Haeundae

Yesterday I traveled to Haeundae to visit Haedong Yonggungsa Temple, I was hoping to go straight to the temple to visit but it was such a nice day I decided to take a detour and visit Haeundae Beach area. This a was a very beautiful beach, There is a beach near my house but you can see merchant ships in the water and isn't nearly as long as Haeundae.

I was also able to visit the temple but it was later in the day so I wasn't able to get as many pictures as I would hope, and I will make another post for that.

Some kind of boat thing was going on.

A few pictures of the Beach.

Some Sculptures by the beach.

An open market in Haeundae.

A neat looking spider I wish I could have gotten a better picture.

Aside from the spider I saw several Hummingbird Moths, I tried to get pictures of. Unfortunately they moved to erratically so instead of pictures of the moth's I had pictures of a bush with a brown blur in the center.

Yongdusan Park, Nampo-dong, and Namp underground shopping center

Today I picked up my camera from the repair shop in Nampo-dong before work. It didn't take as long as I thought it would so I had some time before work. I had a little bit of time to go the park near and take some pictures. Yongdusan park, this is a pretty nice park on top of a pretty big hill, it might be a small mountain, I don't know. There is a tower at the park that I haven't gone up in yet. I am waiting for a clear day to go up it since it cost around 5 dollars. There is also a small modern art exhibit and a model ship exhibit. The modern art exhibit was free and it was a photography exhibit. The model ship exhibit cost money so I didn't go in. On my way down from the park there was some creepy old guy walking down the stairs and grabbing girls hands who work going up the escalators (escalators mostly only go up in Busan, there are exceptions).

If I had my camera fixed earlier I would have been able to take pictures when I was around this area Saturday. They were putting on a play in Yongdusan park with traditional drums and an annoying sounding horn. There were quite a bit of people watching the free play. There was an older man next to me who was dancing to the drums and horn. After doing it for a while I noticed he was doing the same actions as the actors.

The pictures below are of Yongdusan Park, Nampo-dong, and the underground shopping area connecting two subway stations. For the past month I have been visiting this area every Saturday and I don't think I've seen it all but it's a nice are with lots of restaurants a couple movie theaters and it is a good place to walk.

A Buddha statue at the bottom of the stairs to the park


An exercise park about half way up the stairs (I didn't ask the guy to smile)



An engraved stone


Flower Clock


A bell they only ring once a year, it had some etchings on it some I tried to get a shot of that.



A dragon.


A bust of Some Guy


Commander of Pigeons


Yongdusan Tower


A reading room and Instruments of the World exhibit










Some pictures of Nampo-Dong








Some pictures of the underground shopping district, It's just like a mini-mall.

Some Things

If you don't want to read my ramblings about drunken Koreans, don't read this just look at the pictures.

Recently I've been noticing the how much drinking is a part of Korean culture. I don't frequent bars or clubs so maybe this is why it has taken me so long to notice. I started to notice a a few weeks ago when I ended up walking home from an area close to my work. On my way home I noticed several people passed out on the street, and from what I could tell these weren't homeless people, they were dressed in business suits, and were sleeping on benches covered in newspapers or just off the side walk in front of a store on some news papers.

Today I was walking out of work and stumbling into my work building was a lady pulling a man both almost ran into me, and both smelled like alcohol. Then I was riding home on the bus I take home, the whole time wondering if I read the number wrong because the inside of the bus didn't look similar to the usual buses. Finally my bus turns down the street that lets me know this is defiantly my bus. The next stop two ladies probably in their late forties get on the bus, before they got on I figured they were drunk as one was stumbling and the other was pulling on the stumbler. The stumbler some how makes it pass The puller and stumbles right in to me.

Anyway enough rambling, here are some pictures I took a few weeks ago on a cable car that took me towards the old fort that I never got to see. I might post some up some more if I ever get to visit said fort.

Temple of the Nirvana Fish (Beomeosa)

Saturday I decided to take a trip about an hour and a half north by train to Beomeosa, this is an old Buddhist temple that was built in 678 AD and reconstructed many times since then. Aside from the temple itself there are many natural trails to walk on, and since it is on top of a mountain there are some great views.

After getting off of the train I turned around to see a sign that says it's 3 km away, since I figure it's only around 2 miles so it shouldn't be that bad of a walk. However the sign doesn't say 3km up the side of a mountain (or it might in Korean)... which it is. If I decide to visit again which I might, I will defiantly take the bus that goes from the subway station to the temple, and back again.

Although it was a exhausting walk, I am glad I took it, it is beautiful walking up to the temple, but if I had to do it again I would take the walk down rather than up. Mainly because I am not used to either the humidity or the mountains, because by the time I got to the top of the mountain various areas of my shirt were soaked.

The temple and the trails were very nice though, and the temple was full of monks, all shaved bald.

I did get some good pictures for you to enjoy though, although their quality maybe lacking. At some point on journey the LCD screen on my camera got cracked so i took all these pictures with only a general idea what I was taking a picture of. I will try to get the screen repaired when I get payed next month.

Front Gate
Second Gate

I expected these guys to be animatronic but they weren't




Explained in the next picture







Nobody complains about this fence


An offering





I'd like to think this says "please come again"