Choo-seok Trip Part II: Pusan All-Nighter

No, not an all-night study session...not like that at all. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

On Saturday we all got up and had breakfast...I made a massive omlette and fried up ham (man, Wendy can get some awesome food at the foreigner's store here)...I had my own bed so I was pretty well rested (hehe). Then we set out to take a look at the island, or to the dockyards, at least. Here's a few pics of our little excursion.


Are we in China or DSME?


Second largest crane in the world (the largest is at the Samsung shipyards down the road).


Under the crane...down by the sea, yeah...those are containers and parts of the ship to be assembled.


Big-ass oil rig...ya, they make them too.


Lovely Ok-po.

And, here's a shot of Rodgers catching up on some sleep in the car. Ain't he cute?


Rodgers catches some Zees.

After that we had lunch...Wendy had some fajita ingredients and I made some pretty DSME-sized wraps. Actually, they were so full of stuff I couldn't even meet the ends of them, let alone wrap them. What a glutton I am.

I think then we headed to the ferry dock (this is where the trip gets a little fuzzy). We caught the 6PM, 45 minute ferry from Ok-Po to Pusan with a plan to stay out all night there and then come back on the 7AM boat. We met Eileen (another DSME teacher from Ireland) and Chris (another Greek engineer) at the terminal and Chris gave a few of us chocolate chip cookies. As we sat down Eileen made the joke that we'd better not 'toss those cookies'...what a prophet she is. She and Chris headed to the can within 20 minutes of the crossing and I felt like death warmed-over for almost the entire time (and for about an hour afterwards). I just got into my 'zone' and blocked everything out (like what you do when your mom is lecturing you) and managed to keep my cookies untossed.

We made our way to Haeundae Beach (pronounced Hay-eun-day, not Hyun-die) and met more people: Marinos, Lulu, Stephanos and Maya (the only Korean in the group) at the Marriott. I tried to take a picture of the beach, but it was dark and it didn't turn out. Oh well, have to go back there and try again later. We had Vietnamese for dinner in a building that had TGI Friday's, Outback, Bennigan's, Baskin Robbins, McDonald's and a few other western places...man, I hate that...I come all this way to sample Pusan cuisine and all they got are burgers and fries, it seems. Anyways, the Vietnamese was good, but the capper was this sign outside the building.


Gland Open...not even correct Konglish, but who would know?


Women To Let...really?!?! (Let is British for rent.)

After that we headed to 북경대/buk-gyoung-dae or the university district (like Seoul's HongDae) to hit the clubs. There was a subway going right there but we ended up in a taxi...the most any of us had been in Pusan was three times which made for a fun time getting to the right place. Here is the sign of our first watering-hole: the locals just call it Vinyl.


Vinyl Underground aka the Big Banana

It's a pretty cool place. There was a resident Mr. Robot doing his thing on the dancefloor...really funny guy, especially around the uber-engineer Chris who didn't want to be loosened up by some weirdo Korean. Well, I kinda egged him on to bug Chris...what a guy, eh? One brutal thing is Rodgers got me a drink but it was too acidic (too much citrus) so I tried to get a new one...the b*tch (did I just say that?) behind the bar made some bs story that since he ordered it I couldn't get a new one. What a load of crap. I wondered what country I was in. I mean, we just bought like 25 drinks between our group and she wouldn't comp me one messed-up one? Screw that. (Whoa, sounds aggressive, but that kinda thing really irks me.)

Next stop was better, a place called Foxy. Foreingers get in free! Two of Wendy's students (well, they are men, about 25 years old) came as well. This was their 'research' for their oral presentation in class. What a deal! One, Mr. Lee had his 'hunting' suit on...a nice two-piece navy deal he bought especially to hunt women (he's on the marriage trail now). The sign as we entered Foxy was priceless...and quite possibly true for some patrons.


Foxy Nightclub is not responsible if you lose your values.

After that we hit a 노래방/noraebang (singing room, or karaoke in Japanese) for some brutal singing (well just mine was brutal). I used, again, my impressive Korean business/shopping slang to get extra minutes on the clock (100 instead of 60) and 2 free sodas...but the rate was 15,000 won so I knew he had a lot of slack to give. Carol had never been to one and I think she liked it. We had Rodgers do "Yeah" by Usher...that was a tough one. I kept saying I'd get him to do a song be some "MC" guy once we got him into one of those rooms...and he did alright. At the end of the time we basically all fell asleep in there until the guy came in and kicked us out. (I understood that Korean, no problem.)

Once outside the sun was coming up and we needed to get to the ferry terminal. I (again, man, am I good) used my Korean to get directions to the subway. Well, the guy just pointed when I said "전철어디세요?" but that was a big thing for me. Once we got off the train we figured that we were going to be cutting it close to catch that boat. Phyllis and Rodgers ran ahead (he's real fit) and the rest of us followed behind. My group, however, went up the wrong ramp and ended up at locked doors...we could see Phyllis on the other side of the glass pounding it and yelling as if a killer was behind us. Once we got our tickets we had to run down what looked like a 1/2 mile elevated hallway to get to the boat...and we had 3 to choose from. I tell you, it was like a scene from Amazing Race (Mery's favorite show). Even with all the rushing I managed to snap this pic of a giant truckload of eggs.


I am the egg-man!

Thus ended our 'evening' out as we got to bed at about 9AM. (Oh, and no cookies or tossing of cookies on this trip across the strait.)