After three months of living in Deoksin with our only reprieve being small side trips to The Cities, FINALLY it was time for our winter holiday.  On the morning of the 28th we could hardly contain our glee as we woke up early, packed and headed towards adventure.

In order to fly to China, our adventure had to begin in Busan where our closest international airport lies.  We headed down there on the Wednesday having pre-booked a seedy dive for the night.  It cost all of $30 and promised a room with a round bed, something that many of you will know is on Dan’s bucket list.  Unfortunately, when we arrived at said dive the round bed was nowhere to be seem.

It WAS, however, as seedy as you would expect for $30 a night.  They provided the essentials of not one but two bottles of lotion and a box of tissues.

There was even room service in the form of the lovely lady who ran the show bringing us a up a tray of instant coffees.  Awwww.

In all seriousness, the woman who looked after us was super helpful and while we didn’t much want to touch anything in the room it was a perfectly comfortable place to lay our heads for the three hours or so we were there.

Our flight was to be extremely early the next morning thus our needing to be in Busan the night before.  With an evening to kill we thought what better time to try and find the New Zealand bar we had recently heard about.  So off we trotted to Gwangali Beach with excitement growing about the possibility of fush and chups and Monteiths beer!!!

En route we discovered that our seedy dive was bang smack in the middle of China/Russian town.  This seemed somewhat hilarious considering our destination in the morning.  

Eagerly we hopped on the subway towards Gwangali and arrived there in the early evening, just as the sun was going down.  Not knowing exactly where Beached (the Kiwi bar) lay it was a 50/50 toss as to whether to head left or right when we hit the beach.  Of course, initially we went the wrong way but it did provide us with a great opportunity to scope out the beautiful area and take some photos of the beach at night.

While we wandered down the beach we were surprised to see an art installation being projected onto the beach.  Dan got excited and jumped on top of a power box to take numerous photos of wise sayings….

After taking about a billion photos, Dan was finally ready to move on so off we went in search of Beached.

Beached was AWESOME.  It fulfilled all our Kiwi expectations.  There was great service/company in the form of the proprietors, Craig – a Christchurch expat who has been living in Korea for over 10 years – and his lovely wife Hyunah.

There was an awesome Kiwi menu!

There was the full Monteiths range of beer and cider.

All of which equalled two extremely happy Kiwis.

Seriously, we can’t rate this place highly enough.  If you ever get to Korea, or if you come to visit us (hint hint!) you definitely have to get to Beached and enjoy some good Kiwi hospitality.  While its an hour and a half (a bus, a train and a subway!) away from our apartment, its our new local for sure.

We settled in a little TOO well and before we knew it it was time to catch the last subway and head back to our seedy dive to lay our heads down for a couple of hours before heading to the airport.

Our trip off to a flying start we were excited about what lay ahead.  Stay tuned…