Finally, someone thought to bag apple slides together with tomotoes. Only cheon Won at a Lotte Mart near you.
#1- To save money, we took a bus down to Busan. It was 33,000 Won each cheaper than the KTX and still only a 4.5 hour drive. Not bad, until you realize you're sitting right next to the heater and the driver is trying to turn the bus into some kind of jimjilbang. It was so hot and so, so sickening. Luckily, we've been taking Korean lessons and I have achieved my goal of being able to complain in another language. At a rest stop I told the driver that the bus was very hot. Please change this. He responded by pointing out that we were sitting next to the heater, so that was obviously why we were hot. Very helpful.
#2- Upon arriving at Busan bus terminal, we headed towards the metro to travel to our hotel. JUST as we approach a tall escalator, a guard puts a a rope in front of it and tells us to take the stairs. The stairs RIGHT NEXT to the still moving escalator.
#3- The bus station absolutely reeked of stinky tofu/old gym shoes.
#4- Oh yeah, AND the bus station is an HOUR away from Busan train station. An HOUR from Haeundae. An hour from anything! Who puts a bus station someplace like this?
#5- Upon swiping onto the subway, we realized that my t-money card works in Busan, but Mel's doesn't. While she bought a different transit pass, we missed the train. Also, when we eventually got off the train AN HOUR LATER her pass didn't let her exit the station so she had to jump over the railing.
#6- Busan is too big. Although I should have realized this, since it's one of the 50 largest cities in the world, it takes too long to get anywhere! Any time I calculated the distance between stops on the subway, it was like "59 minutes", "48 minutes". Who has time for this? Get your stuff together, Busan.#7- While looking for a decent love motel near Busan Station, a group of Korean cops looked us up and down at least three times.
#8- There are a severe lack of love motels around Busan Station with whirlpools!
#9- A taxi driver that we flagged down refused to take us to the motel we wanted to go to. Even though we had the address in Korean AND he had a GPS.
#10- Our motel room was so hot! You can't control the heat in most Korean motel rooms and the heat comes through the floor. It was stifling and a sick reminder of our long, hot bus ride. Because of the heat we turned on the air con and, as a result, were so dry all night. Neither of us got a good night's sleep.
#11- During our salty breakfast at Amby's on Texas Street, a weird old guy hit Mel on her way to the bathroom and gave her a creepy "hi" as he chain smoked with his buddy.
#12- We went to Yongungsa temple, which was about an hour and a half away by bus. Despite the fact that 4 of the 5 buses visitkorea.com recommends taking from Busan Station don't even exist anymore, we managed to get on a bus heading the right way. This was the busiest bus on earth, and the driver kept stopping short and jerking us around. It took nearly an hour to get a seat, and you know how I feel about that.
#13- The bus announced “Songjeong Beach” in English (our stop), so we got off. The connecting bus we needed to take wasn't listed at the bus shelter and upon closer inspection, we weren't at the Songjeong Beach stop at all. The stop was labeled: “gas station”.
#14- For lunch we went to Happy Thai in Haeundae. When I saw the menu I nearly barfed at the prices. It was more expensive than any Thai place in Seoul, which is already too much. We ordered a main and a side of noodles, both of which tasted nice but were ridiculously small portions.
#15- The fake Dairy Queen under the Aquarium has been turned into a fake Baskin Robbins.
#16- It was too damn cold.
#17- Also, there were no heated bathrooms anywhere, and I never once got to wash my hands with warm water anywhere.
#18- As I mentioned earlier, I can now complain in Korean (I can make excuses too!), so we asked the guy at our hotel to turn down the heat in our room. "It's too cold in your room?" he asked, misunderstanding me. "No- so hot," I said, making a fanning motion with my hand. HE WELL UNDERSTOOD THE SITUATION, so imagine our surprise when the room felt like a sauna again Saturday night.
#19- For reasons unknown, the computer monitor in our room messed up and somehow the only solution was to use the giant plasma TV as the monitor instead.
#20- In the morning the hot water no longer worked in our hotel room, so we couldn't even shower or have one last whirlpool.
By this time, we'd had quite enough of Busan, so we changed our 4:30 KTX ticket to an earlier time and just went the hell home. We'd been there once before... in the summer when the beach was amazing. So maybe we should have just left the memory the way it was. Anyway, here were the 5 things we did enjoy:
#1- Despite the problems with the heat and hot water, our hotel room was clean and nice. We enjoyed whirlpooling, wining and watching Oprah on the big screen.
#2- Yonggungsa Temple was beautiful. Situated right on the coast, this temple has quite a bit to see, even for someone like me who's quite templed-out after 3 years in Asia. It was full of scenery, Buddhas, bridges and worried looking statues.
#3- On Sunday afternoon, we went to Busan tower. Despite looking like a giant lamp post, the view at the top was cool and it only costs 4,000 Won to go up. We saw the harbour, the hills, the clustered, ugly concrete apartment buildings... it was great. At the bottom of the tower, there's a great photo exhibition of old images of Korea. It's amazing how different the country looks now, versus how it was 50 years ago when it was a bunch of fields, huts and stores with signs written in Chinese. The photos were our favorite part of the tower.
#4- After visiting the tower, we went shopping in Nampo-dong. It was a lot of fun. Sort of a cross between Myeongdong and Paldalmun, and there were a lot of stores selling guys clothes. There was much more fake merchandise on the street as well, which is what I like to see. We got Domo coffee mugs, which have to be the find of the year so far.
#5- BBQ Chicken- this is a chain fried chicken place that I've seen all over, but never actually tried. Friday night we decided it would be really nice to eat some fried chicken in the hot tub, so we picked up a box of it from BBQ. Not only was it delicious, but the ajumma behind the counter was the salt of the earth. She gave us directions to our hotel and even slipped me an extra Coke, with a wink and a smile.
On Saturday night, when our bottle of wine required a pizza to go with it, the BBQ lady hooked us up, since they randomly sell pizzas. Let me tell you, this was the best pizza I've had in ages- there was actually SAUCE on it! And no corn. I say this, without hesitation- BBQ Chicken is the best thing in Busan. And since you already have one in your town, maybe you should just stay your ass home.
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