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!

Look! More Mascots and Signs

It looks like this will be my last post in October, so I wanted to end October with a bang. This is another post from my August trip to Busan. Busan is a really great city to visit, and has some absolutely spectacular mascots and some mind-boggling signs. If anyone has ideas for alternate captions, post them in the comments and if I like it I'll bring you something from Korea.

"This is my fifth aneurysm and yet I keep coming back for more!"

"I'll lay down so you can take a bite of my delicious back meat."

"Orange train wins again!"

"Migrain chicken is amazing..."

"Quiet please while us monks do our bidness."

"Mexican is best tasting nationality."

I have no idea what this sign could be about. If anyone reads this who is Korean please let me know if you can translate.

Okay, I'm trying to think if this is a typo, but I can't possibly think of a typo that would bring the word crotch into the description of something served at a restaurant.

Beomeosa Temple

And back to my trip to Busan from a few months ago, this is definitely one of the highlights. Busan features an absolutely beautiful Buddhist temple called Beomeosa located halfway up a mountain on the north side of town. The trip involved about 45 minutes on the subway and maybe another 20 on the bus, so it was definitely worth the trip....twice. My friend Daniel and I went on an afternoon and didn't have enough time, so we went straight back there again the next morning.

So a little background then, I guess. According to Wikipedia, this temple was built in the year 678 originally but burned down a few times. The main hall and front gate were reconstructed in 1612, and still stand. Well that's all I will say about the history anyway, since I mostly just enjoyed the scenery. Here is a picture of the nearby mountains:

This is the long walkway leading up to the front entrance:

The side of one of the buildings was lined with bamboo trees, which looked great:

Some great artwork on one of the doors:

A few tiny monks keeping watch:

A nice view of one of the buildings:

One of the older buildngs, I'm guessing it's up for renovation soon:

There were four guards keeping watch at one of the fountains, and here is one:

Some prayer beads lining a wall:

This is definitely one of my favorite photos, the monk on a cell phone. Another interesting monk moment was when I went into the bathroom and noticed that a monk was just finishing up his business. I'm sure this is not true for every monk, but he did not wash his hands.

All in all my few hours spent there were pretty great. I got some really nice gifts from the shop, too, including a bracelet for my little sister with tiny wooden skull beads. There was also a great picnic area with some large rocks located in a stream flowing down the moutain. It was really nice but also super packed with picnicing people.

Beomeosa was my favorite temple I've been to, even if not all of the employees wash before returning to work. I would like to do a temple stay soon and it is on the top of the list of candidates. The only problem is that its at least 4 hours of travel time each way.

I Went to Busan in August

So most readers here know that I didn't blog most of August and September, so there's a bit of a backlog. Upcoming series include my trip back to the U.S.A. and some events from recent weekends. Right now, though, I am going to describe the trip I took to Busan, a large Korean city on the southern shore.

Busan's population is about 3.6 mil according to Wikipedia, so it's a pretty big city. I chose it for the beaches pretty much, as the first week of August is a great time to sit on a beach all day in Korea. It turned out they also have a really great temple located on a mountain, a modern art museum, and a lot of cool mascots. Look for posts on these soon.

The trip to Busan involves Korea's high speed train system, the KTX. This was one of the most exciting parts of the trip for me to be able to finally take the train. I travelled with my friend Daniel, and he insisted that we ride first class. It was only a few dollars more, and the seats were very spacious and offered all the water you can drink. To get to the KTX line I had to take a one and a half hour trip to Daejeon, followed by about two hours aboard the KTX.

From the KTX it was an easy transfer to the subway in Busan, and then quickly to the beach. There was some interesting scenery on the way:

The beach we spent most of the time at was called Gwangali Beach. From what I understand there are two main beaches in Busan, Gwangali and Haeundae. From my friend Daniel's experience Haeundae is a bit overcrowded, so we spent most of the time at Gwangali. Here is a picture of scenic Gwagnali beach. It's basically the beach on the right with a line of hotels, restaurants, and bars on the left. Really nice.

This is a piece of artwork that I enjoyed at the beach:

A restaurant that I visited no less that three times was called Breeze Burns. It had really great hamburgers, decently cheap beer, and some chili cheese fries that destroyed my digestive system one night:

Here's a picture of the other beach, Haeundae. This place was absolutely packed but we spent one night hanging out there drinking beers on the beach.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was travelling back from Haeundae beach to our motel, where we entered the taxi of one of craziest guys ever. This man knew his way around Busan, and would travel about 145 km/hr over bridges and swerve around the slower cars. This guy was awesome.

Our nights were spent at a motel called the Seoul Motel, recommended to us by some random guy we met in Busan. It was a trip down the subway line, but worth the trip because it costs only 30,000 Won (about 25 American) a night.

My last night there was spent at Gwangali again so that I could snap a picture of this beautifully lit bridge at night. It was cool, too, because it looks like the end of the world at the top of the reflection of the lights:

So Busan really was a great trip, I enjoyed my 5 days there. I feel a little bad that I didn't write about it sooner so that I could remember more about it. If I was to come back to Korea, I would definitely look into Busan.