The Chronicles of Jason: What a Holiday!

First of all, did you know that nearly everyone outside of the United States of America refers to vacations as holidays? It's made a small impact on my vernacular. I had quite a holiday last weekend.

Korea celebrates a Thanksgiving-like holiday every year at this time. It's called Chusok (choo-sock). Families travel, sometimes long distances, to the home of the eldest member of their family. Though there is no turkey to be had, they do have food and fellowship.

For this national holiday, English Village closed its doors on Saturday and Sunday. Because those are usually regular work days for me (as I now have Monday and Tuesday off), and because English Village closed on those days, they took two vacation days from me. It seems logical that if they were going to force me to take vacation, I might as well go somewhere. I had a total of 4 days (Saturday-Tuesday) to use.

A group of my fellow edutainers and I decided to travel east in Korea--to a place called Sokcho (pronounced just like it's spelled). It's about 3 1/2 hours from Seoul, on the direct opposite side of Korea, on the water. It is famous for beautiful beaches and beautiful mountains.

Jessica, Evan, Nikki, Sarah (slurping a smoothie), Herman, and Anand; waiting for our bus--

Platform 16 to Sokcho!--

We left Friday night at 9:30 p.m. and arrived in Sokcho at around 1:30 a.m. We had been told that it could take up to 8 hours to get where we were going, simply because of horrible Chusok travel. And it was pretty bad in parts--mostly because the highway had only 2 lanes. A mistake by any rational observer's perspective (it reminds me of the I-5 between Oceanside and San Diego--AGHHH!).

We slept about 6 hours in our respective hotel rooms and got up around 9:00 for the free breakfast offered. Cold scrambled eggs, weird-tasting orange juice, french fries with ketchup and more were ours for the consuming.

At around 10:30 a.m., we all headed to Seoraksan National Park, which is a 10 minute cab ride from our hotel. In Korean, "san" means mountain--so we were going to Seorak Mountain National Park. It was stunning, especially because of it's very close proximity to the beach. But as I said, Sokcho is known for its beautiful beaches AND beautiful mountains, and they are basically side by side. I'd say the beach is less than 2 miles away from where we entered the national park.

In the cab on the way to the national park--

Just before entering the park--

Where should we go? (Notice the light blue line--that's the cable car we took)--

Jagged cliffs, or I guess you could call it a Happy Mountain...--

A couple of panorama shots (remember to click the picture to see it larger, then hit backspace to return to the blog)--

Waiting for the cable car--

On the way up--

Still on the way up--

Almost there--

It took us up pretty high and dropped us off. From there, we had a great view--albeit somewhat hampered by the low layer of mist (perhaps marine layer?) quickly moving through the mountains.

Now we're at the top and you can see the city on the upper left side of the picture, though it's a bit hazy--Lookout--This fog-like mist was rolling by fast--
Starting to hike--
After taking some pictures, most of us decided to hike a little bit. I didn't have a map of the park area, so I had no idea where we ultimately were or where we should go--but I just started going upwards. There was one pathway made for people to hike. It was relatively easy. I hung back from the rest of the group, taking my time to take pictures like this along the way.

Some moth-like creature on a flower--

After hiking for about ten minutes, I came to the end of the path--where everything opened up and I was surrounded by cliffs. There were many people sitting down, relaxing, taking pictures. Perhaps it's no surprise, but there were curio vendors as well. I bought a bandana that had a map of the park on it. It was only 2,000Won.

A panorama of the precipice (you can see 3 ladies lounging)--

Yes, I was actually pushing that mountain!--

Where I was--

On the edge of a cliff--I guess these two flowers like to live dangerously (but seriously, I had to climb out a little far to get the picture)--

Methinks this was the highest point to get to--at least in the portion of the park we were in. I know that we weren't planning to cover the entire national park, and I really didn't want to anyway. I just wanted to lay on the beach, though I was thoroughly enjoying the place.

People climbing up to where the Korean flag is flying--

Evan, Jessica, and Anand on their way down from the highest point--

Me scaling the cliff (Fear is simulated, danger is real)--

Panorama from the top--

Yay! I reached the summit--and I didn't have to eat anyone!--

Herman and Nikki--probably my favorite shot from the entire vacation--just a cool panorama picture--

Me lounging at the very top--

So when I reached this top point, there was this guy selling gold medals. So random. And what's more bizarre, he spoke better English than ANYONE at our hotel (this isn't to say his English was great, but we tried to ask such simple questions of the staff at our hotel, and nearly no one could help us; it was very odd). So, I bought a gold medal--and he engraved my name (in English and Korean), the date, and the location. It was awesome.

After we were finished hiking around and taking pictures from the top--we rode the cable car back down. From the top we had seen a GIANT statue of what appeared to be Buddha, so we headed that direction. This is the gate to enter where he was sitting.

This dragon head was in the entrance--

There's Buddha--

These little musical statue ladies were on a huge incense "thing" in front of the Buddha statue--

I know little to nothing about Buddhism, other than many Koreans are Buddhist, and there are temples all over Korea.

But strangely enough, there's an entrance at the back of this Buddha to a temple that's directly under him--which was quite strange. I quietly went inside and snapped some shots.

After Buddha, half the people wanted to do some more hiking. There was a waterfall they wanted to see. My legs were tired (I walk pretty much all day every day in Korea, so it's not like I'm just lazy), and I was tired...and again, I just wanted to go to the beach. I just wanted to relax and NOT walk. So half of us headed back to the hotel.

Our hotel (does it seem odd that the name of hotel is in English [with no Korean to be seen], yet no one inside the hotel can speak English?)--

View of my balcony--

View from my balcony--

Once back at the hotel, I promptly put on my Superman swimming trunks (a must-have for every 29 year old that wishes he was still 6), and headed out to the beach--conveniently located RIGHT across the street from the hotel.

The water was CLEAR--

There were about 6 people on the beach--and that's including 3 of us!--

Jessica is from Hawaii--and she loves the water. She wasted NO time getting right in the water. I, however, am not so brave. The water was a tad cold for me, so I opted to put my feet in only, then lay down and read a book.

Sarah sprained her ankle pretty badly about 1 month ago; while playing Ultimate Frisbee. It was tough for her to walk on the sand, as you can imagine, but she did it anyway. She loved the beach.

We all spent a few hours on the beach, and then it was getting dark. By the time I was cleaned up, the other half of our group came back from the national park. They too cleaned up and we tried to find a restaurant that we could all eat at. Some of us are vegetarians and some of us are extremely picky (I won't mention any names). When we asked the front desk person for help with finding a place to eat, they had to get someone else to talk to us. I don't know if it was a manager or what--but anyway, the guy was extremely helpful. He spoke enough English to tell us where a good place was. In addition, he had someone take us to the restaurant in their car. The place was not far away, but I think it was mostly because Sarah was on crutches. It was a very nice gesture.

Our dinner was a very funny ordeal. The menu was not in English (some places have English menus) and no one working at the place spoke very good English. After ordering what sounded good to us, we were worried that perhaps something would be lost in translation and instead of getting the "bulgogi" (beef) we wanted, we'd end up with stuffed squid or something equally distasteful. But it was all good. The beef came and it was very good (and the non-meat food came for those who ordered non-meat food). Our fears were assuaged.

The next day, all I wanted to do was lay on the beach. And that's what I did. After watching about 6 episodes of "CSI: Miami" and "Superman Returns" (a must-watch if you're a 29 year old who wishes he was still 6).

Then, in the late afternoon, in a desperate search for Western food; Sarah, Evan, and I walked the entirety of Naksan Beach. We were told that we could possibly find Western food at another hotel, the Naksan Beach Hotel. That was all the information we could garner. In order to get the food, however, we'd have to find the hotel first.

On our walk, I saw batting cages, and I desperately wanted to try it--because I haven't been able to do that while I've been in Korea. I paid 1,000Won and grabbed the provided bat. The balls came VERY quickly, and I did my best, but my best wasn't very good. I hit one and fouled one. That was it. And I think it only pitched about 10 balls. Oh well, you learn by doing. Stupid.

But THEN, right by the batting cages was a place to rent bicycles! And not just regular bicycles, and not just crazy tandem bicycles, but bicycle cars! And remember, Sarah is using crutches--Evan and I thought this would be an ingenious way to get around.

We had an hour with the bike. On our trip around the area, we found the Naksan Beach Hotel, perched high up on a hill. It would be impossible for us to take the bike up the hill. We rode around a little while longer, looking for other places that might serve some form of Western food. One coffee shop only had donuts, one coffee shop had its door wide open but there was NO ONE inside, and still another coffee shop was closed. The Koreans like their coffee.

Our hour was coming to an end, and also it was becoming very tiring. Though both Evan and I were pedalling, I feel there was something wrong with our bike that made it not work perfectly. So we returned the bike and walked towards the Naksan Beach Hotel.

I alone made the trip up the steep hill to see if the rumor was true; "Was there Western food to be found?" It was true. The hotel had a restaurant that served Western food. Yippee. I informed the others, and we sat down to have something to eat.

A panorama of the great view from the Naksan Beach Hotel--

In case you were unaware of what falling looked like--

Sadly, the restaurant was a little pricey, so I got this appetizer. Smoked salmon. 7,500Won. It wasn't bad. We ordered pizza later that night.

Our last day was spent wandering around various parts of Sokcho, looking for trouble. I'm not sure why this guy has a portion of his body missing...and in the shape of an upright bass...but I thought it was worth a picture.