somehow, neither mom nor hana knew the morning i wanted to leave for sokcho...when we checked into the hotel we had settled on three nights, so the morning after those nights, i figured everyone would be packing up...but i was wrong...hana asked me if we were leaving, and when i said yes, she said i should probably go check on mom and make sure she knew to pack everything...after a long-ish ride on the subway, we got to a bus station in eastern seoul and used the little machine to buy tickets to sokcho...the bus left about ten minutes later, woo hoo!!!
fortunately, intercity buses are pretty smooth, so hana didn't have any issues with motion sickness...i always thought i was bad, but hana is way worse...ugh...unfortunately, the weather wasn't so great, so we arrived in sokcho with dark grey skies, and spitting rain...argh...have i ever mentioned that i hate rain? we got a map from the nice information people, and they told me how to get to the national park the next day...we were hoping the weather would be better the next day...
we walked, and soon enough found a place to eat...it served donkasu, which is the korean version of schnitzel...all three of us had the one with cheese in the middle...too much to eat, but still yummy...we continued to walk, and i soon realized i didn't really know where we were...but we did know where we wanted to be...or, at least, the general direction in which we wanted to be...walking in that direction brought us to the fish market...or at least, seafood was one of the majour items sold in this market...crabs, fish, socks, etc...we bought some fruit...all sorts of random stuff...lots of different types of kimchi...too bad you don't get to try them all...continuing the walk, in the neverending search for my bank, we came to a paris baguette...in an effort to get out of the rain, we stopped for a while...i wasn't hungry, but mom and hana had a snack and coffee...more walking, and finally we decided to look at the map...hana is much better at these things than me, and she figured out where we were, and in which direction we needed to walk...
it turned out we had only just missed the bank by a little bit...ugh...anywho...when i tried to make the transfer to pay for our DMZ tour, it wouldn't work...eeeek...so i knew i'd written the account number down wrong, or it'd been wrong in the email i received...none of us were hungry anymore, so we went back to the hotel, and just relaxed for the rest of the evening...rain sucks...
the next morning was still a bit rainy, but there was also sun, so we had hope...we walked into town to get coffee for hana and mom (i had a chai milk thing)...then caught the bus to seoraksan national park...it's one of the most well known parks in korea, and is really easy to get to...if i'd stayed in korea longer i would've loved to go back and see more of the park...there is a temple just after entering the park, as well as a very large seated buddha...maybe it's the largest outdoor seated bronze buddha? who knows, but it is big...and with the rain, some of the photos made it look like buddha is crying...hana noticed that, not me...after dealing with entrance fees and such, and photos of a few stellae, we agreed on a meeting point for after hana and i were done hiking...we thought we'd take the cable car with mom after hiking...
so we set off on the hike...there were numerous others out hiking as well, but it was still fun...i don't know if hana and i have ever hiked together? the trail was very clear, and at times there were steps...easy enough, but it still felt good to be out there...and the weather finally completely cleared up...we both warmed up rather quickly and had to remove the jackets we were wearing...at the top of our hike there is a rock that is balanced carefully...if you push hard enough with a couple of your friends, it's supposed to move a little...lots of people were having their photos taken with the rock, so we jumped in the queue...well, it wasn't really a queue, more like a mob, where you just had to make a move in order to get your photo...the trees were beautiful up there, and there was a little buddha inside the cave...i wrote our names on a little piece of paper to make wishes for the upcoming birthday, but the lady wanted 30,000 (approx $30!!) which hana and i thought was completely unreasonable...so we walked away, and as we did so, the lady made a show of tearing up our paper...not very nunlike behaviour!
when we got down to the bottom and found mom, she said we'd just missed the last cable car...apparently they'd closed it for the rest of the day due to strong winds in the valley...gutted...completely gutted...i'd really wanted to take that ride with mom, especially because she hadn't hiked with us...she'd come out to the park, but not been able to do anything...argh...sooooo disappointed...we wandered around the temple a bit, but i think all three of us were upset about the cable car...argh...
the bus ride back into town dropped us off on the main street, and we soon found a place to eat...hana and mom had bulgogi, which is thinly sliced pork roasted for a while in soy sauce...it's a little sweet...with tons of side dishes...yum...since the weather was nice we opted to walk along the water for a while...at one point we wanted to walk across a bridge before realizing that the bridge hadn't been completed and that wasn't an option...we found the lighthouse observatory, and a little pavillion that went out over the water...we also walked by a LOT of seafood restaurants...we couldn't figure out what some of the stuff in the tanks was...and some of the seafood looked dead...in addition to the restaurants there were a lot of places selling dried seafood...yuck...lol...
that was it for our adventures in sokcho...
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