Korean drama - day 12: The night at Busan (5.12.11)

Another lazy morning! Woke up around 11.  Got ready and met up with Vanessa at Starbucks again near the beach for a short break.  I did some planning and decided to go Busan. Booked the only available shelter at the top of Jirisan National Park mountain on 7th Dec. The plan was to hike from Ssanggyesa starting point, hopefully on time to see the sunset and then stay at the top to catch the sunrise the next day!  I was already getting very excited!
Vanessa left home around 12:30pm to prepare for classes. I thanked her very much for keeping me three days at her place!  I met Vanessa when I was backpacking at Taiwan for a year (checkout my Taiwan trip which I slept most the 1-month adventure in my tent!)
I stayed around till 1 something. Took 401 back to the bus terminal. Definitely not many mcD around the town but Lotteria instead. I’m not a fast food lover actually but yet I was always finding for fast food!  Perhaps, I find the fast food overseas was much better.  There were buses every 7minutes! So I had nothing to rush for and had my lunch at Lotteria.  The bus departed at 3:35pm and exactly an hour later, we reached Busan!  I called up a guest house earlier to make reservation.  So, my first stop was to check-in!  If I would to live in Korea, Busan would definitely be my option instead of the vibrant Seoul.  It’s a second biggest city yet not as congested as Seoul.
At the terminal, I saw a tourist centre and surprisingly, they didn't have English speaking helpers but Chinese instead!

Pagoda at the 24h temple

The moon was bright
that night

Found out the earliest bus to Ssanggyesa was 7am to be taken at a different bus terminal, Seobu terminal at Sasang metro station, which was thankfully nearer to the Blue Backpacker guest house at Seomyeon, line 2.  There was a line 1 Nopodong just next to the terminal which goes to Seomyeon too.  The map on the website was very clear.
I took the subway and reached the guesthouse around 5:30pm. Did my laundry and met a lot of new friends from Hong Kong, Japan, France and Koreans too.  We went to dinner together and later had drinks and chat at the hostel.  Jordan was from France. We walked 492km in three weeks from Tokyo to Kyoto.

Guess what's this?!
A dental clinic!!

The surrounding area at the temple

Around 11:30pm, we decided to visit a 24-hours temple around town!  Heard of many 24 hours outlet but this was the first time I heard of 24-hours temple!  Very interesting indeed and the whole big group of us, about 6 to 8 of us, walked to Samgwangsa Temple together.  We passed by the casino, Seven Luck and a shopping mall which was just about to close at such late hours!  I saw some patrons were still trying to leave the building.  The 1-hour walk somehow was a little taxing on my legs.  Perhaps, I was getting sleepy too. There were still many people praying at the temple.  We explored around and I noticed there was some ceremony going on too in one of the hall with many people around!

The 24h temple's Main Hall

 

After some photo taking, we didn’t stay at the temple for long.  There were many taxis waiting outside the temple.  Walking back was definitely a no-no for me.  I bet the rest would want their sleep to be delayed for an hour too!  Indeed, we took only 10 minutes cab ride to get back to our hostel for only W4200!!  We could have taken the taxi in the first place, but anyway, it was a great walk chit-chatting with new friends.