Busan Weekend!!!!!!!!!

Busan Busan Busan Busan Busan... Oh, how I love you, Busan.

We started our trip early Saturday morning. We lucked into a direct bus (that didn't do any of its normal milk-run stops) that had us crossing the entire Korean peninsula from west to east in five hours.

Haeundae Beach... where the Koreans are dressed and the foreigners aren't

My sexy fiancé in the water at Haeundae Beach....

After a wee subway trip, we found ourselves at Busan's famous (although decidedly urban) Haeundae Beach, surrounded by fully clothed Koreans and nearly naked Waygookin. It was a glorious blue-sky day and the first 3-day weekend of the summer (ergo, a lot of tourists around).

We managed to find a room in a dodgy hotel that was cheaper than all the other dodgy hotels around (the dodgy hotel that I'd stayed at in November had doubled its prices in anticipation of the influx of tourists). At any rate, we knew that we wouldn't be spending tons of time in the tiny room, the majority of which was taken up by the round bed (pink) and lit with a tasteful red light in the ceiling.

Lunch was Indian - at Ganga - where we ate and drank and ate some more (a bit expensive, but well worth it), followed by beachy time, until we wandered into the Busan Aquarium.

Clowning around with the clown fish at the Busan Aquarium

Being cheesy and romantic inside the shark mouth

The penguins were decidedly uncooperative, which made me sad, but the sharks certainly made up for it. The fun bit of two people who have recently been scuba diving in diverse parts of the world going to an aquarium is playing the "I've seen that fish/shark/lobstrosity/etc in Cuba/Indonesia/Cambodia/Mozambique.... " game at every single tank.

We met up with my friend Jack and, even though we were still full from lunch, managed to gobble amazingly delicious tacos from a lost taco stand surrounded by American GIs, sitting on plastic stools and avoiding cars that kept passing so close to us in the narrow alley that we thought they'd run over our feet. From there, Jack asked if we'd like to go to a local "Upara". A what?

Jack at the U-para shooting gallery

Me and Jack, being silly

U-para is like a Chuck E. Cheese for grown-ups (and kids, and teens, and families...anyway). For $4, you spend an hour wandering around playing video games, reading comics, playing billiards, shooting rifles, fishing, noraebanging, bowling... well, just about anything that you want to do. Our first stop was the massage chairs, of course, before we hit the arcade games. We probably could have spent a few more hours there and not noticed the time passing. It was really awesome and such a neat surprise....

After that, Ty and I headed to the Paradise Casino. It was absolutely packed. I'm assuming that it must be a long weekend in Japan and China too (Koreans are not allowed to gamble in Korean casinos - go figure)... anyway, after playing the same $10 for about 20 minutes on the slots, I wandered over to play Blackjack ($40) for the next hour or so. I was pretty happy, since my luck held out and let me play up and down for about 2 hours in all. Ty and I are pretty sure that we'd be gambling addicts if we ever actually moved to Busan....

Having lost all our money and giddy on free wine and beer, we went for another walk on Haeundae beach, where groups of people were lighting off fireworks.

The next day, Sunday, was a bit overcast. After some restorative Starbucks, we attempted to locate the famous Beomeosa Temple, one of Korea's oldest and most beautiful Buddhist temples. It was a bit of a mission, including a 30-minute wait for a bus that never came and a 20-minute wander around a random neighbourhood, but we finally found our way.

Decorations for Buddha's birthday

With Buddha's 2552nd birthday just one week away, the entire place was decorated up with colourful octagonal or lotus-shaped paper lanterns. Really really gorgeous.

We also decorated a roof tile. We just kind of started doodling a tree, and it started to look like the Shel Silverstein book... There isn't any deeper meaning, but we both love the story.

From Beomeosa, we went to "Shanghai Street". It really wasn't a typical Chinatown, since it seemed to have been misnamed - "Moscow Street" would have been more appropriate. All the signs were in Russian, with overly made-up women in tight black skirts lining the street, smiling at Ty (and saying, "helllllooooooo") and looking at me strangely. Um, yeah.

Toes in the sand... Starbuck's Vanilla Latte.... could life be any better?

Monday morning was absolutely gorgeous, and we took our Starbucks down to the beach for about an hour of people-watching and sand-playing before our return to Mokpo.

We hate the beach, obviously....

I've now got a year (mwahahahaha) to convince Ty that we should really really really move to Busan so that we may partake of its lush green mountains, diverse ethnic restaurants, casinos, beaches, and English-speaking cashiers.....