Cool Places to go~ #4 BuSaN

Busan

This weekend saw FarmBoy and myself, as well as Luke and Holly (aka Huke & Lolly~our SA friends that we came over here with, but who were in the alternate orientation) head to Busan for Buddha's birthday weekend.
Busan is another BiG city, full of people and things to do see, but most importantly it was full of other "waygooks" (foreigners). This might have just been because it was a long weekend, but for the first time since arriving in Korea, the number of Koreans to Foreigners was just about even :)

Anyways, we stayed at a great backpackers called BlueBackpackers, about a 4 min walk from the central Subway Line. Very basic, but it had everything we needed and for the neat sum of W45 000 pp for 2 nights it was perfect! Once arriving at Busan Station after a long 3 1/2 hr train ride from Daejeon, we hopped in  a taxi (only cost us W4000), and arrived at our home for the next 2 days to drop off our luggage and meet up with Luke and Holly.  Bags dropped, swimming costumes on, camera in hand we headed to Hyundae Beach for some sun, sea and sand...



Definately a must if ur looking for a beach that you will feel right at home on. The numbers of foreigners to Koreans on the beach was about 10:1, the foreigners being the pale scantily clad beings, with the Koreans being the fully clothed, "im just gonna haul out my huge SLR and take snapshots of myself and my dogs and my friends and you and you and you..." beings looking on from afar :)

We swam in the freezing water, more out of a kind of a "I am hardcore and this is what us South Africans do" than a "oh look lets dip our toes into the sea and watch the waves lap the shore". The beach was crowded, but it was clean and us girls didnt feel out of places or worried about dissaproving looks from the neighbouring Koreans, as there were many other waygooks looking far more inappropriate than we could ever have tried to look.

All along the promenade there are cool little coffee shops and places to find a bite to eat, as well as numerous little grocery stores selling beer and such.

If your feeling like something with a bit more a vibe, back on the main road there are plenty of restaurants selling anything from Mexican to Italian (as well as the usual KFC's and Baskin& Robbins). We had lunch at a place called "FuzzyNavel"

~great if ur looking for an overpriced, full of VeRy intoxicated foreigners (the makority of the loud ones being American~i love my American friends, i really do, but the inhabitants of FuzzyNavel were another level of loud!), and dirty place to eat tasteless food, then its perfect!

So we had a few drinks there and then went to the nearest convenience store to get some wine and beer and spent the rest of the evening chilling on the beach

under the stars...

Unfortunatley for us it rained the rest of the weekend, so we spent the rest of our time watching movies at Lotte Department Store, crawling round the fabulous Gukje market

(located on Subway line 1, Jagalchi Station, 10 minutes walking toward Nampo-dong, past Let's Miwhadang), and visiting Shinsegae Centum City

~which according to the Guinnes Book of World Records is the largest shopping centre in the world...even their food hall was breathtaking (but that migth just have the been the size and quantity of delicious 'western' delights)!