Learning to Love the Heck Out of Korea #4- Get the HECK out of Mokpo!

After my extra classes on Wednesday, I took off by myself to the 2nd largest city in South Korea- Busan. The trip to Busan was relatively uneventful except for the last leg. On the subway, a young Korean was slowly creeping over towards me. I recognized this as the “You’re white and I want to practice my English on you” creep, which is totally fine. I wasn’t lost or anything, but I guess I looked distressed…really, I was just waiting for my stop, but whatever. Anyway, after we chatted for a bit, this old man leans over and pokes the guy then points at me, point at the young guy and back and forth. They then begin to converse in Korean. Afterwards, the young man said, “He’s drunken and rude. He asked why I was talking to you.” Nice. After I got off the subway, I had planned to call the guy who runs the hostel to get directions or get picked up. To my surprise, the number wouldn’t work. I was really confused at to why…but anyway, I pulled out my post-it with the hostel address and gave it to a cab driver. The building that the hostel is in is called Neospot, but the cab driver dropped me off at a building that said Neospa. By this time, it’s like 7pm and dark out and I started to freak out. I wandered into a 7/11 to see if I could try calling the hostel on their phone (which they don’t have). I was trying to explain to the person behind the counter that I needed to call my “hotel”. He took the number from me and dialled, talked in Korean for a bit then hung up and said, “this is a house number, not a hotel”. GAH! Anyway, after we got it straightened out a woman walked me around the big “Neospa” building to the other side, “Neospot”, and showed me where the hostel was, although I kept saying “hotel” and she kept saying “house”. I was so confused, but so grateful that she helped me find the hostel, especially since I yelled “Fuck” and “dammnit!” in her 7/11. Sometimes language barriers are a good thing, I guess. My hostel, Zen Backpackers, is SUPER cool. It all seems to be new on the inside and everything is really funky and clean. Today, Thursday, I headed out to the oldest (or is it biggest?) Buddhist temple in Korea (or maybe all of Asia?). I was SO SO SO awesome. It was an incredibly beautiful day out and the temple wasn’t very busy at all. I even saw some Buddhist monks wandering around. The architecture and nature are just unreal. It is surrounded my streams and mountains. I can’t even explain it. I’ll post pictures as soon as I get back to my apartment on Saturday. After the temple, I headed to a place not far away and took the cable car up a mountain. I had intentions of finding this sacred cave-type thing, “A sight to behold” the travel guide said. Anyway, after about 1.5 hours of walking through the mountains (half of which was pretty flat and leisurely, the last half being…well….I wasn’t properly dressed for a strenuous hike, let’s say). I think the worst of it was that there weren’t very many signs and the trails kept splitting off into different directions, so you had to guess where to go. After a long while of walking over rocks with no idea of where I was going, I came across a couple who started leading me to the place I was looking for. GAH! It was like another half hour down really steep rocks then about 10 minutes up a really steep paved road. Every time I thought I was coming to the end, it just seemed to continue on going. Now, I HATE hiking up steep hills. Like, really, really hate. And after a while I started getting worried that I wouldn’t be able to make it back to the cable car before dark. When we came to a blockade on the road and my leaders went around it, I was finally like ‘NO! Too far!”. And I turned and pouted until I came across a taxi that took me back into the city. I was really surprised to see cars in what I thought was the middle of the frigging jungle, but after consulting the map, I concluded that the cable car took me up to the peak of the mountain, then I hiked down the other side of it and was really close to the city again. While I was trudging my ill-attired ass through the bush, I was mentally composing a strongly-worded e-mail to send to the writers of the travel guide about just how misleading their description of that excursion is. “I COULD HAVE DIED, I’LL HAVE YOU KNOW!”—I’m definitely including that in the e-mail. Anyway, to soothe my sorrows, I bought a lovely bag of strawberries from a fruit stall and treated myself to a healthy supper from a Western restaurant (Outback Steakhouse). I even picked up some cool knock-offs and hair accessories from street vendors on my walk back to my hostel (a silk Chanel scarf, for example, and some pretty headbands and a mint green coloured pashmina). I’d returned to my hostel at 8pm and plan to have a shower, popcorn and enjoy my book (I’m about 1/3 of the way done The Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Ladies, you’ll love it. Like, really really love it ☺) Got big plans for tomorrow so I’ll post again. Nighty night, TL. PS- On an un-related note, I have officially applied to the following universities: University of Toronto, University of Ottawa, Wilfred Laurier University (all for Bachelor's of Education, Primary) and University of Strathclyde, University of Glasgow, Canterbury Christ Church University and University of Exeter (for PGCE Primary, specialization in the humanities at Exeter). Fingers crossed!