Busan hellraisers

After a couple of days of relative inaction, just doing yoga and going out for food, I just had the messiest weekend I've had for ages.

On friday night I met up with a friend I'd made on tuesday, my namesake from London. We went for food in a place recommended by the hostel owner, Jin, and I'd invited a couple of people from the hostel along with me (all French!). The food was great, can't remember the place name but it was very cheap for rice and lots of side dishes and home made Maekjoli, a kind of fermented rice wine that was much nicer than soju. My buddy went off to meet his girlfriend at the train station and I went back to the backpackers.

Things were fairly sensible up to that point, but we had arranged to meet up later on. I got a phone call from him at 3AM, asking me to come to the beach to set off some fireworks and have a drink. I naively thought that asking a taxi driver for Gwangali beach, the second most popular beach in this city, would be enough to get me there. After two drivers indicated that they didn't know it, I took my map to a convenience store and asked the man working there to write the name of the place down in Korean. I didn't know the Korean for "beach"*, so I just ponted at the nearest subway station to Gwangali on the map (all the trains had stopped by then). Third time lucky and I made it to the beach and found my friends.

It was nice to just sit out watching the sun come up with a few beers and a bit of a picnic (instant noodles, tangerines and bananas). We set off fireworks and it was very relaxing. Later on we went to Hyundae beach, which was empty when we arrived but got very busy later on. Lots of Koreans floating around in rubber rings, apparently not many Korean people can swim. We went in the water quite a few times, it was cold but not too bad. Some more people showed up (everyone was teaching English here except me) and we had more drinks. There was talk of going to an Indian restaurant, which I was excited by, but we ended up going for Korean again, near where Rob was staying in Hyundae, and had the most disappointing meal I've had here. No vege options, no tofu or egg and the kimchi was horible. I basically just had rice with a bit of seaweed mixed in. Some one spilt a drink and we left pretty soon afterwards.

It was dark by then, and Rob, his girlfriend K and myself were steaming drunk by that point and we probably should have gone home to bed, but we stayed out. We ended up walking around in the rain, trying to take a taxi to a certain bar (no joy, we just got driven around in a circle), then finally going into a bar called U2, where we drank, played pool and had a shisha, which I'd never tried before.

Today I'm going to Gyeongju for a few days before I go to Seoul. I'm burning up a the moment, think my metabolism is going into overdrive trying to deal with all the alcohol.

*Note: The Korean for "beach" is "beachy". Nice one.