In Which We Go to Busan

So it's been a while since I last posted on the blog, I realize, and it's about time I got around to talking about our trip to Busan over Solnar, or lunar new year. It was a pretty great time. I've decided that I like Busan better than Seoul, besides the fact that there isn't a temple there, it's prettier and the shopping is better and there is awesome food. But not as much Western food, so I guess it's a trade-off, but it's still good. Anyway, here's how it went down. We were in Busan for four days. On the first day we met Nancy's friend IHaeEun at Haeundae Beach. It's a really famous beach apparently. It was pretty nice. To be truthful, the beach itself was nicer than anything we have here on Jeju. You can't beat Jeju's scenery though. At any rate, we went for a walk on the beach and saw some cool stuff. Then we went to another beach and looked at a cool bridge and got hot chocolate and walked along the ocean, which is something I won't complain about. I like the ocean. Here are some pictures from that.

Haeundae Beach!

The weather alternated between warm and cloudy and warmer and sunny. I never wore my jacket.

Wouldn't be Eastern Asia without stairs.

The sign said, "Photo opportunity! Will not want to miss!" I availed myself of the opportunity. It is pretty nice, I guess.

Bridge!

Nancy with a lighthouse. I'm pretty sure I've seen more lighthouses since coming to Korea
than I have the entire rest of my life.

THE OCEAN. Is right behind this fence? Not so much. It was like a 15 minute walk out.

Gwanalli Beach and the cool bridge closer up.

I think suspension bridges are cool. They had a piece of the cables on display at the beach, and it was HUGE! Like, it was seriously bigger around that me. 

I thought these buildings were pretty cool-looking.

That evening we met Nancy's friend GwakTaeSu, who was baptized while Nancy was serving in Masan. He took us out to Pizza Hut, and it was actually the first time we've eaten at an American pizza place since we moved to Korea. We have them on Jeju, we just usually go to Top Pizza (Best pizza in city!) because it's good and also really cheap. So, that was fun. He's a really nice guy and he's funny. It was great to hear how he really appreciates Nancy for introducing the gospel to him and stuff. Here's a picture from dinner.

We had the waitress take this picture. 

The next day we set out to see some temples. Now, I've mentioned a couple times before that we've gotten to the point where Buddhist temples are all starting to look the same. However, for some reason we keep going. Usually we aim for the ones that have something unique about them. On this day we went to two. One of them was not very unique, but the second one was, so it was alright. The first temple we went to was called Beomeosa. We thought it was a temple that Nancy claimed has a bigger Buddha than the one at Sanbangsan on Jeju. Turned out that we had the wrong temple. This one was in a nice setting up in the mountains, though, and if Nancy had been wearing hiking shoes and not Ugg boots we would have hiked up to the top of the hill nextdoor. As it was, there were a few picture-worthy things. Observe.

Main gate.

Cool stairs with a mini bamboo forest

Fairly large Buddha statue with a whole bunch of attending statues.

Two more big statues.

We did hike up the hill a little.

Pretty cool stone pagoda.

After that we took the subway back into town and got some lunch. We decided that we would avail ourselves of one of the opportunities of the mainland and get some Mexican food! We went to a bar called the Fuzzy Navel that the Internet said had it and we both got burritos, which were good. It's been a while since we've had burritos. Then we got on a bus and headed out to another temple called Haedong Yong Gungsa. The name is a mouthful, but it's a pretty cool place. It actually is unique, because it's built next to the ocean instead of up on a mountain. That's pretty unusual. Here are some pictures.

This was actually a pagoda to pray for traffic safety or something, as evidenced by the tire
in front of it. You definitely need all the prayers you can get in Korean traffic, that's for sure.

Cool bridge.

This is a fairly large Buddha. I think Sanbangsan still has it beat, though.

You would think that since this temple isn't on a mountain it wouldn't have very many stairs. You would think wrong. I'm pretty sure stairs are a requirement for these temples, even if they're built entirely on flat ground, they would make a hill and put stairs on it.

Dragon!

A place to throw coins. I tried one. I didn't make it into the cup, but I did make the fountain, so that's not bad.

Looking back at the temple.

View down the coast with me in it.

Our next stop was Gwangalli Beach to see the bridge lit up at night. Here are the pictures of that.

Cool!

This is blurry. It turns out it's hard to hold still for a long shutter when you're holding someone like that.

The next day we didn't take a lot of pictures. We went to Nampo-dong, a shopping area, and I finally got to buy something that I've wanted ever since I found out that they existed: sparkly ties! Seriously, they are fantastic. They have rhinestones on them! I think they'll be perfect for weddings, and they might be a little bit gaudy for church, but I think I'm going to wear them to church anyway. I bought five. We also shopped a round a bit. It's a fun market with a lot of different things, and it was much better than Chinese markets in that you could actually browse without getting swooped down on and having numbers clicked at you with a calculator constantly. After shopping we went and met another one of Nancy's friends from her mission. His name is Darshana and we went out to lunch. We got backbone soup, which doesn't sound that good, but was awesome. It's probably one of the best soups I've had here, and I live in a country where soup is a staple, so that's saying something. Anyway, we hung out with him for a while and then he had to get to work or an appointment or something, so we took off. Here's a picture:

That night we got Mexican food again. We figured why not while we have the chance. The next day was Sunday and we went out to Jinhae for church, since that was the area where Nancy spent the most time that was in the Busan area. It was pretty fun. There were a lot of nice people there and we randomly ran into a guy from our branch on Jeju who is doing his military service at the naval base there. There was also a foreign family in the ward, so the missionaries were already great at translation and gave me a little thing to listen to, which was fun. After church some members of the ward who knew Nancy invited us over for lunch, and that was good. Then they dropped us off at a hill in downtown. We went on a monorail train up to the top of the hill and they had a tower up there to look out at the view. It was a pretty nice one. Here are some pictures.

Us in the monorail car. The guy who drives it just pushes a button and then I'm pretty sure he just takes pictures for people all day.

Proof that it was, in fact, a monorail. I can now say I've ridden a monorail train. If I were a train enthusiast, I think this would be a pretty big deal. Since I'm not a train enthusiast, I just think it's kind of cool. 

Pretty sweet view. It would have been better without the haze, but you can't have everything, especially if part of the everything you want is a haze-free Korea.

The tower. It had eight floors, I think.

Nancy thought the shrubs had tulip-heads, so we took this picture for her mom, but then we realized that they were rose heads. Oh well, it can still be for Nancy's mom if she wants it.

Train coming into the hilltop station.

Anyway, that's our trip in a nutshell! I think this was a pretty long post. That's cool. Anyway, I'll post about updates back on the island as they come. This is Captain Danger out.