The story of the premium express bus…
Finally well-rested, Billie and I hopped up early, drank our coffees, snagged our last shots of Songdo Central Park from our hotel window and packed up for our next adventure. Little did we know that we would really have more of a misadventure…
The morning and lunch time were spent playing in Central Park and having a delicious meal at Yeoldu Baguni (Happy Cow) Restaurant, followed by a drive to the bus station were we were to pick up the premium express bus to Busan. The taxi driver tried hard to convince us, via the Papago translator app, to take the KTX train, but we respectfully declined.
At the bus terminal, we got our premium bus tickets and asked a person in the terminal where to go. He pointed it out and asked us if we’d like for him to take us there. Again, we respectfully declined. We wanted to do it ourselves. Sometimes the universe sends us hints, and sometimes we don’t pay attention. Later we’d wish we had.
Before we knew it, it was time to leave for Busan. We found the bus, popped our luggage underneath, and zapped our passes as we boarded. Once we settled in, I took a picture, as I didn’t think the bus looked all that “premium.” I also noticed that while we scanned our tickets, they didn’t show up as seats taken on the monitor in the front. As the bus pulled away and rolled down the street, we both realized it…
We were on the wrong freakin’ bus! In a foreign country! And we only spoke a tiny bit of Korean!
We consoled ourselves with the knowledge that at least we were headed in the right direction, but we were a bit worried about what would happen to us when we arrived in Daegu. Fortunately, Yoojin stepped in and contacted the bus company, the bus driver pulled over to the side of the road, came back to talk to us, and once he knew we were the Americans they were going on about on the radio, he let a resigned “Ahh, jeongmal…(Ahh, seriously…)” slip out under his breath, though he was very kind and polite to us even though we had just become a burden.
Billie and I were quite contrite and apologized profusely in Korean. We were also very grateful that a young man on the bus, whose phone we’d had to borrow, “adopted” us and let us know, when we were at the service area stop exactly how much time we had to be back on the bus.
Once we arrived in Daegu, we were walked to the office by our bus driver where we were transferred to the care of a Daegu bus terminal employee. Again, there was a personal escort to the location for the new bus to Busan where our luggage was carefully parked, exactly where our next bus would leave from. We were taken to a bench nearby and told to sit and stay, lol.
I am not that good at sitting, so I played Pokemon Go in the terminal area while we waited. By the time we boarded our bus for Busan, I had caught a ton of Pokemon, even in that tiny area, all new catches, and I earned a badge! Waiting around wasn’t a terrible waste of time after all.
After many hours and a lot of shuffling around, we finally arrived in Busan. It was late when we walked through the door of our 45th floor Happy House Air BnB apartment, but we were kindly fed fried chicken by Yoojin and SongEe who were waiting for us there.
Once our tummies were full, we checked out the view. Wow! I’d never been beyond a 20th floor of any building, so being that high up was both thrilling and a little scary for a girl who grew up in the Texas Panhandle where the surroundings were flat as a pancake and nothing was more than a few stories tall. The night view from that high up was incredible and after taking numerous photographs and dutifully sharing our social media, we all wandered off to our beds to rest up for the next day’s fun.
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