We totally overestimated the amount of time it would take for us to get to Seoul station and the KTX platform and so we were there a bit earlier than expected. I'd like to say that I enjoyed the scenery on the way to Busan, but unfortunately because of how early our flight was we were so tired that I only got to see bits and pieces of the countryside. The pieces that I did see, were beautiful and picturesque, but sleep was more important.
When we arrived in Busan, it took us 2.5 hrs to find a place to stay. It wasn't that they were full cause Chuseok is actually low season for the hotels cause everybody goes home to family. It was the fact the different places we were thinking of trying out were spaced apart and we were travelling in a large group and we had no idea how to get where we wanted to go. Finally after we were thoroughly tired from dragging our bags all over the place, we found rooms in a place
called Hotel Angel. We stayed basically in a traditional korean style place. It was also very cheap. for the 2 nights we stayed there it came to a total of 30,000 won and the place was modern, clean and very cozy. We had 4 rooms which would've worked out to be 3,3,3 and 2 but, Lindsay, Natasha, Anne and I decided we wouldn't cramping a bit and staying together in one room. We weren't allowed to have more than 3 per room so that's why we couldn't rent one less room.
When we got into our rooms, we were all so tired that we decided to take a nap. The funniest thing was that we decided that we'd turn on the tv just to see what was on. Natasha while flipping through some channels managed to flip onto some local porn station. The dude was soo ugly and you could totally tell that the sex was pure acting without real intercourse. but nonetheless it was hilarious and the four of us could not for the life of us turn away from it and we were completely hysterical. Eric, Andrew and Matt hearing all the commotion started ringing the doorbell to our room. Despite flipping the channel, eventually the boys decided to channel surf and landed on the same channel. We watched a bit of it because it was soo funny. The girls sounded so whiny and the guy was really hideous. Eventually we stopped watching it and took this huge group nap. When we woke up we were all eager to get on with some sightseeing. We went to grab some dinner first and ended up eating at some korean place. The meal wasn't too bad except they have some weird idea for Anne didn't quite like it.
After dinner we all got together to try to decide what it was we were going to do. The group kind of formed 2 separate cliques. This wasn't a big problem because we still all got along and we still did stuff as a group. Lindsay, Natasha, Anne, Me, Eric, Andrew and Matt ended up going to Gwangilli beach. We managed to find our way there which is impressive and walked a bit along the beach.
The water turned out to be very very warm despite what our coteachers had told us. We were very excited to swim in the ocean the next day. It is very interesting how different our perception of things are from our Korean co-teachers. I've been told that the walk to Carrefour is very far, meanwhile it's only really about 15 minutes. I was warned before heading to Busan that people don't swim at this time because the water is too cold to swim and yet the water was warm.
After our walk along the beach, we ended up in this carnival-ish place. Where there were 3 rides. We had actually seen something like this during our orientation. There are 3 rides, one of them is like Jet Scream in Canada's wonderland but it doesn't swing all the way around. The other is something like Cliffhanger except there is no water. Finally the last one is something like the disco ride in the ex, where the ride goes round and round, except that a) it's more of a comedy show, b) it goes on forever and c) you get bumped and basically the operator talks, makes fun of you and tries to bump you from ur seat as much as possible. I went on all three and the last ride in particular was very painful. Because we clearly stood out, the operator picked on us. It also didn't help that we were sitting with 4 other beautiful Koreans. The operator also used the ride to flirt with them. Thus we were picked on for the majority of the ride. Both Lindsay and Natasha ended up with bruised arms and Anne was flung out and her flip flop at one point flew off her feet and smacked one of the Korean girls on the head. LOL.. The ride lasted for at least 30 minutes. It was the hardest ride I've ever been on.
(Jet Scream-like ride is on the left and the long-ass crazy ride is on the right)
The next day (Thursday) we woke up as early as we could which was around 9:30am but with 4 girls in a room, and Natasha last, it took us so long to get ready. We ended up eating at 11am and Tous les jours bakery and afterwards headed off towards the beach. Ryan, a Korean university student Anne and I had met on the bus one day joined us since his hometown was about an hour away. This time the entire group went so we really were a huge group. We went to a different beach this time, Haeundae beach.
We got there around noonish and I got settled as soon as I could and headed out to the ocean. It took forever to convince the girls to go into the water. You could see though that the only people swimming were foreigners. The water was cool and refreshing. It was cooler than the night before for two reasons, a) we were at a different beach, b) the water the night before had been warmed by the sun for the entire day. In any case when they were finally convinced to get into the water the group of us except for Ryan and Natasha started swimming. It was incredible. The waves were strong and I really wanted to ask some random surfer to borrow his board. But I refrained from doing so and just swam along. It was such a funny sight because all of a sudden there were a lot of Korean's watching us, SOME EVEN TAKING PICTURES.
hehe i got the group to do the pyramid. that was fun!
After the beach we all headed out to grab some lunch and we had to split up because half of us wanted Seafood and half of us wanted Bennigans. Eric, Aaron, Roland, Ryan, Myself and Anne went for seafood. I had heard great things about the seafood here because here, you'd buy the fish and they'd prepare the sashimi for you. I don't quite know which fish I had, but some of it was great, the Mackerel had some ifs skin still on and it did hurt a bit to eat. But everything else was great. hehe Something else was served as an appetizer. We'd seen it before in street vendors, but had never known what it was. 
As you can see from the picture, you can sort of guess what it is. It was larvae of some sort. In any case, I decided I was going to try it at least just to know what the hypes all about. Well.. I didn't think twice, I've learned that if you're going to do something, thinking about it makes it harder. So Anne's got a picture of me putting it closer to my mouth and I ate it. I had to wash it down with Soju and water. but... the taste? ugh. I would not do that again. One of the other guys, Aaron and Roland despite not quite liking it, ate it again and told us it's better with hot saunce. I didn't try. It wasn't as crunchy as I expected but rather a bit soft. The fact that I knew what I was eating made it worse than it really was. and afterwards, I could smell that thing on vendors a mile back. The smell alone was enough to start my stomach churning and my gag reflex on alert.
After lunch, we met up with the other group and proceeded to look for the Busan Aquarium. I love aquariums but I've been to two this year, Monterey bay aquarium and Busan aquarium and I gotta say, they're pretty much the same thing. It still was fascinating nonetheless.
The 
aquarium took a while because there were so many of us and because we all liked different things. The picture to the right is one of our 7 timer shots. I love my camera (Thank you Uncle Mike!!!). I can set the timer to take 7 shots instead of just one so everywhere we go, we've got to have at least one 7-shot timer photos. We also try to change our pose as much as possible. Lindsay, Natasha, Anne and I have actually taken quite a few of these.
called Hotel Angel. We stayed basically in a traditional korean style place. It was also very cheap. for the 2 nights we stayed there it came to a total of 30,000 won and the place was modern, clean and very cozy. We had 4 rooms which would've worked out to be 3,3,3 and 2 but, Lindsay, Natasha, Anne and I decided we wouldn't cramping a bit and staying together in one room. We weren't allowed to have more than 3 per room so that's why we couldn't rent one less room.When we got into our rooms, we were all so tired that we decided to take a nap. The funniest thing was that we decided that we'd turn on the tv just to see what was on. Natasha while flipping through some channels managed to flip onto some local porn station. The dude was soo ugly and you could totally tell that the sex was pure acting without real intercourse. but nonetheless it was hilarious and the four of us could not for the life of us turn away from it and we were completely hysterical. Eric, Andrew and Matt hearing all the commotion started ringing the doorbell to our room. Despite flipping the channel, eventually the boys decided to channel surf and landed on the same channel. We watched a bit of it because it was soo funny. The girls sounded so whiny and the guy was really hideous. Eventually we stopped watching it and took this huge group nap. When we woke up we were all eager to get on with some sightseeing. We went to grab some dinner first and ended up eating at some korean place. The meal wasn't too bad except they have some weird idea for Anne didn't quite like it.
After dinner we all got together to try to decide what it was we were going to do. The group kind of formed 2 separate cliques. This wasn't a big problem because we still all got along and we still did stuff as a group. Lindsay, Natasha, Anne, Me, Eric, Andrew and Matt ended up going to Gwangilli beach. We managed to find our way there which is impressive and walked a bit along the beach.
The water turned out to be very very warm despite what our coteachers had told us. We were very excited to swim in the ocean the next day. It is very interesting how different our perception of things are from our Korean co-teachers. I've been told that the walk to Carrefour is very far, meanwhile it's only really about 15 minutes. I was warned before heading to Busan that people don't swim at this time because the water is too cold to swim and yet the water was warm.After our walk along the beach, we ended up in this carnival-ish place. Where there were 3 rides. We had actually seen something like this during our orientation. There are 3 rides, one of them is like Jet Scream in Canada's wonderland but it doesn't swing all the way around. The other is something like Cliffhanger except there is no water. Finally the last one is something like the disco ride in the ex, where the ride goes round and round, except that a) it's more of a comedy show, b) it goes on forever and c) you get bumped and basically the operator talks, makes fun of you and tries to bump you from ur seat as much as possible. I went on all three and the last ride in particular was very painful. Because we clearly stood out, the operator picked on us. It also didn't help that we were sitting with 4 other beautiful Koreans. The operator also used the ride to flirt with them. Thus we were picked on for the majority of the ride. Both Lindsay and Natasha ended up with bruised arms and Anne was flung out and her flip flop at one point flew off her feet and smacked one of the Korean girls on the head. LOL.. The ride lasted for at least 30 minutes. It was the hardest ride I've ever been on.
(Jet Scream-like ride is on the left and the long-ass crazy ride is on the right)The next day (Thursday) we woke up as early as we could which was around 9:30am but with 4 girls in a room, and Natasha last, it took us so long to get ready. We ended up eating at 11am and Tous les jours bakery and afterwards headed off towards the beach. Ryan, a Korean university student Anne and I had met on the bus one day joined us since his hometown was about an hour away. This time the entire group went so we really were a huge group. We went to a different beach this time, Haeundae beach.
We got there around noonish and I got settled as soon as I could and headed out to the ocean. It took forever to convince the girls to go into the water. You could see though that the only people swimming were foreigners. The water was cool and refreshing. It was cooler than the night before for two reasons, a) we were at a different beach, b) the water the night before had been warmed by the sun for the entire day. In any case when they were finally convinced to get into the water the group of us except for Ryan and Natasha started swimming. It was incredible. The waves were strong and I really wanted to ask some random surfer to borrow his board. But I refrained from doing so and just swam along. It was such a funny sight because all of a sudden there were a lot of Korean's watching us, SOME EVEN TAKING PICTURES.
hehe i got the group to do the pyramid. that was fun!
After the beach we all headed out to grab some lunch and we had to split up because half of us wanted Seafood and half of us wanted Bennigans. Eric, Aaron, Roland, Ryan, Myself and Anne went for seafood. I had heard great things about the seafood here because here, you'd buy the fish and they'd prepare the sashimi for you. I don't quite know which fish I had, but some of it was great, the Mackerel had some ifs skin still on and it did hurt a bit to eat. But everything else was great. hehe Something else was served as an appetizer. We'd seen it before in street vendors, but had never known what it was. 
As you can see from the picture, you can sort of guess what it is. It was larvae of some sort. In any case, I decided I was going to try it at least just to know what the hypes all about. Well.. I didn't think twice, I've learned that if you're going to do something, thinking about it makes it harder. So Anne's got a picture of me putting it closer to my mouth and I ate it. I had to wash it down with Soju and water. but... the taste? ugh. I would not do that again. One of the other guys, Aaron and Roland despite not quite liking it, ate it again and told us it's better with hot saunce. I didn't try. It wasn't as crunchy as I expected but rather a bit soft. The fact that I knew what I was eating made it worse than it really was. and afterwards, I could smell that thing on vendors a mile back. The smell alone was enough to start my stomach churning and my gag reflex on alert.After lunch, we met up with the other group and proceeded to look for the Busan Aquarium. I love aquariums but I've been to two this year, Monterey bay aquarium and Busan aquarium and I gotta say, they're pretty much the same thing. It still was fascinating nonetheless.
The 
aquarium took a while because there were so many of us and because we all liked different things. The picture to the right is one of our 7 timer shots. I love my camera (Thank you Uncle Mike!!!). I can set the timer to take 7 shots instead of just one so everywhere we go, we've got to have at least one 7-shot timer photos. We also try to change our pose as much as possible. Lindsay, Natasha, Anne and I have actually taken quite a few of these.After the aquarium we headed back to the hotel to shower and wash up for dinner and whatever we may do afterwards. Originally, the group wanted to go to Nori (karaoke) but the girls (L,N,A and Me) also wanted to go to some club afterwards. So we got kind of dressed up but wore our sweaters over whatever we were wearing because it got cold at night. We ended up eating Sang Juk Sow, Ok I'm saying that completely wrong, basically its pork barbecue. It's really good cuz u cook the meat yourself but you wrap it in lettuce leaves or huge ass mint leaves. It's delicious but the pork is really fat. So we hit up the Nori-bong and it was hilarious. It was also very cheap. Turned out to be 20,000 for the room and basically that was it.
We sang our hearts out, in my case I sang my lung out. My throat had been sore from the screaming at the mini amusement park and although the saltwater from the ocean felt like it might've cured the rising cough. It was back from the Nori-bong. We didn't quite sing so much as YELL. and by the end of the night, I couldn't hold a tune for the life of me. We never did end up going to the club because the timer on the Nori-bong kept resetting itself so we had no idea what time it was and we completely lost track of time and ended up staying at the Nori-bong until 3 am.
We sang our hearts out, in my case I sang my lung out. My throat had been sore from the screaming at the mini amusement park and although the saltwater from the ocean felt like it might've cured the rising cough. It was back from the Nori-bong. We didn't quite sing so much as YELL. and by the end of the night, I couldn't hold a tune for the life of me. We never did end up going to the club because the timer on the Nori-bong kept resetting itself so we had no idea what time it was and we completely lost track of time and ended up staying at the Nori-bong until 3 am.Friday, our last full day in Busan was amazing. It was the official Chuseok Holiday so most of the stores and restaurants were closed. We hit up Tous les Jours again for breakfast and then proceeded to the Haedong YongGungsa Temple. The temple is right by the cliffside overlooking the ocean. It was so picturesque, with the waves crashing onto the rocks. There were a lot of people there for Chuseok. 
After the temple we headed back to the hotel, we headed back to Haeundae beach to grab a bite. We ate Vietnamese food. I had been craving pho. The Pho here is expensive (~7000 for a small). We ate it nonetheless and even ordered "spring rolls" which turned out to be the rice wrap ones. I wouldn't have mind it except they decided to change up the ingredients. They had pickle, carrots, fake crab and some pickled turnip. All in all, I wish I had the originals. This one didn't quite taste right. After dinner we headed back to the hotel to grab our bags. We'd already checked out because we'd figured that since our train departs at 5:25 am There was no point in us renting a room. And we'd decided that we just wouldn't sleep and that we'd spend the night at the beach and then just cab it to the station. But before we did that we decided we'd try to hit up the "hot springs". There are actual hot springs, but the place we decided to go turned out to be a jimjilbong. Which is basically a bath-house. By the time we'd figured that out, we'd already arrived there. The guys were gonna go for it, and since I'd already done it. I was willing to go. The other girls weren't so willing. So we were gonna just wait around for the guys. As we headed downstairs we saw the domed saunas in the common area and when the girls found out we didn't need to be naked in the Sauna, we decided to head over there. hehe I didn't tell them that after the sauna, they're gonna want to go into the bath. So we headed to the Sauna and it was beautiful in there. This one was a lot bigger than the one I'd gone to before. Since I was the "veteran", I showed the girls the various things they could do. We first went into the 47 degree sauna, and unfortunately I don't have any pictures because my batteries died. We could've brought our cameras there if we wanted because we were fully clothed. 
(This is one of our 7-shot timer photo in our styling sauna clothings.)
In any case after the sauna, the girls finally decided that they were gonna give it a go. They initially wanted to try to sneak in with just the bottom of our suits and hopefully no one would notice. haha. so we tried it, but we were intercepted by some naked old woman who gestured that we needed to shower first. So we showered and tried again to sneak into the bath with our bikini bottoms. That didn't work and by this time, Lindsay and Natasha backed out of the whole thing. So it turned out to be just Natalie, Sarah, Anne and myself going in fully nude. They totally enjoyed the whole experience and I am proud of Anne for going in. I know she was initially fully against it. In fact I think this whole Korea thing has made her braver than she normally would be. The girls that didn't go ended up regretting it and that is the reason why I feel you should at least try something once. Lindsay felt worse because she had backed out of the Bungee jump and now this, but we're going to take her again for sure. While initially the idea of bathing around ur friends naked seems weird. I find that it takes ur friendship one notch up. We didn't scrub each other. but like I said, it's surprising how fast u get used to being naked around ppl. I find it to be such a feeling of freedom.
After that we headed to the beach and spent the night there huddling and freezing our ass off. It was quite the experience. We met up with some random Canadians there who were teaching in other parts of Korea. At around 3, we decided to head towards the train station and just chill there. This was the first time that I got to see so many homeless Koreans and the first time I felt rather unsafe. A lot of the people there were drunk or they were kinda off in the head. Finally our train arrived we boarded and once again, I was way too tired to enjoy the scenery. I'm gonna try to take the KTX next time but hopefully during the day so that I can take in the scenery of Korea.
I had a great time, but now i'm suffering the consequences of lack of sleep and over-exhaustion. I'm sick as a dog.
Step on the wire, the wire won't bend, that's the way my story ends!!
p.s. I've posted my racing video on one of the older blogs and I also posted the video of my bungee jump in the "high kick and great leap" blog
p.s. I've posted my racing video on one of the older blogs and I also posted the video of my bungee jump in the "high kick and great leap" blog
3 comments:
Meh, those waves are tiny! Surfing would've been a joke.
You're quite the voyager now with all this public nudity :p
How come you have so much time to do all this stuff? Don't you have to teach?
haha.. it was chuseok. so we got a week off school!!!
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