In Which We Visit Some New Mountains

So we just got back yesterday from our latest vacation, and I have to say, it was pretty enjoyable. We visited Seoul and then went all the way across the country to Sokcho and Seoraksan National Park. This is the story of that vacation.

We flew into Seoul and headed up to the temple right away. It's always great to visit the temple, and we met a couple of Nancy's mission friends there, too. After that we went and got dinner together and then went to a cafe and hung out for a while. Here are a couple pictures:

Temple!

Then we went down to our guesthouse, where the guy was friendly, but the place itself was kind of creepy and our room was awkwardly close to the front desk. Like, seriously, we went out the door and we were at the front desk. So, we don't recommend that place. On Sunday we went to church and then headed over to Sokcho on an express bus. It took quite a while because of traffic, because apparently we weren't the only ones trying to get out of Seoul for the holiday weekend. We eventually made it, though and checked into our hostel, which was awesome! By far the best hostel/guesthouse we've ever stayed in. If anyone reading this is ever going to Sokcho, stay at the James Blue Hostel. The staff is super friendly and the place is really nice.

Next came my favorite part of the trip: Seoraksan National Park! This is a place that I saw a picture of a while back on one of those lists that go around of "30 surreal places you have to visit before you die!" or something dumb like that that everyone looks at anyway. At any rate, the pictures looked awesome, and when we realized that we were too late to book any international tickets for this vacation, we thought that this would be a good option, and we were not disappointed! Even though the upper areas of the park were closed (purportedly for forest fire danger, but that seems dumb to me, as it's spring, and they reopen in like a week, right when forest fire danger is actually going to be a thing), the stuff that we were able to do was fantastic! The first hike we went on was called Ulsanbawi. Bawi means rock, and it was indeed, a hike to a great big rock with a fantastic view, that had a whole crapload of stairs and an even bigger crapload of people who were hiking at the same time as we were, all of which liked to close ranks on the trail so I couldn't pass them. However, I think that we got there early enough that we actually got the jump on some of the holiday crowd. Anyway, here are some pictures from that hike, which, again, was awesome.

Park entrance

Big Buddha statue at the entrance. I think all the ropes in the way of the photo were there
so they could hang a bunch of lanterns for Buddha's birthday, which was the day after this
picture was taken.

A small temple on the way up the trail.

Note how smooth and perfect this trail is. Also note that most Korean trails start out like this, and then at some point they turn into what are, by comparison, rocky death-traps. I don't mind a rocky death-trap, it's what I'm used to from back home, I'm just saying that it's a little misleading.

This is Nancy in front of a rock called Heundeulbawi. Once again, bawi means rock. I don't know what heundeul means, but apparently if you push on this rock, it will tip back and forth a little bit. We could have gone up and tried it, but people were lined up forever to get their picture taken (with a dumb rock), and the majority of them (like the ladies in the background) were taking about 20 minutes to do it. Seriously, I waited for them to finish so that I could take the picture of Nancy while people were changing, but they took too long and I ran out of patience. Also, none of them were even trying to tip the rock, they were just taking pictures. It's a rock, for goodness sake. Though, I guess I can't say much, because we took a picture of it. Also, I just realized that there's a guy in the background photobombing this picture. I don't know if it's intentional or not, but it's awesome.

Stairs!

The top of that rock was our destination.

More stairs.

Getting close to the top!

Sick-awesome views from the top of Ulsanbawi.

There was a guy standing at the top who took pictures for everyone. Don't worry, he had a piece of twine securing him to the railing. It was tied loosely around his arm. We only had to stand in line for a couple minutes for this picture, though, which I thought was nice. The crowds thinned out a bit toward the top.

This, if you can read Korean, proves that we were totally there.

Over on a different part of the summit.

Awesome!

Seriously, this view is sick. Also, I'd like to mention that when I was about to take this
picture, a HUGE gust of wind hit us. (It was windy all day, but this one was exceptionally big.)
I yelled, "It'll pass, it'll pass!" but it didn't! Probably for a solid 30 or 45 seconds. I promise that
being there in real life was much more exciting than the story I just told. I couldn't look around
to see if Koreans were looking at me funny for yelling about the wind, because I would have
lost my hat.

So, after Ulsanbawi, which wasn't that long of a hike, we headed back down to the park entrance and then embarked on our next hike, to a "cave" called Geumganggul. This hike turned out to be pretty awesome, and much less crowded than the last one. Here are some pictures. Also, here is a belated warning that this post is probably going to be pretty long.

A nice bridge about a mile in, shortly before the trail started to turn into a rocky death-trap.

This stream kind of reminded us of Donnaeko back on Jeju, only Donnaeko is way better.

Nancy says that I look like a goof with my hat on backwards. I'm cool with that. I call it
"uphill mode."

Those rocks behind Nancy are called Bisoendae. If you look closely, you can see some Chinese writing on them.

The mountains here are awesome!

After Biseondae our trail decidedly became much more uphill and headed for this "cave," which turned out to be more of just a hole in the side of the mountain. It's a good thing I was already in uphill mode!

Most of the way up to the cave there was a spot with kickawesome views out over the mountains!

So cool!

Then we went for the stairs up to the "cave," which, I'd like to point out, where STUPIDLY steep.

There's the cave. There where it looks like the end, yeah, that's the end.

Like I said, the stairs were stupidly steep.

Back down at the bottom!

Our snacks. We of course had to try them when we saw them, but they were kind of weird. Like, mint blueberry flavored or something.

Back at the park entrance!

So, that's our trip to Seoraksan National Park in a nutshell. We tried a couple other things, but they didn't work out. We wanted to go on the cable car they have there, but it was closed due to high winds. Based on how hard the wind was blowing, we figured that was probably wise, though we were a little disappointed. We stopped at the traditional city market for dinner and then that night we went out to see some of the night sights of Sokcho that the guy at our hostel recommended. There were a couple nice bridges that we walked across and saw the city lights.

Also, the traditional market had the BEST ICE CREAM WAFFLES EVER!

Sokcho at night. I had to kneel down on the ground and stick my camera on the ground to make this picture work. I told Nancy that that was the photographer's burden--having to do whatever it takes to get the shot. She scoffed at me.

The next morning we woke up much earlier than we really wanted to and went out to see the sunrise. Sokcho is right on the east coast of Korea, and one thing that I've wanted to see for a long time is the sun rising over the ocean, and this was our chance, as it's kind of a pain to do in Jeju, because it takes and hour and a half to get to the east coast of Jeju by bus, and they don't even run that early. Here are some pictures of that. I thought it was pretty cool.

About to rise! When it started coming up (which, coincidentally, happened a lot faster than I thought it would) everyone at the other pavilion (there were two) got all excited, and I made fun of them, until we saw it start to come up and got all excited.

Nancy looking happy despite waking up at 5:00 in the morning.

The other pavilion.

Then we went back and slept for like three more hours, and then we went out and saw some of the sights of Sokcho. Here are the pictures of that.

The beach at Abai Village, which is populated almost entirely with North Korean expats, which is kind of cool. The signature dish there is squid sundae (pronounced soon-day). Sundae in most places is just your standard blood sausage. However, here they make it out of squid instead and then they stuff it all inside of a squid's outer skin and slice it up. We didn't try it, as it combines two things that, admittedly, I've never tried, but which sound disgusting.

The white rocks in the background of this picture are Ulsanbawi.

The village may not have known what is and isn't real food, but they did have this awesome and really cute dog.

This sign proves that we were there.

This is how we got to the village and back. They call it the Gaetbae boat, though we're pretty sure that's
redundant, because bae means boat. It was, however, pretty fun, and cost almost nothing (200 won each,
which is about 20 cents),probably because you do half the work. You hook those handles on the cable and pull
to move the boat. 

The guy driving the boat for us was kind of surly, but it was still fun.

These glasses were free (unusual) and had excellent magnification.

This was outside the Sokcho expo tower, where they had a bunch of shops that rented out mini motorcycles, mini four wheelers, and power wheels cars, and kids were riding them all over the place. I'm surprised there weren't tons of wrecks. However, right after I took this picture, the kid in the Lightning McQueen totally did a power slide (really!). I was impressed, until he drove into the stairs. Ah, the Koreans start training their drivers early.

View from the top of the Sokcho Expo Tower. Apparently the Gangwon province hosted the world travel expo back in 1998.

The Expo Tower.

This one doesn't have me in it.

The guy to my right is Sokcho's mascot, and I think he's really weird. That's why I'm giving him that look.

View from the top of the lighthouse observatory. It was a pretty great view up and down the coast.

Nancy looking hot.

You know, most of the time I'm not a huge fan of my long hair, but I actually think it looks pretty good in this picture. 

Sokcho beach.

Waiting for it to be time for us to go get on the bus.

Then we went back to Seoul. Seoul is a great place for us to visit, because we get to have Western/American/things we just don't have on Jeju. Here's the list of things that we had while visiting Seoul: (good) bubble tea, Jamba Juice, Taco Bell, bubble tea (yes, again, I love it), and Subway. It was awesome. We also went shopping in a couple areas and bought some awesome stuff. We also got ambushed by three groups of college students who were interviewing foreigners. They were friendly, and two of the groups gave us snacks, so we didn't mind. We only have a couple pictures from that day. Here they are:

Actually, only the one picture. This is us taking a break under a bridge. Don't worry, it's not nearly as creepy as it sounds, there's a trail there along a stream and there were a lot of people (not homeless) who were hanging out down there.

At any rate, that's all I've got from our trip to Seoul and Seoraksan! It was an awesome vacation and we had a lot of fun! At this point, we have less than two months left in Korea, and we probably won't be leaving the island again, which is fine. There's still a decent number of things we want to do here, and we have to start making sure we have our priorities straight. So, I think I'll make an end to this very long post. This is Captain Danger out.