The Great Korean Road Trip of 2012: Part 2

Hello, and welcome again to the Great Korean Road Trip of 2012. We left off with leaving Mokpo, picking up some strawberries, and heading to Busan. Let's continue there, shall we.

We arrived in Busan at around 9 p.m., with not much for maps and a slight idea where we wanted to go. We entered the city from the West side, and needed to head all the way to the South East side, where the beaches are. This took around an hour and a half due to getting lost a few times. But we arrived to find this at Gangwali Beach, so it was OK:

Bridge at Gangwali Beach

Unfortunately, the restaurant I wanted to go to was closed by that time, and the other good looking ones were closed. We settled on some crappy night club type thing that served us some poorly cooked pizza and some overbreaded chicken. We ate it.

The area of Gangwali seemed a bit dead, so we meandered over to the more famous beach, called Haeundae. I don't have any nighttime photos of the place, but we had a good time there. The one photo I do have is from the enchanting fake window plastered to the wall in the hallway of our hotel:

We got some good rest that night, and woke eariler the next day to get some decent brunch and look around. This time, the restaurant I wanted, Breeze Burns Burger, was open. They had the best chicken wings there that I have had in a long time, and excellent hamburgers, too. Along the way I found this place:

"Someone should go to prison for letting me drink this!"

We loitered around Haeundae Beach for a while, knowing that we would have to spend a long time in the car that afternoon. Here are a few photos from our time there:

"No smoking!"

Haeundae Beach

Some crazy patriotic Korean kite flying man

We cruised out of town that afternoon, without even stopping at a gas station before leaving. There was about an eigth of a tank left, so I figured we could make some time before filling up again. I was wrong. That was a huge mistake. Somehow we ended up on a highway that was a huge black hole for LPG (propane) stations. We had to finally stop in a city called Ulsan and ask directions to the nearest station, with gas lights blinking and the needle at rock bottom. Finally, we found one, what a sweet relief:

the sleek Kia Carens, strawberries on the dash

On the side of the road in Ulsan was this crazy giant temple structure, so I pulled over. I never truly found out what it is because I never asked, but I gathered that it was some kind of Buddhism school where young monks are raised. It was a nice place to stop for a few minutes anyway:

From there, we set on the road again due North. We wanted to make it most of the way to North Korea by nightfall, but we weren't so lucky. We started looking for potential stops for the night, and ended up in this crazy crab city. We didn't stop, but they made it completely obvious that you can't escape eating seafood and crabs while there. Much of the architecture was crab-based; restaurants, bridges, bus stops. Driving by the restaurants resulted in people yelling at us to park and get some crabs. We somehow resisted.

There was a nice stopping place near the city, with a temple set up on a hill. We were attracted by the multi colored lights:

It turned out to be a fake tree

The temple, decorated for a New Year celebration

We made another pit stop at a convenience store to look for some snacks and beverages. Timmy found a hat:

I found a nice sandwich with pictures of pomegranites and beans on the packaging. The best I could tell is that it was sweet red beans and pumpkin inside. Surprisingly, it didn't taste that bad:

I later found out that city was called Yeongdeok (pronounced like 'young duck'), the crab capitol of Korea. Pretty much every city in Korea is the capitol for something, like how Seosan is the garlic capitol. Yeongdeok just took it way too far.

It was freezing cold there, so we couldn't do much walking around. We got back in the car and headed North once more...

To recap the trip so far: we started in Seosan, headed South to Mokpo, East to Busan, North to Ulsan and Yeongdeok. That path is about half way around the country. Nice!

Tune in next time for the conclusion of the trip!