The final stretch @ Busan, South Korea
After 6 days and 300 miles of pedaling the final stretch was upon us. At this point we were cycling experts. Helen even learned the delicate art of riding with no handle bars:
It was mostly… an uneventful day. Eduardo had a small mishap with his pannier again, but being so close to the finish line we just added a couple more zip ties (there were now 13 in total). As we approached Busan the scenery and trail itself only got more spectacular:
We whooped and cheered as we crossed the finish line in Busan. Overjoyed with our accomplishment we did what everyone would do in our scenario, a photo shoot:
We felt proud that we completed the ambitious trip, but mostly our butts were just excited for some rest. For dinner we ate at a restaurant near to our hotel with a frozen makgeolli, a Korean rice wine that comes in a bowl. We ladled it out into goblets; it was quite tasty. The restaurant also had landline style phones at each booth. Thinking they must be purely for decoration Adam confidently picked up the phone and put the table number of a nearby booth into the keypad. To his surprise and everyone’s embarrassment the table next to us began to ring. Adam immediately hung up and we laughed pretending like no one saw anything.
We slept well that night and the next day we got some good spa time at Busan’s famous Spa Land. If the name didn’t give it away Spa Land is the Disney land of Spas. As South Korea’s biggest spa they have everything you can think of. Most of the spa is in a clothed and mixed gender area, but we all preferred the same gender birthday suit only bath house section. The same gender area had substantially fewer teens looking for a good instagram photo and fewer self conscious tourists unwilling to embrace the culture of nude bathhouses.
After several hours relaxing our muscles at Spa Land we made our way to Gamcheon village. Gamcheon Village is an old working class neighborhood in Busan that the government invested in to preserve the history and turned it into something of a living art piece. With colorful houses, winding streets that can confuse even the strongest internal compass, and small cafes/shops everywhere it was a fun place to spend an afternoon.
After our full day in Busan we took the bullet train back to Seoul in order to catch our flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia. The bullet train made 4 stops along the way, but still made it to Seoul in less than 2 and a half hours; which made our 6 biking days feel a bit sluggish. We all noted that it’s a similar distance from Seoul to Busan as San Francisco to LA (still waiting on our hyperloop…).
