Friday night heralded the return of dinner with the Korean teachers, this time, Annie, Greg (Annie's Aussie husband) and Heidi. We headed off to a traditional Korean restaurant and celebrated the fact that we'd finally finished all the tests, reports and monthly plans that needed doing, thank God! The food was amazing and I was rather stuffed, but happy, by the time I headed on home.
As sleepy time Fri was relatively early I was all set to meet Alex and Amy outside Homeplus (which is a huge Korean shopping centre, housing a Tesco's and other such delights.) at half eleven Saturday to get the bus into Seoul. Least that was the plan, 'til I put us on the wrong bus and we ended up God knows where, far from where we should have been. Luckily we alighted near a subway and a kindly Western fellow showed us how to get to Seoul, which was about 20 mins away by tube. So off we went. It was Amy's first time on the subway, which was joyous for her, 'til it got busy and then she se
emed to like it less, for some reason. When we got into Seoul finally, our plan to become more cultured took us to Deoksu-gung Palace, which is near City Hall. I've got to be honest here and admit that I wasn't very impressed at all, the palace is heavily influenced by Western architecture and the charm that makes Korean buildings special was somewhat lost. Not only that but the central fountain wasn't working and there was building work going on, plus we couldn't enter any of the buildings. Oh and the purifying stream had dried up. Feeling somewhat deflated we headed off again, in the rain, and hit upon the setting up of the opening ceremony for May's Hot Pink festivities. I met a stilt balloon artist, who made me a pink monkey called Gay Lord, who became a bit of a mascot that afternoon, 'til I realised that I was talking through the monkey and referring to myself in the third person. Although we had to leave to meet Ben at the station pretty sharpish after we'd discovered the fest, we planned to head on back for the actual opening ceremony later that night. One tram ride, many police and a very confused Norwegian later, we got to Seoul Station and soon enough had met up with Busan Ben (oh how excited I was to see an old face!), two of his friends and Faye and Luna (the greatest Korean tour guide ever!). We obviously headed to the nearest bar, which resulted in us going completely the wrong way and traipsing down a street that just sold prosthetic hands, arms, legs and any othe
r body part you could imagine. Weird. We left that place pretty quick and ended up in a UV bar with just the barlady, an old Korean woman, to keep us company. We loved it and bought a couple of huge pitchers before deciding to ditch the festival (the police were about as there was a massive protest to oust the Korean Prime Minister and by the looks of the truncheons they had, we were steering well clear) and to head straight to Hongdae w
here we ate galbi(surprise, surprise) on the street and drank more soju. After stuffing ourselves we headed (and for me at least, on slightly wobbly legs) to Ho Bar, where I was presented with a cake, sang t
o, and given foul shots from Ben. Cheers, love! Ruby arrived too, which filled me with joy and, well, that's about as much as I can remember (again, thanks for the shots, Benny!). Reports have it that I had an ace night though, running around, jumping, dancing on stage with a band in FF's, falling off walls (at what point was there a wall?) and hurting myself, drinking more beer, tipping drinks over Sharon and Elaine, getting to the station and finally jumping on the KTX (fast train) to Busan after picking up a random Korean man, then promptly falling asleep.
When I awoke, we were in Busan!!!!! Considering that I was debating on going down, I instantly felt happy when I saw the sea and was constantly in hysterics for the first couple of hours. Faye put this down to me still being wasted, however I claim pure joy, though I suspect that she was right and alcohol was part of the reason, specially as she kept repeating that I stunk of the stuff. Faye, Luna and I took a boat tour around the bay, which was nice, if not a little surreal, esspecially when I headed below deck to find about 12 hajemars dancing on a dancefloor at 9am and still wearing their visors, and then got off by the maritime museum and had to climb about 40,000 stairs to get to the road again, not good for my hangy! Still, when we arrived at the top, we were able to catch one of those funky little touristy trains back to reality again, with me giggling the whole way down, thanks to Faye's Singapore story. Food was a must by this point so it was off to Chinatown for black noodles and mandu (steamed dumplings with pork and veg) before meeting up with Anda, Rob and Thomas and catching a tube to Beomeosa (Bum ulcer) for some temple action and to meet Tambo Ben.
This time I wasn't disappointed by a traditional Korean building, as the temple is gorgeous and about as tranquil as they come, which is amazing as it's near such a big city. We all fell in love with the place, and Anda and I have decided it's a good place for our temple stay, when we do it. Instantly, I felt so much more chilled and was happy just wandering and feeling the spiritual vibe, you know how hippy I can get! Ben told us that there was a hike further into the hills and so we all decid
ed to give it a go (even though my hangover was screaming at me not to go anywhere except a bed) and 20 minutes later found that we'd only climbed up 0.2km of rock! Lame. Luna started to feel a little tired, so we headed to another part of the temple which we came across on the walk and spent some time looking round and finding a beautiful shrine in a cave and some cute doggies, that for once, weren't rats!Once we left the temple we jumped straight on a tube bound for the beach, in order to catch the sunset. We failed miserably at catching the sunset, however we did get to the beach, grab something to eat and collapse on the sand with some vino and sparklers. Hours of fun were whiled away, and I can honestly say it was up there in 'Penny's coolest Birthday celebrations', though doesn't quite beat the 21st birthday, 'breaking my leg while dressed as a chicken' night. Anda and I had a 'hide the shoe in the sand' competition and generally ran about and wrestled each other to the floor as much as possible, the group was stalked by a hajemar brandishing Roman candles, Tambo carried on with the kle
ptomania by stealing me a birthday present, in the shape of a bright pink bear type thing, from a stall ran by another hajemar (although bad, this was better than his earlier robbing of a tramp. The man had no home for goodness sake, no home!), Rob kept us all entertained by being Rob, we ruined a guitar players set by being loud westerners, danced to traditional drummers, cracked out the iPods, buried me in the sand, did tricks with sparklers, watched fireworks, dipped our toes in the sea and generally had a bloody good time. So I was very sad (again, I'm presuming here, as the end of the night is very sketchy) when I was placed in a taxi and then had to jump on a slow train back to Suwon, when everyone else got to continue the adventure. Damn work, why couldn't I have Monday off over a bank holiday?! Least I finally got to sleep some, and did so quite soundly, save for waking up a few times panicking I'd missed my stop and exclaiming 'Suuuwwwoooonnnn?' To the old guy next to me, before nodding off again.
So then it was to work again, which is a shame. Still, tomorrow is Children's Day, so we get a day off and then heading to Anda's house party at the weekend, plus the arrival of Laura, so who knows what fun the next week will hold?!
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