Shinsegae is the world’s biggest department store, located in Busan. And it really is blimmen ginormous! It was filled with amazing clothes and skin care and accesories - you name it.

But what surprised us most was the food. The lower levels of the building are dominated by the best food halls I have ever seen in my life. Everything from delicate Italian pastries through to the most traditional of Korean cuisine, it’s there. As soon as we saw the modern and manicured food areas with pristinely suited chefs, we instantly thought, ‘This is gunna cost us.’

There was so much choice we simple both headed in separate directions and ordered whatever first came into sight. For Andy that was a sushi platter with udon soup. And for me, the old trusty octopus Bi Bim Bap. As you can see the portions were literally huge and the food was miraculous. We paid a cool $4 for each of these beauties - I LOVE KOREA. 

I wanted to visit the taipei fine arts museum to check out some current exhibitions. We had a nice walk through the park on the way there and spent a few hours at the museum. After wondering through all the arsty surrounds we went and picked up some sushi for 5 bucks and sat in the park again.

Our big expedition while in Bangkok was obtaining our visa to visit China from the Chinese embassy. After three failed attempts because I was struck down by a strange illness after cutting off a bracelet I got when I was blessed in a temple in Cambodia (true story!), we finally took the metro across the city to the embassy.

There was roughly a small town of people already waiting which put the fear of god (or rather the fear of arriving in China with no visa!) into us because working hours at embassies seem to be very few at best. But thankfully China likes to keep it peppy and we were lodging our papers and walking to the local park in record time. 

After sushi in a bus stop while eyeing up the deep fried stall man and a trip to a electronics mall we were back in the embassy queue with several lecherous old European men and their glamourous thai wives. And - Yay - China gave us the green light!

The best part of the day was dressing up in our best clothes and pretending we were ex-pats living in BK. This meant lots of walking very fast in train stations to give the illusion we knew where we were going and keeping our eyebrows firmly un-raised when anything interesting happened. :)