Seoraksan (a.k.a. Seorak Mountain)

This past weekend a group of my friends and I went to Seoraksan, which is the 3rd largest mountain in Korea. It is located on the Northern part of South Korea. Basically the closest you can get to North Korea without going into it.

I put a group of 12 people together and we went with a tour company (Waygook Travel), who provided transportation, a South African Braai, accommodation, and a English breakfast. All of these things were added bonuses because I really just wanted a way to see Seoraksan in the beautiful fall colors without having to plan it! :)

This trip proved to be an interesting one, and I'm so very thankful that I was with all of my very bestest foreign friends who could make even the unpleasant moments great! We should have known it was going to be an interesting trip when we were picked up at 5:10 AM to a heavily drunk tour guide. The following are my friend Lily's thoughts about the trip that she wrote in her blog. She summed it up really well...

"Since our destination was a good 5 – 5 1/2 hrs away, even on a chartered bus, we had to be at the bus terminal at 5 am on Saturday morning, so we started our day at 4 am. (Yuck!) The bus was about 30 minutes late – it was slightly annoying to have gotten up so early for a bus that was late, but we were all in generally high spirits at that point. Little did we know, this was a warning sign – the universe was screaming at us, “Run away! Retreat! Save yourself!” If only we had listened. Instead we piled onto a tour bus along with about 30 other people who had paid to take this tour.

The trip was run by a loud, crude South African man and his Korean wife. Along with this couple were 7-10 other “friends” of the tour leader (I think his name is Derrick) – mostly South African, with a few other Korean women, all apparently tagging along on this trip for free. When we got on the bus at 5:30 in the morning, all we wanted to do was sleep. Derrick had other plans. Even at 5:30 he and the other South Africans were already drinking. Possibly, they had never stopped drinking from the night before. They proceeded to drink steadily through the entire bus-ride. I honestly have no idea how they were still standing when we arrived.

Not only were Derrick and his friends drinking like nothing I’ve ever seen, but he was insisting that we all get into the party spirit. For the first hour, the bus lights stayed off and people napped. At 7 am the lights came on, loud rap music started pounding and Derrick announced that cocktails were available for purchase. (Who wants a rum and coke at 7 in the morning?!) It was clear that the only people enjoying the loud music and insanely timed cocktails were Derrick and his free-loading friends; all of the paying customers would clearly have preferred to be sleeping.

In addition to becoming personally more and more obnoxious the more he drank, the other problem with being on a bus run by a man who is hammered is that he made us stop every 45 minutes along the way so that he and his drunk friends could pee or he could have a smoke.  As the morning wore on and we inched our way to our destination, we all started to get really hungry. Each time we stopped, Derrick assured us we would stop again soon for some food. Finally, 6 hours in, he announced that we were stopping to eat. We eagerly climbed off the bus only to find that the rest area Derrick had chosen only had a convenience store and no real food.

Jonathan and I tentatively bought something called “Pizza hotdog” in an attempt to find something other than chips and cookies to tide us over. This proved to be a frozen piece of bread stuffed with ketchup that was taken from the freezer and deep fried until it was greasy on the outside and still cold on the inside, containing neither pizza ingredients nor a hot dog. It was supremely unsatisfying.

Back on the bus we spent another hour on the road before finally arriving at Seoraksan. Before we got off the bus Derrick drunkenly sang us a tuneless song about Seoraksan which he thought was hilarious while the rest of us wished he would just shut up. He finished his ballad by telling us that we needed to gather wood while we were there in order for us to have the bonfire we were scheduled to enjoy that night.'

...

'[Later] we all trooped back to the bus with the firewood we had collected. (I’m sure the Koreans thought taking sticks from national parks was some sort of strange foreigner tradition). When we arrived at the beach hotel, Derrick instructed all of us to unload all of the food and supplies from the bus (us, the paying customers – not all of his drunk friends who were tagging along). In the meantime, he made a lot of comments about all the free labor he was getting while he took our money. By this point we were all STARVING, having not had lunch and having been awake since 4 am, so we carried the supplies figuring if we didn’t help we would never eat. But Derrick seemed unconcerned about preparing dinner in a timely fashion, so we all continued to wait around for several more hours until it was ready. It was cold. It was raining lightly. Everyone who was remotely “in charge” was completely wasted. Allow me to share a quote from a friend of ours who expressed what we were all feeling so eloquently:

“This is the worst day of my life.” – Chris P.

Eventually we had dinner. And I admit, it tasted really good. Steak and salad and lamb chops and potato salad. We were starving and we ate a lot. Feeling a lot better we decided to head out to the beach. Derrick continued to insist that we could have a bonfire only if we carried all the wood we had collected out onto the beach ourselves, so eventually, we moved our stolen wood out to the beach. The beach was really beautiful at night and it would have been really fun to sit around a bonfire with friends and enjoy it. Unfortunately for us we had to sit around a bonfire with Derrick, who at one point looked down at his drink and muttered to himself, “If I don’t have another drink in 5 seconds I’m going to be angry,” and when the drink did not magically appear, “Now I’m angry. Get me a rum and coke!” and handed his cup to a guy sitting next to him – a random Scottish guy who was just another paying customer. (I will remind you that he had been drinking since at least 5:30 that morning and was still standing somehow). Jonathan and I decided to call it a night when Derrick announced to no one in particular, “Now we will have a competition! Naked swimming!” and pulled down his pants.

Several of our friends also went back at this point and we all went to bed a little early. A few hours later I woke up violently ill. I proceeded to have a bout of food poisoning only rivaled by that one time I got salmonella in Russia. (Possibly it was from undercooked lamb?  - not sure as everyone else was ok, but it didn’t seem to be a virus). After spending all night in the bathroom, I couldn’t even keep liquids down and I knew there was no way I was spending any more time with Derrick, his obnoxious friends, and the bus from hell.

If you take anything away from this story, take this: NEVER go on a trip with Waygook Travel unless you really hate yourself. Especially not Derrick from South Africa. It will be the worst experience of your life. But, DO go to Seoraksan if you get the chance. Especially in the fall. It was (almost) worth the rest of the nightmare. And the beach where we were was beautiful, I just wasn’t able to enjoy it from the motel bathroom. Also, that sometimes in your darkest hour you find a magical English-speaking Korean wizard to remind you that all hope is not lost."

Link to Lily & Jonathan's blog: http://twosorethumbs.wordpress.com/

Now, about out time at Seoraksan: 

There was a temple at the base of the mountain. This temple was covered in swastikas, and while most of our first thoughts are of hatred, murder, discrimination, and death, this symbol has been used in Buddhism for centuries. In this context it means "good" and is represented as a lucky charm. Obviously the complete opposite of how it has been used in recent years.  I'm having to train myself to see this symbol and think good things, and not instantly the bad. 

One of the best parts of this tour group was that they pre-purchased our cable car tickets so that we did not have to wait in line. We just showed up at our allotted time- 2:00. On the way up our cable car was just us foreigners, about 50 of us. It was very orderly and pleasant to watch out the windows. On the way back it was a mixture of Korean and foreigners and it was just like the subway... Even though there was plenty of room, no one wanted to be left at the top (because that was sooooo realistically possible....), so I was being pushed in the back and crammed against the glass to ride down. Luckily there was a Kelly Clarkson song that came on that Sian and I jammed to! Good moment! And we know what we are singing for the Nora-bong  night!

At the top of the mountain where the cable car took us there was a viewing deck and then you could walk up some more stairs to the actual top of the mountain. Well, not quite the top. To get to the real top we had to scale the side of the mountain. In America, this would not be allowed, but in Korea it was almost encouraged by the guy with the climbing gear hanging off the side of the mountain presumably to catch the ones that fall off the mountain!?!?

I really do wonder how many people slip on this incline. It was not the easiest thing ever. I mean, I didn't find it hard, but when I looked around at the variety of people that were climbing, I imagine is is difficult to some. 

Parents were having their small kids do this! It was CRAZY! One false step and they were seriously smashed brains on the rocks! 

Also, it was insane, but there was actually a shop set up at the top. It was a make-shift photo station where you could get your picture taken with a Korean flag, and receive a fake gold metal with your name carved into it! Only 10,000 Won, such a bargain! :) 

Admittedly, the view at the top of the mountain was quite magical and well worth risking your life to see. Seoraksan was much more rocky than any of the other mountains I have seen so far in Korea, so it offered a different view than I am used to seeing. 

I could have stayed up there for a long time just gazing off in the distance, but there was a Korean man yelling in Korean, and I only assumed he was regulating the people on the top since it was a small space. Getting down was slightly challenging, but mostly because we were trying to share the climbing foot holes and the ropes with the people trying to climb up! :)

Benji!!!!!

Eeeeeemily!!!!!!!!!

This guy was quite frightening, but also magical...

That night we stayed at a place on the beach. Only downside was that it was pretty cold and drizzly, so staying on the beach too long at night was not the easiest. I went to bed rather early, and the floor heating was on our pension, which at first seemed really nice. Half way through the night we were all awoken sweating our butts off!

There was a nice mixture of toasty warmness and extreme cold that night that I will not forget any time soon... :)

The next day we went to Naksansa Temple. We found our own way there. I don't even know if there was someone from our tour company who even went... It was a great view of the ocean from this temple and they had a few different highlights, which included this giant Buddhist statue of Haesugwaneumsang. It is 15 meters tall and made out of 700 tons of white granite, and is the largest of it's kind in the Orient. 

There was also a bell/ gong that people were ringing. I'm assuming it was okay if you donated money, because no one yelled at us or ran us off. 

We went back to the pension to again wait what seemed like ages to eat our English breakfast. I know that all of my Brits were pretty excited about this, but I'm not sure it lived up to it's expectations. I personally enjoyed the South African braai much more than the English breakfast. It needed some tea or juice for it to be a lot better for me. 

The last thing that we did before heading back home was riding ATV's. I actually enjoyed this more than I was thinking I would. Riding 4-wheelers is nothing new to me.... It was new for me to be riding them with all of my friends and 50 other people without any instructions or rules. Again, this would not happen in the States. We didn't even have to give them any information or sign anything! Nothing to say that it was not the companies fault if we died... blah.blah.blah... Say whaaaat? 

So, here we were with 50 people, some of who had never driven an ATV before doing so with no instruction. At all. Surprisingly, I only witnessed one flip and only one girl running off the trail into the ditch... Not too bad! :) 

I rode my 4 wheeler for half of our 30 minutes. It was not as agile as ours back home so I lost interest kind of quickly. I gave my 4 wheeler to Hunter and he used it for the last 15 minutes, so I'm glad he got some time on it as well! :) I decided I wanted to take some pictures, so I jumped on the back of Ben's 4-wheeler and was very irresponsible with my camera. At one point I didn't have it on my neck but over my head upside down as Ben was taking the turns quite quickly. Obviously I wasn't holding onto him as well... Living on the edge! 

The ride home was uneventful, except we were again faced with the problem of finding food to eat that wasn't just junk food. Luckily a few of us found some Gimbap at one of the rest stops. Ben got off the bus early and for the first time made it to his house much quicker than the rest of us. Usually he is the one that has to travel and extra couple of hours, so I'm sure he was happy about that! 

The last hour of the bus ride before Daegu, the bus turned into a Nora-bus, and the singing started... I'm sure at some random times this could be fun, but after a weekend of not great sleep and dealing with annoying issues, I think most people in my crew were just plain done.

Darren with the cutest curl ever, and Emily

Matt, Chris and Ben

Ben and I

Darren and Emily trying to overtake us... :)

I am so glad that I have such good friends. This could have been a bust of a weekend with the way the tour was conducted, but because of the people I was surrounded by, I still had a good time! Maybe something we can laugh about in the future.... :)