I caught up with two Busan friends and their mother/mother-in-law on Day Two, where the cable car climbs 670 meters up Seorak Mountain. Once you exit, it’s a simple walk to Gwongeumseong Fortress. Website after website mentions “fortress ruins,” which must cause confusion. If there are ruins of the 13th century Onggeumsan Castle, they must…
Category: Photography
Seoraksan, Day 3
Day Three should have been more strenuous than it was. First I ambled through Sinheungsa, a Buddhist temple of the Jogye Order. The layout will be familiar to visitors of other Korean temples: the brilliantly fierce Four Heavenly Kings, the square inner courtyard and living quarters that flank it and the elevated main shrine hall….
Gijang
I’ve been nurturing a new habit, nursing it, even closer to forcing it. I’ve spent too many weekends in cafes and movie houses and not enough time seeing the country. On this day, I took a half-hour subway ride to Gijang, a county just north of the better known Haeundae. I’d been here before, a…
Igidae, Busan
With the big C bearing down on us, I’m learning to reappreciate the outdoors, above all those patches with social distancing built in. Several days back, a friend invited me to hike Igidae, a coastal mountain trail running from Dongseangmal Observatory to Oryukdo, north to south. We flipped it, meeting in Kyungsung and bussing it…
The Oncheoncheon, Busan
Busan is a bustling port city where certain times and places remind you just how many bodies call it home. Word on the street though often remarks on a kind of looseness in the air. The ocean helps. Escapes like the Oncheoncheon too. Not quite from beginning to end, but as far as I could…
Busan
I’ve grown lazy in the heat. The photos show some of the city’s offerings but I’ve been sticking to my Dongnae district streets. The effect of familiarity maybe, not a lack of options. Busan’s self-governing rat race is more an amble. A major port city of three and a half million, she feels more a…
Da Nang
It seemed like a ghost town after the bustle of HCMC, stretches of pedestrianless streets (under a ferocious early-afternoon sun mind you) and significantly less traffic but the air was breathable again. This was the back half of my trip. I cabbed it to my guesthouse, a calm and clean family business a four-minute walk…
Ho Chi Minh City
It’s been on the vacation radar for a while, partly motivated by others’ travel photos. The emerald greens and grottos of Halong Bay in the north, the hydro economy of the Mekong Delta to the south. In fact, I wouldn’t make it to either but split my time between Da Nang (the site of the…
In Taiwan
In some ways Taiwan was the Asian experience I’ve been waiting for. For a greater metropolitan size of nearly 7 million, there’s a relief in its order and its kindness. I was approached four times in as many days, twice for conversation and twice more with offers of help. Rachel then was a Taiwanese mother…
Colin Moore 