Enjoy and please leave a comment!

-Chad

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The hostel owner recommended this restaurant and I have to say it was the best Bibimbap meal I’ve had in Korea.  Will definitely go there again the next time we’re in Sokcho.

Dave decided to eat a pepper…!

Then he made me eat one :(   I was sad

Soraksan National Park (a bit hazy but still quite pretty.)

This buddha is near the entrance of the park and probably stands a good 40-50 feet tall.   Its amazing.  Here’s a quick video I took while we were there.

We took off from here and hiked up Ulsan Bawi.  This giant rock mountain is quite impressive and proved to be quite difficult – despite the many stairs and ropes that define Korean hiking.

Kate about halfway up Ulsan Bawi.

Dave and Eve help each other up the mountain

We’re almost there!

Eve is pumped and ready to climb the last leg of the mountain…

..Straight up these stairs!! eeek.  they keep going and going….

These older women had no problem with it.. These ajumas weren’t even phased by the climing.

Ulsan Bawi!

Kate and I trying to get a good photo …

The nice man with the megaphone and coffee at the top took our picture for us.   (See this video)

The Party on top of the  mountain… only in Korea…

Ulsan Bawi again.. (BTW.. That’s north korea to the right Eep.  And we were there the day of the “Satellite” launch.  See this video from later in the hike.  A helicopter was circliing around over the park announcing something.  Was it about the North Korea Rocket launch?? I don’t know.  No one seemed too alarmed though.. so I think we were fine. )

After a rest at the top we headed down…

…and found some lovely treats at the bottom of the mountain.. hah yes that’s a corndog with sprinkles on it,  and another with frenchfries in the batter.  Again, only in korea…

That’s Soraksan.  We had a great time as usual with Dave and Eve… we’re sad to see them go, but they will have a great time wherever they end up, and we’ll see them soon when they come to our wedding :)  Right dave and eve?! 

More to come soon…

-Chad

Again,
Again,

Together! You get the picture.

Chad’s turn!




Crazy Mountain Man!

Rocky on rockies.

Chad’s internal dialog – “Should I do it?”

Chad’s external answer. . . .

CAVE MONSTER!!

Lean on me!
1. . .
2. . .
3. . . .
4. . . .
Failed pose but fun trying!

Chad left but I stayed behind to pretend to be a ballerina-cave dancer.

Monster emerging from the midst.

BlAHHH!!!! Getting closer!! This is like getting Big Foot on camera! Luckily we got away in the nick of time! Phew.

We had fun.

Our climb ended up being a little more difficult that we anticipated. Basically this mountain proved to us that our previous thought that Korean hiking is wimpy was wrong – the ropes and stairs are needed. Instead of nice little switch backs everywhere the climb went all the way up and then all the way down.

At the beginning of our hike. Happy little climbers in Korea! Oh, and due to the Kimchi, Chad has grown to be 6″ taller than me.

This little cave caused us to take about 20 minutes out of our climb to take pictures. Above is a sample of those pictures. They will be in another post. Yes, I plan to post again.

Steep stairs to help us down. I have to confess, I thought we were close to the summit. Nope.

Tampoon – pretty fall leaves in Korean

Crazy Mountain Man! That is what our coworkers like to call Chad. He shared some of his summer hiking pictures with them a few weeks ago. With good reason they were in shock of how intense some of his climbs were. Yikes, me too!

Okay, this picture is an image of the “uh-oh” on our hike. We realized the sun was going down and we had NO clue when we were going to hit the middle point. Sadly we turned around so that we would make the last bus and not die of hypothermia.

Graceful climbing.

Break in the leaves. I think that we would have been OK if we had chosen to stay the night on top of the mountain. The leaves were very cozy!

I know this doesn’t look that tough. I was tired, recovering from a cold and the rocks were very slippery! Thank goodness for those ropes!

I love these persimmon (kam) trees. The are like big hovering skeletons trimmed with bright orange balls that look like they are just floating in the atmosphere surrounding the trees.

Overall Update:

We are doing really well. The cooler weather is definitely rolling in. School is still going really well. We are in the midst of planning a trip to Thailand and Malaysia for our break in January. Exciting! We miss everyone a lot and I wish there was more time in the day and less of a time difference so that staying in touch weren’t so tricky. Though, I am not complaining, we would be lost without all of this technology.

We miss and love you all and I hope that everyone is doing well! Thank you for keeping track of us!

K

We all decided to get an earlier than normal start because had an hour and half bus ride and wanted to get some good hiking in so we all met at the bus terminal at 9am. None of us had a clue how to get to odaesan (bad idea #1) so we called 1330, the local tourism phone line which usually has an English speaker, to find out which buses to take. We got the advice, and tried to get tickets but the ticket lady had different ideas on how to get there and after some time got the tickets we needed (we hoped) and hopped on the bus which arrive a half hour later. Usually buses cost about 2-4,000 won- – not much and is dependant on the destination/frequency/and distance. It should have tipped us off that the tickets were 9,000 won each. We sat on the bus to Jin-bu, half unaware and half asleep, wondering where we were being taken. Eventually we saw Gangneun – the other big coastal city about an hour north of Samcheok. We then learned that we had merely bypassed getting off the bus and transferring by getting the more expensive, less frequent trip. So, 10 minutes later with a new set of passengers we took off again, expecting to arrive in Jinbu in about 30-40 minutes. An hour later we finally arrive at a dark and cold bus station. Most are this way, but it ads to the dramatic effect of the story. There, we learn that we need to take another bus to Odaesan and we had just missed the once hourly trip by about 5 minutes. Perturbed the longer than anticipated trip, cost of the tickets, lack of adequate breakfast, and an increasingly frustrating trip we decided to just take a taxi and deal with the extra cost. 10,000 won later we arrived in the park.
Here’s where the story gets even more exciting.
We arrived to a busy temple at the base of the mountains with beautiful statues and perfectly restored buildings.
After trying to avoid getting in the way of peoples pictures, and taking a few of our own, we left and went down the path that we thought would lead us to the trails and other areas of the park. This ended up not being the right path so we headed back up to the temple and out the other side to see if we could find our way to something that resembled a hike.

Passing the Temple, we found only a road, with backed up traffic on it’s way up the mountain. After talking (with motions) to a passerby we were told to start walking up the road to find the hiking.
We walked… and walked.. and walked.. and finally found a sign that said 6.2 km to the next temple (where the trails are). We decided we didn’t have time or patience to hike up the road to get there so we headed back via a small trail we saw on the other side of the stream parallel the road.
Finally something more like hiking. (then it started to sprinkle, of course…)
I snapped a few shots of the beautiful mountains and changing colors.
Mark wanted a new zen photo for his facebook
We walked back down the trail and then the road again when the trail ended to the temple where we started. We walked back to the parking lot area and asked the information lady, who spoke English pretty well, where to get the bus. She directed us to the bus stop. Once there, we realized.. to our dismay, that she was directing us to the bus UP the mountain.. to the top temple where all the trails start. What would have saved us an hour and a half of walking, and enabled us to do some hiking. Slightly bitter, but mostly amused at our ineptitude we had her call a taxi for us to get back to Jinbu… we didn’t have any more patience to wait the hour before the next bus back. We finally got home and had a nice night of movies and food at Eve and David’s apartment. A nice end to a frustrating day.

We ended up spending over 55,000 won for 5 hours on a bus and few hours of walking on a road. Oh well.. You win some, you lose some, and considering this was the first legitimately unsuccessful trip we’ve had while being here – we can’t complain too much. And we laughed a lot at ourselves – so all is well….

Well, Kate has fallen asleep reading her book, and I’m up way past my bedtime, so I must go… Enjoy this last weekend of unrelenting political ads –it’ll be a year and half before you see them again — I’m sure you’ll miss them.

-Chad

We were hoping for a little more of a hike than we got. Koreans love to hike but all of their trails are paved and there are restaurants every few steps. Not true for all mountains but I know its not that far off. Despite the paved path, it was absolutely beautiful and we hope to get back to get onto the not paved trails soon.

This is a huge Buddha statue before the trail heads. Chad caught a few extra couples in this snap shot. We didn’t get their names to email it to them.

A nice view from our little hike. There are supposedly some not so plush cabins we could rent if we wanted to get really crazy and do a two day hike. We’ll see if we can squeeze that in before it gets to chilly.

Okay, Mt, Sorak was stop one of this adventure filled day. We travelled back to our Resortel (which like to pronounce “resortle“), had lunch, and boarded the buses for our next stop, our Korean cultural experience. . . . the GRAMOPHONE MUSEUM! How Korean can you get?!

The museum was interesting. First we went into a screening room chalk full of speakers which Chad go talk about for days. We watched some music videos on a large screen tv and listened to the speakers.

The museum was started from a Korean man’s collection of gramophones. He received his first when he was 6 and I think he got up to multiple thousands in his collection.

Chad is pictured above with the first iPod!


Blending in with the scene.

Checking the acoustics.

After the museum we headed back to the Resortel for dinner. After dinner we saw a traditional Korean mask performance which was interesting. We wern’t ready to go to bed so Chad and I headed to downtown Yang Yang (tiny). We bumped into a couple of friends and stumbled upon and almost deserted carnival.

This lovely young woman pictured with me bargained with her friend so that I could play the dart game for a discounted price. I hit some balloons which means I got a pink rubber ducky like toy!

Our friend Alex (far left) played another game and won. His prize was a furry pink pillow with “I love you” written on it. Also with us in the picture between Alex and Chad is our friend Hai.

Thanks for checking in!

K