Busan/Beomosa/Haeundae Beach

May 18th-20th

The hike to Beomosa (L to R Sara, Nick, Julie)

On the 15th of May Korean's celebrate Teacher's Day and, in an attempt to make up for months of terrible behaviour, offer tokens of gratitude to the people they torment. Obviously I'm generalizing the kids are good for the most part. I kinda got short-changed on the day I only received 4 gifts to Julie's 11, that's the way it goes I guess when you've got boobs. Anywho, because all the schools get the day off. In Iksan to even things up we were givin the friday off, so you know what that means....long weekend.

Crazy trees on the way to the temple

In the spirit of this rare occasion I though it would be fitting to take a long weekend adventure, even though after our extreme weekend we'd told ourselves we would starting saving more money. So we decided to go to Changwon to visit Nick and his g/f Sara, sorry if that's the incorrect spelling, who we hadn't seen since the Bullfighting festival in March. We took the cheap train to Changwon for & 25,000 won and it took a total of 6 hours. More lanterns inside Beomosa

Changwon was a really nice city, there were trees and bushes everywhere and the city was surrounded by mountains, which was a nice change of scenery from Iksan. Since we ended up spending the night there and had a nice dinner of Burger's and homemade fresh cut fries, it was amazing, with a beer it came to 8,000 won, a price that can't be beat. After that we stopped at

a 7/11 for some more drinks and took a breif walk around the area before deciding to head to a DVD bang. For those who don't know it's basically a place where you pay 5 bucks or so to watch a movie in a home theatre room with a nice couch/attomen's and all that. We watched 'Whalerider' in an attempt to get to learn more about NZ/Maori culture, also because our new NZ teacher's recommended it to us. It was pretty good. A pimped out stone pagoda

The next day we left for Busan, Korea's second largest city, and head to Beomosa Temple in the North of the city. It was a really nice complex that had over ten different Buddhist temples within it, and since it was surrounded by mountains the scenery was really nice. So here are some pics of that. It was a healthy 4km uphill hike, that seemed to go on forever, but once we got there it was well worth it. All the way to the temple the sides of the streets were lined with paper lanterns, this is in preparation of Buddha's Birthday which happens to be today, May 24th.

Some sorta ceremony taking place. The wires are for more paper lanterns

That night we headed out for some Kalbi, mikchu and soju and then to a local ex-pat bar called Crossroads that had some decent live music, and fairly priced beer. After that we head to another small bar for mokali, a type of rice wine made that is served ice cold. I wasn't a fan...stuff messed me up...Julie, Nick and Sara seemed to really enjoy it. The stuff was dirt cheap and we were only able to finish one of the two large brass tea pots( I shouldn't really count myself in the we, I did very little of the work). After that it was straight to McD's for a drunk meal before headin back to our swanky Arabian looking love motel. Mokali

The next day we went to Haeundae Beach in Busan, at first it was lookin like it was going to be a shiat day, real over cast, not a good beach day. By the time we hit the subway and then went for lunch at an extemely small (7x12 feet) Mexican restaurant, the weather had turned reall nice. The Mexican food was alright but I still think the place in Itaewon was better. The Beach was nice not too crowded yet, lots of people out sunning themselves, I forgot to put sunscreen on my legs a chess so ended up looking pretty ridiculous later that evening, my skin was purple I was so burnt.

Am I flexing or is the water cold? You decide.
Haeundae Beach

We took a walk up the boardwalk just off the beach and got a bunch of nice pictures, and we got some nice snacks, these old Korean women snatched Julie's camera and took our picture in a nice ploy to get us to bu some duk and some roasted chestnuts. By this time it was startin to get late (well not really, we just wanted to be home before 8pm) so we headed for the train station.
We figured that since there were tons of trains heading to Dajeon that it wouldn't be a problem. Unfortuneatly that day it there was an Exodus from Busan, as all trains were full, with the exception of a 7:00 train. So we ended up having to pay the extra $$$ for 1st class seats, and waiting around the train station for three hours but we made it home safe and sound.

The end of the boardwalk at Haeundae Beach