Jirisan National Park – I made a huge mistake

Early rise on Saturday to take an 8am bus to Jinju.  In Jinju we (Doug, Nick, and I) transferred to get to Daewonsa, which is where we were camping in Jirisan National Park.  I’d packed all my stuff – a sleeping bag, sleeping pad, water, and some clothes – into a bulky duffel bag because Nick had been told that the campsite was very close to the bus parking lot.  Well, when we arrived at the Daewonsa stop (around 11:45), we checked our map and saw that our campsite was right next to Daewonsa Temple.  Unfortunately, Daewonsa Temple was 2km away.  So I threw the duffel on my back (like a backpack, which hurt because the straps aren’t comfortable) and made the hike.

Unfortunately, when we reached the temple (which was quite pretty) we quickly realized that the campgrounds were nowhere in sight.  Flummoxed, we doubled back and still found nothing.  Feeling defeated, we decided to just stay at a campsite that we’d passed on our way up.  It clearly hadn’t been used in a while, but we figured there was no recent we couldn’t sleep there.  But, since we all had the feeling that we weren’t technically supposed to be staying there, we decided to hide our bags and wait until dark to pitch the tent.

After setting down our bags and enjoying a snack of fruit and almonds, we headed to the stream right by our campsite.  Our time there was my highlight of the weekend.  We hiked around the rocks, admired the phenomenal scenery, and didn’t see anyone for probably 3 hours.  After a while we were all feeling thirsty, so we wandered back to the convenience store by the bus stop to get some beers.  Then we headed back to the creek to enjoy them in peace.

After our beers, we did some more wandering.  This time we took a more challenging course and ended up in a bamboo forest.  Man are those trees strong.  Though the difficulty of our route wasn’t overly apparent on the way up, it reared its ugly head on the way back down.  We all fell into the water on separate occasions.  Doug got the worst of it, falling down to his waist.  Nick soaked a full shoe, while slipped after a jump and dunked half my right foot (also banged my shin pretty good).  After falling we decided to call it quits on hiking for the day, particularly given the arduous trek we would be taking the following day.

To kill the remainder of the day, we figured we’d head back to the Ranger station and try to find the location of the mystery campsite.  On our way back to the main road a Ranger in a truck saw us on the forbidden campgrounds, which freaked us out a bit.  We didn’t think we’d get in any trouble, but the prospect of pitching and then having to move a tent sounded just awful.

When we got to the Ranger station, we saw a sign pointing to the campsite, which was just across the creek via a neat little bridge.  Mind you, the Ranger station is just by the parking lot, so the hike we did to the temple in the morning was all for nothing.  We groaned and wondered how we’d missed the sign on our way up (it’s pretty big), our best guess is that the Ranger truck was parked in front of it.

Anyhow, we checked out the campsite and it was pretty nice.  Plus there was only one other tent set up so we’d still get some decent privacy.  We decided to move our things there because the Ranger had seen us earlier and we didn’t want to be booted in the middle of the night.

For dinner we went to a nearby restaurant and got duruchigi, which is usually pork in a savory brown sauce but here it was served with veggies in a spicy red sauce.  This, of course, was cool with me as the meal was delicious.  The only problem was the atmosphere, which was awful.  The restaurant was family owned, and one of the family members was some crazy old dude who couldn’t speak any English and wouldn’t leave us alone.  We left the second we finished our food.

Back at our campsite we were just hanging out getting ready to go to bed when our camping neighbor came over to us bearing the gifts of food and booze.  He gave us some bbq pork and veggies, four bananas, a few clusters of grapes, and two bottles of makkoli.  He didn’t speak great English, but enough to get by.  He worked as an airplane mechanic for fighter jets (F-52s if memory serves correctly) and was super nice.  After 15 minutes or so he went back to his campsite to go to bed.  We thanked him profusely and then decided to do the same.

We set our Sunday alarm for 6am.  I felt pretty good when the alarm started buzzing even though I’d only slept so-so (it got chilly overnight and there’s the whole issue of sleeping outside in a tent).  After taking down the tent, packing up our bags, and eating a quick breakfast of almonds, bananas, and beef jerky, we were all set to leave when our friendly neighbor came by to offer us coffee and hot chocolate.  He’s probably the nicest dude ever.

After hot chocolate (Doug and Nick had coffee), we headed out around 7:30.  Given the numbers I’m about to tell you, it’s hard for me to imagine why I’d so thoroughly underestimated this hike.  Well, probably because I hadn’t looked up the numbers before we embarked.  All I thought was “I’m a fit young man, I’ll have no problem.”

Well I had a problem indeed.  The hike was 14km each way, with 1900m elevation at the peak.  We estimated that our campsite was around 300m elevation, which means we went up 1600m.  But that doesn’t tell the whole story, because the hike went up and down a lot.  I’d say you have to add at least 30% to calculate what we actually hiked, which is 2080m.  If you’re a math man, you’d probably like to think of our hike as 14km along the x axis and 2km along the y axis.

To make things even more difficult, the trail isn’t particularly well maintained.  I’d say over 70% of the hike is navigating through rocks.  Every single Korean we saw had hiking boots, hiking poles, and gloves.  We had running shoes.  I spent the whole day terrified of spraining an ankle (I partially rolled it more times than I can count), especially on the way down. 

After hiking for 3 hours, I was very, very tired and very, very aware of the fact that we were only halfway to the top (and then would have to come all the way down).  It was at this point that I realized I’d made a terrible mistake and wanted to go home.  And when I say I wanted to go home, I mean I really wanted to go home.  The neurons which cause children to wail this phrase repeatedly were firing out of control inside my skull.  It took a significant amount of self-control to not vocalize how much I wished I’d never gone on this hike.  This part of my brain didn’t shut up until we were back at the campsite.

The coolest thing about the experience, though, was getting a taste of what it’s like to be just utterly exhausted.  I’ve tuckered myself out playing many-a-sport and going on many-a-hike, but I have never felt this drained.  There was a point when I was climbing a staircase at a snail’s pace and I realized that I was literally going as fast as I could.  Though I wasn’t quite this tired, I think I’m beginning to have an idea of what’s going on in movies when the dude is staggering along in the dessert and then finally collapses.

It took 6 hours to reach the peak, which, while beautiful, was a complete clusterfuck.  There were probably 200 people up there.  I wish we’d stayed at the 2^nd to last peak, which was empty and only about 100m lower in elevation.  It had effectively the same view with none of the people.  Instead, we reached the peak around 1:15 and had no time to relax.  We had to get down to catch our bus.  So after a short 15 minutes for snacking we headed back down the mountain.

While I could turn the trip down into a paragraph of complete sentences, I’ll just share the notes I took when I got home: “whole way back feared I’d sprain an ankle.  wanted to cry.  knees on fire.  got back at 6pm.” 

OK, I won’t leave you hanging on the wanting to cry part.  After about a half an hour, we passed a sign and Nick says “Damn, we’ve only gone 1km.”  My immediate reaction was an intense desire to just burst into tears in helplessness and despair.

Thankfully, we made it down injury-free.  Back at the campsite I immediately changed clothes, but it didn’t do much good because my body was sweaty, smelly, and covered in dirt.  Back at the convenience store I got snacks to tide me over and we took a 6:30 bus to Jinju.  We transferred busses in Jinju and got back to Busan around 9pm, where we all devoured some McDoozers.  After fueling (albeit when Regular when this baby is supposed to run on Premium) I took the subway home, took a most amazing shower, noticed that I’d burned my back (first time in years, my mommy raised me right), and slept like a rock until the agonizing sound of my alarm the following morning.

DMZ and JSA

Friday

We took the KTX to Seoul, which takes just under 3 hours.  Nick lent me a fascinating book on Scientology (Inside Scientology by Janet Reitnam), which made the time fly by.  That Church is thoroughly fucked up.

Anyway, we got to Seoul and went to our hostel.  Nick booked us a hostel in a phenomenal location, just 15 minutes by foot from the train station and 20 minutes to where our tour left.  The hostel was really well-reviewed, but unfortunately our room had cockroaches L (thank goodness they were of the small, baby variety.  I’m genuinely terrified of the big ones.  The fact that they can survive the radiation of a nuclear bomb is terrifying).  So neither of us slept too well.

Saturday

We had an early rise at about 6:20 to give us time for a shower and breakfast before the tour.  We stopped for a filling breakfast at the nearest MacDoozers (Bacon Egg McMuffins are delish) and then went to our tour pickup.  The tour left from the Lotte hotel, which was one of the ritziest hotels I’ve seen in quite some time.  The lobby features impressive statues and restaurants.  Nick and I, initially disappointed to find our hostel without sufficient toilet paper (we both needed to make a poopie), were treated to a couple of absolutely luxurious thrones in the lobby bathroom.  I’m talking full baday and everything.  Hadn’t had been treated to a warm water rinse where the sun don’t shine since Japan.  I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t nice.

At 8:00 on the button we headed out on our tour.  The first stop was the DMZ (De-Militarized Zone, ironic because, despite a mutual agreement for zero military personnel, it is the most militarized place in the world), which was mostly cool but had some fluff.  The biggest highlight was probably the 3^rd tunnel, which is a tunnel North Korea had built to try to secretly invade Seoul, but, thankfully, was discovered by the South.  The scary part is that military experts believe North Korea has probably built 50-100 tunnels.  South Korea has found 4. 

Some other cool stops included Freedom Bridge, which was used to exchange POWs during the Korean War.  The bridge had thousands of ribbons attached to the walls, which our guide told us were put by South Koreans for separated family members stuck in the North.  I also like the Dora Observatory, mainly because I took pictures I wasn’t supposed into North Korea.  And I got to see some North Koreans working in a farm via binoculars. 

The most useless thing was visited was Dorasan Station, which is the northern most train station in South Korea.  The train tracks actually go into the North, but trains obviously don’t run there.  The only reason it is part of the tour is because apparently Bush visited in 2002.  Hilariously, we read the speech he gave there in 2002 and from the beginning Nick predicted “I’ll be he mentions 9/11.”  Just as we were starting to lose hope, we saw it in the 3^rd to last paragraph.  Classic Dub-ya.

After a spectacular lunch of bulgogi, we headed to the JSA (Joint Security Area).  In the DMZ we just toured the border of the DMZ, whereas during the JSA part of the tour we entered the DMZ and went all the way to the North Korean border.

Our first stop was Camp Bonifas, where we had to sign a waiver that North Koreans may kill us on the tour.  We also watched a brief presentation about the history of the JSA, most notably about the ceasefire signed in 1953 (note that it’s a ceasefire and not a treaty, thus the two countries technically remain at war), the Axe Murder Incident in 1976 (during which two US soldiers doing tree-trimming (the trees blocked visibility into the Northern side) were decapitated by North Korean soldiers wielding axes, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axe_Murder_Incident), and the Soviet Defector Incident in 1984 (during which a Soviet citizen ran across the border demarcation line while on a North Korean tour.  North Korean soldiers chased him while firing, and South Koreans fired back to protect him.  The Soviet survived, but fighting left one South Korean dead and one wounded.  On the Northern side, three were killed, five wounded, and eight captured.  Shots were heard from the North 20 minutes after the firefight, which reports state was the execution of the tour group's commander and one of his key subordinates).  After the presentation, we boarded a military bus and headed to the JSA.

On the way, we passed some rice fields, which belong to residents of Daesong-dong, the South Korean village in the DMZ.  Also known as Freedom Village, the village boasts a 100m high South Korean flag.  The village is under UN control, and as such, residents don’t need to pay taxes.  And that’s no small potatoes, because our guide said the average family pulls in a cool USD $80,000 annually.  But they’re under constant threat of being kidnapped by the North and have a curfew, so it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. 

We also saw Kijong-dong, the North Korean village just south of the boarder.  Not to be outdone, Kijong-dong has a 160m tall flagpole, the 3^rd tallest in the world.  The village is also known as Propaganda Village, as it entirely uninhabited and, apparently, never was.  It was simply built for show.

When we got to the JSA, we saw the Freedom House and Peace House, South Korea’s two buildings within the JSA.  I’m not quite sure what they are used for; our guide said they were for “talks,” but there is a shared conference room whose midsection lies along the border, and apparently that is where talks are held.  Anyway, the Freedom House was pretty and impressive (this is the building which has one side facing the North Korean boarder), whereas the Peace House was just a building.

Between the two buildings, though, is a circle of grass with a small statue, and our guide told us that it was the site of the shootout in the Soviet Defector Incident.  That really made me cognizant of the imminent danger we potentially faced, especially if a stranger did something stupid.

We were led from the busses through the Freedom House and into the shared conference room.  In the middle was a table, with three microphones in a line in the middle, a UN flag on the edge, and South Korean soldier standing, at attention, in line with the flag and the microphones.  Our guide explained this line represented the border between the North and South.  Looking out the window, we could see a concrete line marking the border, with concrete on the Southern side and dirt on the North.

It was a thrill to stand in North Korean territory, albeit for only a couple of minutes.  Nick and I got a photo with a guard to remember the experience.  I’m pleased to say I nailed the facial expression (a mixture of “hey this is pretty neat” and “holy shit).  I really wanted to knock on the door leading to the North Korean side, but there was a guard about 10 feet from the door which we weren’t allowed to walk past.  I did get some shots of North Korean land though the window, though.

After seeing the conference room, we stood on the patio outside of the Freedom House and took some pictures of North Korea.  Their main JSA building was maybe 150 yards away, and had a guard looking at us in binoculars.  I wish I had a better zoom on my camera, because even zoomed all the way in (12x) the dude is still a bit small.

Once the other group finished going through the conference room, we headed back to Camp Bonifas via bus.  On the way out we saw the site of the Axe Murder Incident (a memorial, the tree is now gone), and the Bridge of No Return, which Koreans were allowed to cross after the Korean War.  But their decision of which Korea to live in was final; once they crossed they couldn’t cross back.  Hence the Bridge of NO RETURN.

Back at Camp Bonifas I checked out the gift shop, but the selection was disappointing.  I did buy the Old Man some golf balls though, which came with some tees.  The sticker on the bag of tees is hilarious – it has a golf club crossed with an AK47 and says “The Most Dangerous Game” or something silly like that.  Needless to say, that sticker is mine.

After getting back from the tour, we meandered back to our hostel.  On the way we walked through Namdaemun market, which was absolutely packed and had lots of yummy looking food.  We decided we’d head back there later after cleaning up and visiting the N Seoul Tower.

After a shower, short rest, and some coffee at our hostel, we took the cable car up to the N Seoul Tower.  We’d been there months ago during our first visit to Seoul, but the wait to get to the top was over 3 hours so we decided to skip.  This time the wait was about an hour, which was cool with us.  So we grabbed some snacks, a couple of beers, and soaked up the gorgeous evening weather.

An hour later we took the elevator up, which had a super cheesy space video with some music.  Nick and I laughed out loud at it.

The view from the tower was spectacular.  Seoul is sprawling city.  It brought me back to the view I had on Semester at Sea from the Tokyo Tower (though Tokyo is even more sprawling).  There was also a urinal with a window to look out at the cityscape.  Classiest pee I’ve taken in quite some time, and I’m the classiest of urinators.

After the tower we went back to Namdaemun, but it was dead except for some street dining.  So we decided to get some chicken skewers, pajeon, and beer.  The food was quite yummy.  Though the atmosphere was significantly dampened by the fact that a bum was just harassing the very friendly lady who cooked for us.  He came up and asked for food, and she offered him some egg and rice cakes in sauce (very filling) and water.  But he kept yelling and, presumably, asking for meat.  He wouldn’t leave, even when the vendor, who was being exceptionally patient, tried to shove him to get him to leave.  A male patron tried to get him to move on to no avail.  Eventually the police had to be called.

After our late dinner we wandered in search of bar.  Shockingly, as Namdaemun is in the center of the city, we found zilch.  Apparently it just isn’t a bar area.  But we did get a bunch of dudes asking us to go into a “Business Clubs” (not sure if it’s a mistranslation of “Gentleman’s Club” or they are trying to attract business men, either way they are strip clubs), a pimp offering sex, and even an entrepreneurial women in her mid-30s (she approached and asked where we were going.  When we said we were going to our guesthouse she has “Can you bring a female?”).  Despite being unable to find bars, we weren’t too disappointed because we were exhausted.  Though we were disappointed to have to wander around for a half hour after getting lost.

Sunday

I decided to take the slow train home to save $$.  It takes 5 and a half hours, but has bigger seats and is about $25 cheaper.  So I slept, read about 80 pages of Inside Scientology, and looked out the window.  The landscape is really, really beautiful.  And mountainous.  Seriously, almost the entire time I was looking at mountain ranges.

I got home around 5pm.  I did laundry, cleaned up my apartment, watched the documentary Man on Wire, which is about the French wirewalker Philippe Petit who walked between the Twin Towers in 1974, and then went to bed early.

Brown Belt and an Eventful Weekend in Daegu

On Tuesday I got a Brown Belt!  That leaves me nearly four months to get a Black Belt, from which I’m merely two belts away.  Next is Red, and from Red I go to Black.  And once you go black you never go back.

 

Anyway, let’s get on to tales from the weekend, as they are plentiful.  On Friday I got some Mexican food with Nick and Doug.  The place, O’Taco’s, has some damn fine fajitas.  Also we filled up a card, so next time we go we get a free quesadilla!  Nice-uh.

Anyway, after our delicious meal we went to the local convenience store to get some beers.  Suddenly, this crazy bald guy comes up and sits next to us, asking if he can “finish this here,” referring to his beer.  Now we’d had an encounter with this guy months ago, and he is literally nuts.  I scanned the faces of my compadres when he sat down, and the look both Nick and Doug’s faces can be summed up as the classic “God. Damnit.” facial expression.  I’m sure I was sporting it as well.

Anyway, I forget exactly what we were discussing, but it was something that had to do with politics and, as political discussions often do, implicated race.  So the guy sits down and the first thing he says is “I think racism is bad no matter what.”  Because I thought it was funny and also hoping he would maybe leave, I said “Well you’re with the wrong crowd, because we are all really racist.  Our group motto is ‘If you ain’t white, that ain’t right.’”  Well this guy quickly changed his tuning, somehow making a segway between how horrible feminism wants to make men subservient to women to using the term “feral blacks.”  We all exclaim about the offensiveness of that term, and he backtracks saying our reaction was “knee-jerk.”  A few minutes later he saw a black guy that came over to say hi, and we laughed about him being a chameleon.

A few minutes later, he starts ranting crazily again about how society is coming apart at the seams and that there’s going to be a race war.  He kept telling us to “Put the pieces of the puzzle together.”  As Doug described it later, “He kept calling our reactions ‘knee-jerk’ and going on about the puzzle pieces.  It’s like, ‘Listen dude.  You’ve been going on for 20 minutes and you’re not making any sense.’” 

Anyhow, the race war comment really reminded me of a scene from one of my favorite movies, In Bruges by Martin McDonagh.  There is this scene where everyone is doing coke, and this dwarf starts going about an impending race war.  Colin Farrell’s character (Editor’s Note: He is surprisingly excellent in this movie) starts asking the dwarf about which side groups would fight with.  How about the Vietnamese?  The Mexicans?  Would the black midgets fight with the whites or the blacks?  Would all the white midgets fight the black midgets?”  Anyway basically asked the crazy guy these questions and it took him a bit to realize I was toying with him.

On Saturday Doug and I headed to the train station with the hopes of catching a 9am train.  Sadly, Adam was a little late so we took the 10am instead.  We decided to wait outside the station, where there is a very nice promenade area with plenty of seating and a gorgeous fountain.  As is often the case with public areas, there is also a collection of homeless people hanging around one of the corners.  Anyhow, Doug and I were just sitting around talking when we see an older guy, who didn’t really look homeless, start to smack one of the homeless guys with an open fist on the back of the head.  He smacked him several times, and then seemed like he was going to walk away.  But just as that was winding down, a younger guy (also not homeless, likely the older man’s son) shoved a different homeless man to the ground.  The homeless man went down very easily, and when he was on the ground the man who pushed him kicked him in the face.  It was nuts.  Thankfully, the aggressor didn’t take it any further.  But it was still a crazy thing to see shortly passed 9am on a Saturday in a public square.

Though we have no idea what started the fight, Doug and I are inclined to believe that the two aggressors were not unprovoked.  I’m not justifying their actions, but they were there with their family.  I can’t imagine that they just said to themselves “Hey, want to beat up a few of those hobos who are just chillin’ over there?”

Anyhow, after the early excitement our hour of waiting passed uneventfully.  At 10am we hopped on our train and 45 minutes later we were in Daegu.  We grabbed some snacks at a convenience store and then got tickets for the city bus tour, which would take us to the hike we wanted and to a temple.

Our first stop was the Gatbawi Hike, which was awesome.  Steep and challenging, the hike featured were several cool shrines to see on the way up, a fun climbing area off the stairs where we could escape crowds, and the Gatbawi Shrine at the peak.  Gatbawi apparently means “Stone Hat Buddha,” and that’s exactly what you got at the peak of the climb -- an old Buddha statue with a square hat.  I find it strange how Buddha seems to be worshiped as a deity here.  He explicitly said he didn’t want to be.  But I suppose Jesus also made it pretty clear that you were supposed give some scrilla to the poor, a point seemingly lost on today’s Republicans.  But I digress.  The most fun part of the hike was on our way down (at the beginning, still near the peak), where we took a trail that split from the stairs and allowed for some free climbing.  In that area we completely lost the crowd and were treated to some spectacular views.

We had to hurry down the mountain to catch our bus, which only runs every hour and twenty minutes.  We passed a dude hiking barefoot.  He must have the toughest feet in Korea.  The idea of personally making that climb without foot protection is unfathomable.  I think I’d turn back after 50 yards at the most.

From the Gatbawi trailhead we bussed to Donghwasa temple.  The entrance had these huge colorful warriors which were pretty neat.  They were almost identical to the ones I’d seen in Jeonju all the way back in the orientation trip.  I wondered about their significance in the Buddhist religion.  I know the religion doesn’t have any gods, so I was curious as to their meaning.  But apparently I wasn’t curious enough to bother googling it, seeing as I haven’t done so.

The temple stood out for the scenery.  I’ve kinda gotten to point where temples in Korea run together.  The first ones I saw were very impressive, because the details really are quite impressive, but I suppose I’ve just become habituated.  But what separated Donghwasa was its gorgeous mountain location, with several impressive views of the lush mountains/hills surrounding the temple grounds.  And it certainly didn’t hurt that the weather was beautiful.

But the highlight of the visit was a large standing Buddha statue located at least a half mile from the entrance (the grounds were huge and quite scenic).  I would estimate that the statue was 60 feet tall, and it stood in a large square with colorful hanging lanterns, with a really neat walk around the back of the Buddha that had warrior statues carved into the walls.  There were also two tall shrines more towards the front of the square which, at least aesthetically, I could have done without.  But I’m guessing they represented something important.

After we finished admiring the Buddha statue, we realized our bus was leaving in about 5 minutes.  Not wanting to rush (and I honestly don’t event think we could have made it), we decided to relax and have a beer at a park near the temple entrance.  The park was expansive and beautiful, with several sports fields, a cool fountain several children were splashing around in, and some beautiful trees with pearl white leaves. 

Once our bus came, it was about 30 minutes back to the train station area.  We all slept.  Our guide, a really friendly man who didn’t speak much English but more than made up for it in enthusiasm, guided us to the subway and wished us goodbye.  He told us to come back and drink soju with him, which I’m not sure if I’ll have time to do but I’m certain would be good fun.

We took the subway to our guest house, which was located right downtown.  After a shower and a short rest, we headed to the bar/restaurant area.  I think all three of us had the same immediate reaction: holy Toledo the girls here are smoking hot.  Everywhere you looked the girls were just gorgeous.  It was crazy.  Anyhow, we stopped admiring just long enough to eat dinner at a BBQ place.  I gave the waitress my number but she didn’t call me.  I think I’m 0 for 3 on that now.

Post dinner we basically roamed the streets and bounced around bars.  And man the girls were gorgeous.  I was actually on top of my game, but stung with terrible luck.  The first girl I talked to was at a table with two friends.  They were all quite cute.  After Doug, Adam, and I discussed how cute they were for a few minutes, I decided to approach.  I went with a good one I’ve been using lately, in which I ask the girl the last letter of the English alphabet.  Canadians call the letter Z “zed,” while Americans call it “zee.”  It’s always interesting to hear what Koreans are taught, and it works great as an opener if I’m out with Doug.

Anyhow, I approached the girl who I thought was the most attractive at the table and posed the question.  Then I asked the other girls, and hailed over to Adam and Doug to weigh in.  After maybe a half hour of talking to “my girl,” I could tell I was “in” with her.  Not necessarily because I’m a genius at reading women or anything, but because she took my hand and put it on her leg, and then continued to keep her hand on top of mine.  Sadly, after a short while it became apparent nothing was going to come of it.  She lived with her parents, who were calling her and wanted her home.  Also her friends were lukewarm with my friends.  So eventually we just separated.

Shortly after, my eyes met with a gorgeous girl maybe 10 feet away.  She gave me a big smile, and, knowing I shouldn’t hesitate, I approached her.  She was from Japan on an extended visit to see her boyfriend, who was a foreign teacher.  But they’d broken up (I’m not sure how long ago), so now she was just on an extended visit.  Things were going great initially (she was very flirty, touchy, etc.), but after just a couple minutes of talking her friend grabbed her arm and said they were leaving.  I should have asked for her number but I was so surprised by how quickly it disintegrated I just said “See ya,” and watched her walk away.

My bad luck was contrasted with Adam’s phenomenal luck.  Around 1am, we were just walking around when Adam ran into a guy he knew (by sight only, not his name) from Frisbee.  Adam plays in Busan and this other dude plays in Daegu, and there was recently a Korea-wide tournament, which is where they’d met.  Anyway, we’re all talking to the Frisbee dude, and suddenly a gorgeous girl walks up and says to him “Why don’t you introduce me to one of your cute friends?”  The guy said, “Oh, ok, this is my friend Adam.”  Then the girl just grabs his hand and says “You’re with me tonight.”  WHY HAS THAT NEVER HAPPENED TO ME?!!

We ended up crashing at the guest house around 3am, and were up by 10am to catch a train back to Busan.  The Gwangan bridge was open for pedestrians until 2pm, and I really wanted to walk across it.  Unfortunately, I’d gotten some bad info.  Because I got there around 12:45 only to learn that the entrance had closed at 10am.  That was really disappointing, because there is a cool tower in Daegu and crazy Eastern medicine market that I would have loved to have seen.  Instead, I rushed back for a bridge walk I had no chance of making.  So instead of exploring a wild market with lizard tails and other fun remedies, I just did laundry, cleaned my apartment, got some shopping done at MegaMart, and went to bed early.  Curse you, bridge walk.  I’ll see you in hell.