WW iv: Busan, Beer, Beach, Birthdays

I always get excited when there's a reason to celebrate.  To me, a special occasion is a festival, a new pair of shoes, real cheese at the grocery store, good wine on sale, quality mushrooms, and good people.  Save a new pair of shoes, I've been celebrating a lot lately.  Some fantastic people have had good news, great opportunities, gigs, and my personal favourite: birthdays.

This past weekend, the Hwamyeong Weekend Warriors had another amazing and busy weekend.  Friday I was supposed to go to a beer festival but some of my EPIK friends decided against it and Centum City is just too far to venture out alone.  I got an amazing pizza (Rio Carnivale from Pizza Maru).  This pizza is made on green tea crust and has tomato sauce, steak, broccoli, tomatoes, mushrooms, and is topped with two kinds of sauce.  It's also got a stuffed crust.  No, I didn't gain a gazillion pounds this weekend (actually, I lost!) but I did indulge a bit (sharing is caring, amigos).  After a bit of a catch up, the other 2 musketeers and I put our heads together and skyped my parents back in Canada.  My Mom's facial expressions wow-ed the crowd and my Dad cracked a bunch of jokes about my getting sea-sick.  To those of you offended when someone says: "you're acting like your mother" I'm so sorry.  My parents are awesome and I'm glad they got to meet a couple of the most important people on my Korea journey.

 The next day I woke up late and it was a scorcher.  We were concerned as there was still a typhoon warning in effect.  Waking up Saturday morning was more uncomfortable than I've been in a while.  Summer heat in Korea is hotter than hell.  Regardless, I got a workout in without AC, then headed down to Gwangalli to meet up with some gal pals.  We had a vegan lunch at "Jack and the Beanstalk".  Get off at Geumnyeonsan station exit 5 (I think) and head straight a couple of blocks, turn left, walk a couple of blocks and you're there.  The food takes an eternity, but it's pretty good if you're looking for lots of veggies at a reasonable price.  We shared a salad and a veggie burger but the real winner was the vegan bulgogi bibimbap with tons of tasty mushrooms and cabbage (GET THAT if you go.  It was soooooo goooood).  After that we rolled down to the beach, put on TONS of sunscreen and rocked out to good beach vibes and great tunes c/o S.

We really only had a couple of hours at the beach before we were slated to meet up at Sushi Berry.  This is one of my favourite places in Busan.  A tiny restaurant that actually serves up North-American style rolls with amazing service?  I'm all over it.  The chef is so kind - he chats with us like we've been friends forever (I've only been twice now) and he made an amazing vegetarian roll for our friend.  One note - if you're not into onions make sure to ask for your roll without 'em.  A couple of the bigger rolls come covered.

After a phenomenal dinner we hailed a cab and ventured over to Centum City Week's Beer Festival (sponsored by Hite so the only beers were Hite and Max).  For $10 we were given a golden chalice and the opportunity to down as much beer as we could before 10 PM.  Seeing as it was already past 7PM and the line would.not.budge we had our concerns.  The performances seemed cool from the outside but nobody knew why we weren't moving.  Turns out there was no seating left.  A gentleman in a formal suit wandered through the crowd (after about a 40 minute wait) to deliver this news.  At this point I was pretty irritated and blurted out: "I don't care.  We can stand!" and so we did.  They gave all of us wristbands and let us in.  I drank my first beer in the time it took them to pour my friend's beers (sorry, Mom!), and with appropriate libations we were on our way to check out the tents.  There was tons of local food and even some international food from Centum City Mall's food court.  We danced to the K-Pop music, bumped into other expats, and played some games they had set up.  It was pretty tame.  Eventually we found seating and just relaxed and chatted.  A festival? Not quite.  A good night?  Definitely.

Sunday was all about the beach (again).  L chose the same restaurant at which I'll be celebrating my birthday for her celebratory brunch (La Bella Citta).  I will never decline an invitation to that wonderful place.  We had phenomenal cocktails with our delicious brunch (I had a mushroom risotto with salad, a soft-boiled egg, a burger patty, and a few roasted potatoes) sitting at a table by the window peek-a-viewing the beautiful Gwangan scenery and diamond bridge.  After our decadent brunch (ps. thanks O! - you are TOO KIND!!!) we peeked into the garden and a man grabbed my galaxy for a super random photoshoot.

Later, I think I spent 3 hours in the water watching a dance competition and swimming to the lifeguard limits.  We lucked out and got to watch The Dudettes perform live in a lovely (because it was both awesome and early) 7 PM set at Sharky's Bar Gwangan.  It's not my favourite location because the food and drinks are overpriced even for the area and the food tends to be a little disappointing.  That said, we had a front row table to enjoy good company and great music.

It was an early night (*phew*) and I even got to skype the famjam before bed.  Also, my tan is on point.  If you're tired of buying sunscreen only to find it's got whitening agents in it make sure to check out Etude House - I'm not the most tan I've ever been but between their sunscreen, exfoliating scrub, and aloe my skin looks really great.

Ye Olde MySpace

Musicians of Busan - I'm looking for a band.  In the process, I found my old MySpace page.  Hysterical, I know, but I'm going to share it with you anyway.  Just click here ;)

Weekend Warriors iii: Typhoon Nangka

I'd like to preface this post with the fact that we have been VERY lucky in Busan.  We have had some rain and high winds but even that has not deterred us from heading to the beach and swimming in the rain.

Living in Hwamyeong, we truly are Weekend Warriors.  We live in a bubble an hour away from most of the city centres or hot spots to see and be seen, so we refuse to spend our free time vegging out at home in the Hwammer.  This past weekend I decided to venture out of our regular crew and volunteer with the amazing staff of Yaman Joint at their fantastic Summer Beach Slam (throwback to Kingston and Princess St. summer 2006 Queen's U).  It was our first sunny Saturday in...a month?  and we went out to Song-Do beach (a beach just a little way out from Nampo-dong - I think about 15 minutes by cab?) where there was an awesome rasta bar set up and a bunch of independent vendors showing everything from jewelry, to clothes, to longboards, coffee, and other knick-knacks.  A cross-fit gym from Nampo was doing awesome demonstrations and there were even pole dancers.  We had a variety of DJ's playing, K-POP dancers, acoustic performers, and even a high-energy saxophone player which reminded me a lot of my time at Joseph Richards in Vancouver.

My friend and I were the only foreigners there helping out, so at first I'm not quite certain people knew exactly what to make of us.  Before too long, however, we had met some amazing, friendly people who cracked some jokes with us and made sure we exchanged numbers so we could hang in the future.

This is a famous Korean rapper.  That's all I know.

Naver (Korean Google) said that it would take an hour to city bus it back to Buam (near Seomyeon), so we cabbed it back which cost about $15 and took about 25 minutes.  We cleaned off the sand, had a glass o' vino, and I was off to Oncheonjeong for a little gathering before seeing our friend Jason perform with The Dudettes at The Basement (where we spent G's burt-day).  I also discovered AfreecaTV that night and all of the magic it includes.  You essentially just live stream your life and people comment in real time from around the world.  I'm pretty into it.  I might spend Thursday night having my first wine/ ramyeon/ chat that I'll loosely call "mukbang" (look it up - it's huge here).  Hey Canadian/ American friends - wanna join me in what's essentially a giant public skype sesh while you're all getting ready for work?  I know I want that...

Sunday morning it looked like it might be sunny.  No such luck - our rainy "monsoon" weather had returned which was the perfect excuse to head down to Gumbo House to try some dishes from the brunch menu.  The Eggs Benny wasn't a hit unfortunately.  The English Muffin wasn't toasted, the first try at the poached egg was...not cooked...and the hollandaise was really mayonnaise-y and lemony.  The Mac n' Cheese, on the other hand, was rich, creamy, delicious, and a steal at $8.  If you're heading to Gumbo house and aren't actually getting gumbo or jambalaya then the Mac n' Cheese should be your go-to.  Actually...get it and share it as we did.  You won't regret it.

We did manage to get some swim time in but it was cold and rainy and dark so we really didn't last long.  Back to Seomyeon we went to see "Dark Places" (by the same author/ screenplay writer as "Gone Girl").  We had just enough time to comfortably make it to the CGV in Judies Taewa by subway.  We did, in fact, make it in time, but apparently the CGV Seomyeon is actually near the Busan International Finance Centre.  We hailed a cab and raced over to the location in the Naver directions.  This is where things got a little weird.

I told the girls that I didn't think I could actually blog about this because the situation was just a little too much.  We walked into a mall that had a KFC and a coffee shop (To the Different, perhaps?) but was otherwise inhabited by sad little stands and a completely dark and abandoned escalator.  Trying to follow the signs got us to a bathroom area, but we wandered around and eventually found a solitary elevator that took an eternity to call.

After seeing the elevator bounce itself down to the bowels of Busan abandoned shopping mall hell (that's B5 for all of you counting) it pulled itself back up and we got on.  As we exited the elevator we noticed that the only route to take either led us to the roof (an open-air section) or a barely marked door.  We opened the door, peered through, and I was pushed into the unknown.  Yeah we were going to see a thriller, but we didn't exactly expect the 4D experience en route...

We finally got to the ticket vending machine and after selecting our seats the machine refused to spit my card out.  It seemed like it was charging me again, and again, and again, and I was starting to panic.  I've never had to have a refund issued and with 4 minutes to spare until the movie started I wasn't about it push for it now.  Eventually all was worked out, we made the movie (it was awesome, by the way!) and we were ready to go find some dinner...or at least an appropriate exit.  This proved difficult at first and we headed into a creepy arcade area before finding the proper exit (by the way the movie theatre snack game is on POINT at that theatre.  If you can make it past the creepy entry in time you'll be able to snag what looked like Korean poutine before checking out your film.  There's even a convenience store in there if you're not about bland nachos or deep fried spicy squid).  We got to the main floor and realised had we made a right turn instead of a left we could have bypassed the entire zombie apocalypse mall scene and just headed up the proper set of elevators.  Rather than taking the subway we opted to cab back to Seomyeon to grab dinner.  Walking up toward the main drag we noticed two white 80's limousines absolutely doused with dirt, grime, and soot (no - not just dust...these things had budding ecological systems on the precipice).  Convinced they were full of dead bodies (hey - 4 girls at night in a new area of town after a "scary" movie?  We had some fun freaking ourselves out) we peaced out to known territory and opted for Fuzzy Navel for dins (our food took almost an hour to arrive.  I wouldn't go again).

The Typhoon has yet to beat us, but I don't want to tempt fate.  I'm heading to Osaka, Japan soon for summer break with some rad people and although I'm sure it'll be a blast either way I'm going to need the weather to be great if I'm going to enjoy Diagon Alley at its finest (yaaaaaaaaassss Harry Potter World Universal Studios Osaka!!!).  The Weekend Warriors may take it easy next weekend, but with one of the Dudettes suggesting a trip to Haeundae Saturday who knows.  I guess you'll just have to wait and see!