5 Days of Chuseok: Part I

The author is tired, so very tired. He wishes to convey the holiday weekend as it happened and without forgetting anything super important or interesting but he fears that he may but he will endeavor to transcribe some of the stories and adventures of the Chuseok holiday and an entertaining and excellent experience to beautiful Busan and back.

This weekend was Chuseok which is more or less Korean Thanksgiving. It is still about family and the harvest and many of the things that we do in the US for Thanksgiving but with some differences. Many people, mostly children, dress up in traditional Hanbok clothing, they eat traditional foods, and they visit grave sites of their ancestors. That being said I will attempt to tell you how I spent this Chuseok and the five glorious days I had off work to do so.

By the time this weekend took its sweet time getting here, I had several travel plans with several people all of which fell through.  I wanted to get out of Seoul and see something out of the city so badly. Only one other person had this same desire and that was my coworker, Rosie. We both wanted to go to Busan, the second largest city in South Korea and a great tourist destination with lots of beaches, see why we wanted to go? To drop a colloquial phrase, “everyone and their mom” told us that travelling this weekend would be impossible and that we shouldn’t even attempt leaving the Seoul metro area since all the trains, planes and automobiles would be booked and the only salt water we would see would be from our tears as we learned firsthand at the train station the black hole that is travelling on Chuseok. What did we learn? Never say die.

We made our way to Seoul Station immediately after work on Wednesday and walked right up to the ticket counter after waiting in a small line and found two tickets to Busan via the KTX bullet train for less than $50 a piece. All, meaning every single one of our coworkers (Korean and American), said that this small feat would be impossible. Hear that kids? You never get anywhere without trying.

So we stocked up on provisions, which included some seaweed-rice snacks and several beers and some Soju—that vile, relentless liquor that is so cheap and so well-loved here in Korea and boarded our train; Busan bound. On the train, several beers in, we wandered over to a table with only one Korean guy about our age and asked him if he liked Soju and if we could sit down. As it turned out, he did indeed like Soju and we took our seats and soon his friend came and joined us as we all became quick friends sharing the drinks and grabbing some beef jerky and mixed nuts from the passing train attendant.  They explained to us that they were two engineers living Incheon, which is next to Seoul, and were headed to Busan for the holiday to visit their families. Their English was phenomenal and we were asked to quiet down on no less than 3 occasions—not a bad train ride.

Finally, in only 3 hours, we had traveled across the entire length of the country and had arrived in Busan, barely finding room at a hostel and waking up Thursday morning to begin our adventures anew on the southern most part of the Korean peninsula.

I hate doing blogs in installments but I am still pretty tired from this weekend and would love to write more tomorrow.

Anyang!