August 25, 2012
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Trip to Seorak (Korea Day 3)
20 Aug, Sunday: We had a late morning out of Hotel California, lazing in bed again till near 9am. By now we have bookings for Jeju, and also booked two nights of Airbnb stay with someone’s BBUNGALOW#2 place at GyeongBokGu which was where the palace was (actually GyeongBokGu was the name of the palace, and also the SMRT station name – SMRT stands for Seoul Metropolitan Rapid Transit). Went down stations down where we were staying to Express Bus Terminal. Had brekkie at one of the coffee shops and then up to the bus terminal where we found that we could only get tickets for 1pm bus
As we were walking around, we found that another counter advertised tickets to Sokcho for 12.20pm. So weird. Isn’t it standardized? Not sure why but apparently tickets are released later, for earlier buses. At that point, there was a person shouting for tickets to Sokcho together with a word my wife recognized as Hurry in Korean. Illegal tickets? Hmm, probably not as he was doing it right in front of the ticket counter… and exchanged our 1pm tickets for 12pm tickets!!! Too good to be true? No, because nothing happened and after walking around waiting for the bus for half an hour, we boarded a bus (at 12pm, of course) and were on our way to Sokcho!
It was a 2hr 40mins ride, slightly longer than the advertised 2:20 most likely caused by the rainy weather and heavy traffic jam getting out of Seoul in the rain. There was also a 15mins break stop after 1hr 20mins. Finally… we were in Sokcho. Lugged the luggage out nearby for some food – couldn’t travel really far and it was drizzling so we ended up in a nearby coffee shop for instant noodles as we don’t really know what else to order (ramen is a keyword we are using now). There is one of those 7-11-like shops at the station which sells umbrella (good quality) for 9000won and a very durable raincoat for 3000won. With that, we could at least move about (at least walk 10mins along the main road till we reached the shop where we had lunch, and the bus station)
From the bus terminal, cross the road then move rightward for about 50m and bus number 7 or 7-1 will take one to Seoroksan for 1,100won. The journey is about half hour – it is quite a distance away even though not many stops. We were staying at Seorak Tourist Hotel, where I had earlier emailed Charlie Kwak, the manager of this place and secured bookings for 80,000won a night. It was a loooooooong walk in (especially lugging luggage that had to travel on uneven grounds which prevented the otherwise draggable trolley wheels from doing it’s job)… About 100metres in. Information Counter guard did not speak English but using Google maps, found it (this has turned out to be one of the other most valuable tool on this trip, especially for the anally need-to-know me, combined with the 4G device providing instant and extremely accurate where-we-are information at all times).
Charlie was all too happy to explain about the various trekking routes, while we couldn’t wait to get into the room after a long ardeous travel and walking around in the rain. It was coming close to 4pm. By the time we got to room and settled in, fell asleep in deep nap and woke up 6pm to have a short walk round the park. At nearby temple, got caught by a monk explaining things to a group of young people whom we found out later were on templestay. Temple Stay is a program where you can stay in a temple and experience what it’s like for a few days. Think it’s free. By the time we finished, we were closer to Enlightenment but running out of time for dinner at 7.40pm (monk offered us room at their residence which is just next to our hotel). We didn’t stay at the temple :-p
It was too late – all the shops were closed despite Charlie telling us closing time was 8pm. However we could get pizza or fried chicken delivery! 15 mins!! We took the pizza option and really, most fantastic meal (as we were really hungry. Then tuck in but not for sunrise as we wanted to get more sleep than a view of sunrise from the mountain.
Not knowing what lies ahead, we ate at the first coffee shop
Schedules on three of the ticketing booths. So it says 13:00 but later switched to 12:20 and we got the 12:00 bus ticket from some guy.
There are swimming pools in Korea but we never got to any (too rainy, too distant?). As I had a long distance swim event in early Sept, I will be out of training for a while.
Rest stop
Windmills… and our neighbour’s innovative way of putting the bottle where there was no holder (we were on the first row)
This is the bus terminal.
Not knowing what to order, all menus were in Korean with no pictures… the owner understands “ramen” so ramen it was and something else we pointed to.
Had an hour half long session with the monk.
