Hitchhiking Race to Busan

The weekend of 14th and 15th of March, we decided to organize a hitchhiking race from Daegu to Busan. We created an event on Facebook, posted it to our exchange students’ group, and surprisingly we got over 30 participants.

The week leading up to the race was really fun, knowing that I’m always super competitive (let it be a board game, race, whatever – I always want to win!), everyone was making fun of me, pretending they had some secret strategy, claiming they were gonna win etc.

The rules were pretty simple. We encouraged everyone to pair up 1 male + 1 female and the rules allowed you to pay for only one public transportation fare (either to leave Daegu or to get to the finish line in Busan). The finish line was in Samgwangsa temple.

The race began around 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, in front of our dorms. We quickly introduced the basic rules, took few pictures and the race was on.

It was my first ever hitchhiking experience in Korea, so I didn’t really know what to expect. I read quite a few blogs, where everyone claimed that it’s super easy to hitchhike in Korea and we were about to learn that ourselves.

I was traveling with Ukrainian girl, Ola. We took the bus to the south tollgates of Daegu. After arriving at the spot, we found out that one pair was already waiting there, Dutch girl Winnie, and Hungarian guy Gergely. 2 minutes later, they got a ride with an old lady. Later they told us that she even offered to take us too, but they explained her that it was a race, and fortunately they didn’t take us.

3 minutes later, another car stopped, this time it was our turn. The guy turned out to be a salesman for Mars company (chocolate bars). He spoke some English, so it was nice, we had a chance to chat a little with him.

After some time we decided to try and make him get us straight to the temple. I couldn’t believe how easy it was – all those bloggers writing about easy hitchhiking in Korea were right. Koreans are just too kind, not sure if it’s only towards foreigners, but for me they are just too kind! We just asked the guy where exactly was he going and few seconds later he said that he will get us to the temple. Perfect!

The rest of the ride I was bothering Ola with the same question over and over again – I kept asking if she thinks that we’re gonna win. Just before Busan we got stack in a traffic jam for around 20 minutes or so, but soon, roughly 2,5 hours after leaving our dorms in Daegu, we arrived at the temple. When we arrived we didn’t notice anyone from our group, so excitement was building up, and few minutes later we already knew that we won the race – the prize was, a jjimjilbang fare (more about jjimjilbangs soon). In the meantime, waiting for others we had enough time to explore every sinlge corner of the temple.

You can actually stay in the temple overnight for free. So if you're looking for a budget accommodation in Busan, go to Samgwangsa!

Around 15 minutes later another group of 4 arrived, they also got a direct right from Daegu, straight to the temple. After another half an hour, more pairs started arriving, and around 14.00, everyone was there, except for Arnout and Kristiina, Dutch guy and Estonian girl. We were waiting only for them. One hour later, we decided to divide, we took a group picture with 2 Ajummas (Korean old ladies) that wanted to join and one part of the group went to the bus to get to downtown, while other was supposed to wait for the late-comers. The moment when one group was getting on a bus, a police car arrived… with our lost pair on board. They were last, but arrived in style.

After they arrived, we all moved to Gwangalli beach, where we went to a bar full of foreigners for few beers and around 21.00 we decided to head towards Jjimjilbang for a night. But when we arrived to the Jjimjilbang it turned out it was closed for restoration… so we had to find another one. We did so, and after another 20-30 minutes of walking we finally arrived. 

Jjimjilbang is a super interesting thing. I'll keep it short here, but I'm planning to write a separate blog post about this awesome thing. It is basically a spa, a bath house, with a possibility to sleep there. There is a bathing area with many different saunas, jacuzzis, swimming pools, showers etc. This is the part where you go completely naked – it may feel slightly awkward at first, but after few minutes you don’t even think about it. This is of course gender separated area. Then there is a common sleeping area, where you sleep on the floor (traditional Korean way). In Busan it was my first jjimjilbang experience and I absolutely loved it. 

Next day after waking up, we hit the bathing area once again (that’s probably my favorite part about jjimjilbang – you wake up, drop your clothes and go straight to Jacuzzi, sauna, or wherever else you want) and left soon after that. After leaving we split up into smaller groups again to hitchhike back to Daegu. We decided with Ola, to see a little bit more of Busan and we headed towards famous Haeundae Beach. We walked on a beach for a while and then we noticed those three skyscrapers standing out, so we decided to try and get to the top floor. We made up some bullshit story, to pass the front desk, but it wasn’t even necessary, the guy saw that we were foreigners and only asked which floor we want to go. I noticed that elevator goes up to 80^th floor, so I quicky replied 79^th. Unfortunately we got to the wrong elevator and managed to get to 59th floor only, but still the view was pretty nice.

Shortly after, we decided to head back to Daegu, we got to the hitchhiking spot – which wasn’t perfect (not enough space to stop), but after less than 5 minutes of waiting, we got a ride from the most awesome guy ever. We got picked up by a plastic surgeon who is also a passionate hiker and survival specialist. He even has his own show in Korean TV. We talked with him throughout the whole ride. He recommended us plenty of places to visit in Korea and food to try. We exchanged Kakotalk IDs and got the ride straight to the main gate of the university!

And here is an episod of his TV show. In several episodes you can notice a white Jeep Wrangler, that’s the exact same car that took us from Busan to Daegu.

Summing up, it was an awesome trip. It was my first hitchhiking experience in Korea and certainly not the last - it's just to easy here. It was also my first jjimjilbang experience, and again, certainly not the last one.