Busan and a fun filled weekend with Aly

On Wednesday I returned from Japan to Busan. I had the added adventure of finding my second couchsurfing person - Mayo. Mayo had hosted Aly in the past however had neglected to send me the directions to his house. It looked like I could be spending another night in a sauna.

Whilst waiting for my email with the directions, I decided to give myself a quick tour of Busan.

My initial impression was that this is a true tourist town. I've seen more foreigners here than in Seoul! Busan has a famous beach named Haeundae which seems to be the only beach in Korea that has sand on it. It's the spot that I stayed at. The only problem being that the water was pretty cold and it was raining.


Anyhow, my self led tour led to a mermaid statue and a lighthouse along a little rocky trail. It seems that everyone is out for their healthy walks.


The Busan stay included a couple of nights meeting Mayo's friends, a pool tournament in which I miraculously made it to the third round and a game of Monopoly which became a little too competitive for my comfort level. But none the less - the experience was fun.

Friday involved a frantic cab ride to Busan train station to catch the fast train (KTX) to Seoul. In the end I had 8 minutes to spare - plenty of time!

Friday night I met up with Aly. Weekends are always fun with Aly as you never know what is going to happen and it's always a guaranteed good time. This weekend was no exception.

We begun by taking the KTX down to Mokpo (a short distance from my original starting point in Busan...) with the usual picnic of food and beer. The train arrived in Mokpo around 10:30PM. Our first mission was to eat supper, consisting of tomato, cheese and bread. We did have a problem though - the tomato needed to be cut and we had no knife. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a plastic throw away knife in Korea. But, we eventually found a street store vendor to cut it up for us - with a bit of a cranky face mind you.

We sat down on the steps of a random bank and ate our supper - like a couple of reasonably well dressed vagrants. Whilst doing so we observed the "Mokpo Strangler". He was a guy who'd been hanging around our vicinity for a while. In his hands he was wielding a headscarf - tensed up for the quick kill. We watched him cautiously until he dissappeared up the street to get his first vicitims. They walked back to a car with him . Whilst the driver went to open the vehicle the strangler lifted the headscarf to his neck and...

...let him open the vehicle and continued to talk and joke with his friends. I guess our sense of adventure had just got the better of our imaginations. Woops!

After our nervous supper Aly and I spent a night in a Korean sauna. Luckily for us the sleeping area was also a sauna that turned into a refrigerator later on in the night. It also provided free mosquitos and the soothing sounds of dogs barking throughout the night.

Saturday morning we kicked off to an early start. I looked outside the window and to my surprise the barking dogs had been guarding a yard packed with trash. It was obviuosly pretty important trash to somebody...

Anyhows, we ran into a Korean guy who'd spent time in Columbia and started to speak to us in Spanish. Luckily Aly's Spanish is much much better than mine so I let her do the talking.

We eventually caught a cab to a ferry terminal. Our aim was to go to Hong Do (Island) for the weekend. Unfortunately, we had missed the ferry by 10 minutes and the next one was not until 1:50PM. D'oh! We decided we would go to Heuksan Do instead and then catch a ferry to Hong Do.

We arrived at Heuksan Do about 11:30 and had a craving for swimming. We had a map of the island and had a sort of rough idea of how to get to a beach. We decided it would be better to get directions of a local, so we asked a fisherman the beach was close by. He said something about jump on my boat and I can take you to a swimming spot. Pretty soon a couple of blocks of frozen fish got thrown on the boat together with a small group of people. Luckily for us, most of the group was around our age, with a couple of them speaking fairly good English.

We set off on the boat and ended up on a floating dock-come-fish/oyster farm. Aly and I were pretty excited as the water was extremely clearand looked swimmable. However, to our horror - the water was teaming with jelly fish. I guess swimming is out of the question. The group took us for a quick tour of the fish farm and started fishing themselves. It looked like we were having fish for lunch I guess.




Pretty soon we ate our lunch - raw fish that had JUST been gutted in front of us - with rice and all sorts of side dishes. Actually, lunch was pretty good and filling.

We quickly became friends with our new hosts and they invited us to stay with them for the night at their house on the island. We accepted and decided we would go to our original destination - Hong Do - on the Sunday.


The evening progressed with dinner followed by a small party upstairs as it was one of the group's birthday.

The following morning we awoke to breakfast and headed off to Hong Do by ferry.

Hong Do is a relatively small island that is best seen from the ferry tour. Whilst waiting for the tour we went for a walk. We ended up talking to a young girl. Her parents then forced her to "go away give the strangers a tour of the village". The young girl talk us on a couple of scenic walks and then a quick tour of the village - even pointing out the place where the local ferral cat hangs out. We paid her with and ice-cream and sent her on her way.

The ferry around the island was interesting. It was very picturesque however involved many long stops where the Koreans could take many many photographs of the same thing. The photographs usually involved multiple angles and multiple permutations of people. One of the most amazing sights, was "The Man Who Fishes In The Middle Of Nowhere". Basically he was fishing from a rock sticking out of the ocean - with no means of transport nearby. The 9th Wonder of the World - just did he get out there?


The ferry back to Mokpo involved us and many other people being yelled at for being on the outside decking - which was only to be used for boarding and exiting during emergencies.

We ended the weekend with a return trip to Seoul on the KTX and the return journey to Beomgye on one of the last subway trains for the night. Another successful weekend thanks to the kind Korean folk and the adventurous Aly!