...and yet more adventures from Busan.

Last night was pure confusion, but before I get into that I should let you all know that I'm no longer sick. The cold has subsided and I think I must give credit to my Korean acquaintances who supplied me with a non-stop barrage of remedies such as bottles of vitamin C drink, chicken-ginseng soup (samga-tang), and a vile tasting murky brown/green liquid that I think was devised to eliminate any psychosomatic illnesses (if being sick means having to drink this, no one will pretend - Buckley's has nothing on this stuff). Regardless, it seemed to work, so I thank them.

So yes, the confusion...

I had intended originally on spending my five day Chusok holiday (I've heard it referred to as Korean Christmas as well as Korean Thanksgiving, but I'll just call it Chusok) just relaxing, not going anywhere at all. This was partly due to being sick last week, partly due to a lack of funds to go anywhere. This plan was forestalled by Han Tae and the rest of the band (Yong and Dong Un). They insisted we go to Busan to see live bands. Yong has a car, they would pay for food and we would drink little to nothing. Inexpensive and convenient. They made it clear I had no real choice in the matter, plus it sounded fine to me.

So, we all met up at about 5:30 last evening and made our way to Busan. One of the first things they told me was that they'd never driven to Busan before and weren't exactly sure how to get there. I didn't think much of that as I was fairly certain the highway would be easy to find and road signs would be fairly helpful. For the most part, that assumption turned out to be true. We got a bit lost once we entered Busan, but finding Busan itself was no problem.

There was confusion once we arrived in the city as we didn't know exactly how to get to the university area. I was no help at first. I only knew the train and subway. However, once we finally did encounter the subway line, I became the guide. It is a strange experience to be a Canadian guiding three Koreans around a Korean city. I managed to get us where we wanted to be and after some parking issues, which will have a role to play later in the story, found us a place to eat.

I had eaten at this place before. I had scallops and noodles there the night I met all those new people from a couple of postings ago. My Korean friends did the ordering, as was expected. The food was not what I expected. It was Korean BBQ, but along with the regular pork were thick slabs of pig skin and bits of cow intestine. I turned off the part of my mind that screamed, "Good lord! You're not eating that, are you?!" and ate it. Both were remarkably flavourless. The textures were odd. The skin was softish while the intestines were quite chewy.

Anyway, after dinner we made our way to Soultrane and found out there was a big thing going on involving three bars and a whole lot of bands. We bought the passes and made our way inside. It was a completely different crowd than usual and I saw none of the people I know there other than those who work at the bar. We watched a bit of one band there who covered the likes of Good Charlotte and Blink182 and got bored fairly quickly.

Next up was Moo Monk. I had been there once before on my first trip to Busan. We walked in during a set of a woman fronted rock band. It was the first time I had seen a female in a band here. The drummer was also female. They were pretty good. They did an almost dead on version of You Oughta Know. We left after their set and made our way to the third of the three bars we had passes to get into.

I had never been to this place before. It's called Queen. We were greeted by the sound of creepy organ music. This very quickly changed into full on head banging speed goth metal. It was great. The guitarists and singer all did the whole twirling of their long, straight hair thing. The drummer was amazing. Everybody but the keyboardist was extremely active in their headbanging. She just passively stood there and played her music with an intent look on her face. It made for a good contrast. Unfortunately, I was the only one of the four of us who enjoyed it, the other three just found it humorous and quickly wanted to leave.

We went back to Soultrane where we watched another band that covered some bland pseudo-punk and at midnight my bandmates wanted to call it a night and go home.

At this point, we had to find the car. At first, we had parked right next to the subway station, but when we got to the restaurant we were told that the car would likely be towed if it were left there. So, Yong and Dong Un went to go move the car. They came back shortly and it was forgotten about. But now we had to find it again, and they weren't sure where it was. We wandered around the general subway station area, stopped for some food and some coffee and after making many wrong turns and doubling back frequently, we finally found the car.

This doubling back thing turned out to be a theme for the rest of the night. I can't count the number of times we pulled a u-turn because nobody was sure where to go to get back home. All I know is that we were at various points in construction sites, on barren, narrow country roads, and we ended up at the same toll booth about five times. Eventually we got ourselves on the main highway and made our way towards Miryang. However, we missed some turn offs along the way, apparently, as we suddenly found ourselves in the province to the north of the one we usually find ourselves in. We passed through Gyeongju and eventually turned around in Daegu and found the highway that would take us to Miryang.

All in all, a trip that costs 3000\ (approximately $3) by train and takes 45 minutes ended up taking 4 hours and likely costing a hell of a lot more in gas money. But hey, it was an adventure for sure.

I slept late today, obviously. Have spent all of it just lounging around, other than getting some groceries. I still have 3 days off. Not sure what I'm going to do. I have literally no money left and don't get paid until next weekend (or possibly even next Monday), which seriously curtails my possible activity. I'm sure I'll come up with something, though.

Guy