Busan Fireworks Festival Trip

Weekends in Korea are definitely 80% of what makes living here worthwhile. This weekend was no exception. Saturday morning nine friends and I made our way to Busan (about 90 minutes on the bus) for the annual fireworks festival.

Out of the almost two months I have been here, it has rained about twice. So of course, the weekend we're supposed to travel to another city to watch fireworks, it pours. It rained all night Friday night, and when we left on Saturday morning it was pouring. We were unsure if the fireworks would even be held, but we decided to try anyway and made it to Busan right after lunch. 

Busan is an awesome city. It's bustling, there are so many foreigners walking around on the streets that if you didn't know any better, you might just think you were in K-Town in L.A. There's just so much to see there, and in my opinion, far more "foreigner friendly" than Jinju. It's so huge, but really clean and so easy to navigate via subway. I will definitely be going back soon.

Since it was raining, we checked into our luxury hostel (really, the nicest one I've ever stayed at!) and walked through a maze of fish vendors, where we saw some of the most disgusting "food" available to mankind. One "fish," called gaebul is one of the more horrifying things I've seen in my life (I'll spare you the photos... but it if you're curious, google images has a plethora of sites devoted to this vile creature. Sick.), and seeing it crawling around made my stomach churn, but apparently sells like hot cakes around here!! De-licious.

After that appetizing treat, we headed to a delicious lunch at an authentic Mexican place, "The Fuzzy Navel," then to the biggest shopping center "in the world," (really.... there's a Guinness Book of World Records Plaque there... weird) called Shinsaegae. It's endless floors of entertainment: an ice skating rink, a cinema, an insane food court, and multitudes of stores, from Gap, Nike and New Balance to Fendi, Prada and Tiffany's.

outside....

...and inside.

We spent a couple of hours walking through the center, and by the time we were through, the rain stopped!! It was fireworks time.

So we headed toward Gangwali beach, kind of unsure what to expect. It had just gotten dark, but it was still so warm! We barely needed jackets. The fireworks festival goes on for about ten days: Saturday night was the international competiton, and we were going to see choreographed displays from China, Japan, USA, Poland (?), and of course, Korea. There were probably thousands of people there. The beach was packed with almost no room to move, and the ten of us crammed on to two mats to sit and watch. The USA went first, and used a bunch of Guns N' Roses songs, which went over quite well with the crowd, haha. Everyone else had weird dramatic classical music, I think Japan used the Pirates of the Carribbean soundtrack, haha. 

The little video above (which I think is China) certainly can't do what I saw justice, but it will give you some idea about the choreography. It was great. It was incredible, actually. It was, hands down, the most amazing fireworks display I've ever seen. We all sat there like little kids just, in complete awe. Jaws agape. It lasted about an hour, and each finale was better than the last. (Poland ended up winning.... who would have thought?!?!)

me, Eve, CR, Morgan, Shannon, Aine, Eoin, and Annie on the beach after it cleared out a bit.
(We're missing Gareth and Sarah, who were taking the pictures)

So after an hour of sitting on the beach watching amazing fireworks, we kind of felt like celebrating!! So.... we headed back toward our hostel and went to an Irish bar, "The Wolfhound." We had a couple of drinks and just to be silly, I started dancing by myself, haha.... soon, CR joined me, and then the entire bar (Koreans included!) joined in and we had a full fledged, sweaty, out of control, 2+ hour dance party, complete with a soul train, it was crazy! There was lots of laughing, screaming and sweating. My dance partner was a big Korean buy who spoke almost no English, we were a good team and had a great time, haha. My cup runneth over, everyone was smiling and laughing so much. Haha. I slept REALLY well last night.

This morning we got an awesome Western-style breakfast and came back, happy, exhausted, and achy, to Jinju.

me, Aine, Eve, Gareth, CR and Annie loving life and devouring egg sammies with forks and knives at Brizz Burn's.

I'm so lucky! I'm having fun! 

More pictures coming soon! <3M