South Korea: So Close, Yet So Far

For Friday, October 21, 2011

Busan

I rode the bus to the Jeju airport and flew to Busan. During take off, the cockpit door swung open, and the flight attendant tried several times to prop it closed. Finally, she had to hold it closed by hand until we leveled off. Terrorists: Here’s your chance! I rode the bus from the Busan airport to the neighborhood of my hostel and spent the next hour walking around completely lost in a heavy rain. My umbrella is small to pack easily, so it doesn’t cover me very well, especially when wearing my travel pack and carrying my day pack, so I got pretty wet. Finally, I found the hostel, Busan Pobi Guesthouse and Hostel—which had been close by the whole time on another small street—no thanks to the directions they gave me. When I checked in, I was pretty pissed off. I crossed the street to grab a late lunch. I ordered some kind of beef stew thingy that came with a white powder that I couldn’t figure out what to do with despite many attempts to communicate my question to the waitress. The waitresses found my ignorance quite funny. I couldn’t blame them. Back in the hostel, I ran into another couple that had also been on the DMZ tour that I had done. They were also heading to Japan, but a few days sooner than me. I blogged while it rained very hard outside. For dinner, I crossed the street again and ate at a BBQ restaurant. I ordered thin strips of beef. Again I tried to upload my camera pictures to Flickr, but no success, because it was all in Korean.