A trip to Busan

ESL Teachers: Looking at the map you would think that Yeonggwang is closer to Busan than it is to Seoul. However, the highways wind around the mountains which means the trip takes at least four hours. In our case, it took six hours door to door because of traffic within Busan. Overall I had a favorable impression of the city. It's smaller than Seoul, but it is definitely a huge city. If I were to return to Korea I would really like to teach/live in Busan. It's a 3-hour train ride to Seoul, a 3-hour ferry ride to Japan, and it has western food and a beach. You can't do much better in Korea.

Our first stop was the area called Texas Street. I had read on the internet that it was like Itaewon up in Seoul. We were hoping to find some western food there. Unfortunately, it is nothing like Itaewon. It's basically a red light district. Some of the bars and motels are owned by Koreans and some by Russians. I recommend you skip it entirely.

We took the subway up to Haeundae Beach. The subway system is very similar to the one in Seoul and it is very easy to use. It was 7 stops on one line and 16 stops on another but we eventually reached the Haeundae Beach area. It was well worth the trip. Haeundae Beach is one of my favorite places in Korea. I'm told it's a man-made beach, but it's still lovely. It runs about a mile long. There are many, many places to get western food (TGI Fridays, Bennigans, Outback Steakhouse, and smaller non-chain places). There is also a large block of love motels just off the beach. Unfortunately, the motels know that they are in a prime location so the prices were in the 100,000 - 150,000 Won range. We opted to take the subway back to the center of town (the Seomyeon subway stop where the green and orange lines intersect) to find a cheaper room.

The next day we found some coffee then headed to the UN Korean War Memorial. The memorial was worth seeing. A few thousand soldiers are buried there from all of the nations that fought under the UN flag. The contrast from the cemetery to the high-rise buildings in the background is unbelievable. When these soldiers died in the war Koreans lived in huts with dirt floors (if they were lucky). Now they drive nice cars, use cell phones, live in air-conditioned high-rise buildings and dine out as much as Americans.

After the war memorial we went back to Haeundae Beach for lunch. The rain started to pick up so we opted to return to Yeonggwang. It took nearly two hours to clear the street traffic of the city. Koreans love their cars.

The UN War Memorial and Cemetery.



I didn't see any explanation but there were about a dozen Americans in the cemetery who died after the war ended.








This is very similar to the Vietnam War memorial in Washington, DC. All of the names of those killed are etched into black granite. About 90% of the casualties were American.






Haeundae Beach.