seoraksan

This past weekend me and some friends decided to go on an adventure to the "crown jewel" of south korea, Seoraksan National Park. We met up at the East Bus Terminal in Seoul and bought tickets to the town of Sokcho. Sokcho is a town on the East Sea, directly East of Seoul. The bus took around 3 hours and when we got there we hopped in a cab to our hostel right near the park. On arrival we discovered that our room was "ondol style". In korea instead of heating their houses with hot air, they pump hot water through pipes under the floor. The floors are nice and warm and this heats the room. This heating system is called "Ondol" and due to the toasty floors, many Koreans sleep on the floor. So we didn't have beds, just sleeping pads, pillows, and blankets. I didn't really mind it, the beds here feel like you're on the floor anyways. I miss my foam matress :( Anyways, we set up our beds and went to bed early so that we could get up and go hiking the next morning.
We woke up at 8 and after finding some random food for lunch and breakfast we headed to the park. We started our hike and were surprised at how many koreans there were. Sorry if this blog becomes a rant but the national parks in Korea really bother me.... There were literally thousands of people hiking with us. At many points we had to literally wait in line to countinue on the hike. We joked that we were waiting in line for space mountain and wished we had gotten the fast passes. The Korean national park experience is nothing like the American one. Instead of a peaceful hike through the forest we were literally being pushed out of the way, waiting in lines, and trying to manuever through crowds. Very different from my trip in July to Glacier National Park in which I got to experience the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen with just my family... maybe seeing another human being every 4 hours.

The scenery was beautiful in Seoraksan, and the fall colors were amazing... but I couldn't seem to enjoy it as much as I wanted to because I was so frustrated with all the people. This is just another case I guess in which Korean culture is very different and hard for me to understand. I love the American National Parks way too much I guess.
We made it to the top of the mountain called Uslan Bawi after making our way up through Buddhist temples and hermitages and then came back down. We went back to the hostel then out for pizza and beer. We ended up meeting 2 Korean boys who spoke very little english but we went to the Noraebang with them, which is a karaoke room. We sang the English songs they knew and the Korean ones we knew. It was a funny night. The next morning we went to the beach in Sokcho for a little while and then took the bus back to Seoul.

Now I don't want people to think I didn't enjoy myself in Seoraksan, it was a fun weekend. I just really dislike the national park system in Korea and wish it were different... but thats just my opinion. Seoraksan was beautiful, I just wish they would do something about controling the crowds...