Busan

Thursday, June 16

Nine years ago I came to Busan, South Korea to teach English for almost one year. I loved living in Busan. I love the food, the hiking, the beaches, the cutesy Asian culture, the temples, and especially the incredibly nice people. But, I hated my job. I worked at a private school that was more interested in making a profit than it was in the wellbeing of the students or the teachers. I have many a funny horror story from this school. I decided to leave early and break my work contract. Foreign teachers in Korea call this a midnight run. I was not the first from this school to do this, which shows how toxic it was.

When I left I technically violated my work visa. For the last nine years I’ve wondered if they would let me back into the country or if I’d be flagged somehow. Or, if I managed to get through, whether they’d alert the old school manager and she’d be waiting for me at the airport ready to wring my neck.

So, when we made it through Jeju immigration I was extra stressed. But we met the COVID requirements and nothing was said about my former teacher status. As we hung out in Jeju I wondered whether anything could go wrong when we went to the mainland, to Busan.

Well, sure enough, there was passport control at the Jeju airport. I watched Carl breeze through the automated stall and get his photo taken. Mine flashed red and I was told to see the attendant at the desk. My heart started pounding.

She asked for my passport and my ID card. I looked at her, confused because my passport is my ID. Then I realized she was asking for my old ARC card that was given to me when I was a teacher. Back then, the ARC was needed to do anything like get a bank account, a phone number, rent bicycles, etc. I have no idea where this card is but I’m guessing I didn’t give it back to the South Korean government when I left because, well, I didn’t want to advertise that I was leaving.

Perhaps luckily, her English wasn’t great. I tried to hand motion that I used to be a teacher but no more. She gave me a face like “I don’t get paid enough for this” and let me through.

Korea’s current COVID entry requirements are proof of vaccination, test before arrival and a test within three days of arrival. We doubted that the Korean government was really tracking whether we got the test after arrival but we wanted to play by the rules so we went ahead and scheduled one for our first day in Busan.

We got a taxi from the airport to the COVID testing center. They were very efficient and there were few people there so they breezed us right in. The woman that administered the test was outside, in a little glass room that had gloves arms sticking out of it. I couldn’t help but think of bubble boy.

I watched as Karen flinched away as the woman dig deep into her skull with a q-tip. Another staff person came up from behind Karen and held her head in place so the bubble lady could jab her. It was horrifying. For my turn they didn’t hold my head but I flinched and the lady jabbed the q-tip so hard that I felt something pop. It hurt so bad.

When I entered back into the room where Carl and Karen were waiting we were all holding our noses with tears welling in our eyes. My face still really hurt. Then Karen looked at me wide-eyed and said “your nose is bleeding”. I freaked out and ran to the bathroom. Sure enough, it was like I had a runny nose but it was blood. It was awful!

As I cleaned myself up and looked for a new mask one of the staff people came in to see how I was. I pulled the tissue away from my face just as she walked in and I think I freaked her out. She came back with a handful of free masks and seemed to gesture ‘are you ok??’

We got in a cab toward the beach and my nose kept hurting but the bleeding stopped. All of a sudden there was commotion ahead of us. We saw that a taxi had hit a motorcyclist and the motorcyclist was trying to get the taxi to pull over.

Then we realized our taxi man was trying to get involved in the situation. We thought our taxi driver was trying to block the other one so that the motorcyclist could get his information. We joined in on the gesturing and shouting saying “ya pull over!”

Then we realized we were on the wrong side. Our taxi driver was trying to block out the motorcyclist to let his taxi friend get away. We were mortified that we had been shouting and gesturing and the poor motorcyclist thought we were on team taxi. Before we could see what happened, our taxi drove away from the situation.

We still had a few hours to spare before our Airbnbs would let us check in. We decided to head to the beach where we are staying and get some lunch while we waited.

Gwangalli beach used to be THE place to hang out. Day or night we would go to the beach, admire the bridge, and then go drinking at one of the many western bars. These days none of the bars we used to go to are still there. So we went to a place called Mad Dogs and got some fried chicken and beer.

We finally checked into our Airbnb and dropped our stuff. It was so cute! There was a loft area for the bed and so much storage space. Even the refrigerator blended into the white cabinets below the stairs.

We headed down to the beach for some reminiscing time. The weather was perfect. Warm but breezy. We took tons of photos with the lovable bridge and sat on the beach for a bit.

For dinner Carl and I tried out a place near our Airbnb. We reasoned that we couldn’t eat barbecue every night, so we would need to try some other Korean restaurants. This place looked like a no frills diner with pictures on the walls of rice bowls and soup.

Once we went inside we realized the menu was totally in Korean and there were no photos indicating what things are. I used the camera function on google translate to try to translate to English. The translation seemed wrong. One of the dishes was translating to ‘acupuncture’ and another was ‘country of re-enactment’. I gave up on translating and pointed to the least expensive one and one of the middle priced ones. The waiter seemed fine with this.

They brought us cold barley tea that I loved. Then they brought out bibimbap – a rice bowl with lots of veggies on top, and another entre that looked like a pile of cabbage topped with crushed peanuts and dried fish. They served us banchan (side dishes) and soup. The soup was awful. It was a clear broth with a bunch of pieces of some kind of seafood. They were like clams but small and round like little fish eyes. The main cabbage dish wasn’t great either so I ordered us some makkoli, a rice wine, to help wash it all down. The makkoli and the kimchi were the best parts of the meal.

We had already been tired from travel and I think the emotional weight of a bad meal completely exhausted us. Carl went back to the Airbnb to do laundry and go to bed. I decided to not be a flaky croissant and met up with Karen.

We walked along the beach and over to an area where there is a luscious flower garden. There were tons of sunflowers and flower arches. It was pretty to see the colorful flowers with the bright city lights glimmering behind.

We decided to pop into HQ, a western bar on Gwangalli beach. It definitely wasn’t the same as Beached, the bar that used to be the go to for foreigners, but it was just as good. The beers now have more hops in them, at least.

Right as we entered the bartender announced that trivia was starting. We love trivia! I was sad Carl was missing it, but we played on in his honor. An English teacher was hosting and she treated us like rowdy students saying things like, “if you don’t like it, you can host”.

We recognized a friend from when we were here before, Tim. He already had a team of 5. Karen recognized someone else that I hadn’t met, Gerry. We invited him to our team and he seemed surprised and honored. Having Gerry was a lot like having Steve. Gerry was very insistent on several answers, some of which we knew were not right. We gave him some and changed others.

Gerry proceeded to get very drunk. At one point the host paused the trivia to announce that there was a huge strawberry moon. We all ran over to the window to see this huge, red moon hanging over the glittering bridge. It was magical. Gerry stared at it too long and when he came back to our table he couldn’t see. Karen suggested he have some water, or go home and lie down. Gerry interpreted this as Karen saying he was too drunk and should go home. He did not like that. As Karen tried to help him he called her mean. While I sat by with indifference he said I was nice. He was gone.

We ended up doing pretty well – about 3rd place amongst 6 or 7 teams. We were proud considering it was basically just me and Karen and the occasional firecracker of a third teammate.

Karen walked me home and on the way we stopped and got a mint and chocolate chip donut and it was the most delicious thing. I’m still thinking about it.

Friday, June 17

For our first full day in Busan we thought it would be proper to go back to where we used to live and work and take a stroll down memory lane.

We started the day by a trip to the top of Aqua Palace, a fancy hotel on Gwangalli. We got the code from the front desk and went up to the viewpoint on the 30th floor. We had the place to ourselves and the weather was perfect. One side of the terrace has a skywalk platform where you can walk out over where the pool is and there’s a glass floor to see through allll the way down.

Then we got a bus to Mangmi Jugong, our old work. We used to work for a private English school called Kids Club. We taught every age from about teeny little 5 year olds all the way to teenagers. Sometimes they’d ask us to teach kids from the kindergarten on the first floor who had absolutely no English. The kindergarten was still there but Kids Club had since closed. We were able to go inside and see the cutesy artwork still on the hallway walls. Outside, the school’s sign was still hanging up but it was worn and dirty looking.

We quickly walked up to a park where I used to take my breaks- walking around a small circular path over and over. Then we went back down the hill. Our favorite cafes were gone but somehow there was still a place called Pizza School that made weird, slightly awful pizza. We got some kimbap – Korean sushi – from a cafe and kept moving.

We got the bus toward our old apartments. I didn’t recognize the steep driveway down to our building, but luckily Karen did. We went into the hallway and up onto to the third floor rooftop. The apartment building kind of smelled like dust and cigarette smoke but there was also a hint of something I couldn’t name that just reminded me of living there 9 years ago.

We crossed the street and went to Homeplus, a grocery + everything store. Besides getting groceries here I would sometimes just walk around and look at all the stuff. There is a whole pet section that has fish, hamsters, and sometimes other weird things like ferrets and I used to go and stare at the animals as a kind of free zoo on rainy days.

Then we went to Daiso, a fancy dollar store. There didn’t used to be one so close to us (probably for the best) but we used to go to one near the subway so it fit under the category of nostalgia shopping. We walked to Yeonsan metro station – our old home base and I realized we used to live right in the middle of the city.

On the way we stopped to get some street food. Carl and I shared some tteok-bokki, finger sized rice cakes covered in a spicy red sauce. Busan is apparently known for their fish sticks so the tteok-bokki came with some pieces of fish stick and a side of fish stick broth. It sounds kinda gross but it’s basically like chicken noodle soup, except fish.

We journeyed back to our Airbnb to rest for a bit before heading out to dinner.

Carl and I reasoned it had been over 24 hours since we had barbecue so we were due. We went to a place called Seorae, which is located just one block inland along the main drag that connects the beach to the subway station exits. Nine years ago our group of friends would go to Seorae about every other week or so.

It was fun to reminisce here and even better, the food was still amazing. They (mostly) let us cook our own meat. We got marinated short pork rib (galbi), spicy pork skirt, and pork belly. When I took my first bite of galbi, I started to tear up. We had some meat shots (soju shot followed by a grilled meat chaser) and wraps where we fill a piece of lettuce with meat, rice, gochujang (thick hot sauce), and pickled onions. We washed the whole meal down with Hite, a Korean beer, and felt great.

We walked home along the beach. The bridge has a light show every hour that we watched. There are also a few art exhibits like some swings that light up. For a bit we watched a magician who played with fire and put his entire body into a balloon. There was also some sort of Korean singing competition being filmed, with various singers doing bits flanked by dancers. Korea was just as great as I had remembered.

Saturday, June 18

Our main plan for the day was to go to a baseball game. I never made it to a Korean baseball game before but had heard they are more exciting than American games. First, there were cheerleaders. When our team was up to bat, everyone in the bleachers stood up and the cheerleaders would lead them in choreographed dance and song.

We found out too late that you’re allowed to bring food and beer into the stadium. We felt silly that we didn’t bring our own beer but then the stadium’s beer was actually really cheap.

The teams themselves didn’t seem that good and we realized we had gotten tickets for the wrong side (Busan Lotte Giants vs. Seoul Incheon Landers) but it didn’t matter. We met up with a few other people I had known from before: Tim K., who kindly organized buying all the tickets, Doeyeon, a Korean teacher who used to work at my school and has since opened up her own classes, and also JJ (and his wife), Nav, and Brian. There were some new faces for me: Namkyeon, Tony Vu, and Nav’s girlfriend and his 2 friends from school. I don’t even know which team won, but we had a great time.

Afterward we went to Haeundae Beach to go bar hopping. We started in Thursday Party, an old time favorite. This place used to have free popcorn that we would devour, but no more. Now it’s $3 a bowl! We got some anyways, for memories sake. Some of our group went next door to eat and joined us later. When they walked in they also didn’t know the popcorn was now paid for and started going to town. Karen was shouting, “you have to pay for it now, ya know!”

We played many rounds of foosball and got to know Allan, Nav’s coworker, who taught in China for several years but was able to leave during COVID.

Then we went on to the Irish pub, the Wolfhound. This is where I had first met the big group of Irish friends back in the day, and the place was exactly the same. There was a foreigner rugby team in town. They were all dressed as pirates and were filling the bar. We also met some foreigners that lived in Seoul and were in Busan for the long weekend. We played beer pong and darts until we nearly closed out the place.

So we moved on to Noraebang, Korean karaoke. We went into the basement and were given the VIP room because we had so many people. Somehow we figured out how to use the remote that was all in Korean and we picked songs from a massive song book. Memories are fuzzy from this point on but all I know is that the next day my wrists and ankles hurt from such aggressive dance moves. Several videos were taken but I think it’s still too soon to watch or share them.

After two rounds of Norae we went back to Thursday Party to watch them close and play one last foosball game. When we finally went out to find a cab, the sky was lightening and the sun was coming up. It took us forever to get a cab but we finally got one back to our Airbnbs and passed out.

Sunday, June 19

We were proud of ourselves for getting out of bed and meeting Karen for brunch at a reasonable hour. We went to a place in Suyeong that Karen had found. We ended up ordering a crunch wrap supreme and some Japanese noodles. How international.

We felt queasy and exhausted but it was a beautiful day out so we forced ourselves to the beach. We went to Haeundae, the same beach we had partied at the night before. The water was absolutely freezing but Carl and Karen found the courage to go in. I refrained and just sat, frowning on the beach.

For linner we went back to the Wolfhound. I guess their menu had changed and Karen had a hard time finding something vegetarian. She ended up creating a custom burger where she substituted the meat patty with two hashbrowns. The Korean wait staff thought she was nuts but I think she is onto the next big thing. Carl and I got chicken tendies and they were restorative.

By the time we got back to Gwangalli it was near our bedtime. Although we didn’t accomplish much while the sun was out, we were proud we did as much as we had.