Beautiful Busan

This weekend we caught the speedy train right down to the South of South Korea, to visit some of our new friends in Busan, the second biggest city in S. Korea. It looked a bit like Scotland with a load of high rise buildings dumped on top although the tour book likened it to San Francisco?!

Everyone has said great things about the beaches here so we thought we'd better go and have a look for ourselves. In Summer, these beaches are absolutely heaving and there is literally not an inch of space left anywhere. We were a little bit surprised when we reached the beach and were confronted with this spectacle that blends in so well with the scenery...

Along with Starbucks, Mexican food and drinking in Foreigners bars, we did actually manage to do some cultural stuff too, and went to visit the Temple of Haedong Yongkung. It has an motto which I will take with me wherever I go....
"The only thing must be answered by and through your heartfelt prayer whatsoever"
Glad to have cleared that one up then.

The temple itself was very impressive and quite spectacular being just by the sea, and there were some excellent stone carved lions, dragons and some other less identifiable
animals.


The statue of the female goddess backs out onto the sea and people used to come to her and make offerings and pray for rains so the crops would be successful that year.

Finally, there were a couple of these dragon heads guarding the temple which I thought were great - each one was about the size of a small dog.