Adventures with buses

The Dakbatgol Mural Village is just opposite Somang Stairs. At least, the top of it is. When I arrived at the bus stop near Somang Stairs, at the beginning I considered going downhill, before I decided to visit Somang Stairs first (so that I might not need to climb back up later).

a general view downhill

behind the signs (the part with the green floor) seemed to be a parking lot

stairs going down to Dakbatgol

a nice mural

just showing the short steep incline up to the mural

the entrance at the bottom of the village

I didn’t really know where I was at that point, and when I didn’t find the bus stop that was supposed to be located at the bottom of the village, I decided to go back up to the bus stop I knew.

But before that, I noticed a small gallery (at first I thought it was a souvenir shop) and went inside.

I think the person manning the gallery told me I could go upstairs. I started taking photos upstairs where there was no one (didn’t dare to take photos downstairs…and I can’t even remember what it looked like). I only snapped a few photos because I didn't know when someone would come along...

It seems like this is an exhibition of this person's art

When going back up to the top of the village, I made a few detours (and discoveries). This is where not having data (which I called a “semi-good thing” in this post) was kind of a good thing, because if I had managed to look up how to get to a bus stop earlier, I might not have come back to see these places. I am sure that I still missed quite a lot of the village, because it was really a maze.

a little garden illustrating a fairy tale

Here's the translation of the story from Google:

I guess the "hunchback", "black", and "lumps" in the story are actually warts. It sounds like neither old man was really nice though. :P

another viewpoint from above

Let me end this post with what was a not-so-good thing about not having data. I was using the Naver app for maps and navigation. Despite having an option to download an offline map, I found that the offline map didn’t really work. And if we were to check for buses (and other ways to go anywhere), it works well, but only when there is data. (Note: Google Maps is not really updated in Korea because South Korea doesn’t want their data on Google servers, for fear of it being used by North Korea. And we can’t even download offline Google maps of South Korea.)

There is free public wifi in Korea, but the coverage is not really good. While at the bus stop to return to the Busan city centre, I checked the app and found a few buses that could take me back. But not being familiar with the app, I decided to take one bus that happened to NOT stop where I wanted…instead, the bus would go to the stop right before the one that I wanted, but I would walk the distance to the remaining stop (which is not that far).

But…not knowing that, I waited for the bus to announce my stop…which never happened. The bus then went through some hilly roads, and I was confused, but thought it was a detour before getting to where I wanted… (this was only my second bus ride in Korea; the first brought me to Somang Stairs without incident).

It was only when the bus stopped somewhere, and the driver came out of his seat…that I asked whether it was the last stop. It was. Oops! The driver and a few other passengers were helpful enough to tell me in broken English that I could take another bus from the same stop, back to where I wanted to go. (I think those passengers were going to transfer at that stop.) They even reminded me to scan my public transport pass when exiting the bus, so that I could get the transfer fare (instead of a “new trip” fare) for the connecting ride (I already knew this from my research before flying there).

And at this bus stop, I discovered an interesting heating seat!

I still don't know how it works... 

I saw this kind of seat again at another bus stop, I can’t remember where. Probably not in Busan. But it is not at every bus stop.

Anyway, after that fiasco with the bus, I learned to check properly how many stops the app asks me to ride, and where to get off. :P Also, later on I learned to take screenshots of the remaining distance I would need to walk to my destination, from any public transport stop. I learned that after getting off at a stop and being totally disoriented (Seoul Metro does that to you, since by the time you get up the stairs, you have turned around so many times, you no longer know from which direction you arrived earlier!)