Busan on a saturday.

so after leaving Kat's apartment in Ulsan on saturday afternoon, we made the trek into busan - about two hours. when we got to the subway we met some other foreigners, one of which, as it turned out, lives in gimhae! so i have a new contact in my city, which is nice. i just need to get a phone now. anyway, one of the two guys, Ryan, came along with us to Haeundae Beach... we just wanted to check it out since we had heard that it is the nicest beach on mainland Korea. it was nice... i was wearing jeans and running shoes and didn't feel like taking them off (could have something to do with the pints the night before) so i just walked along the length of it taking pictures. Kat was more adventurous than me, though, and actually stood in the water... i missed the shot of her getting splashed by a wave, but it was funny to watch anyway. next time we go to the beach we're going to check out the aquarium, which is supposedly one of the biggest in asia. it was a little too expensive for us yesterday since we're getting our first paychecks on monday... but we also want to check out the "swim with sharks" tour they've got... more on that when i have it. so we walked along the beach for a while, and saw some greenery (trees and stuff) at one end and decided to check it out. here are some photos from the park that we walked through:







after the beach Ryan told us that we should check out the "busan tower" - so we did... it's sort of like a smaller version of the CN tower. it was more or less like every other tower that i've seen, touristy and not very exciting... of course there was a nice view from the top, but i felt a little vertigo... it seemed like the floors at the top were crooked and slanting towards the windows, so it felt like you could fall out at any moment. it was all right, but i don't really like heights that much, but it was ok.







it gives you an idea of how big Busan is... the other 3/4's of it lay beyond the mountains you see... in other words, it's huge. after the tower, we headed to o'briens bar, in search of the elusive nachos... i had heard somewhere that they have real nachos with cheese and salsa and sour cream (which is almost impossible to find here - i think they ship it in). sorry i didn't take any photos of the place, i probably should have, but i was so tired by the time i got there all i wanted were these:

i was so happy to see real salsa that i could have cried. i told the owner that i loved him, they were really good... tasted just like nachos anywhere in montreal, at least now i know where to get some. next time i go i'm bringing a tupperware with me and i'm gonig to buy some salsa from them! the bar was nice, they had stella artois on tap, and even had some real molson canadian (which i don't like, but was neat to see) next time i go i'll take some pictures of the place. they have a bout 6-7 booths and each one represents a foreign country - naturally we sat in the canada booth. i contributed a montreal metro ticket to the display... we'll see if it's still there next time i go.

two of our EPIK friends met up with us there and after a couple of beers, i headed back to their place (a half-hour walk from the bar) and kat went back to ulsan... it was great to spend the weekend with some english speakers and to get out of gimhae for a day or two... all in all, an ace weekend. stay tuned for more adventures...