Busan, Part I

I spent this past weekend in the southern port of Busan. Larry and I had been planning on heading that way for quite awhile but things hadn’t been working out. Primarily, we were hoping to meet up with my friend Sun Young, with whom I spent days digging in Greece, but she is perpetually on the move or otherwise occupied. This time she was in China. It would have been nice to have somebody with us who 1: spoke the language and 2: knew the city like the back of her hand and could be our tour guide. We decided against postponing because Larry is down to his last few weeks in Korea. We are at the end of the line and he is checking out at the end of intensives.

There was something familiar about our trip to Busan: it reminded me of taking of on an adventure with Brandon. It had this nostalgic feeling despite being basically as far from home as I can get. If I had to put a finger on what kick-started my memory I would have to say is that we had NO PLAN WHATSOEVER.

I talked to Larry in the short breaks between a full schedule. Actually, he had a full schedule; Fridays are a joke on my end. I had three class scheduled and two of them didn’t even show up. I had a total of 30 minutes of classes on Friday.

The furthest along in the planning process we got was that I bought tickets for a KTX train leaving Daejeon, the next city over, at 10:45pm. We would arrive in Busan at about 1:45am. From there we had no idea what we would do. We barely got tickets as Busan is a pretty popular beach destination and figured it would be catastrophic to pay for a motel for two weekend nights. In which case the sensible thing to do is obviously to spend the night in a bar. Problem solved. Done. Worry about the rest after the hangover.

I spent 4,000W on a cab to the Cheongju bus terminal and 3,000W on a bus only to have it stop directly in front of my apartment in Gaesin-dong (my neighborhood). On the plus-side I had Popey’s. The first time I ever had Popey’s in my life was in Cheongju, Republic of Korea. Cool, I know.

From there Daejeon was about 45 minutes with a decent amount of local stops and traffic thrown in for good measure. I had a vested interest in this bus ride as two of my best friends have taken a contract in Daejeon so it is a trip I am expecting to make frequently. It was not bad at all and the way was scenic with the constantly-present mountains raising a bit more dramatically. What is more is that every now and again lightning tore through the black sky and vivid and often repeated flashes. I enjoyed the ride.

Another cab took me from the Daejeon bus terminal to the KTX station. Not too long ago Korea joined the handful of countries with ultra-high speed trains. The KTX has managed to shrink an already tiny country into a more convenient, bite-sized portion. The KTX runs from Seoul in the northern reaches to Busan in the very south with various outward stretches here and there. It’s top speed is 220 mph.

We got lucky with our train. It stopped only once or twice instead the handful of ordinary stops and brought us to Busan in the 2 hours it promised. We were unlucky in that we had to sit backwards the entire way. It is unsettling and a bit disorientating to travel 200 something miles-per-hour backwards in the dark. Further, we had to watch a little Thomas the Tank Engine type show that featured an animated KTX constantly being attacked by an angry train that often sent the KTX flying off the tracks and into the air. It was a pretty stupid thing to show.

Busan is the second largest city in Korea. It is the largest and most active port in the area and makes an attempt to be the vacation destination of the mainland. We figured that our best bet was to head to happening Haeundae beach; but not before we took a stroll down Texas Street.

We came across Texas Street accidentally. We chose to walk to the right and that’s where the street was. Texas Street, according to guidebooks, was a pretty good place to avoid at night. While it certainly had an appropriately seafaring level of seediness to it, it didn’t seem to warrant a “don’t go” label. The first thing we saw was a banner hanging that said “Welcome U.S. Navy!”

Larry and I picked a funny time to go to Busan. Somewhere, not too far away was the GEORGE WASHINGTON, a nuclear powered air-craft carrier that is currently serving as flagship while the combined forces of the U.S. and South Korea stomp their feet and make other very loud noises to show North Korea what’s what. Busan was crawling with U.S. Military.

For a time we walked with the Shore-leave “police” unit assigned to haul in the too-far-gone and misbehaving sailors on Texas Street. In a few hours that would probably be every sailor on the street, but at this point it all seemed pretty festive. There were Russian restaurants and bars with open doors. Signs written in Cyrillic hung here and there. Clubs pulsed to beckon the waterlogged and Russian whores stood by the doors. Definitely worth a walk through and it didn’t seem to be as far gone as Itaewon.

A taxi took us from Texas Street to Haeundae Beach. We were a lot further than we thought we were. Haeundae Beach was still hot and busy at 2am. Sailors and Koreans walked every which way, from bar to beach and back with a steady flow of booze.

We didn’t spend the night in a bar. Instead we classed it up by walking around the beach, dipping our feet in the freezing water and then spending the night drinking and laughing outside of a convenience store. At one point while we dangled our feet over a sea wall two Korean guys came up and asked if we had accomodations and seemed to be asking if they could stay with us. We replied that our accomodations were the beach and a bottle of horrid Mongolian vodka. Soon after, or during, an older Korean guy joined us and barraged us with drunken Korean and promptly ripped a fart and then we left.

We managed to stay awake until 6am, when we skulked into a BBQ restaurant in search of charred meat. A few minutes before we came across an old guy from the U.S. who was crossing the street with a pack of cigarettes. He told us that he had come from the GEORGE WASHINGTON and was also in search of meat.

“I just bought this Korean guy some cigarettes,” he said, “so hopefully that’ll work.” He then offered to buy us a drink or two with the rising sun but I got the impression we were both looking for different kinds of meat. We wished him luck and he to us and we parted.

The BBQ was horrible. Most likely, the older Korean women had served one too many drunk U.S. sailors and wasn’t too happy to see us walk in at dawn. The meat was pretty terrible and most of the food was tossed onto the table without so much as a smile. Scratch that, they were pretty openly pissed off at us for being there.

Bill paid, we found our way to the cool sand of Haeundae beach and built a couple of sand pillows and tried to sleep. Larry, was successful and was unconscious in seconds. I, on the other hand, have been having a lot of trouble sleeping on my bed, let alone on the sand. Ordinarily this would have resulted in me laying around irritated and grumpy. This time, though, I was rewarded with one of the funniest experiences of my life.

I saw the beach combers, 20 or so people dressed in orange with garbage pickers and little nets to clean the sand for the masses that would soon come, about a fifth of a mile away. I should have nudged Larry so that we might get out of their way or otherwise NOT look like a couple of foreigners sleeping in their clothes on a beach with no tent or sleeping bag- kind of gives off a bad impression. Instead, I said nothing pray Larry would not wake up and took out my camera.

It was everything I could have imagine. Larry laid like a little child as Koreans walked by and picked up the garbage that laid around us. They looked at us and gave us (me) a few laughs as I sat there taking photos and laughing in hysterics. One of them even had the amazing idea to pick up Larry’s glasses with her picker.

Alas, eventually they left and I had nothing to do but lay there and look out into the sea as the sun began to burn off the morning fog.  I guess it's not such a bad place to have insomnia...