so that it is alive as I eat it, in fact, giving it the opportunity to *watch me eat it* is cruelty, and something I won't do. I pointed out that if an animal were brougnt to me, living, but killed humanely at the table (one quick slice and it's over) and then prepared, I would have no problem consuming that animal.

It is on this ethical foundation that I base my carefully worded disclaimer "If you offer me food and it doesn't fight back or run away, I'll try it."

Andrew nodded. He saw my point, he just didn't feel the same conviction. I nodded and said that if I didn't feel that way, I'd surely eat whatever I came across, alive or dead.

After lunch, we went our seperate ways. Andrew back to the hostel for an afternoon nap before going shopping with his Girlfriend, Chris to see a temple on the waterfront, and me to find the fish market and the international market, which are right next to each other, across from the mouth of Busan harbour.

I had a couple of small gifts I was tentatively searching for, but if I didn't find them it was no big crisis. I didn't find them, but I did find some really remarkable pictures at the fish market. The new fish market building is a steel and glass monolith with a profile that pierces the sky like some postmodern Noah's ark. On the waterfront side is one of the prettiest views of the harbour, complete with swooping seagulls and rows of tug boats all in a line beneath mountains shrouded in fog.

Inside, it is booth upon booth of sea creatures, almost all of them still alive, in tanks and bags and shallow pool pans, waiting to be selected, executed, prepared, and sent home with their buyers. I wish I could show you pictures of every oversized creature there, but I'd have to post a few dozen images and you'd still not feel the immensity of these things.

These crabs, for example. These were perhaps only half the size of the largest ones I saw in the market, but they photographed the best. For comparison, look at the people in the background. That crab's main claw is almost as thick as my forearm.

And don't get me started on the shrimp. See tiny pink shrimp in the background? Those are shrimp of the size you and I are used to. Those shrimp in the foreground? The heads are the size of my fists.

Also, heads up, the Korean's eat some shit out of the ocean that I'm pretty sure God never meant to be edible. Like Rays. I mean, really? It looks like an underwater UFO--I'm pretty sure that means "danger, do not ingest" to every sane human being on the planet.

Don't get me started on the items in this next picture either. I can't even identify what half of that stuff is. But its for sale, so you can take it home and eat it if you want.

The upstairs, I discovered, was a series of sushi restaurants. Too bad I'd already had lunch--fresh-from-the-sea Tuna or Salmon actually sounded wonderful. Oh well, maybe next time I'm on the underside of the world,

While exploring the market, I did notice a couple of cool things. Women carrying things on their heads are a common site here, so this picture (despite the fact that she's carrying an entire meal's worth of food, plus service for four) isn't very remarkable. What made it remarkable was when she stopped, ten seconds after this picture was taken, and performed a whole transaction, buying about a half kilo of beans from a street vendor, without missing a beat, then continued on her way.


After wandering the market for another couple of hours, I headed back to the hostel and grabbed my bag, then grabbed a taxi for the airport.

Korean taxis don't really understand speed limits the way your or I do. The Speed limit, in a taxi driver's mind, is the physical limitation of acceleration that keeps the car from its top speed. On an open stretch of road like the long byways out to an international airport, the driver, usually encumbered by the traffic and limited space of inner city driving, will probably hit upwards of 150 km/hr in the straightaways, and maintain 100+ through the turns, often changing lanes inside them to bleed off the tension on the wheels without losing speed.

The ride to Busan International was fun.

When I arrived, I confirmed that I had plenty of time--three hours--before my flight and I sat down and read for a while as I waited for the check in desk for my airline (since they only fly a couple of times per day out of Busan, they don't open until 2 hrs before takeoff). Once I was inside, I grabbed a waterbottle and settled in to a seat near the gates.

After I'd been sitting for perhaps twenty minutes, I was joined by a young Korean woman. I could tell by I know not what cues that she was going to talk to me, but first, she asked her friend to get a picture of her sitting and reading next to me. I'd had the good sense to be reading something halfway respectable (Confucius Lives Next Door by T.R. Reid, a gracious loan from my mother) and so I snatched it out of my book and mimicked her body posture. As her cameraman snickered and tried to get a good photograph, she fidgeted, and each time she changed posture I matched it as closely as I could.

When the photo had been taken, she turned to me and extended her hand. She asked where I was from, and I told her, as well as where I was going. Her companion, the photographer, sporting a bright pink polo, came over to join us, and we talked for a while. They told me where they were from (an older town about one hour from Daegu by bus) and that they were going with their team to Thailand for a demonstration of Tae Kwon Do. When I asked what they did, they said they were students of TKD, so either they were world class professionals, or they do other things, but in the context of the trip, their TKD training was most important, so that was the answer they gave.

Their professor came over and spoke to us briefly, apparently amused that his students had found a westerner to adopt, and after he'd left I gave them my e-mail address and we took a few more pictures. My posture in this group shot looks a little odd because they asked that I not be so tall, and I laughingly dropped my weight back and bent my rear leg to make myself appear shorter and smaller.

The group shot as a whole wasn't a very good one of the girl who started it all, so I got another one with just her and I.

After they left for Thailand, I climbed aboard a Dragonair flight back to Hong Kong. The flight was uneventful and the dinner pleasant. I'll never get used to an airline serving Kimchi along with an in flight meal though. To paraphrase my favorite director, it just seems like such a strong choice, and I'm not sure it is the right choice. Oh well, it was good Kimchi.

When I reached the Hong Kong airport, I had a little time to kill while I waited for my bag, so I tried to take a few surreptitious cellphone shots of couples arriving from Korea. When couples from Korea--young newly-weds especially--travel abroad, they often wear matching outfits, apparently to easily identify each other and to make clear they're part of one unit.

It is either the most horrifying or adorable thing you'll ever see in an airport, and I find it endlessly comical. The couple on the left there is slightly more innovative, they're wearing the same patterned shirts, but his is blue, while hers is pink. Asian individuality at its finest.

I found my way back to my Hostel, easy now that I had already been once, and crashed hard. The next day I had big plans to see the temple of 10,000 Buddhas, and then a flight to Jakarta to catch.