Day 5 Korea
This morning I did a quick tour of a temple about an hour's bus ride away from Gyeongju. It was one of the most enjoyable temples I've been to. A temple is not just a temple I guess. The Buddhists who built this one sure do know how to pick a good location.
I was supposed to go to a nearby grotto after that but it took a bit longer than expected to get to the temple so I ran out of time.
Back to Gyeongju to check out of the hostel, collect my bag and head to the KTX station to go to Busan for a couple of days. I had a great bibimbap at the KTX station for lunch.
20 minutes on the KTX then a quick subway ride to the hostel. This is the biggest hostel I've ever been in. It's a complete apartment building they've turned into a hostel. 8 floors of dorm rooms. It has good ratings too so they must be making a killing. Not sure I'd want to deal with the drama of all those backpackers and staff personally but hey - good on them. I got a ridiculously cheap couple of nights in a decent facility.
I did fear it was going to be a bit of a party hostel but it really wasn't. Was pretty quiet actually. They didn't really have a good common room so people pretty much just hung out in their rooms when they weren't out and about.
I arrived mid afternoon and didn't really have a plan. One of the staff came in and recommended the beach for the afternoon. Given how hot it was I decided that was a pretty good idea. It was one of the places I had intended to visit anyway so today seemed like as good a time as any.
So I jumped on the subway and went down to Haeundae Beach. Busan's version of Waikiki basically. I hadn't really intended to but I ended up having a swim. Compared to what we get in Australia it's not much of a beach. There's plenty of sand but almost no waves so it's pretty much a big bathtub.
And get this - the beach has opening hours! It officially closes at 6pm and if you're still in there they chase you out with jet skis. The also only let you go about 25 metres out into the water. The rest of it is reserved for jet skis and boats. Boring. Although with no waves there's not really any point going much further out.
Since I hadn't intended to swim I hadn't worn my board shorts so I headed back to the hostel to change before going out for food.
The hostel is about a 15 minute walk from a big food district which is cool. I walked around and checked it out for a while then ended up at a Chicken & Beer restaurant that looked pretty good. The menu was completely in Korean so I just pointed at something and said "beer". The waiter looked at me and said "no chicken" ... I'd obviously tried to order a vegetarian dish at a chicken restaurant. Silly white person. So I asked him for whatever was best and he nodded and went away.
I ended up with a giant plate of chicken which I presume was cooked in beer. It was delicious. Ate as much as I could (all of it) and then headed back to the hostel to sleep.
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