Rain, mountains, and fish...

"Getting to the top is optional, getting down is mandatory."

- Ed Viesturs

     Last weekend three friends and I decided to visit the city of Busan.  Busan is the second largest city in South Korea and is on the Southeast coast. Although the map says 3 hours we took the cheaper slower train and took 4.5 hours. 

Our train left Suwon, a city about 30 minutes by bus from me, at 6:20AM.  Everyone except me promptly fell asleep, so I took photos of them.  Here is sleeping Beth with some beautiful misty mountains behind her.

After arriving in Busan, we all got coffee and decided to explore the Gamcheon Culture Village.  This is a neighborhood made of brightly painted houses clinging to the mountain side.  

The village is a maze of tiny alleyways and stairs.  Unfortunately it started pouring shortly after our arrival.

We spent the night at an airbnb apartment that we rented.  The next day we of course went hiking.  Why do I have friends that love hiking?  Anyway the final destination for this hike was Seokbulsa Temple.  To get there we had to take a cable car to the top of the mountain, hike down half the mountain, then climb back up.  The climb back up almost killed me, but the temple was worth it.  Behind the main building and up steps you came to this gorgeous grotto filled with statues carved right out of the mountain side.  

I need to work on being serious at religious sites.

For some reason there are always people eating at a temple.  A very nice family at this temple gave us coffee and rice cakes with red bean.  Now before you go aww how nice!  Rice cake is not actually cake.  Its basically rice jello.  It is very dense but squishy.  The red bean actually is what it sounds like its red beans that are somehow sweet.  I ate one piece to be polite and could barely keep it down.  Alex took one for the team and ate three pieces of the rice cake and Beth drank 3 of the coffees.

Remember when I said we had to climb back up half the mountain to get to the temple?  That climb back up was on a road that was switchback after switchback.  There was never a break just straight up for about 45 minutes.  I made it and then laid on the ground for 20 minutes.  Then the worse part about hiking is that once you arrive, you know you have to go all the way back down.

This week my school has vacation, so I have a whole week off of work.  That sounds fantastic but as I will be going on a 6 week trip starting September 1st I could not afford to go anywhere this week.  I have been trying to do at least one thing each day but it is also 90 degrees with 80% humidity.  One outing I did was to go to one of Seoul's aquariums.  I found Nemo and some sturgeons!  

One section had aquariums made out of strange objects. Anyone want to play with these legos?

Its seems the goal of aquariums is to really freak people out about rivers.  Forget sharks, its the river fish that are terrifying.

Case in point: very shiny pirhanas

I think this is the first time I have seen manatees.  I am quite in love, I think if I was a sea creature I would be a manatee.

Over the winter Conan O'Brien visited Seoul and bought this octopus at the fish market.  Instead of eating him, Conan donated him to the aquarium.