nightmare on a bus

i don't always have the best luck. in fact, i have had quite a few sordid adventures with traveling. let's see, there was the trip to phuket on the king's birthday, where it took me 15 hours alone to get there from bangkok, instead of the eight-hour express bus with my friends. there was a motorcycle drive to no where in bali with warren, camilla, and nur. i still don't know how three people could miss a volcano. the freak rain showers did not help either. there was the hellish ride from luang prabang to vang vieng in laos; i was excited to have the front seat, but not so happy when the old lady next to me alternated between sleeping on my shoulder and eating cucumbers and tossing pieces of the out the window over me. there was the misadventures with jacqueline all over europe--lost hiking in malta, hot and smelly trains through portugal that seem to last forever, italian trains that never run on time, and so on...

this weekend tops all of that. i have never, ever spent so much time on a bus. anything that could have gone wrong with tranportation did.

riley and i woke up early on saturday morning, excited to get to our friends' place so we could get to the beach as soon as possible. we went to the express bus terminal in seoul and sat around for two hours, since the next five buses were sold out. that bus got stuck in tons of traffic getting out of seoul, taking an extra hour and a half to get to masan. then the four of us (leslie, grat, riley, and i) hung out for a bit and jumped on a bus to busan to go to the beach. it should take about an hour to go the short distance of 20 miles between the two cities. our bus took four hours. i'm pretty sure i could've jogged there faster. it was dark when we arrived, so we gave up on going to the beach. we had dinner at pizza hut and went back to masan (that bus did not take long at all).

we went out there to a bar named after che guevarra which was throwing a party that night. they only served tequila and budweiser. ew and ew. that wasn't the strangest part of the party though, oh no. the koreans working in the bar we wearing red shirts with swastikas on the front of them. i hoped they were the hindu symbol, but i think someone made an error at the print shop. riley and i were given a couple as parting gifts. i think i can safely chuck that in the bin.

and then sunday. we spent sometime with leslie around town and then made our first attempt to get back to seoul. it took going to three different bus stations and waiting for four hours until we could get on a bus. needless to say, i was thrilled to get back last night.

i want to travel around korea while i'm here, but i'm a bit put off by it at the moment. everything is in and around seoul anyways. i am so happy to live where i do. i'm sure i'll try busan again, but i'm flying there. or teleporting. or finding a hovercraft to borrow.