Day 3:
Now remember how yesterday I was talking about carnival rides as a
metaphor for my emotional state? Good, I
just wanted to remind you. Now this day
started off rather rocky. We woke up
late and ended up searching for nearly an hour for lunch. We went into the massive department store and
ended up not getting something to eat there.
The place was really crowded and it was a little confusing as to how to
order and pay. But it was a massive
collection of all sorts of foods from across Asia, along with a few
others. But after being turned away from
several places and even finding some of the most ridiculous combinations of
food that I have ever seen (“French Pizza” that served mostly Japanese food) we
finally settled on fast food.
From there we spent a good long time running around on trains to get
our return train ticket for Seoul. It
was actually a good thing that we did that as they were starting to run low on
tickets.
I’ll admit that I was starting to feel a little down. I mean after yesterday with so many things
that I was hoping to see gone, I realized that most of the things that we had
done we could have done here in Seoul.
Well that changed today. Now
there is a funny thing about the beaches here, they are closed and patrolled by
beach cops after 6:30 or so. Now with
this in mind we still got on some swimwear and wandered down to the local beach
here at Gwangan. Even though we were too
late to do any swimming (nor did we actually have a towel), we walked along the
water’s edge with our feet in the sea looking for sea shells as we went
along. We actually managed to find a
small pile of intact shells that are quite pretty.
This was the most authentically Busan-ish event of the trip. As the sun was going down, we sat at an
outside table drinking expensive drinks and eating cheap Mexican food (Sadly
the reverse would have been a better option in my opinion, not saying anything
was bad about the drinks, just that the food could have been better). As the sunlight went down the lights of the
city came up and we watched the bridge lights come up, setting a perfect
picture to the whole scene.
After having our fill, we wandered around the beach and re-discovered a
small spot that I had found several years ago.
So remember those carnival rides that I spoke about in the
beginning? Well here is where I bring them
back up again. I remember finding this
place years ago and thinking how strange and cool it was that there was a run
down, gritty carnival just off the beach.
At night years later it was still just as run down, but that added to
the novelty of it. Rachel and I got on a
Viking ride and despite the rundown nature of the place the ride itself was
quite safe, but the steel ramps that led up to it were quite dangerous in my
opinion. We played a few games and
Rachel was happy to get in some air-hockey.
We continued to follow the path that led up to a small amusement park
with rides that I would be no doubt too large to get on. My personal highlight was getting Rachel to
hop on what I will call “Robo-Giraffe”.
Now “Robo-Giraffe” had many brothers and sisters including “Robo-Puppy”
and “Robo-Panda”. These machines are
large animals that are meant to be ridden (presumably by small children) and
move around the immediate area. No, no
not like those plastic helicopters that used to be outside of every
K-Mart/Kroger/etc that we would always beg Mom and Dad to put us in as
kids. I mean they actually moved
around. They even have a steering wheel
for some control. Now picture this if
you can… a busy amusement park with people and expensive equipment and so
on. Now add in a number of roaming
robots, shaped like cute/adorable animals, being guided by the hands of small
children. Yeah, it is cute isn’t it, and
awesome and scary at the same time.
Well another day down and this is our final night in the city. We have our tickets and we have a whole
afternoon to play with before we have to leave.
Who knows what will come of it, but I think we might have something
rather enjoyable in mind.
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