For Sunday, October 23, 2011
Busan
I walked to Haeundae Beach, the most renowned beach in South Korea, with Jin to watch the Gumi Bears practice their frisbee throws and say goodbye. We got a spare frisbee and Aaron, Fenton, Jin, and I tossed it around on the beach for twenty minutes. Jin and I took the metro to the Jagalchi Market, where we perused the various kinds of fresh (and live!) seafood sold there. Squid, octopus, eels, crabs, oysters, mussels, fish. You name it, they got it. We ate cooked eel and some sort of fish penis thing (I’m told) at a hole in the wall restaurant. Jin said the pictures of my face were priceless. I’m still waiting to get copies. From Jagalchi, we walked to the nearby Yongdusan Park. We ascended the hill to the base of the tower, but decided not to pay to ride it to the top. Nearby was a chain link fence on which lovers had attached locks with their names written on them. From Yongdusan, we walked to Busan Station so Jin could buy her train ticket back to Gumi later that evening. We decided we had enough time to see one more thing, so we rode the metro and a bus to get to the Songgwangsa Buddhist temple. Sadly, we didn’t have much time to look around, so maybe it wasn’t worth the effort to get there, but oh well. I don’t know what it is about steps that Buddhist monks love, but they should look into escalators. You know, for the handicapped. We had to hurry back to Busan Station. Jin barely made it to her train in time. There wasn’t even time to pause to face each other, she just kept running, and I had to stop at the gate. We were able to say a proper goodbye later over email, though. I rode the metro back to Haeundae and home.