To celebrate Buddha's Birthday, I headed to Busan to enjoy a long weekend of sunshine and relaxation on the beach. Unfortunately it rained the.whole.weekend. and not just a drizzle, drip, drop, but a monsoon type downpour.
Actually, Friday was quite nice, so after a two hour KTX ride (not bad at all!), we went to Haehundae Beach which is the main beach, especially for foreigners. In honor of the holiday a man was making a huge Buddha sand sculpture which was pretty neat to see. Oh, by the way, Haehundae Beach set the world record for the most number of parasols at a location. Back in 2008 there was almost 8,000 parasols lined up on the beach. Not only does Busan hold a parasol world record, but it's also the home to Shinsegae, the world's largest department store! Because of the bad weather, we spent a lot of time there. Shinsegae was nine floors of happiness, it included every designer you could possibly think of, an ice rink, movie theater, and so much more. Later that night, we had dinner at TGIFriday's, walked the beach, wandered into a fish market and an amusement park.
The bad weather started Saturday and lasted until we left on Sunday, but we still managed to have a good time. We went to a temple which was still decorated for Buddha's Birthday, did a city bus tour that lasted forever due to the awful traffic, saw Robin Hood, and checked out Seomyeon- Busan's shopping district. On the city bus tour, I saw PIFF Square which is where the Pusan International Film Festival takes place and there's a 'star street' similar to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. So being obsessed with everything entertainment, I was happy to see it and I'm still planning on going to the PIFF and DMing Justin Chon (Twilight) to meet up... no joke.
Luckily, we bought our returning KTX tickets beforehand, so assuming that we would want to soak up every last ray of sunshine on the beach, our tickets were for a train that left at 5 p.m. However, due to the awful weather, we wanted to head home earlier so we went to Busan Station to see if we could trade our tickets in for an earlier train. The scene of Busan Station was straight out of a movie where everyone is stranded at an airport. I really think all of Korea went to Busan for the holiday weekend and wanted to head home early, just like us. So, there weren't any earlier tickets, but we did make it back to Daejeon safe, sound and only a little wet.
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