Beached in Busan

Last weekend a group of us headed down to the south eastern corner of Korea for some beaching in Busan. It was an amazing place, so beautiful, and yet still a huge city (like the entire population of NZ lives there, insane!)
A smaller group of us headed down on the train straight after work on Friday night, making the five-hour journey tollerable with lots and lots of beer.
We offended numerous Koreans by speaking louder than a whisper. It's a strange culture thing here that noone makes noise on public transport, no matter the time of day or type of transport. It's rather annoying when it's Friday night 7pm and you get sushed at for laughing at something. We had to move our festivities to the dining cart to calm the people down.
I was lucky enough to get a personalised Michael Jackson Name-That-Song trivia show from a big fan of MJ, provided a great deal of entertainment for a while.
Once we arrived we headed straight to Haeundae Beach, one of the most popular spots in the city, particularly with westerners. We found really cheap digs (about $8 each!) and went off for some soju cocktail, fruit platter and cassuh

How the fruit platter looked after I got my hands on it.

The woman who ran the hof was very impressed with my skills

The next day I headed off for breakfast with a few other Yeongtongites who'd arrived late Fri night and then it was straight down to the beach. It was beautiful. The beach gets super busy in the peak season, but by October I think Koreans just don't go to the beach anymore, so it was pretty quiet. Water was so clear, such a novelty, and there were some decent waves. The beach was actually closed to swimming except for a small area where we coincidentally happened to be swimming, but everyone was ignoring the messages anyway. They need to go to NZ if they're worried about swell, it was pretty tame.

Janine enjoying the sun and sand

This man is enjoying the sun, sand and himself, at this moment he's taking a photo of his amazing budgie smugglers

Incredible sand sculpture

Haeundae Beach

Sara and I catching some rays

Haeundae Beach

The whole day was spent alternating between the water, the sun, the umbrella and the GS to get beers, and was pretty joyful. More and more people kept turning up as the day progressed so by the end we had quite a posse.

That night we had some very tasty tacos at the horribly named Fuzzy Navel (ew), and also a disgusting margerita with about a TBSP of salt thrown in for good measure. I had to dilute mine down with lemonade (called cider here - still unexplained)... and then I diluted and drank Sara's too as she can't handle salt.

Next up was Thursdays Bar and some delicious wine (amazing for this country)... and eventually a few of us headed to a club but the music was terrible - the doof-doof kind - so we flagged that, got lost for a while thanks to my terrible sense of direction before finding a great bar on the 18th floor of a building where I could throw water out the window and watch people down below's reactions as they couldn't figure out whereit was coming from - sometimes I'm not such a nice person, but it was so enjoyable!

Sara and I

Sunday was rinse and repeat of Saturday, just as perfectly clear and blue and sunny, until we all headed back to the train station for the long - and much quieter - journey home.

Overall I really loved this place, I want to go back again for a better look around and am thinking if I do stay another year, it's very likely I'd want to head there - watch this space!