Travel [Busan] like a local : Korea's Highest Cable Car Ride

Hello, everyone!

I'm Michael, and I'm a Korean with an English name (yes, very perfectly normal).

I was wondering how can I make myself useful to everybody, especially for all you travelers, and thought that maybe I could share some of my local Busanese wisdom with you so that whoever comes to Busan may better experience the city.

So most of you who have visited Busan probably know some of the BIG places--Haeundae Beach, Billy Jean(a pub in Haeundae), Thursday Party(another pub), or Grid(a club).

Well, obviously, Busan is more than just a scramble of pubs and clubs. I'm not trying to judge you though. In fact, that's perfectly normal! It is not surprising to see all these taxi drivers and travel agencies in Busan trying to take foreigners to the same places. There aren't a lot of options for you to go, if the city fails to provide you with the services to experience the REAL Busan.

Information is very difficult to obtain, since many local places don't provide foreign language services. And who wants to fill this gap(even if it's just a tiny bit)? Your humble servant, Michael the Korean.

So, enough with my story, I am going to write a series of localized travel logs for all you travel enthusiasts--starting with the relatively unknown, Korea's highest cable car.

See the cable cars hovering over the sea? That's the one. Its official name is called the Busan Air Cruise: Songdo Cable Car(Korean: 부산에어크루즈 송도해상케이블카).
It's known to hover at 86 meters from the ground, the highest cable car in entire South Korea. One whole trip goes for about 1.62 kilometers, which is about a 20-minute ride that connects the two islands of Songdo and Yeongdo.

If you can't feel how high 86 meters is, you should really try riding it. From my own personal experience, it was pretty high, and pretty damn scary.

So this is the close-up view of the car that I got on. It doesn't do the courtesy of stopping for you, so you should hop onto the thing before it's too late (although, even if you miss one, you can still get the next one, obviously).

Also, one word of caution--right before it jumps off a cliff, it automatically opens the doors and closes them again for "safety reasons" (the staff there tells you in advance--but in Korean), so please don't be surprised. It's not going to throw you out.

You can still scream though, just to tease your friends who don't know this yet.

This is the view inside the car. I took this photo right after it took off, so you can still see the parking lots below. But once you venture in further, all you'll be seeing is the beautiful sea and the mountains. Oh, and the cable cars you see on the top hand of the picture that are way up there? Those aren't reflections from the glasses, those are UFOs.

The mountains will be onto your left (well, it may differ depending on which side you're sitting on), and you'll be able to see these little wooden pathways to the side which are beautiful to see at night (the pathway is illuminated with white lamps, which qualifies the place as a famous dating course for local Busanese). And to your right, you'll see the rest of the strip of Yeongdo Island that leads out to the beautiful open sea.

By the way, there are two types of cars you can get on: the one with a steel floor(the Air Cruise), and the one with a GLASS floor(the Crystal Cruise). Yes, as you've probably guess it, the glass-car floored car allows you to enjoy the landscape almost 360 degrees.

But mind you, this thing can get pretty scary. It goes faster than you'd think, and it tends to shake a lot, especially when it's going over the support towers. There is no danger of falling, since the whole facility is designed in a way that each car can hold as much as 11 people.

Nevertheless, your mind can go crazy with all these crazy imaginations. I was imagining of crashing into the sea with the doors not opening. The water slowly drips in from the little gaps all around the car, and you have no options but to wait for the water to fill in, encroaching upon your life very slowly, but gradually...

Oh well, I tend to imagine a lot. I'm a creative guy. Please be assured that the car is very safe.

Please follow the link for locations: https://goo.gl/YJJZ6B

I hope you liked my very first piece on Steemit. I want to make my contribution to make Steemit a better place with better information for everyone. Please stay tuned to my little travel logs. In my next article, I will take you to some really good local restaurants around the cable car facility, so that you can get something very nice to eat after you spend all your energy screaming all the way in a thrilling cable car ride.