The Malaysians trip to Haedong Yonggung Temple

August 6, Saturday – Wei Shin, Ryan, Yushu, BJun, Eileen and I departed from DSU at 11am to Haedong Yonggung Temple. It was the first time all the Malaysians in DSU went for a trip together as our big brother, Wei Shi is always very busy. We took the subway to Haeundae and had lunch at KFC there.

The menu of KFC here is different from in Malaysia. There is no Original and Spicy chicken to choose from for the chicken. They have other options instead. One of them is herb and another one is quite plain. There are different sauces for each. For the herb chicken, they have onion sauce and for the plain one, they have Thai chilly sauce. They are less oily than those in Malaysia. The potato wedges here are not so crunchy. The way they serve the food also differed, such as they use a basket to serve the chickens instead of a paper bucket if we order quite a number of chickens. The cheapest set cost 3,900 won, which is less than RM16. Wet tissues are prepared in the restaurant and there are no basins to wash hands.

After lunch, we took bus 181 to Haedong Yonggung Temple. It was located at the outskirts and we need to walk for around 10 minutes from the bus stop as we arrived. The road to the temple was filled with trees, like a mini jungle, which reminded me of the tropical forest in Malaysia. There were surprisingly quite a lot of people for a small temple. It was located by the beach and its entrance has statues of the 12 zodiac animals. They looked like as if they were guarding the temple. There was nothing special about the architecture of the temple; it was the same as any other temples in Korea. But, they sure have a lot of statues for different gods. The main attraction of this temp is the stone like thing with a sharp triangle on its top, pointing up to the sky and its view facing the sea. However, I still prefer the beach at Taejongdae as it is not so polluted.

At around 3pm, we departed from the temple. The weather was really hot that day and there was only 1 bus back to Haeundae. We waited near the bus stand for quite some time. The place nearby was quite deserted, with no trees and a lot of dust. It seemed like as if we were waiting a bus in the desert.

As we reached, we had a walk around the beach. There were surprisingly a lot of umbrellas on the beach, covering all most every part of beach. The waves were very strong and no one is swimming there. There was a very grand stage at one end, with spot lights, speakers, a few big TV screens etc. It seemed like a concert but it was actually a game tournament. Wow… Koreans are really crazy when it comes to games.

At around 6pm, we departed to Goejeong by subway and had our dinner there. Wei Shi treated us for this meal. Thanks a lot! Then, we took bus 96 to Dadaepo for the Busan International Rock Festival. It was an annual event held in Busan. There was no admission fee for this. Korea's top rock bands and chart topping world rock bands will be performing live there. The bus was extremely packed. We barely have any place to stand. We reached after 20 minutes and everyone stepped down at the same bus stop. Wow…even aunties and uncles were interested in such an event. There was a huge crowd there. It looked like as if it was a real concert, with the lightings, settings, effect, cameras etc. There were police directing the traffic near the entrance and a bus of police in the venue, prepared for stand by. There were quite a number of foreigners there. Everyone is enjoying themselves, jumping, singing along. It was really loud and noisy, it just doesn't feel nice when a bunch of sweaty people accidentally knocked me. Overall, it was okay.

We departed after staying there for 55 minutes with bus 98 to Seomyeom. The bus was more expensive than the normal ones because there were more seats. The journey from Dadaepo to Seomyeom was a long one, around 45 minutes. Then, we took bus 167 to DSU.