A Weekend Excursion Down South

Korea has a lot of random holidays. While I'm not in any way complaining, I've already celebrated Children's Day, Parent's Day, Buddha's Birthday, Lantern Festival, Memorial Day, and... wait for it... my school's birthday. For all of these holidays, we get school off. It's great! The first weekend of June happened to be South Korea's Memorial Day, so my friends and I (and most of Seoul, actually) decided to head down to Busan for the 3 day weekend!

Busan is the second largest city in Korea with a population of 3.6 million people (Seoul has over 10 million people). It is the largest port city in Korea and the fifth largest port city in the world! Some Korean's pronounce the cities name "Pusan", as that is how it was previously spelled and also the "p" and "b" sound are interchangeable in the Korean language. Busan has the world's largest department store, a gigantic fish market, beautiful beaches and what will be the world's tallest building in 2013 (they're clearly making add-ons to achieve this feat): the 110th story Lotte Super Tower. While all these facts are great for the city of Busan, I didn't make the trip down there to see the ports or the Lotte Super Tower. This was a chance to see another part of Korea and take a mini-vacation with some great people! And the beaches weren't too bad either.

We took the KTX train down, which is a fast train that crosses the entire length of Seoul to Busan in 2.5 hours. When we arrived, we checked in at our hostel:

 

and then headed strait to the beach!

This was the group of girls I went with to Busan. Brit, Sabrina, myself, Clare and Jess. Brit is from Texas and Jess from San Diego, while Sabrina and Clare are both from England. One of the most rewarding parts of teaching in Korea has been the experience of meeting people from all over the world. This was definitely a great group to travel with! They're awesome!

We were surprised and stoked to see that Busan was having a Sand Festival during the long weekend. We were greeted with these awesome sights upon our arrival at Haeundae Beach:

 Gulliver trapped by the Lilliputians!

Now that's what I call a sand castle!

We toured the amazing sand sculptures, and then took a rest on the beach to soak up the rays and scenic beauty. And, of course, take a jumping picture. Anyone who knows me well knows that this is a vacation must.

After getting our fair dose of vitamin D, we ventured back to our hostel to get ready for a night out on the town.

This is a pic snapped at a Western bar called Rock 'N Roll that was on the 14th floor of one of the tall buildings down by the beach. It was certainly a fun night!

The next day we decided to try and find a less crowded, more relaxed beach.. and we were certainly successful! This is Gwangan Beach:

It was beautiful out this day of our trip! We all were just in awe of the great weather and soaked up every ounce of it! However, I can only lay out in the sun so long before I feel the need to be proactive. So, I took to building a sand castle with Brit:

This sucker not only had a water moat, but a draw bridge AND a soju tower! Brit and I will most likely be heading to the big competition on the other beach next year. I mean, clearly we have the talent to do so.

Constructing such an architectural masterpiece had built up quite a thirst in me, so we all decided to make a special combination of what, I believe, to be one of the greatest ideas of all time.

This... is soju watermelon. Using a knife we stole from an absurdly slow restaurant, which therefore qualified them to be stolen from, we cut several holes in the melon, poured in the bottle and let it sit! In a few minutes, we were ready to go to town! This picture is of Jess and Robbie, the lone fella in our group, testing it out. I can strongly say that it was a big hit with all of us.

After the soju watermelon and day on the beach, we headed to the infamous Busan fish market. It was GIANT! I won't waste space posting all the crazy marine life you can buy there, but if you want to look at more, I have them on my facebook. Basically, how the market works is you walk around isles and isles and floors and floors of live or recently deceased fish (mostly live). They don't just have fish, but octopus and squid and crabs and everything you can imagine would come out of the sea! You pick what you want, pay a sitting fee, go up stairs and they cook up the exact items you picked out! Here is a picture of our dinner:

We had two crabs, two LIVE octopi, and some flounder. Delicious!

And this is me in awe of the biggest crab I've ever seen!

After gathering our selected items, we all sat down and ate together!

After the fish market, we prepared for one last night out on the town. Of course, we made it a good one. The next day we packed up our things and ventured back to Seoul. Jess and I took the long train (it was cheaper, but 5.5 hours in duration) and although we were constantly bombarded with people who were unable to purchase a ticket and therefore standing in the isles, the slow scenes of the amazing country were totally worth the long ride. We got to ride through practically ALL of South Korea. It was beautiful!

Busan was a great vacation, and I was so happy to go with such great people! Although I truly do love Seoul and was happy to come home here, I will most certainly make another weekend trip down to Busan before I leave Korea. Perhaps this time I will test out a soju pineapple? Who knows! The possibilities are endless here! :)