No Flip Flops, Russian Red Light District and Breathable Air

Things have been crazy busy over the last couple of weeks. The first week of May we had a long weekend – FINALLY!!

Cherie, a friend from hockey, suggested a while back that we go to Busan for that weekend. I have wanted to go there since I have arrived in Korea and just have not had the chance until now.

So Kristin (a co-worker from Kids Club) and I headed down for our adventurous weekend in Busan. We arrived late Thursday night after riding on the famed KTX bullet train. It took 3 hours from Seoul to Busan. It used take around 6 hours on the regular train. We arrived before our friends and decided to wait because there was like 8 of them. So we took this crazy cab ride to our hotel. Once we finally arrived, we got to our room and there was only 1 double bed – we had asked for 2 double beds. Anyway, they did change it and once we got settled we passed out.

Friday we woke up around noon and it as FANTASTIC!! WE got out of bed and headed to the beach where we met up with everyone else. The beach was nice and the weather beautiful. There was a fair amount of people there enjoying the beach, lots of foreigners. All the Koreans took pics of the foreigners who braved the cool ocean water. I even saw a Korean girl in a winter jacket J.

Friday night was event-filled, as we tried to find a Hongdae-esk place to party (this is the area to party in Seoul). So we all had dinner at Bennigan’s and went looking for a place to party. We tried the Marriot and 12 people were turned away because they didn’t allow flip-flops. Go figure that a hotel by the beach doesn’t allow flip-flops. So Kristin and I headed off with a couple other friends in search of a place to dance.

After getting everyone into cabs, we headed out and after a 20-minute ride that took use all the way back to the train station, we ended up in the Russian Red Light district that is located a hop, skip and jump from the train station. After about another 20 minutes, we found someone who knew where we wanted to go and ended up at a bar called Vinyl. It was good, had fun and ended up home at 4am. The funny thing was it was really only a $6 cab ride.

We woke up early on Saturday to have a fun filled day of touring and it was, to our dismay it was RAINING!!! Yuck!!! So we decided to sleep in and good see a movie – we saw MI-3. We just wandered around the mall and waited for our movie. After the movie, we went back to our hotel and low and behold it wasn’t raining anymore – yay!! We got all dolled up and ended going to the bar right across from the Marriot. It was a blast and well all had a great time.

It was a lot better waking up on Sunday, it was bright and sunny, a great day for touring around. We decided to make an adventure of it and take a city bus to the cable car because who wants to ride in a stuffy subway. So about a half hour later we found where we were going. The view was awesome and I got some great pics.

It was a nice weekend and relaxing. It was strange to be out of the city near the ocean. The air was so much cleaner and full of salt-spray. It is a nice place to be and very mellow.