The Weird and the Wonderful: Busan

This past weekend I took a trip to Busan, which is a Southern seaport in Korea. It's the second largest city in Korea, next to Seoul, and is known in Korea for it's beaches mostly. We took the KTX train, a speed train which cuts down a 5-6 hour ride to something just under 3 hours. We stayed in Haeundae, a popular area for tourists. We hit up the beach right after eating. It was nice, but the weather here is still quite cold, so I couldn't really feel the full beach effect. Apparently in the summer, this place is just packed with people. There are not many beaches in Korea, so much of the country flocks to a select few.

Our motel was about a 5 minute walk from the beach. It turned out that the sleeping area was not beds, but blankets on the floor. This seemed okay until someone accidentally turned the heat up to 90 degrees. Remember I mentioned that the floors were heated? Yea, it felt like I was sleeping on the plate of my straightening iron. We had lots of snoring going on as well. Needless to say, I was not the happiest camper at work on Monday. Big time case of the Mondays.

Our host, my friend's coworker who is from Busan, made us an amazing Korean meal for dinner. Then the next day, his parents took us out for a Korean BBQ meal. Everything was delightful.

Sunday we went to a Buddhist temple called Okransonwon (I think I butchered this spelling, I only know how to spell it in Korean 옥련선원).

Buddhas. Buddhas, rockin' everywhere.

We finished out the day by going to Nampodong and then a fish market. Nampodong is a market with tons of street food and knock-off designer stuff. I ate a lot. Walking up to the fish market, we watched as this woman ruthlessly skinned squirming eels. Yikes.