Boring Busan and the Horrible Hotel
We last left our heroine (that would be me) in Gyeongju, preparing to leave for Busan.
I considered staying another day in Gyeongju, since there were still sites I hadn't seen. But I thought there would be plenty of things to see in Busan, too, so I followed the original plan, and headed down to the bus station to take the express bus to Busan. This makes it sound slightly easier than it was, but finding the express bus terminal (as opposed to the local or intercity bus terminal) was not too hard. I bought a 4000W ticket to Busan, put my luggage on the bus, and waited just a few minutes before it left. Getting to the express bus terminal in Busan only took an hour, and I was impressed how fast it was.
The station attendant asked if I wanted a taxi, and since the express bus terminal wasn't on my map of Busan, so I had no way of knowing how to get where I needed to go, I said yes. (Actually, he didn't speak any English, so it was a little more complicated than that, but we understood each other. Fortunately, "taxi" and head nodding to indicate yes works for both languages.) So he called a taxi to come get me, and I waited a bit until it arrived, loaded my luggage in, and asked to go to downtown Busan.
This is when I found out why getting to Busan was so fast, and why the terminal wasn't on my Busan map. The express bus terminal is in BFE, way on the outer edge of a very large city. The taxi ride to the downtown area took 40 minutes and cost 25,000W (for comparison, the hotel in Gyeongju cost 25,000W per night, so think of that as the equivalent of a night's accommodation at a decent hotel.)
After the taxi driver found the hotel I had chosen from the guide book, I went in and asked if they had a room. The man at the counter said they did, and after giving it a quick glance in which it looked ok, I agreed to take it and paid for two nights--22,000W per night. (In Korea, you pay for your stay in advance. Maybe the big resort hotels have you pay after, but the smaller, less expensive kind I've been staying in require that you pay first.) After quickly leaving my things, I tried to lock the door on my way out. It wouldn't lock with the key he'd given me, although the key would fit in the lock and turn, it wouldn't lock it from outside. I could only lock it from the inside. This seemed very strange, as it meant leaving it unlocked when I wasn't there. I did eventually find out that all I had to do was press the lock from the inside, and then close the door behind me, so I *could* have locked it if I'd known how. But not figuring this out at the time, I shrugged and left it unlocked, which I regretted all day, as I worried constantly in the back of my mind that I'd arrive back at the hotel to find all my things gone.
Anyway, about noon I headed off to Beomeosa (another Buddhist temple), which was at the top of my list of things to see in Busan. It required a trip on the subway (closeness to the subway station being one reason I chose the hotel), followed by a bus ride, but it was easy enough to figure out. I wandered around the temple, which was quite pretty, but not as nice as Bulguksa. One thing that was different, though, was that there were services going on there, so it felt more like a place of worship and less like a tourist attraction, which was nice, but also made me feel more like an intruder.
Eventually, I caught the bus back to the subway, and headed for the next thing on my list, the Busan Metropolitan Museum of Art, which according to the guide book, housed a number of traditional works, as well as a modest sculpture garden. Well, at first there was confusion, because where the guide book calls it the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on the subway station listing it was the "Busan Modern Art Museum", but it was located exactly where the guidebook showed the museum, so I went for it, although I wondered if it would have any traditional works, being a "Modern Art" museum. After a little confusion, I found the museum and went in. It turned out that the museum was closed for some reason (and had been closed for some time, maybe for renovation or some such). However, they waved me toward the stairs down and said I could go there. So I went down, thinking maybe it led to the "modest sculpture garden" the guide book mentioned. It didn't (there was no sculpture garden at the museum, so far as I could see). However, it did lead to two small galleries of works, which were at least interesting. A man was sitting at a table near the entrance of the second gallery, and while I was in the first one, he came in and gave me a booklet with color photos and information about the works I was seeing. He also insisted on pouring me a cup of tea, which I politely accepted, although I couldn't drink it because I wouldn't have been able to sleep that night if I had. So I wandered through the two galleries, holding on to the cup of tea. When I was in the second gallery, he came in, and indicated that he was the artist of a work at the far end. It was a large glazed vase inlaid with mother-of-pearl butterflies and flowers. It was quite pretty, and I indicated my approval. Eventually I wandered outside, still hoping to find the non-existent sculpture garden, and surreptitiously poured the tea into a bush.
Having seen what little there was to see at the museum currently, I left and headed for Gwangali beach, which the guide book said was one of Busan's two nicest beaches, and was particularly lovely in the evening. I took the subway and walked down to the beach, arriving between 5:30 and 6:00. It was really nothing special at all. I could only think that we have much nicer beaches in California. But the guide book mentioned that there was a "light show" in the evening, so I hung out there and looked through the guidebook, searching for other things to do in Busan, since I would be there for two more days. I couldn't find anything else listed that I wanted to do. I began to regret that I had come to Busan instead of staying in Gyeongju. Also, I noticed that my favorite watch, which had been perfectly fine when I checked the time before going to the temple, now had a badly cracked crystal. I have no idea if it can be replaced, or how much that would cost, so I was really bummed about it. Breaking my favorite watch just seemed part and parcel of the way nearly everything had gone in Busan so far. I started to consider going back to Gyeongju the next day.
I spent the rest of the time until dark looking through the guide book at all the things to do in Jeju, and figuring out what I wanted to do while I was there. This was a much more cheerful prospect, as there were a great many interesting things listed for Jeju island. Eventually it got dark (and chilly) and I waited impatiently for the light show. After a while, I had to get up and start walking around, because I was getting too cold. I hadn't brought a jacket, as it had been quite warm, and finally sunny, all day. Walking warmed me up again enough to stay a little while longer, when the light show finally started. It wasn't spectacular, but it was quite pretty, as was the general area after dark, when the buildings lit up. So I enjoyed that for a while, then headed back to the subway and the hotel.
I looked for a restaurant near the hotel that was listed in the guide book, but I couldn't find it. Either it was well hidden, or it had closed or moved. Eventually I decided to go into a Japanese restaurant in the same neighborhood. Despite my disappointment over the other restaurant, this turned out well, as they had the same dish I had eaten in a Japanese restaurant in Seoul and liked very much. (Wintersweet, it's called "Tonkatsu Na Bae", though I'm spelling it based on the Korean spelling, which is based on Japanese, so I have no idea how close to the original Japanese it will wind up.)
After eating, I headed back to the hotel. Along the way, I noticed that the pedestrian overpass had a little light show of its own. It was quite pretty. That, plus the light show at the beach, and the yummy food, put me back in charity with Busan again.
It didn't last.
I got back to the hotel, and prepared to settle in and spend the last of the evening reading, before going to bed. In the bathroom, I noticed that it wasn't particularly clean -- the sink was clean enough, but the wall had squashed flies stuck to it, and the tile behind the toilet was so filthy it was brown (the rest of the bathroom was green, blue and white). I was grossed out, but it was after 10pm, and I didn't want to try to get my money back and find a new hotel at that point. So I went back to the other room, and sat on the bed, and started to read. Then I noticed a funky smell. I sniffed the pillow I had put behind my back, and it smelled...off. Not horrible, but unpleasant...probably mildew. So I tried the other pillow, same thing. Then I checked the blanket...same again, as well as bed itself. Yuck. I didn't want to sleep on it, but packing up my stuff and lugging my bags all over Busan in search of a new hotel in the middle of the night didn't appeal, either. As the evening went on, I noticed more and more things I didn't like. The corners all had cobwebs in them, some with dead insects in them. The curtains were filthy, and the window screens had holes that let in several mosquitoes, which gave me a number of mosquito bites overnight. The toilet was cracked and leaked water.
I tried to curl up in the middle of the bed with no pillows or covers and get some sleep, but I couldn't. I got up again and played The Urbs on my Nintendo DS, and I read some more. Then I tried to get to sleep again. I did eventually, but only got about 4 hours of sleep during the night. I didn't want to shower in that yucky place, so I put my clothes from the day before back on, feeling filthy from my contact with the room, gathered my stuff, and went down to the lobby. I told the man that I wanted to leave because I didn't like the room, and he tried to talk me into accepting a different room. I think he really didn't want to give me my money back for the second night. Well, there was no way on earth I was going to stay in a hotel that obviously gave their rooms only the most cursory of cleaning, so I said no. He wanted to know what was wrong with it. I said it was not clean. He wanted details, so I began enumerating them, and after listing four or five, concluded, "many, many things". He just stood there and looked at me, and I just stood there and looked back at him. I wasn't staying another night, and I wasn't leaving without getting back the money I'd paid for the second night. After a few moments of staring contest, he looked grumpy, and went up to check the room. (I suppose to make sure I hadn't done any damage.) Then he came back and reluctantly gave me 22,000W.
I went out, and dragged my luggage several blocks, until I reached a street that I couldn't cross, I had to go into a pedestrian underpass, which meant lugging my bags down two flights of stairs. Sighing, I did so, and down in the underpass met a man who kindly helped me get them back up the stairs on the other side. He asked where I was going, and I named another hotel from the guide book, that was located not too far away (and which I desperately hoped would be much better, since it cost more than twice as much). He helped me get my bags to Busan station (both a train and subway station), which the hotel was on the far side of, and pointed me to the hotel. After thanking him, I headed to the hotel, where I fortunately had no problem securing a room for one night for 45,000W, and it was MUCH nicer. I had already decided against going back to Gyeongju, as after so little sleep, I was much too tired to go back and do a lot of hiking, which both places I wanted to see involved.
I showered and rested (but didn't sleep) at the hotel for a bit. Eventually, now that I was once more clean, and kempt, and sheveled, I decided to go to the spa mentioned in the guide book. I figured that a hot soak and a massage might make me feel a bit better about my Busan adventures. Alas, it was not to be. I went to the subway station nearest the spa, and carefully studied the map at the subway for landmarks on the way to the spa from there. The spa itself was on the map, so I thought it would be easy to find.
I found all of the landmarks I'd memorized, but I couldn't find the spa. I found a sign with the spa's name pointing down a street, and I went down said street, carefully reading the signs on each building. The symbol used for spas is also used for hotels, and there were a zillion hotels in the area. The street itself ended in a T-intersection, with no further signage. I searched up and down each nearby street, searched the same street again, all without any luck. How they could hide a spa advertised as one of Asia's biggest, large enough for 2,000 people at a time, is beyond my imagining. But I couldn't find it. After the horrible hotel, and the museum being closed, and my watch breaking, and getting only four hours of sleep, added to the general stress of traveling in a county where I don't speak the language, I was at my limit. I considered asking for help from a passerby, but I was so frustrated, and annoyed, and tired, that I was actually near tears, even though I felt stupid about it. I knew if someone didn't help me, or even looked at me funny, I'd start crying, and the last thing I wanted was to add the indignity of crying in public to the list of other things that had gone wrong.
So I decided that the best thing to do was to just go back to the hotel, and spend the rest of the day relaxing and resting, and trying to de-stress in peace and quiet. Then I couldn't find the subway station. I'd wandered around so much looking for the spa, that I'd gotten a bit disoriented, and wasn't sure how to get back. I found what I thought was the right spot, but it said it was a train station, and had no signs about the subway. I wandered around some more, looking for the subway and hoping for a Baskin-Robbins because I was hot and sweaty from all the wandering around in the sun on a hot day, and ice cream sounded really good. Busan wouldn't even cooperate with me enough to provide a Baskin-Robbins, in spite of the fact that there is one practically every three blocks elsewhere. After much too long, I discovered that the train station is also the subway station, but the entrance to the subway is small and off to the right.
I got back to Busan station by the hotel, and as I was walking toward the hotel, I caught a sight of a familiar sign, and detoured over to the Baskin-Robbins across the street for some "Bavarian chocolate mint" ice cream, which was every bit as good as it sounds. Then I bought some water, juice, and yogurt for the next morning, and went back to the hotel, where I settled in to read and relax. That evening, I did go out again just long enough to get something to eat for dinner. I went to bed early and (thank goodness!) slept soundly for 8 hours. Then I got up, ate, showered, packed up, and headed for the airport.
I was so desperate to get out of Busan that I had totally forgotten it was still a day early, until the woman at the ticket counter pointed it out. Needless to say, I was filled with dismay. She asked if I wanted to fly out that day instead, and I said yes. She said it would cost "eighty-five thousand won", and I was so eager to leave that I agreed. Fortunately for me, it was actually only 8,500W.
An hour later, I was happily on a plane to Jeju Island.
I considered staying another day in Gyeongju, since there were still sites I hadn't seen. But I thought there would be plenty of things to see in Busan, too, so I followed the original plan, and headed down to the bus station to take the express bus to Busan. This makes it sound slightly easier than it was, but finding the express bus terminal (as opposed to the local or intercity bus terminal) was not too hard. I bought a 4000W ticket to Busan, put my luggage on the bus, and waited just a few minutes before it left. Getting to the express bus terminal in Busan only took an hour, and I was impressed how fast it was.
The station attendant asked if I wanted a taxi, and since the express bus terminal wasn't on my map of Busan, so I had no way of knowing how to get where I needed to go, I said yes. (Actually, he didn't speak any English, so it was a little more complicated than that, but we understood each other. Fortunately, "taxi" and head nodding to indicate yes works for both languages.) So he called a taxi to come get me, and I waited a bit until it arrived, loaded my luggage in, and asked to go to downtown Busan.
This is when I found out why getting to Busan was so fast, and why the terminal wasn't on my Busan map. The express bus terminal is in BFE, way on the outer edge of a very large city. The taxi ride to the downtown area took 40 minutes and cost 25,000W (for comparison, the hotel in Gyeongju cost 25,000W per night, so think of that as the equivalent of a night's accommodation at a decent hotel.)
After the taxi driver found the hotel I had chosen from the guide book, I went in and asked if they had a room. The man at the counter said they did, and after giving it a quick glance in which it looked ok, I agreed to take it and paid for two nights--22,000W per night. (In Korea, you pay for your stay in advance. Maybe the big resort hotels have you pay after, but the smaller, less expensive kind I've been staying in require that you pay first.) After quickly leaving my things, I tried to lock the door on my way out. It wouldn't lock with the key he'd given me, although the key would fit in the lock and turn, it wouldn't lock it from outside. I could only lock it from the inside. This seemed very strange, as it meant leaving it unlocked when I wasn't there. I did eventually find out that all I had to do was press the lock from the inside, and then close the door behind me, so I *could* have locked it if I'd known how. But not figuring this out at the time, I shrugged and left it unlocked, which I regretted all day, as I worried constantly in the back of my mind that I'd arrive back at the hotel to find all my things gone.
Anyway, about noon I headed off to Beomeosa (another Buddhist temple), which was at the top of my list of things to see in Busan. It required a trip on the subway (closeness to the subway station being one reason I chose the hotel), followed by a bus ride, but it was easy enough to figure out. I wandered around the temple, which was quite pretty, but not as nice as Bulguksa. One thing that was different, though, was that there were services going on there, so it felt more like a place of worship and less like a tourist attraction, which was nice, but also made me feel more like an intruder.
Eventually, I caught the bus back to the subway, and headed for the next thing on my list, the Busan Metropolitan Museum of Art, which according to the guide book, housed a number of traditional works, as well as a modest sculpture garden. Well, at first there was confusion, because where the guide book calls it the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on the subway station listing it was the "Busan Modern Art Museum", but it was located exactly where the guidebook showed the museum, so I went for it, although I wondered if it would have any traditional works, being a "Modern Art" museum. After a little confusion, I found the museum and went in. It turned out that the museum was closed for some reason (and had been closed for some time, maybe for renovation or some such). However, they waved me toward the stairs down and said I could go there. So I went down, thinking maybe it led to the "modest sculpture garden" the guide book mentioned. It didn't (there was no sculpture garden at the museum, so far as I could see). However, it did lead to two small galleries of works, which were at least interesting. A man was sitting at a table near the entrance of the second gallery, and while I was in the first one, he came in and gave me a booklet with color photos and information about the works I was seeing. He also insisted on pouring me a cup of tea, which I politely accepted, although I couldn't drink it because I wouldn't have been able to sleep that night if I had. So I wandered through the two galleries, holding on to the cup of tea. When I was in the second gallery, he came in, and indicated that he was the artist of a work at the far end. It was a large glazed vase inlaid with mother-of-pearl butterflies and flowers. It was quite pretty, and I indicated my approval. Eventually I wandered outside, still hoping to find the non-existent sculpture garden, and surreptitiously poured the tea into a bush.
Having seen what little there was to see at the museum currently, I left and headed for Gwangali beach, which the guide book said was one of Busan's two nicest beaches, and was particularly lovely in the evening. I took the subway and walked down to the beach, arriving between 5:30 and 6:00. It was really nothing special at all. I could only think that we have much nicer beaches in California. But the guide book mentioned that there was a "light show" in the evening, so I hung out there and looked through the guidebook, searching for other things to do in Busan, since I would be there for two more days. I couldn't find anything else listed that I wanted to do. I began to regret that I had come to Busan instead of staying in Gyeongju. Also, I noticed that my favorite watch, which had been perfectly fine when I checked the time before going to the temple, now had a badly cracked crystal. I have no idea if it can be replaced, or how much that would cost, so I was really bummed about it. Breaking my favorite watch just seemed part and parcel of the way nearly everything had gone in Busan so far. I started to consider going back to Gyeongju the next day.
I spent the rest of the time until dark looking through the guide book at all the things to do in Jeju, and figuring out what I wanted to do while I was there. This was a much more cheerful prospect, as there were a great many interesting things listed for Jeju island. Eventually it got dark (and chilly) and I waited impatiently for the light show. After a while, I had to get up and start walking around, because I was getting too cold. I hadn't brought a jacket, as it had been quite warm, and finally sunny, all day. Walking warmed me up again enough to stay a little while longer, when the light show finally started. It wasn't spectacular, but it was quite pretty, as was the general area after dark, when the buildings lit up. So I enjoyed that for a while, then headed back to the subway and the hotel.
I looked for a restaurant near the hotel that was listed in the guide book, but I couldn't find it. Either it was well hidden, or it had closed or moved. Eventually I decided to go into a Japanese restaurant in the same neighborhood. Despite my disappointment over the other restaurant, this turned out well, as they had the same dish I had eaten in a Japanese restaurant in Seoul and liked very much. (Wintersweet, it's called "Tonkatsu Na Bae", though I'm spelling it based on the Korean spelling, which is based on Japanese, so I have no idea how close to the original Japanese it will wind up.)
After eating, I headed back to the hotel. Along the way, I noticed that the pedestrian overpass had a little light show of its own. It was quite pretty. That, plus the light show at the beach, and the yummy food, put me back in charity with Busan again.
It didn't last.
I got back to the hotel, and prepared to settle in and spend the last of the evening reading, before going to bed. In the bathroom, I noticed that it wasn't particularly clean -- the sink was clean enough, but the wall had squashed flies stuck to it, and the tile behind the toilet was so filthy it was brown (the rest of the bathroom was green, blue and white). I was grossed out, but it was after 10pm, and I didn't want to try to get my money back and find a new hotel at that point. So I went back to the other room, and sat on the bed, and started to read. Then I noticed a funky smell. I sniffed the pillow I had put behind my back, and it smelled...off. Not horrible, but unpleasant...probably mildew. So I tried the other pillow, same thing. Then I checked the blanket...same again, as well as bed itself. Yuck. I didn't want to sleep on it, but packing up my stuff and lugging my bags all over Busan in search of a new hotel in the middle of the night didn't appeal, either. As the evening went on, I noticed more and more things I didn't like. The corners all had cobwebs in them, some with dead insects in them. The curtains were filthy, and the window screens had holes that let in several mosquitoes, which gave me a number of mosquito bites overnight. The toilet was cracked and leaked water.
I tried to curl up in the middle of the bed with no pillows or covers and get some sleep, but I couldn't. I got up again and played The Urbs on my Nintendo DS, and I read some more. Then I tried to get to sleep again. I did eventually, but only got about 4 hours of sleep during the night. I didn't want to shower in that yucky place, so I put my clothes from the day before back on, feeling filthy from my contact with the room, gathered my stuff, and went down to the lobby. I told the man that I wanted to leave because I didn't like the room, and he tried to talk me into accepting a different room. I think he really didn't want to give me my money back for the second night. Well, there was no way on earth I was going to stay in a hotel that obviously gave their rooms only the most cursory of cleaning, so I said no. He wanted to know what was wrong with it. I said it was not clean. He wanted details, so I began enumerating them, and after listing four or five, concluded, "many, many things". He just stood there and looked at me, and I just stood there and looked back at him. I wasn't staying another night, and I wasn't leaving without getting back the money I'd paid for the second night. After a few moments of staring contest, he looked grumpy, and went up to check the room. (I suppose to make sure I hadn't done any damage.) Then he came back and reluctantly gave me 22,000W.
I went out, and dragged my luggage several blocks, until I reached a street that I couldn't cross, I had to go into a pedestrian underpass, which meant lugging my bags down two flights of stairs. Sighing, I did so, and down in the underpass met a man who kindly helped me get them back up the stairs on the other side. He asked where I was going, and I named another hotel from the guide book, that was located not too far away (and which I desperately hoped would be much better, since it cost more than twice as much). He helped me get my bags to Busan station (both a train and subway station), which the hotel was on the far side of, and pointed me to the hotel. After thanking him, I headed to the hotel, where I fortunately had no problem securing a room for one night for 45,000W, and it was MUCH nicer. I had already decided against going back to Gyeongju, as after so little sleep, I was much too tired to go back and do a lot of hiking, which both places I wanted to see involved.
I showered and rested (but didn't sleep) at the hotel for a bit. Eventually, now that I was once more clean, and kempt, and sheveled, I decided to go to the spa mentioned in the guide book. I figured that a hot soak and a massage might make me feel a bit better about my Busan adventures. Alas, it was not to be. I went to the subway station nearest the spa, and carefully studied the map at the subway for landmarks on the way to the spa from there. The spa itself was on the map, so I thought it would be easy to find.
I found all of the landmarks I'd memorized, but I couldn't find the spa. I found a sign with the spa's name pointing down a street, and I went down said street, carefully reading the signs on each building. The symbol used for spas is also used for hotels, and there were a zillion hotels in the area. The street itself ended in a T-intersection, with no further signage. I searched up and down each nearby street, searched the same street again, all without any luck. How they could hide a spa advertised as one of Asia's biggest, large enough for 2,000 people at a time, is beyond my imagining. But I couldn't find it. After the horrible hotel, and the museum being closed, and my watch breaking, and getting only four hours of sleep, added to the general stress of traveling in a county where I don't speak the language, I was at my limit. I considered asking for help from a passerby, but I was so frustrated, and annoyed, and tired, that I was actually near tears, even though I felt stupid about it. I knew if someone didn't help me, or even looked at me funny, I'd start crying, and the last thing I wanted was to add the indignity of crying in public to the list of other things that had gone wrong.
So I decided that the best thing to do was to just go back to the hotel, and spend the rest of the day relaxing and resting, and trying to de-stress in peace and quiet. Then I couldn't find the subway station. I'd wandered around so much looking for the spa, that I'd gotten a bit disoriented, and wasn't sure how to get back. I found what I thought was the right spot, but it said it was a train station, and had no signs about the subway. I wandered around some more, looking for the subway and hoping for a Baskin-Robbins because I was hot and sweaty from all the wandering around in the sun on a hot day, and ice cream sounded really good. Busan wouldn't even cooperate with me enough to provide a Baskin-Robbins, in spite of the fact that there is one practically every three blocks elsewhere. After much too long, I discovered that the train station is also the subway station, but the entrance to the subway is small and off to the right.
I got back to Busan station by the hotel, and as I was walking toward the hotel, I caught a sight of a familiar sign, and detoured over to the Baskin-Robbins across the street for some "Bavarian chocolate mint" ice cream, which was every bit as good as it sounds. Then I bought some water, juice, and yogurt for the next morning, and went back to the hotel, where I settled in to read and relax. That evening, I did go out again just long enough to get something to eat for dinner. I went to bed early and (thank goodness!) slept soundly for 8 hours. Then I got up, ate, showered, packed up, and headed for the airport.
I was so desperate to get out of Busan that I had totally forgotten it was still a day early, until the woman at the ticket counter pointed it out. Needless to say, I was filled with dismay. She asked if I wanted to fly out that day instead, and I said yes. She said it would cost "eighty-five thousand won", and I was so eager to leave that I agreed. Fortunately for me, it was actually only 8,500W.
An hour later, I was happily on a plane to Jeju Island.