Weekend in Busan

I don't think you can ask much else from life when you've got friends, good food, some alcohol and the waves crashing. That's exactly what I got this weekend and aboslutely loved it. Over the weekend I visited Busan for the first time. I went with 5 of my friends and had an amazing time. Busan is about a 40 minute bus ride from Changwon, which makes me happy because I definitely want to go there often while the hot summer weather lingers on for a few more weeks. Haeundae (hey-uhn-day) beach is the famous beach in Busan, and packed with people. It was insane seeing a sea of yellow and blue umbrellas across the sandy beach as people tried to block out the sun.
We arrived in Busan after a long and uncomfortable bus ride. Once we formed our plan of checking into our hostels and meeting up again for dinner, the boys, Nolan and Paul, went their seperate ways, and the girls Lindsay, Zoe, Sudeshna and I caught a cab to our hostel. We had a pleasant time in the cab. Our cab driver put on some mixed tape he had of corny English music. We got to listen to a little Micheal Jackson. I think the driver was having a good time. I definitely saw him bob his head to the music a couple of times.


In order to get to the hostel you have to go down a set of steps from a bridge on the main road. This is the view looking down from the steps.


And this is the view from our room on the 13th floor

To my left is Sudeshna. She is Bengali. We do our our fair share of communicating in Bangla. Two Bengali girls in the same town is a lot for people to handle. We're a pretty sweet duo. And we were about as happy as can be because we were about to go get some Indian food (a rarity in Korea, as you can imagine) and go chill out on the beach after wards.

After checking in we headed towards to subway where the boys were going to meet us so we could all head to the Haeundae station together. We had a few mishaps on the subway, almost going the wrong direction, missing one of our stops to switch trains, getting the ticket machine to accept our wons so we could get our tickets! We eventually made it back to the main strip of road near the beach and headed to the restaurant. The food was okay. The naan could have been fluffier, and the curries could have been spicier, but getting Indian food in Korea was a gift in it of itself.
Okay so I swear its not pizza were eating, but naan which was pretty delicious even though I still think it should have been fluffier! After our ethnic outing we went to the store got ourselves some soju, and KGB beers and made our way to the sand. Even at night the beach is packed with people. It just doesn't look as bad because everyone is not hiding under their huge yellow and blue umbrellas to avoid the sun.
That's Lindsay, Paul and Nolan enjoying their alcohol as they were watching the waves crash. We chilled on the beach and it was amazing. I had the beach, my friends, my food, my alcohol, and I was completely satisfied. We decided to leave the beach around 12 and head over to another part of town to go to this club called the Vinyl Underground. We saw some pretty crazy dancing going on. It was pretty empty in there when we first arrived, but people started trickling in and some of our other friends showed up so it made for a pretty good time.

I don't remember what time it was by the time we got a cab to go back to our hostels but needless to say I was exhausted. Oddly enough, I woke up the next morning at 8 and started chatting with one of the other girls staying in one of the rooms in the apartment we had. Aside from just being in Korea, this is probably my other favorite part about this entire year in Korea. Meeting complete random strangers that I will probably never see again and just chatting about the adventures we've had so far in this country.

Sudeshna and Lindsay left at this point so it was just Zoe and I left to our own devices. We got on the train to meet back up with Nolan and Paul. When we finally reached Haeundae beach again, we decided we needed some food. So we found some restaurant and ordered what they called a potato soup. There were only a couple of potatoes in the soup, but it was mostly ribs and other leafy vegetables. I think the two ladies that were running the place enjoyed having us there. When the soup was done one of them came over and served each of us and then she came next to me and started shredding my meat for me, and before I knew it she ended up feeding me like a little kid. Everyone started laughing. But she did not just stop at feeding me. She made her rounds with each of us at that table.It was Paul's turn to be fed.This is the sweet lady. She was adorable. We started referring to her as our Korean mom. I have every intention of going back to Busan and finding her again. We left there with full stomachs and started strolling towards the beach. During the day it was packed from shoulder to shoulder. The weather was pretty nice outside. If it was a smidgen hotter, I think it would have been better. Zoe and Nolan were brave enough to go pretty far out into the water. I was being a wimp because it was freezing cold.

And finally, I'd like to leave you with this. It's a sign we saw on our way to the subway station. I'm not sure what the place is, but you can judge for yourself.