hotel heaven and silly fun in Busan

This is Haeundae beach, Korea's most famous
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So, on Monday, Ryan and I set off for Busan after going to visit James at his school and meet his crazy kindergarten students, who apparently were on their worst behaviour for us, but were still very cute.  IT gave me a great appreciation for the amount of energy it would take to teach really young students on a daily basis.

We set off for Busan, and arrived there in the evening.  We had hoped there would be some cheap hotels around the bus station, which has been my experience in Korean cities, but alas, this was not the case.  After getting moderately lost, and reorienting ourselves through the help of a pc bong, we got it together again, and figured out where we wanted to go, just praying we'd find a hotel when we got there.

Our food came and we were bewildered, it was very strange looking, and seemed kinda floppy.

This shot was taken at our rest stop on our bus ride. I thought the scene was beautiful
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Getting off the subway, we spotted a hotel sign, and headed for it, and ended up lucking in to an awesome place.  I put up a review because of how impressed we were.  Good bath tubs are something of a rarity in Korea, so I was totally impressed to see a gigantic tub and a shower with eight faucets!  I took three baths in two days...  hehe... We had a huge room with a king sized bed, and the cost was only $40.  I'll post some pics so you can get an idea.

After getting settled in, we set off to find some food and after failing to find a Galbie restaurant open at that hour, we ended up at a chicken place.  We tried to order some wings, but they were sold out, so we checked out the menu, and pointed to something that looked decent, confirmed it was chicken and were happy.  Not for long though...  Our food came and we were bewildered, it was very strange looking, and seemed kinda floppy.  Ryan thought it looked like Calamrie.  So, bravely, we both took a piece to try and counted down.  I chewed mine, which was slimy and chewy and gross, and Ryan actually spit his out into a napkin because it was full of cartiledge.  I cringed and said, uh, Ryan, I'm not sure that's not chicken feet.  Which it was.  How horrified were we?!  Ryan was still talking about it days later.  We got some proper food after sending it back though.  yuck!

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The next day, we set off for Haeundae beach.  It seemed like a nice day, but was unfortunately windy which made it much colder.  We sat on the beach for a bit, and took a few pictures, but Ryan spotted a casino, and decided that would be a fun idea.  At the casino, we got free hard drinks and played the slots, and Ryan won $100 American.  Sweet!  (I unfortunately, did not win).

We then headed off to the Aquarium which was really great.  I especially liked the sea turtle and the penguins.  They have an underwater tunnel, where you walk through and it feels as though you're on the ocean floor.  Very cool.  I must say though.  Sharks are ugly.  After the aquarium, it was back to the beach.  We attempted to go to the art museum, but it closed early, unfortunately.  So we set off for our hotel, and chilled there and drank a half a 40 of Hornitos Tequila.  Oops!  Silly antics followed in our fruitless pursuit of pizza.

Here is Ryan in our hotel room
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The next day we set off to put ourselves in a position close to the airport to grab lunch before we caught our flight to Jeju Island.  We finally found a pizza place, and thought we'd have enough time, but alas, it was a slow pizza place.  Finally, we realized we'd have to get our pizza to go.  Good heavens.  The airport turned out to be father than we thought, and we ended up cutting it very close to missing our flight.  So here we are, two hapless tourists running through Gimpo airport with our pizza in tow.  Sigh.  Ah well, at least we're able to laugh at ourselves!  We got on our flight after arriving 20 minutes before takeoff at the airport (oops), and sat down to wait to be taken to Jeju Island, Korea's Hawaii.