Busan, Beomeosa Temple, and Good old American Softball.

The next morning I leave the hostel around 9, planning to meet Mac at the station around 10. I'd given myself about half an hour to make the trip and half an hour to find a global ATM and pull down some Won, as I only had about twenty thousand to my name right now (which is about 25 bucks).

I'm staying very near the transportation heart of Busan, near Soemyong station, which is also where the Lotte Department store is located. In fact, the Lotte figured into the directions to my hostel. I had been worried I'd have trouble using a store as part of the directions, as it might not be easy to find.

I couldn't have been more wrong. The Lotte department store in Busan (like the ones in Daegu, spread through Seoul, and elsewhere), is maybe 8 to 10 stories high, and approximately the footprint of a large grocery store.

To give you an idea of what exactly the Lotte corporation is, imagine this: Wal-mart buys Marriott, the hotel chain. Then, emboldened by it's success, it buys Burger King, Hostess snack foods corporation, three Six Flags locations and the entire chain of Carmike Cinemas.

That's Lotte. They operate theatres, fast food joints, hotels, department stores and amusement parks, they seem to run the country, and I'm halfway surprised the train system isn't also a product of theirs.

So when I get up the next morning I head back past the Lotte department store and Hotel and Casino (yes, really), and into a Busan bank with a global ATM. Where my debit card refuses to work. (SH!T).

As you may recall, I had severe cash flow problems in Europe, namely that my debit card was functionally useless throughout France, parts of Greece, and almost all of England. So when my card transaction didn't complete here in Korea, with my cash reserve entirely wiped out by Hong Kong, I was very, very concerned.

I hiked up the street to the next bank, which didn't have a global ATM but directed me around the corner to another branch of the same Bank (Sinha? I think) which, as it turned out, didn't have a global ATM either. They directed me back past the other two banks to the Lotte Hotel, which had a global ATM in the lobby. Thankfully, this one (operated by the KB bank goup, who are apparently a large Korean bank), worked just fine.

I withdrew as much money as I dared, worried that I wouldn't get another shot at it, and off I went to Busan station plaza to meet Mac, a few minutes late, but no worries. For some reason my phone refuses to function here in Korea, I get a polite message in both Korean and English saying calls have been disabled, and that's all (thanks Verizon!), so I couldn't call him in advance to warn him I was running late. I found him with relative ease though, and we looked at a tourist map in the station and got directions to a beautiful Buddhist temple named Beomeosa. Before leaving the station, we stopped by a little snack shop and bought some food, and I bought some Pocari Sweat. I'd heard about Pocari sweat before, but never tasted it.

Imagine you've been sweating a lot, and lost a lot of vital nutrients and salt through a long run, or athletic session. Now take your normal gatorade, make it clear, and add about 5 ounces of that sweat you lost right back into it. That's what Pocari tastes like. I suppose it's an acquired taste.

We took the subway to the stop nearest the temple, then hired a cab for the last mile. The fare was around $3, which wasn't bad at all, and Mac exchanged cell numbers with the taxi driver (a common practice here) so that we could call him back when we were done.

The Beomeosa temple complex was beautiful. Beomeosa means "temple of the Nirvana Fish" and thhe temple grounds include fish and other sealife worked into much of the decorations. We hiked out into the surrounding forest to discover tiny gardens nestled in among the rocks near the fresh stream that flowed down the mountain near the temple. The temple wasn't very crowded and the monks were welcoming and tranquil, waving a hand to indicate if pictures were or weren't allowed and generally just being as serene as hell.
The pictures convey the overall feel of the place--A sortof fairytale set back in the hills. I can't explain the tiny rock stacks. Apparently it is a tradition, because in particular places on the temple grounds we saw lots of them. Maybe it's some sort of physical meditation similar to "dig a hole, fill it up"? I don't know.

You'll notice the swastika symbol (an eastern mystic symbol for good luck) scattered throughout these pictures. That's because it's still everywhere in Bhuddist temples, it's never lost its traditional association, and I expect that most of them don't even know, or forget between bouts of history or old movies, about the evil, reversed twin--the Nazi emblem. In fact, on all the tourist maps Buddhist sites are marked with the good luck icon.

Mac had a softball game that night at Camp Carroll, so we headed back to the subway around 1pm, and caught a subway train for Busan station. When we boarded the train it was half empty, and we grabbed a couple of seats near the door so I could show Mac pictures of Hong Kong. He got a call from Mallory while we were on the train, and we spoke to her briefly. As we were nearing downtown, a gentleman of about 80 who had been sitting near us approached me, as he was about to debark. He was wearing an immaculate light brown suit, and his face was all straight lines and dignity. Mac was finishing up his phone conversation. This man had been riding in the same train as us almost since the start, a good ten or fifteen minutes.

"Do you speak English?"
"Yes sir."
"Do you speak Korean?"
"No, not yet."
"Ah. This chair. . ." He paused, digging for the words. ". . .is Sixty five."

It took me a minute to grasp his meaning, and then my eyes widened. "Oh! I'm sorry!"

He waved his hand as if he were discarding something, and debarked as I thanked him for telling us.

As we pulled away towards our next stop Mac looked askance of me as he closed the phone. "What was that about?"

"We're in the seats reserved for the elderly and infirm."

"OH!" We both jumped up, as quickly as possible, and stood for the last two stops, sheepish looks on our faces. Oh well, at least the fellow told us. I finally saw a set of small pictograms that explained the seat's purposes, but they had been obscured by other riders when we entered the train initially, and we hadn't looked closely--a mistake I won't make again.

We grabbed a very interesting lunch at a Lotteria (kindof like a Korean Burger King). I had a shrimp burger with whole shrimp fried into a patty, and Mac had a 'bulgogi rice burger'. it wasn't really bulgogi,just ground beef, and with bacon, but the bun was fried rice, fried into two flat discs. It disintegrated halfway through, but Mac says that despite the challenge of eating it, it was pretty tasty.

He hopped on a train back to the small town where his camp is located, and I grabbed the Subway back to my hostel. There I grabbed my bags, left my key and a note for June saying I was leaving early, and headed back to the train station. I arrived just in time to catch the 1610 train towards Seoul.

The slow train (Mugunghwa) I was on, afforded me ample time to take pictures and watch the scenery of Korea slide by. Unlike Hong Kong's sharp, wrinkled hills, which force most of the transportation to conform to the dictates of their shape, Korea is a country made almost entirely of foothills. At some points it feels like the north Georgia mountains, or some of the smoother parts of Kentucky. The flat spaces are all farms, gardens and rice paddies, the rest of the country is constant hills, just on the edge of being mountains. It has a more worn down, settled look than Hong Kong or Lantau island, but it is still rolling, hilly terrain. It's no wonder people claim that the Koreans developed Tae Kwon Do because they had strong legs--these people spend most of their walking time going either up or down hill.

As a result of how challenging the climbs can be, there's a really powerful taxi industry here, and the taxis will actuall hail you, if you appear to be walking any distance, they'll prowl up behind you and tap the horn, hoping to pick up a fare.

When I reached the small town station, I took a cab to the camp entrance and showed my two forms of ID. I'd brought my DOD civilian ID with me, knowing that it would come in handy when I was in Korea, and maybe other places, and it did. They waved me on and told me that I'd be expected to register with DBIDS, the electronic access pass system, on Monday. I nodded and hiked across the social and life parts of the base, past library, bank, and post office, to the Softball field, where I sat down and watched the rest of Mac's game. His Delta Dragons won, beating out Bravo Squadron 5-3 in the 7th inning.

Afterward, we went out to "Country Restaurant", commonly referred to as "country kitchen" by the local soldiers. It's a Korean restaurant directly across from the soldier's main gate, and it serves Americanized Korean food. It's got a really fantastic mural inside, too.

I had really excellent sweet and sour chicken, and afterward we wandered around town a bit and then headed back to Mac's quarters and crashed. He grabbed the community guest matress from the day room and we threw some sheets on it, and I slept like a baby.

Tomorrow. Daegu, and the hopeless taxi driver.