Nic Trips

On Sunday, March 22nd,  the other half of our weekend trip, we headed back towards the east side of the country towards our giant neighboring city of Busan. On Haeundae Beach on the southeast side of the city, there was a giant celebration for Holi Hai. Holi Hai is an ancient Hindu festival held in spring. It's also called the 'festival of colors'. It primarily involves a massive singing and dancing party while colors are thrown and rain down everywhere. People use powdered colors as well as colored water or even wet paint to throw at other participants or just into the air to rain down on everyone. There is a large population of Indians living in Korean that likely brought this festival to Busan every spring, but in recent years the celebration has become very popular among other non-Hindu, southeast Asian countries and of course the many open-minded and adventurous foreigners that travel there.   I left my camera on the bus because I didn't have any...

The weekend after New Years, Andrew, Shane, and I decided to take a day trip to Busan. After looking up several things to possibly do there, we decided to go to Taejongdae Park (태종대 공원), which is on an island to the southwest of the city called Yeongdo (영도). We took bus 1127 from Ulsan (that goes almost all the way to may apartment) to the subway station on the northeast side of Busan. It only took about an hour and a half. From there we took a 45 minute subway ride to the island on the south of the city and walked across the bridge. The coast and harbor was filled with more boats than you could possibly count, and in the sky line of the city you could see all the cranes as evidence of  the constant construction. The weather was gorgeous and sunny. Eventually it got so warm that we were able to take of our coats. Once we crossed the bridge onto the island, we came across this sign that told us Taejongdae was 6.6 km away, on the far end of the island. We ...

Our final adventure on the first full day was to Beomeosa temple. It is bigger that Haedong Yonggunsa, but it was much less crowded. I assumed this was because rather than hiking DOWN to the coast, you had to hike UP part of the mountain to get to it. It was late afternoon by the time we go there, and the atmosphere was calm and magical in the slowly setting, summer sun, There were about 5-6 different, giant staircases that led us to the top and to the main temple. Each tier had another entry way or archway to view. Most of the paint and woodwork had been restored in the last decade or so, and everything was glowing with the intense colors. This part of the temple you had to walk underneath, up the 2nd to last staircase to get to one of the main tiers. You can sort of see underneath it how quickly the mountain goes down and into the distance in the background. Off to the far left side of the temple was an exit (or entrance) with two giant, painted ...

We used our first full day in Busan to go to the most famous of its temples, Haedong Yonggunsa. It has a beautiful location on the rocky coast, and the weather was gorgeous for the hike down. On the way down to the temple we walked past a row of statues representing the Chinese Zodiacs. So of course we all posed for pictures with our animal. Jarah and I were the only Monkeys. We arrived at the temple just as the first groups of tourists were starting to flow in. When we walked past these statues on the way in of "Budda for Academic Achievement" they were empty, but when we were leaving we noticed they were COVERED in coins. Apparently someone really needed some luck with their school grades. The pig statues I slowly started to noticed were everywhere in Korea. They eat a lot of pork here because it's one of the cheapest meats in Korea because pigs are easy to raise there. They don't have the space for grazing cows, so most dairy pro...