I went with a group of seven people (including me) to a town called Sokcho. One of its main attractions is a national park called Seoraksan, where you can hike up mountains, so that was kind of our big plan for the vacation.
We ended up renting a place to stay from a Korean guy named Brian Kim. One of the guys in the group set everything up with him and it was pretty painless for the most part. (Except that Brian Kim accidentally gave us the wrong apartment number and we scared the crap out of this Korean lady by trying to get into her place...). Brian Kim called his place "the white Sokcho" and we could see why. EVERYTHING was white.
We were also able to go on the roof, where there was an awesome view!
Saturday: The first night was pretty chill. We had Korean barbeque at a place near the water and then went to get some groceries for the trip. After that we just hung out at The White Sokcho and drank a bit. We actually ended up going to bed relatively early, which was good considering our hike was the next day.
Sunday, we went to Seoraksan. There are a number of trails you can choose from and we chose Ulsanbawi. In terms of difficulty, I think it's somewhere in the middle. There are other ones that will take you pretty much all day.
Massive Buddha statue on the way to the trails.
It was actually more of a hike than I was expecting. I had been telling people that I was going to be climbing a mountain over Chuseok and I was exaggerating a little...turns out I kind of wasn't There were times during the hike when we were literally just climbing rocks. It started out pretty low key with only a small incline, but eventually we were climbing really steep stairs...and rocks. The following are pictures from the hike. I'm actually pretty frustrated because none of the pictures really seemed to do it justice.
This is probably about halfway through the hike.
Right before we started the really steep stairs.
Same area...that's the same tree as the one in the other picture.
Some of the stairs. It was really pretty impressive. There were old women and young children on the hike, too.
Almost to the top, climbing up rocks.
View from the top!
Going down was almost as difficult as going up. You had to be careful about where you put your feet and it was difficult to control your pace. It was less physically challenging though, and we were able to relax and talk a little more than on the way up. We were expecting to be pretty sore the next day but I actually never ended up feeling it as much as I thought I would.
Monday: We decided we should recover from the hike, so Monday was pretty relaxed again. We went to smaller park area (that I can't remember the name of) with a temple and some statues and a really nice view of the water. After that, we sat on the beach for a while.
I wish I knew what this statue is but it was really cool.
I'm guessing this is some kind of "holy water" or something.
For dinner we went to a fish market. It was really interesting. They had all the fish, squid, crabs, etc alive in tanks and you just chose what you wanted to eat and they killed it and cut it up minutes before serving it to you. Everything was served raw except the soup.
I didn't know people ate these...
King Crab
Where we ate. There were tons of these places and they all looked pretty much the same. They were open on either end, so it was like being partially outside.
Our food! I mostly ate the fish in lettuce wraps.
The soup. This part of the meal was cooked.
After dinner, we made our way back to The White Sokcho where we spent the rest of our last night. Overall, it was a great first vacation in Korea. It was a really fun, easy going group which can really make all the difference.
Just introducing this group because they have a new song, which I'm posting on the next one. :P
Artist: miss A
Song: Bad Girl Good Girl
Album: A Class
Released: July 2011
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