Busan Beach City

August 13, 2011

For our last long weekend, Jesse and I elected to go to Busan. This is the second largest city in Korea, located at the southern tip of the peninsula. It's famous for beaches and fish. As always, we did the bare minimum of planning, and ended up leaving the house around 3 pm on Saturday.

The next train to Busan left at 6:30, so we went for Indian food at Yak & Everest. The mutton tikka and chicken tikka masala were both delicious, but as I discovered after, Indian food and I don't mix all that well. There were some indigestion issues, so I spent the first hour or so of the train ride breathing shallowly and trying not to look out the window. Sigh. Well played, body, well played.

On the four-and-a-half hour train ride, Jesse and I alternated between reading our respective books and watching season 2 of Glee. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to actually say this, as Jesse doesn't want his little friends to find out that he watches Glee... but then again, I doubt his little friends will be reading this, so no secrecy necessary! He was resistant to watching it at first, but if you don't take it seriously it's really hilarious, which he has since come to appreciate.

We arrived in Busan at around 11:20, whereupon we set out to find a hotel. In a stellar display of failing, I had somehow forgotten that this was a holiday weekend – despite the fact that I got Monday off. Anyway, the first two places we went to were booked up full, so we resorted to wandering the back streets of Busan looking for a hotel with free rooms. We found a promising place – promising in that it said “Motel” on the sign – until we discovered that it was next door to a strip club. That, or it was actually part of the strip club, we weren't too sure. Regardless, we decided to find something a little less... sketchy.

The hotel we found had two single rooms left, which we snatched up just before a horde of weigooks arrived looking for rooms. We felt a little bad – well, I did, at least – until we realized that there were about twelve of them, and they would have never fit into two rooms anyway. Moral dilemma resolved, we grabbed burgers from Lotteria, ate them, and retired to our separate rooms for bed.

Check out time was 10 am, which meant that I had to get up at 9 am. Unfortunately for me, my body dislikes sudden changes in schedule, and I had spent the last week going to bed around 4 am. Apparently intent on spiting me, my body forbade me from going to sleep until around 3:30 am, which meant I got about 5.5 hours sleep. Fan-freaking-tastic. Still, I managed to get out of bed and into the shower without any major catastrophes, like stumbling off the balcony in a sleep-deprived haze.

We had originally planned to spend Sunday and Monday in Busan, until Jesse pointed out that the only things we were really interested in seeing – a sea-side temple whose name I've already forgotten, and the Busan aquarium – could easily be done in a day. Thus we bought train tickets for the 9 pm train, and proceeded down to Haeundae beach for our day of frolicking in the sun.

Since the weather report had read partially cloudy, high chance of thunderstorms, we didn't bother to pack sunscreen. Spoiler alert: Jesse and I both got badly sunburned. The nice thing about sunburns, though, is that you don't really notice you've gotten one until a few hours after. Therefore I was able to enjoy Busan without pain... and then spent the train ride home ruing my lack of foresight. Ah well.

The sea-side temple is unique in that it is the only Buddhist temple in Korea not built on a mountain. It was quite spectacular. You walk down a stone staircase that winds through a forest of young bamboo shoots, and then emerge from the greenery to see this sprawling temple perched amidst the rocks. We lounged on a rocky shelf for a while, just enjoying the view, then headed into the temple complex itself.

I really like going to Buddhist temples, because I like to watch the people praying. That sounds sort of creepy, but I really do. It's very spiritual, and even though I have severe reservations about religion in general, I almost always find myself admiring people who believe so strongly in their faith. Buddhism is especially fun in that worship takes the form of standing, then kneeling, then bowing, then kneeling, then standing back up again, multiple times, possibly a set number of times, or maybe even just until the worshipper feels they've done sufficient praying for the moment.

Jesse wasn't quite so tickled by the worshippers, so we headed up the steps to see a big statue of the Mother of Mercy, then down into a shockingly warm cave to see a stone Buddha. After eating some delicious ice cream, I stopped into the washroom. I mention this because it was possibly the most traumatizing experience of my life. Alright, that's an exaggeration, but it was still creeptastic beyond all belief.

So I do my business and turn to flush the toilet... only to discover that the speckled wall, which I thought was some sort of tile design, is actually speckled by hundreds of flies. Not just the tile wall, but the walls of the bathroom stall as well. And the ceiling. Then I go outside the stall to wash my hands. The walls are covered in them. The ceiling too. And the mirror in front of the sink. Just... this bathroom is infested with literally thousands of flies, but not flying around like flies are wont to do. They just sat still on the wall, like some gruesome insectophobe's nightmare, staring at you like they're about to mass-swarm you and devour your flesh. I barely managed to contain my shriek of despair as I fled the scene.

That horrific experience was only the beginning, as the temple was about 20 minutes away from the beach, and we needed to get back there to see the aquarium. Jesse and I had taken a taxi there, but there was a horde of people waiting for taxis when we left, and not a taxi in sight. Instead we opted to take the bus. Using all the pushing-through-crowds skills I have developed over the years, I scored Jesse and I spots on the bus, which then proceeded to fill up as tight as a 9 am, Western-bound 2 Dundas bus. Even better, Korean bus drivers are batshit insane. They brake without warning, delight in taking sharp, fast turns, and just seem to have a general disregard for the well-being of their passengers. We spent about half an hour bumping and falling into our fellow passengers, who returned the favor, until someone finally got off and I snagged a sort-of seat on a risen floor segment. From there it was child's play, at least for me, except I think my seat was right above the engine, because it was uncomfortably hot. Still, it was worse for Jesse, who got some sort of rubber burn from his foot digging into his flipflop every time the bus jostled.

After such horrors, it seemed a good time to break for lunch. Jesse wanted bibimbap, except the restaurants all seemed to be samgyopsal places (thick bacon slice BBQ). We ended up at Papa John's Pizza, which was delicious, and we brought some along to eat later. Once again my stomach failed me, and we wandered along the beach for about an hour while I recovered.

The Busan Aquarium is pretty darn awesome, if I say so myself. There's this massive tank that you can actually float above in a glass-bottom boat, which we didn't do. They've got sharks and manta rays and jellyfish and all sorts of awesome marine fauna, and there's even a glass tunnel you can walk through to see it all up close. I snapped a pic every time a shark came close, although I don't think they turned out very well. Curved glass is remarkably good at distorting images.

At the end of the exhibition was the Mola Mola fish tank. I wouldn't have cared about them at all – they are somewhat dull, as far as fish go – except that we learned about them in Friday Special Day class. The mola mola fish, you see, is so incompetent that it can't distinguish the glass walls from the water, so it bumps straight into the wall. At that point you'd think it would turn around and try a different direction... but this is the mola mola fish we're talking about. They don't believe in defeat. Instead, they start slamming themselves against the glass walls in a futile attempt to break through, so much so that they got concussions. The marine biologists ended up coating the glass in a thin layer of nylon in order to save these delightfully daft fish from their own stupidity.

We proceeded back to Busan station, pleased with our accomplishments, and dined on green tea gelato while we waited for the train. The train didn't arrive in Pyeongtaek until 2 am, by which point I was basically asleep on my feet, and I fell into bed almost immediately upon arriving home.