The Barcelona of South Korea

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If Seoul is the Madrid of South Korea, Busan is the Barcelona of South Korea (a conclusion my dad and I came to). Suffice to say, Busan was the perfect place to go for our long weekend. It felt nice to get out of a busy metropolis and travel down south to a beach city...

Haeundae Beach was phenom! I never thought I would like seeing so many tourists, but it was comforting to finally hear other people speaking English. There are 99.9% Koreans residing in South Korea, so its very rare to see another westerner lingering the streets of Seoul. In Busan however, there were tourists everywhere. It felt nice for a change.

There were intense sand castles being created for a festival the next weekend. They had even hired a man to stand all day in a (suffocating-looking) tiger suit and water the bases of the sand castles. I guess they take sand-castle building pretty seriously here! I just hoped they realized that with all the drunk and debaucherous westerners lurking around, they would be lucky to still have them all standing by next weekend! Who knows? Maybe they hired night watchmen as well!

Our Sunday night turned out to be very interesting. We met up with my Korean friend Jenny and her boyfriend, and walked up a beautiful park trail to a lighthouse, where there were menacing looking "suicide rocks" below! Then we went with Jenny and her boyfriend Johan to a fish market. I don't know what I expected when I heard "fish market"... maybe some nice pre-cut slices of salmon?

Jenny asked if we liked "lowfish." After figuring out that they were "flat fish" which are just as they sound, flat sting-ray-esque fish, we agreed that we were sure we'd like them. So Jenny spoke in Korean to a cute, friendly-looking little Korean lady. I might even go as far as to describe her as frail looking. Before I knew it however, she had a big net in hand and was aggressively swinging away at the fish in the huge basin. Once she caught a few, she bashed them down one at a time on a cutting board, and as they were writhing around, she picked up a huge knife and sliced their heads off. I gasped and jumped back as blood sprayed onto the lady, and into the fish basin and onto our feet. The fish went rigamortis and then she did the same thing to the next one. She then proceeded to clean them a few times, skin them, chop them up, and voila! Our dinner was ready.

With her blood-stained apron, she brought the big plate upstairs to a table, plunked it down, smiled, bowed and walked away. It was then that I enjoyed the freshest sushi I've ever had in my life. UN-real. So delicious. Now whenever I pass a flat fish on my walks home from work, instead of walking right by, I find my mouth water a little at the memory. I will never look at them the same!

After a long dinner, we drank Cass on the beautiful and famous Gwangan Bridge. It was the perfect end to a perfect day.

It was hard to pack up and leave on Monday. Our vacation went by way too quickly, but alas, thats why they're called "vacations" and not "life." :)

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