Last Friday Amanda and I drove to Masan with our director Glen for some more training before we had class in the afternoon. It was about a 45min-1hour drive in Glen's car. During our departure from Masan back to Jinyeong, we discovered there was a large interesting port in the city, so we thought it would be fun to come back and visit, take photographs, walk around, you know, the we're-American-and-want-to-be-adventurous stuff. So we did! After classes finished on Friday our friend Kang and our director's husband Luke showed us that we could get to Masan from Jinyeong on the train in only 20 minutes; they looked up the times and prices for us so we had everything we needed. The cost was incredibly cheap: only 2500 won for one trip (less than $2.50)! Not bad at all; the round trip cost for both of us comes out to something around $8.84. Saturday night, the night before we planned to go, I looked up where the train station was in Masan. It was then that I realized we may have a bit of walking to do. The station was on the very north end of the city, whereas the port we wanted to check out was much, much further south. But we decided to go for it anyway, so Sunday morning we hopped on the train and were in Masan at about 11:30. As you'll see in the photos below, there's a channel that leads up into the city from the port, so we decided to head for that first instead of trying to make it all the way to the main part of the port right off the bat. Well, with our good walking shoes on and cameras over our shoulder we set out from the station with nothing but my phone's compass and occasional ability to pick up some WiFi to check the map. We reached the channel in about 45 minutes, which was not as long as we expected. At this point our spirits were high, at least they were until we smelled the channel. Let's just say it wasn't the sweet smell of roses, but more of... 대변...
So we continued down the channel to reach the port. After much walking we reached our destination and gazed upon the dynamic port before us:
It was really stunning. The water was calm and the air was quiet. The occasional squawk of a seagull interrupted the sound of the lapping water. We could see the new bridge out in the distance in the haze (which we've been told is moisture and is more prevalent because of the time of year, and maybe due a little to pollution...). To sum it up: it was cool.
At this point we had been walking for nearly a few hours and were dreading the jaunt back to the station. I suggested we attempt to get a taxi but Amanda wasn't feeling it, so off on foot we were again. After we got only a few blocks from the port area we saw the entrance to what we believed to be a market, and oh man was it ever! We walked through blocks of live sea food: squirming crab, octopus, shrimp, fish (both swimming and decapitated), squid, eel, stingrays, mussels, snails, abalones, oysters, and a few things we had no idea about, plus a bunch of vegetables. Maybe next time we'll stop and try something...
After leaving the market we decided to take a different route back to the station, one a little more direct. We were judging our direction based on the hills we saw in the distance, you'll see in the map below there are two large hills in the middle of the city. Trouble was, we couldn't always tell what hills were in the city and what hills were the city limits. Shortly after the market, we came to a T in the road, and instead of going left or right, decided to see where the small passage leading through the middle took us. It was the most winding and confusing path we could have gone down. The "streets" were nothing more than a ~6' wide path leading to the different entrances of peoples' homes. We continued to randomly choose a path at each intersection we came to, trying to stay going in the right general direction. It reminded us both very much of parts of Greece. Looking at the map after we got home we saw just how large the area was: blocks and blocks worth! There must be hundreds of homes in this area, only accessible by extremely narrow paths. If a fire started, how would the fire department begin to even dent the density of this place! Absolutely insane.
Well after we made it through the "narrows" (-Batman Begins) it was a pretty straight shot up to the station. A pretty - long - and straight shot. We finally reached the station at about 15:00. We were exhausted, completely worn-out and somewhat regretted not getting that taxi back to the station. After getting home I mapped out our route and measured the distance we walked. In total: we walked 7.14 miles in Masan. Wheeew! Adding the distance we walked to and from the train station in Jinyeong, we clocked nearly 8.4 miles for the trip. Needless to say our calves are still a little tight. Below is a map of our route and the relation of Masan to Jinyeong. And here are more photos from Masan.
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