Beautiful Busan!

Hey! Three day weekend was  coming up and Jenn and I had no idea what we were going to do. So we figured we'd go to Busan, which is the 2nd largest city in Korea, and right next to the coast. This is a little late of an update, but the three day weekend that we are referring to is the June 6th,7th,8th. At least thats what I remember. Korea had a Veterans Day too so we had no school Monday. Regardless, on to our trip. A little background info on Busan, its BIG! Not nearly as big as Seoul, but bigger than Daegu. It is also a very popular place to visit among Koreans, and tourists. Since it's right by the coast, it has a lot of great beaches, and the weather is a lot cooler. Anyways, we are lucky enough to live 45 minutes by KTX from Busan. And we can take this high speed rail for the low cost of 24 dollars round trip. It was great. The KTX is always a great train ride. Quiet, fast, and just...dang, its a high speed train! These things are awesome! But yeah, we took an early KTX to Busan at 8ish in the morning, with the idea of staying in Busan if we found a cheap enough place, or just taking the late train back to Daegu if we didn't want to spend the extra dough. But I'll get to that later.

Outside the Subway station

So we arrived in Busan around 9, and thought about our next option. First thing we had to do was get subway cards. Subway cards are different in each city, but I think they have plans to make them compatible anywhere in Korea eventually. At least I hope so. But yeah, we bought our subway cards and decided to head to Haundae Beach. This weekend, there was a Sand Festival at Hauendae, so we thought we'd check it out. We get there after about an hour on the subway (like I said, Busan is huge!) and instantly Jenn and I could smell the ocean breeze. It was nice to be reminded of how good we had it going to school down in SoCal. We headed toward the beach, and walked past a---gasp---Mexican restaurant! Busan was amazing already. Anyways, we ended up eating there later, but first, we had to check out this sand festival. It was pretty awesome. They had a bunch of sand sculptures, and some huge sand castles. They even had some sand...paintings? I'll put up some pics of them so you can check it out. We kept walking along the beach, and eventually we got to this roped off area with a big stage. Apparently not only was there a Sand Festival, there was also an International Dance Festival! And it was free, so we got some seats, and watched some contemporary dancers (from China I think). 

Fuzzy Navel Mexican Food!

After their dance we went back to that Mexican place, Fuzzy Navel. It was there that I realized that I didn't have my wallet. Yes. My wallet with 60 bucks or so, Alien Registration Card (like Korea's version of a Green card), two credit cards, and my coupon card to Star Kebab (hey, I'm like three stamps away from getting a free kebab, its' important! hehe). So I pretty much did what anyone would do. I curled up on the ground and started crying. Just kidding! That's what I felt like doing, but we traced our steps all the way back to the dance festival stage. It was there that I saw one of my tourism pamphlets, so I knew that my wallet must have fallen out when I was sitting down. So when my wallet wasn't there, I pretty much lost hope. But keep reading, there is a good ending! We talked to some of the staff members, and they said they would call me if anyone found it. We headed back to the restaurant to meet our friends, and I pretty much was I dunno, just thinking of how I couldn't imagine having any fun for the rest of the weekend if our trip started off like this. BUT, then I get a call from this Korean guy that we asked to help us, and he's behind us waving my wallet in his hand!!! I got my wallet back (apparently he just asked around the stage area), and it had all of my money, all of my credit cards, and nothing was stolen. I checked online later, and there were no charges on any of my banking accounts. I went from despair, to extreme happiness. And I pretty much locked my wallet into my shorts for the rest of the trip. We went back to Fuzzy Navel, had some pretty good Mexican food, and talked about how honest Korean people were. It was a good start to our trip :)


After lunch, we went back to the beach and walked around some more. We looked at a sand castle competition, and saw some pretty good sculptures forming up. We also wanted to go and take a look at the Aquarium. Busan has a pretty famous aquarium, and lucky for us, it was right on Haundae Beach. Well, not on the beach, but imagine a boardwalk, and the aquarium on the opposite side of it. It was all underground too. Anyways, we went into the aquarium, and looked at some pretty cool sea creatures. It was pretty fun, highlights though were definitely the otters, the penguins, the sharks, and the see through underwater tunnel. The Aquarium was pretty dark, so unfortunately, we didn't get a lot of good pics. Sorry!

After the aquarium, we went to get dinner. We got some grilled pork, and by the time we were done, it was pretty late outside. So we grabbed some dessert and drinks, and went to relax on the beach. It was nice to just relax on the beach at night. There were no bonfires allowed, but a lot of people had mini fireworks. We sat, ate, and drank, and generally had a good time. After a while, a drunk Korean guy came to join our group. He was basically kind of a creeper, so after awkwardly trying to be polite, we just got up and left. By this time it was about 12 or so, so we headed over to check out a bar that a bunch of foreigners liked to go to. It was nice I guess, but I dunno, didn't come to Korea to go to a bar with a bunch of English speakers. I can do that back home. Haha. We also met up with some of our friends from orientation. It was nice to see them, and we made plans to see them again soon. After the bar and some dancing, we decided to hit up a Norebang. Which is a place that has Karaoke rooms that you can rent out with your friends. And it was fun! We sang some K-pop, sang a lot of American pop songs, and even tried some rap songs. Their song selection was incredible.  By this time, it was 3 or 4 o'clock. But...the amazing thing was that, when we got out of the Norebang, there were still people everywhere. I might even say that it was more crowded than before! It's like Koreans don't sleep! (But I hate to generalize, so I'm just going to say that we were in a pretty popular night area). 


Anyways, we headed back to our hotel, oh forgot to mention. We found a hotel earlier right next to the beach. 200 dollars for one night, but split between 5 people, it was only 40. We knew it was going to be somewhat expensive b/c of the holiday weekend, but 40 bucks a night per person is actually very cheap. Oh, and it was like a two room area. With a huge living room that could probably fit 10 people easily, and a connecting room with 2 queen size beds and a bathroom. It was nice! And it came with a lot of blankets and pillows. but yeah, we headed back to our hotel room, and called it a night.

Early Morning Beach Walk!

The next day, Jenn and I woke up early (around 9 am or so) and went to walk on the beach. It was already packed with families enjoying the 2nd day of the Sand Festival, but it was really nice to grab a coffee and walk on the beach. One of our favorite moments of the trip. Then we met with our slower waking friends for lunch, and decided to head over and check out Hadong Yongungsa temple. It took forever to get there, but the temple was definitely one of a kind. It literally is right next to the ocean, and you can get some pretty cool views there. It was also packed full of people (first time I had to wait in line to get into a temple), but definitely worth the trip. This was kind of a whole day thing, and we decided we weren't going to stay another night, and just headed back to Daegu. Long story short, we got back to Daegu around 8ish. We ate dinner (I think), and then got home. We did a lot in just two days, and we definitely want to go back to Busan. Especially because now we know how easy it is to get there! Sorry if this seems a little rushed, I'm tired! Until next time friends and family!