Typically my Buddha’s birthday celebration amounts to a trip to Insadong to take in the parade and festivities. This year though a spontaneous decision to join my friends Sonia, Renzo, Peter, Paul, Theresa, Lisa, Dele, Keith, Mikhail, Charles, and Lucia on a 3 day getaway proved to be the best decision ever.

Buddha Holiday Getaway Day 3 – Ssannakji

KICK ASS KOREAreason 3

With the clock ticking Renzo and I left the green tea fields behind and raced back to the shuttle bus. However, the bus in question was nowhere to be found. Knowing our train back to Gwanju was the last one we decided on the option that’s always the last resort: the dreaded black taxi. He knew we were trapped. The grin said everything. We bundled inside and sped off back to Boseong station. I have to say that the countryside surrounding Boseong is absolutely stunning. But Boseong the town is a tiny no man’s land that would shrivel the spirit of this die hard city boy. I’m not quite sure how my roommate Joe lived there for an entire year especially considering he hails from New York City.

At the station we discovered to our dismay that purchasing tickets from Gwanju to Busan was a  no go. Everything was booked solid, even the busses. Instead we barely managed to book standing only tickets from Gwanju to Daejon on the Korail train. Sounds bad, right? Thankfully it turns out that standing only isn’t so bad. Renzo managed to find space on a garbage bin with a nearby outlet so he broke out his laptop and fire up Civilization V. I crouched on the floor and tuned in to Slate’s Political gabfest podcast. Not a bad way to kill a couple hours. On the way I got ahold of our friend Charles. It didn’t take much to convince him to grab his friend Lucia and head down to Busan to meet us. Charles is so easy.

We all rendezvoused in Daejon on the same KTX train bound for Busan. As we hurtled along a quick call to our friends Sonia, Peter, Paul and Theresa revealed they were still stuck in traffic! Public transportation redeemed! We pulled into Busan at quarter to one in the morning. Not wanting to deal with the hassle of finding a hotel I chose the most convenient Ariang Hotel right next to Busan Station. I should’ve just gone for something by the beach since we ended up tossing our stuff down and heading right for Gwangnalli. A couple bottles of soju, a bottle of wine, and a few cans of beer were all we needed to camp out on the beach till the wee hours of the morning.  While we frolicked on the beach a lone woman snuck up on us asking to join in on the fun. The more the merrier is our sentiment though perhaps we should rethink that in the future. With her vague answers and dodging questions you would have thought she was either a government assassin, a terrorists, or a hooker. We weren’t sad at all to see her go as we we ventured out to splash in the water.

Soon enough four am was fast approaching. We headed back to the Ariang to catch some sleep before Monday’s big adventure. In the morning the gray skies and misty weather didn’t deter us. We headed straight for Jagalchi fish market. The in-climate weather luckily kept most folks away. We wandered the aisles, gawking at the variety of sea creatures while trying to make up our minds on exactly what we wanted. I knew for sure I wanted to try squid. I had been meaning to for so long that there was no way I was passing up the opportunity this time around. We also snagged prawns and shark. The price for food came out to 50,000 KRW. Upstairs on the second floor we found a restaurant that would cook everything up for about 20,000 KRW. Not bad at all!

The ladies at the restaurant whipped out the squid, diced it up threw some sauce in a dish and had it in front of us in under a minute. While we dived in they went back to work on the prawns and shark. When eating live squid you would think that dicing the critter up would mean it stays still. Not true. The limbs wormed around on the dish and even stuck to our chopsticks as we consumed them. And consume we did. I really can’t describe the taste because I slathered on so much of the sauce. I needed the sauce. Visions of squid arms crawling back up my throat kept me adding more and more sauce to make it all go down easier. I might have it again, but I’m not sure I’d bother when the prawns and shark were so much tastier.

After our late lunch we ventured behind the market to snap pictures on the wharf or dock or pier thing. Busan really is a beautiful place. With the slate gray skies, multicolored houses on the hills and jet black hulls of the ships the entire view was mesmerizing. I hope my photos do it justice.

The Good:

adventure eating at its finest! Fresh delicious seafood bought and cooked right on the spot. Ssannkji won’t be like anything your mom made!

The Bad:

Your own fears are bad enough, I won’t add to them!

The Weird:

After it’s diced up it still wriggles and crawls.

Prices:

Varies

You can find Ssannkji at most seafood places or seafood markets.