Tokyo to Fukuoka to Busan

  Busan, Korea Rep.
Friday, May 4, 2007

This morning we caught a 9:30am flight to Fukuoka in the Kyushu prefecture of Japan on Skymark airlines. We originally wanted to visit South Korea by taking a direct flight from Japan, but unfortunately we tried to book out tickets a little too late and discovered that we were getting to the prime travel season in Japan. This season is typically throughout March and April when college students graduate and have a break before they start working. It also extends into late April and May during Golden Week- which is pretty much a series of national holidays in Japan put all together so everyone has almost a full week off of work every year. As such, tickets from Tokyo to Seoul went up from about $200 to over $550 a piece! We were still determined to see Kores though, and so about a month ago I devised a plan to get there via an alternative route: plane to Fukuoka and then a high speed FERRY to Korea! We considered taking the JR train to Fukuoka but be advised that this is actually more expensive than flying and takes much much longer. We put our bags in the lockers at the airport and were able to take a subway right from the airport into town. The flight to Fukuoka was only about an hour and we arrived with enough time to take in the Dontaku festival- the country's largest Golden Week Festival! Fukuoka was a very pretty smaller city and the festival had lots of fun food stands.

Chris at the Hakata Festival

The rest of the festival- so far as we could tell- was mostly local middle school aged dance troups performing kind of silly Western style routines on mini stages. It was kind of silly but we did see a few more authentic Japanese performances including a drum performance and a fan dance. Once we wandered away from the festival we walked around a bit before going back to grab our bags and hopping in a cab to the Hakata International Ferry Terminal (which is different from the domestic ferry terminal, we learned after we were dropped at the wrong spot). It was fairly easy to check in at the JR Beetle terminal and about $200 late we were each boarding a high speed hydrofoiling ferry to Busan, South Korea. I cannot say enough about how much I really enjoyed this ferry- the ride was very smooth and it was SOOOO much roomier than an airplane! We got some good sleep on board and deboarded in what seemed like 20 minutes but was actually about three hours. Once in Busan we needed to go directly to the Busan Train Station to try to secure our KR Train passes. You can purchase a KR Pass online and they give a good discount for people under 25 or who have an International Student ID card (which we did) so that it is about $60 to ride the train system throughout Korea on an unlimited basis for three days. We wanted to use these passes to go on a high speed train from Busan to Seoul- using the pass is much cheaper than buying a normal ticket although the passes have to be purchased prior to entering Korea and are only available to foreigners. We bought our vouchers but were concerned that the KTX train from Busan to Seoul might sell out as it does sometimes on weekends. Until you exchange your KR Pass voucher for the actual pass, however, you can still get a full refund online. We were happy to see that there were still tickets available when we got to the station so we exchanged our vouchers (in a very long and drawn out ordeal where no one seemed to know what they were doing and we held up a huge line of angry people) and got two tickets for Sunday morning to Seoul. We were very impressed with the Busan train station, it is very new, modern, and clean. We decided that since cabs were so cheap we'd taxi it to our hotel, the Crown Busan, rather than risk getting lost on the train. The train system in Busan is also very good, though cabs are very cheap for more than on e person and it does stop running at midnight. The Hotel was a three star and was very nice- clean, new, and all the amenities and great service. After checking in we went out right away and tried to explore and find dinner. We walked down lots of fun neon-lit streets with tons of shops and street vendors. Korea was the perfect combination between the safety and cleanliness you find in Japan and the grit and character we loved about Thailand. After some debate we settled on a Korean barbeque place where you sit on mats on the floor and cook meat and vegetables on a grill at your table. They had vents which came down out of the ceiling to keep your clothes form stinking, which was a huge bonus.  We had to order by kind of pointing to pictures on the menu and indicating that we wanted beef, which the waitress understood in English. We also ordered some giant Korean beer called Cass which tasted a lot like Japanese beer.

dinner

 Soon after a gentleman came to out table with some giant tongs holding a metal bin full of red hot coals! It was kind of nerve wracking as he instead it into the hole in our table. Next came lots of kim chi (a kind of spicy fermented cabbage), delicious cucumber salads, and more yummy side dishes. Finally came the marinated pieces of beef which were perforated but still in one piece. You kind of grill them up on a grate and then use the scissors they bring to cut them into smaller pieces. It was delicious and Chris declared Korean to be his favorite Asian food.

Dinner night 1 in Busan

 Sitting on the floor can be uncomfortable but I learned the hard way not to extend you legs under the table at a Korean Barbeque when I got a nice huge burn on my leg from the coal pot under then table! Once we left (and got out shoes back on) we stopped at a street vendor for another treat we had read about- a kind of hollow pita bread with honey and cinnamon brushed on the inside. Yum!

a pile of silkworm larvae to eat in Busan

We continued to wander and explore Busan at night- which was quite bustling. (Busan, by the way, is the second largest city in Korea with over 4 million people and is a huge beach and port town). We were looking for a fun place to hang out- which proved difficult because there is not as much English in Korea and we did not have a guide book for Busan. We settled on a place called Club 88/99 or something like that. I was wary of this place as well as many of the others we passed because they had a strange look to them and in Asia you never know what is a gentleman's only club. As we walked in apprehensively we were greeted and taken into a gaudy yet charming roomful of large leather booths, sculptures, and mirrors. We were seated at a booth nearby the other patrons in the place and soon realized that this was a karaoke club. This would have been fine if there had been lots of people there- but the place was HUGE and it was only us and one other booth. It even featured a host of the karaoke who would go up on the stage and sing a few songs in between performances by the members of the other table. He made sure to welcome the table of foreigners when we came in (in Korean but he said the words "foreign table" in English). All of the other patrons seemed like professional karaoke-ers with amazing voices and one girl who worked at the club belted out some pretty great is put in a Celine Dion renditions as well. Eventually, of course, we began to get pressured into singing a song.

singing karaoke

We managed to put it off as long as possible but finally Chris put in a request for his favorite and only karaoke song: Fly Me to the Moon. They managed to find a strange, way-too-fast, Muzak-like rendition of the song and called us to the stage- thankfully just as the only other table in the place was leaving. We managed to spit out the song (very badly) and sit down quickly- but not before the waiter took some picture of us on stage. They harassed us to do dome more but we politely and repeatedly declined and sat down. The employee-singer belted out a few more and finally they just closed down the stage and put on filler music. Shortly there after we walked back to the hotel and passed out!