A Night at the Water Park...

Our impromptu stay in Busan, Korea ended up more interesting than we could’ve ever imagined. Our first night came with gold embroidered pillows that read “Hotel Dong Shin”. There was also a rather large complimentary can of bug spray—needless to say, we didn’t stay a second night; the mosquitoes were hungry. In need of a new location, we headed to the Aqua Palace Hotel where we were introduced to our first “JimJillBong” (sp) experience. We were given matching uniforms and swimcaps, a day pass to the indoor water park and spa, and a night stay for under $9 in….well, the water park. We spent the day in the techno wave pool, trying the 3 story water slide, the ice room, the hot pebbles and hot salt spas. We can't forget to mention the "onsens". These are basically many hot tubs and soaking baths where being naked is not optional. For lunch, we decided on prepackaged Ramen-esque soup bowls and chocolate chip cookies since that’s all we could make out from the menu.

As the evening came, fireworks began to go off outside of our hotel; after all, it was the celebration of Thanksgiving across Korea! Our hotel sat on the beach, giving us a gorgeous panoramic view of a cove that connected the city skyline by a giant color-changing bridge. Upon seeing the lively atmosphere outside, we convinced a younger staff member to let us go out for “food”. We ended up lighting off fireworks on the beach and a seeing a fish market, but we did make it back in time for our curfew… apparently, $9 a night comes with some unforeseen restrictions. When we did get back, we were obligated to put back on our gender specific pink & mustard-yellow striped uniforms…which became matching pajamas. Heading to our room, we discovered our room was really everyone else’s room too. Put simply, it was a huge open floor. Don’t get us wrong though, it was a clean, marble one. And there were movies going on until 1AM. Ok so they were in Korean but Justin kept himself busy by giving geography lessons on the location of Iowa. When it came time for bed we opted for the “soft pebble spa” over the floor, so we spent our night in the rock ball pit with a few other locals.

Apparently we couldn’t get enough of being on the floor because when we got our train ticket to Seoul everything was booked except standing room only. We took the tickets anyways and opted for the handicap corner where we could sprawl and lay out. Good thing it was near the bathroom and the floor only flooded once (thank god it was just the furnace). However, we did meet a lot of interesting locals on this 6 HOUR ride and two little girls drew funny pictures on our Whiteboard.

Our search is over…we made to SEOUL. Up next Beijing!