I'm in love...

with the city of Busan. Busan is the second biggest city in Korea and the 5th largest port in the world. What an amazing city it is. With a population of more than 3.5 million, it is some serious urban sprawl. Its not just any urban sprawl, its a looooong one. Due to its being on the coast, Busan is an abnormally long and stretched out city. I could definitely see myself living in Busan. Walking on Haeundae and Gwangalli beaches it was clear that the city was my paradise. On my left I had the waves of the East Sea and on my right I had towering office and apartment buildings. Exactly the place I want to live. A major city on the ocean. Perfection.

A bunch of us went to Busan for the 14th annual Pusan International Film Festival and Jack's birthday. Busan used to be pronounced Pusan until 2000 when the Korean government revised the romanization of Hangul. When the film festival started, the city was called Pusan and so now even though the P has become a B, the festival's name stayed the same. In my typical fashion I didn't make the early bus that most people took. Fortunately Wendy took the same bus as I did. We were able to find the love motel that everyone was staying at fairly quickly. It was literally down a side street and less than 100 yards from Gwangalli beach. The hotel had round beds, a color changing mood light, and a shower that was built specifically for sex. Lots of room, jets pointing in all directions...you get the picture.

The festival area was really cool. There were tons of booths giving away free things. At one booth you wrote on a post it note what your life's dream was and at another you put a tag on a map of the world where you were from. Needless to say, I was the only one from Rhody. For dinner we got Indian food. I'm not normally a big fan of Indian, but the curry I had, more like a creamy tomato sauce, was delicious. After that we hit up the casino where i won 12,000 won! About 10 USD.

The next day Wendy and I set out to explore Busan. We had three things on our agenda. An English bookstore, Dr. Fish, and Mexican food. The bookstore was a piece of cake to find and we found out that a Dr. Fish and a Mexican place were only a few blocks away. Too bad the website that gave us our information neglected to tell us that the Mexican place closed down. Some other foreigners were nice enough to tell us and let us know that it wasn't very good anyway. Next came the Dr. Dr. Fish is a coffee shop/book lounge with a little something extra. For a mere 2,000 won (less than $2) you can put your feet in this big fish tank set in the floor and have the fish eat the dead skin off your feet. I know this sounds gross but it was actually pretty cool. Once you get past the severe ticklishness of it all, its pretty nice. Kind of like a psuedo foot massage. After it was all said and done, I inspected my feet and found that they were in pretty good shape. I recommend it to anyone who gets the chance to try it.


Wendy and I then hit up another PC bang (PC room) to find another Mexican restaurant. Turns out there was one just a few stops up on the metro, in the direction we needed to go in anyway. We stopped at Pusan National University and right down the street from the University's gates there was Tacopia. Now I'm not saying this was great Mexican food, but it was Korea good. Aka halfway decent. It wasn't that expensive either. A taco, quesadilla, and a margarita came to about 13,000 won each.

This weekend its over to Gwangju to find some more foreign food, Halloween costumes, and to see April and Lou get some ink done.