Beach Bums in Busan!

Appetizer

Main course

Last weekend, for our weekend off, we took a little trip to the beach.  One of our old students Janice and her friend were joining us, and the four of us thoroughly enjoyed Korea's beach town.  The first day we browsed their gigantic outdoor market for 4+ hours.  The first part of the market was things like clothes, hair accessories, shoes, and various food stalls.  These food stalls made up our lunch for the first day and it was certainly a decision we did not regret.  We had a variety of samplings from the vendors, including Busan's version of Korea's tasty Hotteok.  The normal version is just a simply filled sweet pancake with a filling of brown sugar, crushed peanuts or sesame seeds.  Busan's version were better, and they also included some kind of seeds, chopped peanuts, honey, and cinnamon.  Yum.  Our next stop was a stall with some vegetable pancakes, which we proceeded to eat right there at the stall with the chopsticks they provided us.  After a bit more wandering through the market, some of us got strawberry smoothies and some of us got Turkish ice cream.  I'm not exactly sure what they do to the ice cream in Turkey, but it's much stickier and stringier than normal ice cream.    Next we proceeded to Busan's famous fish market, which is massive.  Row after row of freshly caught seafood of all varieties, you can purchase your fish there and have it prepared at an adjacent restaurant.  Talk about fresh. 

After all our marketing, it was time to hit up Busan's claim to fame, Haeundae Beach!  According to the seasoned foreigners, it's basically the only real beach in Korea, which explains why it is always so ridiculously crowded.  It was even worse the weekend we went, since it was the "opening weekend" for the beach.  I'm not exactly sure what that means, since I'm pretty sure the beach is always there :)  but I think it means that all the umbrellas and chairs are available, which is highly valuable to the Koreans who are moderately to extremely Heliophobia (the technical term for fear of the sun)  :)    So on this beach, it was unmistakably obvious who the foreigners were (in their bikinis) and who the Koreans were (huddled under the umbrellas, or swimming fully clothed).  So, as foreigners, especially ones who lived in cloudy England for the last year, we took full advantage of the sun in all its glory.  There were some other interesting things going on at the beach due to it being opening weekend.  They had built a giant sand hill for sand boarding/sledding, there was a giant parade and band with people dressed as characters from all over the world (including Madonna, Elvis, and maybe Moses?).  We went to a delicious Thai restaurant for dinner, appreciating the fact that we were in Korea's second biggest city and thus had more food options than we normally do in Suncheon. 



After relaxing for a bit at our hostel, we headed back out to the beach briefly to catch and glimpse and take some pictures of the much photographed Busan night skyline.  We also caught the tail end of a concert on the stage set up on the beach.  It was kind of bizarre.  The people on the stage were super excited, but the Koreans didn't really seem to know what was going on, and certainly weren't about to start dancing around. 

Busan by night

A rare shot of empty Haeundae Beach

 The next morning, in order to not throw off our sleep patterns for the coming week, Jon and I got up quite early.  While we waited for the other girls to get up, we took a stroll down Haeundae's sandy shores again, this time we basically had the beach to ourselves.  There were still a few late night parties who refused to call it a night, and one man curled up with a blanket on the beach catching a few z's, but for the most part it was oddly empty of the previous day's partiers. 

Seaside Temple

 After the other two traveling companions were up, we headed for a seaside Buddhist temple, which was huge and gorgeous.  We enjoyed the scenery there for a while, took a break from all the hard work of sightseeing at a coffee shop, and then parted ways.  The girls wanted to do more shopping, Jon and I ...did not :)  We set out in search of lunch, passing the beach one last time, and happily found the most delicious end to our weekend getaway.  We ended up at an Indian restaurant, and upon entering we were greeted by about 15 Indians also waiting to be seated.  We took that as a good sign and began to anticipate the goodness that awaited us.  We were not disappointed.  Aloo paratha for appetizers, Jon got a creamy dal dish and I got a Korma Curry, amazingly seasoned.  Our trip ended with a rushed trip through the metro after getting change through an ice cream shop (oh darn) and barely catching the last frequent bus home.  Lovely weekend!

Cutting it a bit close...