Madcap weekend

The first weekend here was really fun. I hooked up with Ian Stotesbury and his girlfriend Ange and they gave me a great tour of the city. We have gone so many places together that it has all blurred together. But on that first weekend we went to Haeundae beach and to Seomyeon, which is downtown Busan. The city is really busy. Different people have told me different things, but I gather that the city has 4.5-5 million people in 763.3 square km. Which makes it quite similar to Toronto in population and size. Although the geography of Busan in far more interesting. The center of the city has a population density I have never experienced in Canada. Seomyeon was a chaotic series of flash impressions. I have a attached a photo of Ian and Ange in one of the Seomyeon shopping areas.

The evenings of that first weekend are what I really remember, although I don't remember getting home :)

We spent most of the saturday afternoon on Haeundae Beach. It was the first weekend after the heart of the rainy season. So it was beautiful and sunny, but the high season crowds had not hit yet. We spent our time swimming and drinking beer. I met a half dozen new people, all English teachers who Ian and Ange know. That evening we went out and had this wierd Korean dish with a western flavour. Korean food at certain restaurants is often a mixture of traditional and new influences. In this place they take a traditional fried rice and spicy chicken recipe and add cheese! Basically they take a flat wok and a server cooks up the chicken in front of you and then adds rice and cheese. Its like a wok casserole. Anyway, its perfect drinking food. So we ate and drank Soju, which is the rice liquor that everyone drinks here. You can buy what looks like glass pop bottle filled with Soju (21% alcohol) for a buck and it only takes 2 to get you most of the way to drunk. So we left the restaurant full and tipsy and hit some of the Waygouk (thats Korean for foreigner) bars. I ended up getting home about 5:30 in the morning :)