Busan weekend

I spent last weekend in Busan.

We are in the middle of monsoon season, and it has rained each day for at least a week, and the forecast is for this trend to continue, but we decided to try for an afternoon on the beach anyway. It worked out perfectly and rained Friday night, but the next round held off until Sat night, staying nice all day Saturday as we played a little beach frisbee and swam in the still chilly ocean.

After dinner, a couple of us decided to go to the casino. I was quite surprised to find out that the casino is for foreigners / tourists only, Koreans are not allowed to gamble! The plan was to just play a little blackjack and have a few drinks before heading out. It was small stakes (5000 won = $4 a hand minimum) so although I had some bad luck, I could rationalize that I broke even with a couple mildly expensive cocktails. But my buddy busted out of blackjack and decided to play a little roulette. He fared poorly and resorted to a defensive betting strategy of increasing his bet with each loss. All of a sudden he's out of chips and talking about going to the ATM again. Well, now at least I can talk about the time I saw my friend bet more than a million on a single spin of the wheel - I put what was left of my chips ~$70 down in a solidarity bet. Basically there were three numbers out of the 37 that could hit to bust both of us, and of course 36 red came up the winner.
The rest of the night we hung out at a bar or two, and saw a street fight involving a man in underwear with a large kitchen knife. Sunday the weather was bad, so I didn't do too much before heading back home. Overall a memorable weekend.