Christmas Vacation Part I

For the first half of Christmas Vacation I did two things, which can be further divided into four and three things making for a total of seven things. I did nothing (which means I watched Lost, ate Korean food, slept in and wrote Dungeons & Dragons scenerios) and I went to Busan (which means I gambled, drank and ate raw fish).

Since we've probably all done nothing I'll talk a bit about going to Busan. The second largest city in Korea is at least as ugly as Seoul, but is also adjacent to the ocean. This means you have all the filth of a commercial and industrial port, too. Don't get me wrong, Seoul is an incredible city, but not an attractive one. Busan is its sleazy cousin Vinny.

I went with no plans and therefore had an extremely low-stress visit. I stayed in a Sauna and this being my first time spending the night at one of these places, I got to have the bizarre experience of waking up in the morning surrounded by passed out Korean families. I guess lots of people like the sauna so much they don't bother to go home at night. This place was called Vesta and it has an excellent outdoor bath on a balcony overlooking the sea. Naked, with a beautiful view, is hard to beat.

I also ate some seriously raw fish. Again with no plan, I walked into one of the fancier looking restaurants on the boardwalk just a stone's throw from the lapping surf. The place was packed with satisfied looking Koreans, which I always take to be a good sign. Several days later my parents would have an experience that would challenge this perspective, but that episode is for another post.

I pointed at the first thing on the menu which seemed to have its own category of honor. Then there was the usual combination of miming and piss-poor Korean speaking from me to confirm that this was indeed what I wanted to eat. It ended up being a multi-course feast of sashimi-like slices of fish, bowls of soup and salad, sweet cornmeal dollops, toasted sugar-crusted leaves(?) and an entire fried mackerel. Delicious and indulgent.

Besides this meal and losing money/gaining whiskey at a beach-front casino, my favorite part of the trip was probably the high speed KTX train. The ground was clear around the station I departed from, but then we went through some magic mountain and on the other side the whole world was powdered with snow. Also on the train there was a terrible poster of a woman holding a basket of apples in front of a giant smiling tomato(?) face. I had never been on a train before, unless you count that glorified amusement park reject that takes you from Newark into Manhattan, so the whole travel part was very novel.

In Part II, my parents come to Anyang.