Back from Busan!

Yesterday morning EAP took us on a 1 night-2 day trip to Busan, a beachside city about 5 hours drive from Seoul. Good thing we stopped at rest stops, which by the way are nothing like American rest stops. There are huge bathrooms with like 20+ stalls (of course there's still a line out the door for the women's bathroom -.-) and they are very nice for public bathrooms. There's a cafeteria kind of building with a convenience store, coffee shop, and a whole bunch of different kinds of meal foods sold inside. Outside there are snack foods like roasted chestnuts or corn, french fries, donuts, hot dogs, hot cakes, ice cream, etc. One of the rest stops even had a little hut area to sit and eat! (note: bad hair weekend)



When we arrived in Busan, we ate at a Korean barbeque restaurant called 1번가 (Ilbunga). It was so delicious! I forgot to take pictures of the food, but here we are full and happy:

Then we went to the Arpina youth hostel to drop off our stuff real quick. I had always had a negative image of hostels until now because I've only seen pictures of shady European ones, but this one was really nice! It was like a hotel but not as nice and obviously geared towards large groups. Afterwards, they took us to the Haeundae beach and released us. That was retarded. All they did was give us a sheet of paper that had a list of 5 possible things to do in Busan and told us "free time! see you tomorrow~" What the heck! No map or directions of how to get to places! Melody and I walked around the beach for a bit and witnessed white men doing 씨름 (Korean sumo?) with the natives. There was a huge crowd around them! The white guys, who seemed to be American soldiers from my best guess, were actually pretty good. Here's a low-quality shot because we didn't want to get sandy and move closer from the boardwalk:

We walked around the city area and looked at stores and stuff in the streets, like this cup and spoon:

Then we went inside Sfunz, an entertainment center/mall, and killed some time in there too. We ate dinner at Midarae, a Japanese restaurant:

Eel roll and seafood/udon stirfry for less than $6 per person, and delicious too! I keep forgetting to take pictures of food before I eat though! One of the rolls made it halfway into my mouth before Melody saw and screamed at me to stop. That's why it looks kinda floppy ^^;;
Then we decided to try to go to Gwangalli Beach, which was one of the items on the list. Apparently there was Korea's longest bridge there. Well we got off on the subway exit the paper suggested and ended up walking 30 minutes toward the beach, which never showed up (it was supposed to after 10-13 minutes, according to the leader who we called in distress). We walked past 2 subway stops before the one we had gotten off at -.- Finally we hailed a cab and decided to go home because it was almost 11, the neighborhood was getting ghetto-er and shadier, and we were pooped! The cab didn't drive for 5 minutes before we were on the stupid bridge, which was extremely short compared to American standards. Needless to say, our first day in Busan wasn't impressive. Not bad, but not amazing.

The second day, they gave us kimbap for breakfast on the bus because we had to get rolling. They also made all of us (about 100 people) wear the EAP shirts and we got gawked at everytime we weren't in a tourist-y area. First we went to "The Hill of Welcoming the Moon" which is supposed to be great for moon-viewing. It was also near the cafe where "My Sassy Girl" was shot, but it was under renovation. The weather wasn't very clear so you can't really see the great view of the ocean in the picture:

After, we headed to the Dragon Palace Temple, which was a Buddhist temple. Along the hike up to the actual temple area, there were many cool statue things made of stone. There were huge ones of all the zodiac signs.
We're both rabbits!:

Me on a soccer ball and a hand:

Someone left a hat on this horse:

His belly is black from all the hands rubbed on it over the years. This buddha will give you a son if you rub him! I rubbed it a little too ;]

Pigs of luck:

Some funky looking holy things in the distance:

After, we had a really great lunch in a Korean restaurant called Kun Jip. Again, forgot the photos hehe. Then they released us at the International Can Market/Jagalchi Fish Market area for some more dreadful free time. It wouldn't have been so bad if we had known where to go and if the time wasn't so long. Pretty much it's like "hey you have three hours to get lost and find your way back". The open air markets pretty much sold the same stuff all throughout, and it was hot and sticky so Melody and I cleverly found our way into an air-conditioned mall where we killed some time. Later as we were heading back, we bought some cheap takoyaki, a Japanese dish (there are a lot of Japanese products there because of all the Japanese tourists) of fried octopus balls. They look much better in Japanese dramas than they taste. But the ice cream waffles we had made up for it by 500%!!!! My new favorite food. Waffles with a scoop of strawberry ice cream and a scoop of vanilla, and a drizzle of chocolate syrup- for only $1! After I scarfed it down, I felt really guilty for not taking a picture of it so here's the cart I bought it at!:


Speaking of waffles, I have gained some weight since coming to Seoul. I haven't had access to a scale, but my pooch and cheeks speak louder than numbers. :<