Weekend in Busan...

On Saturday, despite pouring rain, the OAF decreed that I must spend a lot of money and take her down to Busan. This "request" was despite the fact that a Friday-night full of bar-hopping left her incapable of reaching my Deajeon love-pad before noon on Saturday.

But she was insistent, and so we trundled down to the yeok, and hopped the THX to Busan. In any case I wanted to get down to Busan to meet James Turnbull, who writes the rather excellent blog, "The Grand Narrative." And a trip on the THX is rarely a bad thing. Trains leave frequently, they are clean, they rock (reaching nearly 300 KPH at times), they include a tray service that serves beer, and the Korean countryside is just spectacular at this time of year. Oddly, I also seem to get my best language study done on the train. So down we went, me with my nose in my Korean language book

It took just less than two hours to get to Busan and when we got there the skies had opened up and I, of course, had left my umbrella behind. We scampered the 120 meters from the train station to the subway. We were heading to Haeundae Beach, where James had told us of a nice and inexpensive yeogwan. By the time we got to our stop on line 2, rainwater was coursing down the marble steps out of the station, and running like a river down the smooth marble of the overflow troughs on either side of the stairs.

So we went out and got wet. And I got an umbrella. We wandered down to and then along the beach for a bit, eyeballing places that we could eat, and then called James to find out the name of the yeogwan. It was "Bridge Motel" and, of course, it was at the opposite end of the beach from us. We walked back over, got a room, and dried off a bit. The room didn't face the beach, but it only cost $48.00 and was quite serviceable - it even had a Western style tub.

Then it was back outside, where it was still raining, but not in sheets. At a third story boite with a lovely view of the entire beach we had a beer, a strawberry smoothie and the "peaches" side dish that many bars have. Ten bucks for a can of sliced peaches in syrup that are tossed out onto some ice.

One of the really pricey food options in Korea.

Then it was a walk down to a brilliant Galbi place which was old-fashioned enough that the toilet was outside and there were no smoke hoods over the barbeques on the tables. The other truly odd thing was that no Kimchi was served with the meat.

Anyway, the pictures are here.

Finally we left the restaurant and called James. We agreed to walk back to our hotel and meet him there. Then it was off to a bar-girl bar. A bunch of young women in reasonable scanty clothes serving, and sitting and talking to, men or groups of men. They ignored us completely as we were with a woman and waeguk as hell.

James told many an amusing story, often with his Black Russian pressed against his forehead, but I think those tales are not mine to share. ;-)

Then, at James' suggestion, the OAF and I walked back to our hotel. Once their we decided (by which I mean the OAF forced me) to go back out to the beach and it was a wise decision as the rain had cleared and celebrants were shooting off unsafe and insane fireworks (conveniently sold, by a man on the beach, from a cart). We finally wandered back to the hotel at about one and sank into dreamless sleep.


On the way back we came across a guy who didn't quite make it to his own house. If you look to the left of his feet you can see, in the dark damp and disturbed sand, the troughs in which his feet struggled, without success, for some last bit of balance.



DAY TWO TO FOLLOW....