Weekend in Busan

I returned to Busan last weekend, for a short vacation. We started off by taking a train from Seoul, early on Saturday morning. When taking the train in Korea, you have two options - the traditional trains (Korail - 5 hours), or the high-speed trains (KTX - 2 hours 40 minutes). The KTX trains reach over 300km/h.

Since I've never really seen the Korean countryside, we took the slower-train to head over there. I'm fairly sure that in total, I saw more rice fields than people. And I saw a lot of people.

I admit, before coming to Korea, I didn't know that rice was grown underwater:









Busan is most famous for its beaches, and so, that was the first and only stop we took on Saturday. Drinking in public is cool wherever you are in Korea, and there's something pretty awesome about just going into a convenience store, buying some beer, and staying on the beach for a few hours.

On Sunday, we toured some very interesting sights:
-The UN Memorial Cemetary in Korea
-The Busan Museum
-The APEC House

The UN Memorial was, for me, the highlight of the trip. It's a very solemn place, where soldiers from the countries that participated in the Korean War were buried, including 378 Canadians. I'm not entirely sure why their bodies were never repatriated, but I have a hunch that the 1950s logistics of transportating the dead in the middle of a war were difficult.

The Busan Museum had a mix of very interesting information (regarding Korean/Japan relations), and somewhat boring stuff (Pre-historic). I always enjoy a good museum, though, and this was no exception.

The last thing we saw was the APEC House. APEC stands for Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation - a group formed of Asian and North American nations. Every year, the heads of states meet (each time in a different country). You may remember this as 'that time that the Prime Minister goes overseas for a meeting'.

Anyway, in 2005, South Korea hosted it in Busan. They built this fantastic house to receive the leaders of 21 of the most powerful countries (including Russia, the US, and Canada). It's on a small island off the mainland, and gives a great view of both the city and the ocean. There were many pictures of Paul Martin with Roh Moo-Hyun, which really highlighted how the recently-deceased leader had been in power only a very short while ago.

Coming back, we took the KTX, which was quite cool. For something that goes so fast (it reached 305 km/h), it's a heck of a smooth ride.

Have a good week!