Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022 — A fast train swept us from Seoul to Korea’s beautiful, coastal second city, Busan, in a little over two and a half hours on Thursday, and we have kept moving ever since. The first evening we walked the Nampo District, from Biff Square, a homage to the city’s 27-year-old film festival, on to Busan Tower, and finally, explored the vast and fragrant seafood market, Jagalchi, where we saw a swirl of sea life and were beseeched by restaurant owners who wanted to feed them to us.

Our first full day in Busan was one of the best, most memorable of our trip so far. We took a long cab ride north of the city to the spectacular Haedong Yongungsa Temple, the only Buddhist temple situated on Korea’s rugged coastline. It is a special place, the sea crashing against the rocks only a few feet from the temple buildings, with infinite views up and down the rugged coastline. We listened to the chants of monks, lit prayer candles for our loved ones, and took picture after picture of the spectacular setting.

We cabbed from Haedong to the station for the Haeunde Skycapsule, where we boarded one of the boxy, sweet and silly rail cars and set off, slowly, down the aerial tracks. It was great fun, trundling along the coastline, making our way through a pine forest, and curving around a headland before we arrived at the north end of the Haeundae Beach, considered Korea’s best and most beloved beach. By Oregon standards, it’s a fairly small beach, at most a half mile long. But it was beautiful, lined on one side by high-rise hotels, and the other by blue-blue surf that glittered in the sunshine. We walked the length of the beach to Bay 101, a yacht club, where we met up with Asma.

After lunch, we walked south along the waterfront to Busan’s Cinema Street, a quarter-mile stretch of boardwalk dedicated to Korea’s film history, with displays of many of the country’s most popular movies, actors and actresses, including Hong Kong’s greatest actor, Tony Leung. We wanted to go directly from there to the headquarters of the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), which opened Friday, but had trouble communicating our wishes to the cab driver and Courtenay quickly and brilliantly asked instead to go to the Shinsegae Department Store, which is next door to the BIFF performance center. Shinsegae is the world’s largest department store, an incredible expanse with every conceivable high-end brand of clothing and accessories, and we lost ourselves in the place for an hour or so.

We emerged across the street from the film festival, which was buzzing with people and music. Asma and Courtenay explored the BIFF merchandise on offer, and then we heard a roar of excitement, saw hundreds of people hurrying to the seats in front of the main stage, and we followed them to discover that they were holding a live, in person interview with one of Asia’s greatest actors–none other than Tony Leung.