#◟ * muyeol › night view

[viragosoul]

*   night view   ⏤⏤⏤⏤   @44m4

the dinner was transpiring rather nicely, but siyeon still needs a moment of reprieve. it's the way she's taking extra precautions to make sure she isn't the source of any drama, the analyzation and overthinking, that causes her to feel like a balloon with too much oxygen; strained. the son's abode is unsurprisingly vast, and it takes a bit of time for her to find a place where the voices of the others don't reach, but once it's located she takes the opportunity to let out a sigh. it's new territory having to mind the feelings of others, even moreso when one among them is your ex and another is one you loathe despite the fact that everyone else fawns over her ⏤ but for the sake of earning her spot within the revered red and green club, she stays.

taking some moments for herself, the back of her head rests upon the wall behind her while allowing for time to sit still for just a few seconds, mind easing from one hundred miles down to forty five. it's only when mingze breaks her out of her reverie with his presence, passing by while oddly dabbing at eyes made of glass, that the pace starts to pick up again. call it self preservation in the way that siyeon decides to keep to herself, instead focusing attention upon the phone upon her lap as a good distraction, in hopes that she could end up regretting. that would be odd anyway, right? to just saunter up to someone and start questioning them during a potentially vulnerable moment. the information she knows wasn't really hers to mind after all, but when the situation with jisoo was concerned ...

when muyeol appears sometime later she comes to realize that she was hardly concentrating on the images on her phone, despite what her hunched position over it might seem. and of course he looks nearly unfazed, as she feels like he always seems unfazed, but that gnawing feeling inside of her only develops within as she comes to wonder if maybe the detective's son passing by in this exact moment the spotlighted sign she needs. even if she did try to drown him once or thrice before. "pssssst, stupid," she calls out in his direction in a mix of a yelling whisper tone that's comical, abandoning her place at her seat to shuffle towards him, "one, what are you doing here? didn't expect you to be this much of a sore loser that you follow me to a private party for a rematch. yikes." purposely pretentious, siyeon moves a section of her hair over her shoulder with a languid flick of her head, though her attention peers over his for sight of the topic at hand, "also, what's up with mingze? looks like he was upset," head nodding in the direction he walked in, "is he okay?"

[kim-isnt-seaweed]

Busan, day one.

day two 

On the morning of the third day of our trip, we woke up a bit late and leisurely got ready, so we ended up taking the bus at around 11 Am and arrived at Busan around 1 pm. Everyone i imagine has their own individual feeling when experiencing a place for the first time, and for me the moment i stepped out of the bus and saw the city before me it reminded me of Miami, in a way it looks different from Miami but its as if Seoul and Miami had had  a baby, that’s what Busan felt to me that first second.

We felt our things at the hotel and immediately went to seek out our lunch, Dwaeji gukbab. Dwaeji Gukbab or pork soup with rice is apparently one of the most popular dishes in Busan. I’m a picky eater, so I’ve had a hard time getting used to Korean food, i have a hard time with food, in general, it’s hard for me to try new foods or more specifically certain types of food, i have a really complicated relationship with food that deserves a whole post. That’s why i wasn’t very excited about trying it since i tend to avoid soups, especially soups. I like noodle soups like ramen, pho, and cold noodles, i also like tofu stew and kamjatang (potato and rib stew) but other soups aren’t so easy for me especially anything that has seafood or, for lack of a better term, “weird” pieces of meat. So when my husband said it was a soup with boiled pork and rice i wasn’t very excited but alas, he really wanted to try it and even found the most popular restaurant of this dish. When we got there he ordered and to my surprise, there are two ways you can order the same dish, the original which is the soup with everything inside, the one he ate, and the soup with the meat prepared and served separately, which he ordered for me. I tried it since i had promised him, and i even surprised myself with how much i liked it, the soup is just clear broth with spring onions, it was a little bland for my taste but nothing some salt or pepper paste can’t fix and the meat was just delicious. I ate almost everything something very rare for me.

  Taejeongdae

After getting our tummies full and heavy we set off to our first place, Taejeongdae even though its fairly far from downtown it’s surprisingly easy to get there, you can just get on a normal city bus the one that has the right route, of course, pay the normal fee and it will take you all the way to the entrance of Taejeongdae. There you can walk up to the main building and buy a ticket for a little train that takes you up to all the different stops along the park, or you could just walk there but its a bit of a hike i must say.

  The view going up is beautiful, but mostly covered by trees which is fantastic and it’s not long before we reach the first stop, the observatory. There are three floors, i can’t remember what’s in the lowermost floor, on the second floor there’s a convenience store, tables and the balcony where you have a beautiful view of the sea, dotted with ships passing by and sadly a bit of trash from passing tour boats. nonetheless, the view is amazing, we stayed a while taking pictures and looking through … i forgot what those are called …telescopes, yes looking through the coin telescopes. we didn’t bother going to the third floor because it’s a restaurant and we weren’t hungry.

    From the observatory, we walked to the lighthouse. To get there you have to go down forest stairs, where there are different landings, one is a memorial for important Sae men along Korean History and much more things to see along the way until you get to the lighthouse, sadly everything seemed to be closed but we could still see around the grounds, taking in the beautiful view of the sea, the boats and the cliffs descending from the forested mountain and the faraway city.

  From the lighthouse, far below to the right there these beautiful cliffs where you can actually walk to but again they seemed closed.

  To the left, even father below at sea level, you will see some tarps, those are actually what i would call restaurants, these little food stalls are run by grandmother’s and they sell seafood, i believe if you like fresh seafood (i don’t) this is the place for you. These grandmothers, dive every day to catch the fish and whatever sea delicacy and the prepare it right there for you. we were tempted to go down for a look but it was so far below the climb back up would be so tiring and besides it was getting a bit late.

  We took the train and we debated whether to stop at Taejeongdae temple or just go back to the entrance since it was late and it was the last train that was passing by. We weren’t going to stop but i felt like it would be a shame not to see everything there was to see.  We got off at the Temple, but i have to admit i actually walked along and took quick pictures because it was dark and lonely and it was giving me the chills. We looked around quickly and then headed back to the entrance by foot, it was dark and a little cold but walking it was a nice walk with fresh crisp air.

  If you ever visit Busan it must be a place you visit, it is said to be one of King Taejeong [king muyeol] used to spend  time in this place practicing archery and training his troops, there are different theories but it is said he loved the place because of its natural beauty, that thankfully hasn’t changed much since then and he also performed a rain ritual.

Apeach cafe.

We took the bus back to the downtown area, and we went to the Jung-gu area, it’s a trendy area full of shops and restaurants a bit like Myeongdong or Hongdae in Seoul. We went there for two reasons, one of the was the Apeach cafe. If you know anything about Korea you know that the number one messaging app in Korea is Kakaotalk, it’s like WhatsApp on steroids with cute emojis and stickers, games and it’s own line of characters and it actually has it’s own bank, like an actual bank, an online bank but a bank nonetheless. it’s so popular that they have stores full of merchandise.

So Muzi is a radish and not a rabbit?

And that’s precisely where we went, in Busan’s Kakaofriends store on the highest floor they have a cafe dedicated to possibly one of the cutest characters among them, Apeach. Before you get there you have to go through floors full of merchandise, the cutest things ever in my opinion. If it were up to me i would buy everything, the things are just so cute and adorable but thankfully my husband is a bit less tempted by cute things and marketing so he wouldn’t let me buy anything because he says everything is overpriced which is a bit true.

  After looking at all the things, me secretly wishing to buy them and my husband complaining he’s a bit sick of Kakaofriends we finally got up to the cafe. His first reaction to it was “it’s so pink!” and he was right, it was completely and utterly covered in pink, pink walls, pink sofas, pink lights and pink statues of Apeach because obviously, he is a pink peach. I for one loved it, it was my favorite shade of pink and it was my favorite amount of cute…very cute.  I took a lot of pictures with the cute little a peach statues around the place.

  All the food in the place is Kakaofriends themed, we ordered a strawberry frappuccino and chocolate cupcake.

The cupcake wasn’t much of a cupcake but rather a literal cake in a cup, the cake itself was yummy but the frosting although cute because it was the face of Ryan, it wasn’t that good it tasted a lot like food coloring.

    The Frappuccino, on the other hand, was absolutely delicious, nothing much to say about it other than it was cute and delicious but i was too cold to drink much so to the delight of my husband he got to drink most of it, it was so good that despite how much he complained about the prices he said he would order it again if we ever went back.

Nampo Market and Gwangalli Beach.

After leaving the cafe, we walked around the area, got free pens from a group of very pretty Zombies (they’re apparently students at MBC’s makeup academy) and then got close to Busan’s very popular Jagalchi fish market but i honestly can’t stand the smell of fish or sea creatures so i begged not to go there, i know it’s an important sight in Busan but i just can’t deal with the smell. We then went to Nampo Market, during the day i imagine, it’s a traditional market where they sell everyday products needed for everyday food, but during the night the stalls are closed and the food carts are open for business.

The first thing we tried was soup in one of those bread bowls because my husband loves it i don’t know why. You pay for the bread bowl basically because they will give you free soup refills. The soup instant soups, but i am not complaining because it was yummy and on a cold day like that it was a treat.

The second thing we ate was veggies wrapped in pork belly, you have an option to chose it with spicy sauce or normal soy sauce. you really can’t go wrong with pork belly and veggies so it was undoubtedly delicious. However, for some odd reason, maybe i was just too excited or hungry i ended up forgetting to take a picture of it and only ended up with a bad shot of the stall.

We then ate something i was excited about but was sadly disappointed. The dish was potato and melted cheese, i don’t know what i was expecting(maybe like cheese fries ?) but it wasn’t what i got. The potato was a full potato but fried, like a full potato croquet, it was terribly bland on its own, then the cheese was also bland for some reason not salty enough, not enough taste at all. It also came with onions, ham bits, pineapple, and a quail egg. The dish has potential but it needs perfecting, all i could taste was the onions and bland fried potato.

The last thing we ate was just stir-fried meat with veggies and it was the best we had there. It really doesn’t need no explanation, it was just delicious.

There was much more food to chose from like: hot dogs, kebabs, chicken or steak skewers, Vietnamese street food, etc but these were the only ones we were able to eat before we got full.

Later that night, we went to the beach. Gwanalli Beach to be precise, it’s a modern looking beach, with a bridge crossing right in front of it just a few ways off the shore. My husband said this beach is popular because it is one of, if not the only beach in Korea where the stores and restaurants are directly behind and visible from the beach, it didn’t really seem like anything special to me since this place reminded me a lot of Miami Beach, or at least of what I’ve seen the few times my family drove by.

  We took some pictures and we asked some girls to take a few pictures of us, and let me just tell you, that you can’t ask better people to take a picture of you than a group of Korean girls. They take their pictures very seriously, they have no shyness when it comes to taking the cutest and most unique pictures they can think of, they don’t care if people are looking at them, they will take that picture no matter what. this also translates when they take pictures of you, they won’t just take a picture and be done with it, they will actually tell you what they think will look better, what has a better mood, and their friends will be saying comments like “oh that looks nice!!” or “no no, not like that, do this!” it’s just so nice and sweet. I honestly believe no one takes better pictures than Korean girls.

    However because of the Cold we didn’t stay long, we waited for the bus and went back to the hotel were a sleepless night awaited me, who would’ve thought that sleeping near Haeundae beach, with its restaurants and bars, was going to be noisy? certainly not my husband haha.

To the south, third day! Busan, day one. day two  On the morning of the third day of our trip, we woke up a bit late and leisurely got ready, so we ended up taking the bus at around 11 Am and arrived at Busan around 1 pm.