EPTBoo!
Wellll...it's been a while... I would offer some spectacular excuses as to why this blog whimpered away like a soggy firework but I have none. Just been lazy.
My last real entry was about the marvels of teaching in Korea. I still have a tonne of weird/interesting/funny stories from the classroom but I'll come back to those later. The following two entries will be about 2 mini-trips I made earlier this year. Both destinations were 'must-gos' in my Korean Checklist and both were great fun.
Let's get going- Pusan!
I went to Pusan in February with two good friends. We contemplated flying down in style from Seoul but eventually agreed to do it the PROPER way...
![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/KTX_in_Seongjeongni_on_2005-09-05.jpg)
...via Korea's triumphant KTX....Glorious thing.
Arriving in Pusan with one of those stupid :D grins. The first that struck me was the weather. Seoul in winter is cold. Real fucking cold. (For a mere Englishman anyway). But even though Pusan is only 3 hours south of Seoul, the weather was a lot friendly, particularly to my nipples :|
Fifth Avenue and Pusan Tower
Near the station was a street called Fifth Avenue (?) and we walked around there for a bit. For film buffs, it's apparently where they have the Pusan Film Festival every year and normally, it's a pretty busy, downtowny area. I compared it Myeong Dong (Seoul's shopping clusterfuck), except a lot less claustrophic and a bit cleaner. I came across this shop with a sign that looked like it had been written by a very bitter and sarcastic English teacher:
![[image loading]](http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/4986/sdc10022m.jpg)
The amazingness of this shop and its unimaginable wares clearly transcended time itself. Sadly, I couldn't be arsed going inside.
+ Show Spoiler [Brief Panorama] +
Nearby was the Pusan Tower, so a short but very confusing hike later, we gazed down upon the Pusanites/Pusanians//Zerglings below us...
![[image loading]](http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/2908/sdc10023.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/1726/sdc10029v.jpg)
Apart from the sea, the architecture and sprawling layout of the city is very much like that of Seoul
+ Show Spoiler [Brief Clip from the Pusan Tower] +
Haeundae
Soon after, we headed off to the Haeundae - the place where we were going to stay the night. Haeundae is actually a large area including a beach. When we got there, it was pretty dark which was fortunate as the area has some great night views. Pretty randomnly we followed a trail down to the beach and bumped into the throngs of Korean couples holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes.
![[image loading]](http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/6967/sdc10047b.jpg)
Try as we did, sadly, we 3 guys couldn't quite replicate the mood.
![[image loading]](http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/6334/sdc10042.jpg)
Finding a place to stay was kind of fun. The beach is, as they are, a nice wide arc of sand around the sea. Behind this lovely arc, there is an impressive line of expensive hotels. This is the money shot. The stuff that appears on your postcard to your mum. The shit that gets on the HiSeoul adverts. But behind these buildings, are an equally well-illuminated set of buildings: Korean love motels.^^
Ah.. love motels... always tucked away so not to disturb, yet always there, easily found whenever needed....definitely a future blog entry candidate. Anyway, these places double up as very reasonable lodging for backpackers and short-term travellers. Just avoid the shitholes....
![[image loading]](http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/7821/sdc10059svz.jpg)
like we didn't on our first night. LOL.
Actually it was completely not funny at the time. The place was fucking disgusting. Our Korean friend, drawing upon his native knowledge, felt compelled to warn us off any and all potentially dried-sperm-encrusted objects. E.g. Me: 'oh, here's the bathroom. Now... where's the light swit'..'DONT FUCKIGN TOUCH THAT! SPERM!!! DANGEROUS.' ... 'Oh okay... well anyway, there's a TV at least, let's see wha..' 'DONT TOUCH REMOTE!!!!!!!!' 'Fine okay.. Look, I'll pick up the remote with the tissue over ther..' 'NO TOUCHING TISSUE!'..... -__-
Moving on. Haeundae is actually Korea's most popular beach. In peak season, it looks like this:
![[image loading]](http://coolstuff.floristone.com/images/beach-10.jpg)
For us, the next morning looked like this:
![[image loading]](http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/6012/sdc10065r.jpg)
Really refreshing, especially when contrasted with Seoul. (The weather was not as shit as it looks D
Geo-jae Island
Sometime during the trip, we decided to go a little hardcore and visit this not well-known island. We took an uneventful ferryride from Pusan and arrived 1.5hours later on the small island.. We did zero research beforehand so we didn't know what to expect. Geo-jae Island is pretty small. I think you can go from one side to the other by car in an hour. There is a little town next to the port but it's very rural apart from a smattering of villages here and there. Basically, the opposite of Seoul in every way.
![[image loading]](http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/5669/sdc10082q.jpg)
This was the only tourist map I ever saw in this great city of tourism
After some very lazy discussion, we picked a couple of remote but cool sounding places and headed off for them. The island was pretty small so it would be easy to get to them right? Wrongggggg. Initially, we thought about taking a taxi down so we waved down a taxi and asked for the fare. He said he would make a deal for 30,000Won for the 40min journey. The fool was clearly trying to rip off another bunch of clueless foreigners. I scoffed in his face and we marched off to the bus stop.
Long story short. 1 stressful bus ride, 2 hours wandering around in Korean wildnerness and another hour of hitchhiking later, we still hadn't reached our destination.....It occured to me that maybe I had finally met an exception to the 'taxi drivers are all greedy, over-charging bastards' rule and the guy was probably a honest bloke. Oops. In fact, for the last leg of the journey, we very reluctantly called a taxi... I kept thinking how perfectly ironic it would be if the same driver turned up. He could have given the most incredible IFUCKINGTOLDYOUSO grin. Lady Fate wasn't being too bitchy that day though.
![[image loading]](http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/2695/sdc10102m.jpg)
Rural Korea. Did you know I am standing in one of only 3 locations in Korea where you can do this without being instantly Carmageddoned??
The next day, we went to a few more cool places including a little port. We booked a boat tour around some scenic rocks/islands and explored around while we waited.
![[image loading]](http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/7129/sdc10123x.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/2590/sdc10122d.jpg)
Fresh penis things anyone? Buy one get one free.
The boat tour was weird as the driver/tour guide was clearly on some type of strong medication. He would spontaneously burst into Korean song while commentating on the scenery around us (a hit with the Korean adjummas). His best act was racing the boat around some particularly perilious-looking rocks while blasting Ride of the Valkyries over the speaker system.
We visited this stunning mini-island called Waedo. 'Waedo' is just a clever anagram for 'Paradise' though.
![[image loading]](http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/1413/sdc10162s.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/9579/sdc10170g.jpg)
Fuck yo' Hanging Gardens of Wherevah
We actually only spent these two days and one night in Geojae Island as one of the friends decided to start hating everything about the island and demanded we go back to Pusan. :/ So we did, this time via the bus. After that, we spent one more night in Pusan. We visited a quaint temple on the coast, felt the buzzing night life (in an area called Seomyeon, basically Sinchon Version 2.01), sampled the local soju and embarassed myself in a trendy trance club. Nothing incredibly noteworthy happened though .... and this blog entry is taking forever to finish, so I'll just end with some pics.~
![[image loading]](http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/8899/sdc10181.jpg)
No Korean trip is proper without a sampling of the local soju.
+ Show Spoiler [360 in Seomyeon] +
Small anecdote
Loyal readers as you all are, no doubt you will remember my entry about language exchanging with some Korean girls in London. One of the girls (number 5 lol) was pretty cool but I completely lost contact with her after I came to Korea. Anyway, as I was walking down Fifth Avenue on my first day in Pusan, I spotted this quite pretty girl walking towards me. She had a resemblance to this girl but she seemed taller and prettier so we just exchanged glances. It would be pretty ridiculous if in my first hour in Pusan I met the only local I knew, who I last saw on the other side of the world 6 months ago. Besides, I was pretty sure the girl I met was still in London so I forgot about her 5 seconds later.
Fast forward 2 days, I'm back in Seoul and I get an email from the girl I met in London. I'm pretty surprised as me we hadn't talked for over 6 months and the last time I saw her was hundreds of miles away in London. The email is just along the lines of 'Hey, what's up? Long time no speak. How is your life in Korea?.'. I have a nagging feeling at the back of my head though so I get online and talk to her. I ask her if perhaps she was at the same street at the same time I was... She said she only got back to Pusan the week before and that she was there! .....LOL The thing is that she doesn't remember me at all and thought she would just send an email because she was bored. I think she noticed me subconsciously which triggered her sending the email. Small world, weird human brains etc....
Concluding thoughts
Within a few hours of setting foot there, I found Pusan to be very similar to Seoul. This shouldn't have been surprising and I don't know why I was expecting different. Having said that, there are 4 important differences about Pusan:
1) The sea is conveniently nearby.
Refreshing.2) Streets are a lot less crowded. Yay.
3) Pusan people have a Korean dialect which is really cute. (Note: only applies if the speaker has no penis. Otherwise, dialect is at best mildly annoying)
4) Real Pusan o-deng/오뎅 is ACTUALLY DIFFERENT and damn tasty!! (Only those in Seoul will get this.. ^^)
As for Geoje Island...well.. it was nice, but I really recommend going to the place in my next entry instead....
<3 to comments as always.
