Pusan

Leaving Japan for Pusan, Korea. The hydrofoil, called “Beetle II”, was packed with Japanese. The seats came complete with seat belts and barf bags. Travelling at 80 km/hr (about 50 mph) over the seas could get a little rough. The boat was powered by a jet turbine engine. It was quite comfortable- complete with snack shop, duty free and TV- the Detroit Lions vs. the Blue Jays baseball game. The Japanese men settled in at 9:00 a.m. with their beer, everyone took off their shoes and watched the game. The Japanese men have this horrible way of speaking- like a low frequency growl. The women’s voices were like high-pitched cotton.
We landed in Pusan, got a hotel and happily found the cost of living much more to our liking. A first-class hotel, the Phoenix, for $60/night. We grabbed a cab, got to the hotel. While the standards are not quite up to the Japanese (not quite as clean and efficient), the price was right (although, the A/C didn’t come on until 3:00 –or so they said).

John called to get a rental car. We tried all the Korean agencies and not a soul spoke English. Finally, we called Avis and got someone with some English. It was hysterical to listen to the conversation concerning price. John would ask the cost and he would get a response of “po”. He’d repeat “po” back and the guy would say, “po, po”. He’d say “po, po” and the response was “18 tauziman” then “po po tauziman”. We gave up trying to understand and just agreed to take the car.
Then we had the challenge of lunch. The charming woman at the front desk walked us to the local bibibap place where we had a feast- at least 12 side dishes along with the main course. We walked to the subway- a deal at 50 cents. It was amazing- people here will stop and ask if they can help when you look confused. It’s nothing at all like Japan where they act as if you’re invisible.

We walked down “Texas Street”- named for the days when American GI’s were stationed here and came here for shopping and drinking and other things.

Today, it’s filled with Russian petty traders, sailors and hookers. All of the signs were in Cyrillic and on every street you could find a “shot bar” set up- just in case you needed a shot in between shopping for your cheap clothing and luggage. The street scene was amazing- tons of Russian men drinking at the shot bars, hookers parading their wares, and Korean families with their children sitting around in front of their stores.

We headed back towards the hotel and took the escalator to the top of the hill to Pusan Tower. Riding the elevator to the top afforded wonderful views of the city and the harbor.



The city stretched on forever and the port business was larger than any we’d ever seen.
We walked down in search of a place for a cold beer and were hustled by some Korean women. They raced from their restaurant down the street to get beers for us- then tried to charge us $30 for 4 beers and an un-ordered plate of dried fish, dried ginger and bag peanuts (a beer sells for about $2.00 elsewhere). We made a huge stink- old Mama san was pretty upset. We finally got the bill cut in half and left yelling “rip-off”.
On the walk back to the hotel, we saw the newest Korean X-er craze- DDR, Dance Dance Revolution. The machines were set up for easy street side viewing and the purpose of the game was to follow the patterns on the screen and match the steps to get points toward the perfect dance. Well, it’s true that white men can’t dance- but Korean men really can’t dance. It was the funniest thing to watch these guys trying to act so cool-when they in fact looked like nerds.
We grabbed a glass of wine on the hotel roof top restaurant and watched the sun come down. A great day.