Busan: Beaches, Boys, and Blue Mint Chocolate Ice Cream

Finally back in Seoul after a quick two and a half days in Busan. For those of you that do not know, Busan is the second largest city in South Korea and is located on the southernmost part of the peninsula. It is well known for its fresh fish and beautiful beaches. But the reason that we were going there was to see part of the biggest event that happens in the beach town, The Busan International Film Festival.  

So since I like to tell things how they are, even though that makes me a little long winded with the explanations (I know mom that I promised you that they would be shorter posts, but oh well), let me start off at the beginning and work my way to the end.

We were told to get the Seoul Station by 8:20am by our program staff so most of us were down in the lobby of our dorm by 7:30 ready to go. I went with my roommate and a few others by bus and got there by 7:45 am which was great because we were able to grab breakfast at the meeting place which happened to be a McDonalds. There breakfast there was very similar to the ones in the states, but a little bit more variety in what we could order for breakfast. I ended up getting a chicken biscuit sandwich set that came with a can of Tropicana OJ and a hash brown.  Eventually the other people in my group showed up after navigating the subway and or getting a taxi. So even though we were all there by the time that our program wanted us there by, our train was not until 9:20, so we all just hung out around the station until we were allowed to board or train and head off to Busan.

The train was very similar to the train that I took from Paris to Belgium when I did my Rotary exchange a few years back. Pretty much it was like a plane ride on tracks, they dimmed the lights and had a snack trolley that came down periodically to see snacks, and thankfully I had gotten a few munchies before I got to the station from the local convenience store which was way cheaper.  The train ride was pretty uneventful. It was pretty rainy/overcast outside so there was not much to see off in the distance. Korea outside of Seoul is pretty rural, or at least by the train a track is was, so most of what I saw outside of the window was farm land with a few factories dotted here and there. SO since there was not much to see outside of the window, I mostly listened to my ipod and Kakaoed with my mom and sister back home. For those of you that don’t know what Kakao is, it is like the Korean version of Viber back in the states. It is a free app that allows you to chat and call people for free, and the Koreans are obsessed with it!

After about two and a half hours on the train, thirty of those being a human pillow for my friend and seatmate, we finally made it Busan. It was sprinkling and a little overcast, but amazing. As soon as I stepped off the train on to the platform, I was instantly hit with the ever present sea breeze and I was instantly brought back to the AFG (Awful/Awesome Family Gathering, depends on your mindset) that I went to in Jacksonville the week before I flew out to Korea.

We took a VERY crowded bus to Haeyundae Beach area (the main touristy part of Busan) and checked into our hotel and were turned lose on the city by our directors. I went out to lunch with a few of the guys in the program and then went back to the hotel to go see my first movie of the festival after checking out the beach and the main festival pavilion of the make shift boardwalk on the beach across from the hotel. The movie that I wanted to see was Rough Play, Lee Joon’s newest movie for all of you fellow Kpopers. Pretty much it tis a story about an actor and how he slowly goes crazy because of the demand of his job and his ability to shake his characters’ personas off of his own personality. I really wanted to go see if because this would be my only chance to see it with English subs since it is going to be release here in Korea without subs in a few months.  So I was heading out, but a few friends wanted to go as well, so we left a little later than I had wanted but it was still all good, but after not being able to find the subway and with fifteen minutes until the start of the movie, we decided to ditch the movie and get ice cream (I got blue Chocolate mint flavor, so freaking good) and plan our next move.  

We ended up going to the BIFF (Busan Film Festival) Pavillon on the beach and got to see a live interview with the starts for the movie Top Star and were able to see all the fans and paparazzi go crazy when they were trying to leave. Truthfully we were mostly just people watching and creeping on the security guards and the volunteers that were working at the event.

I think it was a requirement that the festival hired only good looking young men and women to work. All the guys spoke unaccented English and were very cute and were not afraid of coming over to see if you needed help. All of us girls were very grateful for this fact! So yeah… we ended up creeping on them a lot until we tried to go see a movie later that night. We went to the theater and tried to get tickets with the vouchers that we were given, but got confused on how we were supposed to get the tickets. So instead we just walked back to the hotel (it was about 8:30pm by then) and ended up going down a side street that was lined with small stalls selling fish and spices with one or two small family run restaurants dispersed in between.  We ended up eating in a small Mandu (dumpling) shop that was run by a small family.

Oh my gosh, this place was amazing. The food was all made by hands and the dumplings were made right out front of the shop. You could watch them make the filling and shape the mandu by hand. We got the traditional pork dumplings and also the kimchi pork dumplings to split between the three of us. For only 7,000 won (3,500 for one order) we got eighteen dumplings total with banchan (or side dishes).  I really loved this place and ended up eating there for most of my trip! They even had one of my favorite Korean dished Kalguksu (noodles in a beef bone broth) that was simply delicious and could easily be split between two people.

The next day, I went to the mandu place again and got the noodles for breakfast with a few of my friends, and then a girl named Karen and I went to the Busan Aquarium.

The Aquarium is the largest in the country and was so much fun. I got to see them feed both the penguins and the sharks! There was even a touch tank where we were able to pick up starfish and hermit crabs. There was a school group that was there was well, and all the girls were afraid to pic anything up. Since Karan and I were the only westerners in the area at the time, everyone was impressed and curious when we fearlessly picked up things and held them without freaking out. I actually impressed one of the workers that were helping out in the hermit crab tanks, because I was able to hold the hermit crabs without them retreating back in to their shells, so I had all the students around me looking at the hermit crab up close. Karen dubbed me the Hermit crab whisperer!

After the Aquarium, we met up with a few girls form our program and we went up to the festival’s headquarters in downtown Busan (after getting directions form two cute volunteers who popped up out of nowhere like freaking  ninjas that pointed the way to the free bus). 

When we got there, we traded our vouchers for movie tickets, one for an Indy love story called Pascha and one for a  sci-fi post-apocalyptic film called Snowpiercer.  Since our movies were in the area, we went to the mall were the theater was located and just walked around and got lunch in the basement food court. Now let me tell you about the food courts here in Korea. They are actually really high quality dishes and you definitely get your money worth. Even though mall food is expensive in comparison to what we pay for in the States at the mall food courts (think like $5 vs $7-8). After lunch and getting some gourmet cupcakes/muffins (I got a blueberry preserve and a raspberry cream one!) we went up the rooftop garden to eat our cup-muffins and wait the remaining time until our movie. On the roof top there was a play area for kids that included a small petting zoo that had hedgehogs, puppies, flying squirrels, chipmunks, and bunnies.

Pascha was an interesting movie. Now that I think back on I, it seems like a good movie, but while I was watching it, I was not all that into it. For those of you that watched Elizabeth Town with Orlando Bloom, it had a slightly more indie feel to it (the movie synopsis: http://www.biff.kr/eng/html/program/prog_view.asp?idx=10415&c_idx=55&sp_idx=&QueryStep=2).  We got out and then got dinner in the other mall in one of the restaurants; I split a mandu dish with Karen, and then made our way to the main center for the festival to go see our final movie for the day, Snowpiecer.

 Now I really liked Snowpiercer (http://www.biff.kr/eng/html/program/prog_view.asp?idx=10869&c_idx=51&sp_idx=&QueryStep=2). The movie had actually been out in theatres here in Korean for a few week prior to me going to Busan, but the showing that I went to was the first time that the film was being shown to an international audience. Since it was the first time, the main Korean actor and the Director came out on stage before the showing and introduced the movie and the director stayed afterwards to answer questions about the film and his process that the audience had after watching the film. But this movie was great; there was action, really in depth character development, and even a few surprise endings that I was not expecting at all. The cast for this cast for this was great and many of my favorite actors were in the film like Octavia Spencer (the film was shot in English and was shown with Korean subtitles). Before the film was shown the director told us for English speaking countries like the US, Austrailia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa to pay special attention because this was the only time that we would be able to see the film in the was that the director wanted to show it. For the debut in the English speaking countries the producers were going to cut the film and change a few of the scenes to better “fit” the audiences. So I was in for a treat because I have read somewhere that when the film was test viewed in the states, it did not get great reviews because the edits made the film more action driven than plot driven.  For those that can, try to see the film in its original form, it is amazing!

That night a few of my close friends that I have made in the program and I got together around midnight and went out to the beach to watch the wave and just chill.  We had bought a bottle of rice wine and just played in the surf, I only went up to my knees because the water was a little chilly and I was not in a bathing suit, just a skirt and tank top. But like any beach city in the States, all the young people were out  with their friends just relaxing and watching the surf; but none of them were going in the water and were bundled up, while we foreigners were in short sleeves (let’s just say we got a few stares that night).

On my final day in Busan, I had breakfast at my favorite mandu shop and had the noodles again with one of the large bun like mandu that was so good, I wanted to buy another to eat even though I was full.  I got a green tea frap and a cupcake that was made using real butter (a huge rarity here in Korea) and studies for my Korean Vocab test that I was going to have that Thursday.

Since I did not have any more tickets to go see films and it was slightly raining, I took a taxi with a few friend to the Train station earlier than we needed to so that we could get some homework done in the coffee shop there before we needed to be on the train. Actually a lot of people in the program had that idea, because all twenty of us got to the train station two hours before we needed to meet up and had a group study section in the café there.

The train ride back to Seoul seemed longer than going, even though I slept most of it and only really listened to my ipod the whole way.  But since it was really gloomy and raining for most of the trip, it just seemed longer. I later found out that there was a minor typhoon off the coast of Busan that was the reason for all the bad weather we were having in Busan and later in Seoul for the days following my trip.

            But mostly for me, the trip was far too quick, but it really made me start to miss home. Since I lived in Jacksonville Florida for a while and majority of my family lives there, we tend to spend lot of time at the beach together.  Being back at the beach and because Busan had a very relaxed beach town feel to it, I got caught up in the similarities to how I feel when I am at the beach with my family, I was a little homesick during the trip. But in general, I just want to go back and see more of the city and the beach, because there was so much more that I wanted to see outside of the tourist area that I mostly staid in.