It's HOT in the city

The hottest day we have had was last Saturday when we drove from Taebaek to Busan. Some 300 kilometres later in a car with deadski air conditioning. I was not happy. In fact by the time that we had driven around and around Busan looking for Haeundae (a big beach), I would happily have bought some of the plentiful raw fish and covered myself in it. Fortunately, a raw fish Squeezy was not on the menu. I think that it would have been a bit on the nose! We managed to weave and dodge the car through the heavy traffic (hey, I'm used to 3 cars and a bus - big city driving is not much fun!) and into a parking lot.

I had to peel myself out of the car - I think Mike fell out on his side, I don't know I wasn't paying attention. Then we found the beach. Hallelujah - literally. It seems that Busan was about to have a massive Christian Revival meeting on the beach. This is somewhat a deterrent from breaking out the cossie and jumping in to the sea. I was getting enough double takes while being fully dressed.

We found a cosy love hotel with the help of the information people and Mike was thrilled when we got to the room. It had a round bed. TICK. Mike's convinced that we must stay in each kind of love hotel this year. I thought the round bed was somewhat impractical but it wasn't too bad as it turned out.

So after a rotation or two in front of the fan and air conditioner, we headed out to explore the shopping and night life of Busan. The subway was good, it took 20 minutes to get halfway across town. The strange thing on the subway was the announcement of certain stops with the lilting strains of seagulls. It turns out that they are the beach-side stops.

We meander around the downtown area and enjoy the multitudes of shops and people. It seems to be a tropical version of Seoul. If Seoul had a little less money. I guess it was totally reasonable that the only places we saw other foreigners was at the beach. If I lived there, I'd be spending my weekends at the beach.

The next day we have a quiet walk around Haeundae, which while the weather was warming up, it was nice to do. The time to drive off to the airport rolls around quickly - unlike our lunch. The slowest Thai food ever. We actually had to point out that waiting over 20 minutes for 2 simple Thai dishes was inappropriate. It was such a shame, as the quality of the thai food was excellent. The flavours were spot on and the servings weren't too large. The slow lunch adds a small amount of stress to the drive to Gimhae airport but after dodging through more traffic and enjoying the 1.7km tunnel (it was cool!!), we make it to the conveniently located parking lot.

A few minutes later we get to have a wonderful reunion but I'll tell you about that next time :)