Apologies in advance for the essay!

Busan/Pusan so much to say. We arrived last Thursday by hydrofoil (after scrounging money off staff to pay the taxes!) and found ourselves at the subway not knowing anything about the culture or the currency! We were faffing around the ticket machine clearly looking like confused tourists when a guy approached us and out of the blue paid for our tickets. Thanking you kind man. First impressions of Busan were incredibly welcoming and kind even if it was a bit rough around the edges compared to Japan. We made our way to our motel (we think it was a love motel) in down town Busan. It was full of Russians, we later found out that it bordered the red light district - Fabulous. We headed out and stumbled upon an incredible outdoor market selling anything and everything. We mooched on further and came across Book Street, store after store containing books piled from floor to ceiling. We were minding our own business getting lost in the books when Marky was talent spotted by a camera team who were filming a documentary about the street. The novelty of this soon wore off as they were there at every turn.

We eventually got away from our adoring fans and made our way to the largest fish market in the country - Jagalchi Market selling every form of fish you could imagne. At this stage we decided that we were hungry it was here that I realised that South Korea does not cater for the average veggie, we decided to brave it and experience some real Korean food - You don't order food you sit down at the table and they bring the one thing that is on the menu to you- In our case it was a plate full of raw pork. The idea is to cook it yourself. Yummy!

After betraying my veggie beliefs we returned to the motel avoiding the red light district. The following day we went to stay with an American girl who had been living in Busan for the last 8 months. It was a bit of a bizarre situation- we met a guy in a hostel in Beppu (Japan)called Steve who had been living in Busan for the last year teaching English. So we got chatting to him and he said to contact this American girl as she would love to have us to stay when we got to South Korea. So the short version of the story is we did and we stayed with her for 4 brilliant days where she showed us the sights of Busan until 6 in the morning on the first night (24 hour drinking culture). We experienced Soju the national drink which tastes like watered down vodka, it is particuary potent in a kiwi smoothie (yummy), we tried their local speciality pork spine soup ( i was dreading it but it was actually lovely). The remaining days consited of us visiting an incredible temple called Tongdosa where we were lucky enough to witness monks perform an evening ceremony. However we were not so lucky to meet a Korean guy who introduced himself as Johnny Paige and serenadeded us with Led Zeplin songs and American idioms the entire time we were there! The Koreans LOVE to sing!

To top of our amazing week in South Korea we met this incredible Korean family who invited us to their house for dinner where we had home cooked traditional food. Really, really wonderful.

All in all we have had an awesome introduction to South Korea - I am sure I have missed something! We have since made our way to an island 180 miles off South Korea called Je-Judo it is meant to be the Hawaii of Asia. Markyo will fill you in at some atage.

Annyeong-hi gaseyo