My friends Abigail, Meghan and Kayleigh and I have decided to form our own version of the Spice girls. Abigail being Kooky Spice, Meghan, Chill Spice, Kayleigh Fit Spice and Me, Wit Spice! Haha, we've really enjoyed getting to know these girls and have had a blast exploring Korea with them. At the end of April, we took a weekend trip to Busan, the 2nd largest city in Korea. It's located in the south and is right on the ocean. It was a fantastic city to visit and luckily our friend Meghan had lived there for a year prior to coming to Gongju so she acted as a perfect tour guide. We got in late Friday night and hit up some of the popular foreign hot spots. Stayed out way too late and then spent the night in a jimjilbang. For those who don't know what that is, it's a common way to stay somewhere for very cheap. However it does come with a price and that is, YOU DON'T SLEEP! For those who know me well, I am a pyscho sleeper anyways and this is not in any way the ideal place for me to try and get rested. More to come on the terrors of the public bath house sleeping rooms in a later addition...
So the next morning we crawled out of our capsules and headed out for the day. We traveled to Haeundae Beach and had breakfast and watched the morning beach goers. It was a beautiful day in the 70s and there was one guy that kept us amused as he practically screamed at whoever he was talking to on his "handphone" while wearing a business suit and hanging out at the ocean. Tranquil was not in his vocabulary. We played around at the water's edge, I fell in after trying to show off my gymnastics abilities (wet underwear is not a pleasant way to start the day, just FYI) and then we headed to our next destination. We dropped our stuff off at a hotel, which much to my delight had the softest, bounciest beds we have slept on since we arrived in Korea and trekked to Beomosa Temple. It was a beautiful place to walk around and one of the better temples I've visited. I'm kind of getting to the point where you've seen one, you've seen them all. Ok, correction. I am at that point. But anyways, we enjoyed that and then tried to find a place where we could get on cablecars and ride to the top of a mountain. After a long, expensive, completely misunderstood taxi ride, we gave up and just decided to hit the spa.
We went to the largest bathhouse I've ever seen. In it, there were different pools such as green tea, barley tea, pine etc. and many different temperatures to enjoy a long soak. I won't be posting any pictures from this part of our trip! :) After spending several hours at the spa, we went and ate dinner, had drinks at a fun bar that Meghan knew and then made our way to noribang (karaoke). We sang the night away, again way too late! But it was so much fun! We only paid for an hour but the guy was so awesome, he just let us keep going even though our time was up. I think we stayed for a little over 2 hours! haha We made it back to the hotel and crashed for the night.
The next morning we headed to a famous fish market and walked around considering our options and checking out all the amazing kinds of seafood. We decided to have a traditional Korean sushi breakfast, along with some BBQ'd fish. We met a super awesome man named Mr. Joo who helped us pick out the best ones. He prepared it all for us and sat and chatted with us while we ate. We headed out to an island next where you can walk around and visit a cool lighthouse and see the cliffs along the coast. We finished up there, had a late lunch and started to make it back towards the terminal to catch our late afternoon bus. We took the KTX to Pusan so it was only 2 hours. It goes over 300 kilometers an hour! Super cool like the bullet train (Shinkansen) in Japan. You can check email, do karaoke, visit the snack car, play videogames or just relax. It is a very nice way to travel. I'm sad that Abigail is leaving in just a week and our Spice Chicks Tour must come to an end but it's been an awesome ride. Thanks for the memories girls!
