Hello hello!

I’m about due for another big email, so here goes (cups of tea may be required!!)

Two weekends ago, we had a Monday off (public holiday) so me and five other girls headed down to Busan for a long weekend.

Busan is a very large city on the south-east coast (its the second biggest city in South Korea after Seoul – ’bout 4 million people or so).

We took the night train down on Friday, stayed in an awesome cheap love-motel on the edge of the red-light district (which is also the Russian district), and had a whole lot of fun.

The first day we were pretty tired, so we went down to the beach, found some bumper cars to play with and then took a ferry ride around the bay for pictures etc. Then we had some ridiculously tasty sushi at one of those cool restaurants where the food goes around the conveyor belt and you just take off what you want (it was soooo cool!!!).

After that we hit the aquarium, saw some sharks and really big fish, and when we came out onto the beach it was dark and there were fireworks going off and a local high school were playing drums on the sand – it was really awesome!!!

Then we went back to our hotel rooms and got drunk (of course!!!).

Sunday we got up and went to see the view from the cliffs, then climbed down a hiauge staircase to get to the PEBBLE beach!!!! Honestly, I can get that at home!!!

Sadly, Sarah, one of the girls we were with, fell down hard on the steps and twisted her ankle pretty badly, so we cut short the sunbathing and went back to the hotel. We left her with her foot in a bucket of ice while we went to procure nourishment, by way of Mcdonalds!!

On our excursion, Penny and I left the others shopping and wandered into the Russian district to have a look around. We saw lots of very old looking hookers with at least three inches of make-up on, sitting around in the street, talking Russian (like you do).

We also discovered that if someone in Korea asks you if you’re Russian, what they really mean is “Are you a hooker?”.

Then we saw this woman with a wheelie cart (you know like those hot-dog stands type thing), and she had a couple of plastic stools, and on her cart was a range of vodka, gin, rum and whisky!! We thought that was pretty cool, so we sat ourselves down and ordered a drink, sitting literally right in the middle of the street!! It was very nice, and the Korean lady was terribly sweet, especially when these Russian guys came over and got all excited (I think they thought we were hookers, and given that we were a good twenty years younger than all the other hookers, they probably thought it was their lucky night!!). However, our drinks lady shooed them away shouting “NO!!! They’re tourists!!” in both Korean and Russian for our benefit!!

So, that night we went out drinking, went to a number of bars and clubs, no details required really, drinks were drunk etc.

Monday I had a killer hangover (seems that’s becoming a habit these days – very worrying!!), but we went back to the beach, lazed around sunbathing, and then headed for the train home.

All in all a very good weekend, was tons of fun, and a well-earned break, although I didn’t exactly get a whole lot of rest!!

In other news, I started a Hapkido class this week, which is a Korean martial art, like Taekwondo, kinda. As the very hardcore scary instructor explained to me, “Hapkido is no defense, HIYAAA!!!! Hapkido is ATTACK!”

He’s really scary!!

Anyway, I’m not really fussed about the actual moves – I’m pretty crap and uncoordinated, but they give you a hardcore workout – it’s all star-jumps and sit-ups and press-ups etc, and believe me, it’s hard to motivate myself to exercise, but when there’s a scary middle-aged black belt standing over you, you’re gonna do those goddamn press-ups!!!

Plus he’s well into the attack part – he was showing me this basic move to elbow someone in the belly, and he’s all “look into the eyes!!! now scream!!! HIYAAA!!!!!” – He thinks that the biggest part of the art is the scary eye-contact and loud noises – designed to intimidate the opponent I guess, but I can’t pull it off without laughing – not terribly intimidating!!

So that’s about it from me for now – keep me posted with all your news from wherever you are!!

tons of love

not-a-russian-hooker-Maya

xxxx