Busan

Busan is on the coast, has lots of music venues, good restaurants, a subway system to easily get you from one part of the city to the next, and only 3.5 hours away from Gwangju so it's a fun weekend get away.

This boy on the beach was practicing his Taekwondo.

A little jam time.

Public bike rentals, use a credit card and it's yours for the taking.

Not only did we find delicious Indian food, we found dairy free coconut milk ice cream, and had sake. The waiter at the sake bar brought over a selection of sake cups to choose from, that was a tough decision. We sat at a corner table in the second floor window, where we had a great view of the street below and watched as Koreans (who typically drink too much too fast) stumbled out of bars and had all sorts of comic stumblings and swayings.

Unfortunately black out drunk is something you see a lot of here, there's even a blog devoted to photos of Koreans passed out in awkward places (it's called "black out korea" if you want the proof). I see it every week, somebody slumped in a planter, curled up on a bus bench, or passed out at the corner store's picnic table. I won't go into detail about the vomit everywhere, but I think that's a big motivation for removing shoes when you enter a building.

Saunas

Korean saunas or jimjilbang are wonderful. That is, if you like to sweat and lay around and then hop in a hot tub or cold tub. The sauna sections are co-ed and usually have a few rooms to choose from with different ambience or healing materials (salt, ochre, charcoal). Some saunas are open 24 hours so many travelers use them as a cheap place to spend the night (you can sleep/nap in the common lounge room). To use the sauna you are given an outfit of shorts and shirt to sweat through, which is great and comfortable. But eventually that strange odor of steam and sweat soaked cotton starts to kick like a old towel and that's a good sign you've had enough. The towel on the head is optional and this is the way to wear it, I usually do something more turban like.

I visited "spa land" in Busan, it's the largest jimjilbang in the country and caps the visit at 4 hours, but it was long enough and really great. The highlight was the outdoor hot springs. It's a fancy place, totally touristy, and if I'm in Busan I will go again.

Radio Fun

The cherry and plum blossoms were beautiful while they lasted. (That's the radio station building in the background).

So, an opportunity presented itself to me, and I took it. GFN, Gwangju Foreign Language Network the local English language radio station needed voices to fill some interview style segments. The past 2 months I've been chatting it up with the host Anne in a segment called Enjoy Korea- I talk about artsy things happening in Gwangju and Korea. I never get to hear the program because I'm always teaching at the time it airs. It's a short segment on Friday mornings from 11am to 11:20. You can listen here...

(That's Anne behind the mic)

The radio station is near a park that used to be a zoo, now the only animals you can see there are in the form of paintings or sculptures.