The Natural...

A few weekends ago, Sandy and I had booked a tour to take us to Seoraksan National Park in Gangwon province right up north in Korea. Not quite DMZ but not far off. The idea was to take a slow train ride on Friday night up to Seoul and stay overnight. That proved highly successful. We took along my laptop and watch a couple of Episodes of a show called “Dollhouse” (a very intriguing show that Sandy introduced me too)…

Synopsis:

A private drug company called “Rossum Pharmaceuticals” has developed a way to delete and replace all signs of memory and personality from the human brain. This company uses this new technology to create “Dolls” whereby the rich and they well to do of society pay money to have human beings (who voluntarily sign away periods of their life to have their minds completely wiped) imprinted with personalities and memories of other people and situations that were completely foreign to the “Dolls” human beings, such that the people who hire a doll can live out their fantacies. The show is about one particular “Doll” called “Echo” whose body slowly adapts to house all the personalities that she is given by this company. We are lead through her transition from “Doll” to humanities savior.

If you don't feel like reading the rest, here is the video summary of pics. I warn you - it is nearly 12 minutes long.

Arriving in Seoul we got a motel room for the night and awoke bright eyed and early on Saturday for our tour pick up at 7:30. Low and behold – despite strict instructions not to be late as we leave at 7:30, we only left Seoul at 8:05. Grrrrrrr! Sandy and I had to rush to find breakfast to try and be there on time (FYI – I had one chocolate and one blueberry muffin and Sandy had a chicken salad).

Half way to the park we step off the bus and realize – “flip, it is really bright”. I had left my sunnies at my flat by accident and Sandy didn’t have any to begin with. So we bought a pair each at the rest stop. After seeing Sandy’s (Bought with the express purpose of allowing them to fit over her seeing eye glasses) I liked what she got better then what I got :-P

Following a Bimbimbap lunch where we met Nick (New Zealand) Jennifer (US), a friend each of theirs, and the cutest Beagle pup, arrival at the National Park occurred at around 14:10. We then had a choice to make:

Climb the steepest climb on offer, with the POTENTIAL of an amazing view of the surrounding area and the ocean in the distance

OR

Take a medium toughness hike, pay money to get on a cable car for a good view and then take a stroll to see a waterfall.

After an inner conflict that lasted the 40min bus ride from lunch to the Park I managed to convince Sandy of our choice. What did we do?

THE STEEPEST CLIMB OF COURSE! My reasoning to Sandy: You have seen better waterfalls in Hawaii, I am sure, This is Korea – where what we hope is normally what we get and thus an anticlimax, thus the waterfall is probably not that good anyway AND when would we ever be able to see a view like the one that we can again. With the worry for her muscles, still in her eyes, Sandy bravely agreed to trek the peak called – Ulsan Bawi. At the time there was a bit of debate as to if we would actually be able to see anything because of a bit of cloud cover that arrived but we went anyway.

Water coming out of NOWHERE!!! Very cool trick of the eye.
There is a pipe running from ground up into the tap structure

All was fine and dandy until we got to the rock face. The Korean people have been nice enough to put steal steps that go up the rock face almost vertically, to allow us to get to the top. That was a little hazardous. If you slipped you could seriously injure yourself and the people walking behind you but we made eventually. The hike up was about 1hr 40min for me and about 1hr 55 for Sandy. The peak was 873m above sea level about 900m lower than the elevation of Johannesburg. There was a bit of cloud around but it was still a great view. The park itself was really impressive. Green as far as the eye could see with interesting shaped rocks everywhere, just a truly beautiful sight. It was great to be in the fresh air even if it was not as peaceful as there was still a lot of noise from everyone visiting the park.

After a short rest we slowly made our way down to meet back up at the tour bus where we were taken to our accommodation for the night. This, though, caused a little consternation for Sandy and I. On the Bus ride to the park – the tour manager asked for a list of names of couples who wanted their own rooms with bed (as everything else was Ondol (sleeping on heated floors-traditional in Korea). Sandy and I thought a bed would be great after the hike so we put our name down. When it came time to receive the room key for our room with our bed, any sense of order disappeared and people just grabbed keys. There was no reference to the list that had been compiled and we got shafted as the accommodation had run out of bed rooms when we tried to get a key. We got stuck with an Ondol room. We would not have mind but for the following:

1.       Why take a list of names when you were never going to refer to it?

2.       Why did they not ask the accommodation how many rooms they had with beds, when they called to tell them that we were running late?

3.       Why did they not just say to us “Listen there are not enough rooms, do you mind having Ondol?” ? (Had they said this we would have been completely cordial and said: “cool”.

These were the 1^st set of contentions – 2^nd set to follow.

That night it was suggested to us to go to dinner at a certain restaurant as the food was good and cheaper than other places (Dinner was not included in the tour). When we tried to see what other places there were we were not allowed to look around and forced to go to the place that was just recommended. After a long day’s hike and having our room taken from us we were less than amused. Food was nice enough though and I had something called “Wild Grape Wine” which tasted like Kosher wine (And thus, to me, very yummy). I maintain that what we paid was probably not the cheapest as this place had no revised menu of prices. They probably just had a verbal agreement with the tour people that their patrons would come there and I think they upped their prices a bit because of that.

That night was hot and uncomfortable and breakfast the next morning was worse.

Contention number 2.

I would love to know why Korean motel owners insist on having the under floor heating on even in the heat of summer?

1.       When we tried to find someone to ask if they can switch it off (we did not have control of it in the room) there was no one in site (on both occasions we looked).

2.       Why was there no way for us to turn on our air conditioning when clearly there is a unit in the room, for use by the patrons?

3.       We paid a lot of money for this tour package which included breakfast. Breakfast was 2 slices of toast with peanut butter and jam on. The Coffee had no milk/ sugar (we never had any). Orange Juice was warm. Everything was self serve (which is fine except when you only have 2 toasters making your tour breakfast for 75 people – the process is rather slow).

As I said – we paid a fair bit to do this trip. The least they could have done was:

Provide milk and sugar for the coffee (Which they could have gone and bought from the small shop outside the motel)

Provide enough toasters to do at least 10-15 people in one go rather than 2 people at a time. (Which would have been more time efficient – we ran late because of it)

We were paying for breakfast, not army rashes so they could have supplied cereal with small bowls and milk (Which would have been cost effective)

They could have had the cups with OJ poured and set out for us to take if we wanted instead of having 2 bottles open at a time and people having to pour for themselves (Would have been way more time efficient. Not to mention complementary to the guests who were paying good money for an enjoyable experience).

It may sound like I am complaining a lot – that may be, I do know that having already booked another overnight with this company, before I went on this trip sadly I will have to put up with their inadequate customer service again. They are great for day trips. I really enjoyed myself during the day.

Breakfast was 2 slices of toast and a small class of OJ

After breakfast we went on a nice 2 hour walk through the valley by our motel. Again the views were beautiful and it was the perfect hiking weather. On the way back to the buses (where we had lunch and made our way back to Seoul) I had an interesting chat for the whole 45min walk back with an Aussie chat. Well we didn’t so much as chat as he Quizzed me on SA and told me anecdotes. It was enjoyable none the less. Here are some more photos:

When you walked through that gate, you were to make a wish and one day it will come true

Look how clear and clean that water is!

Sadly the bus ride back was also fraught with annoyance – this though was not the fault of the tour company. Due to the weather that weekend a great number of people went out of Seoul and to the national park and surround to enjoy the sunshine. Thus, these same people all tried to get back into Seoul at the same time on Sunday. There are but so many roads that lead to Rome (or Seoul in this case), so a journey that was supposed to take 3hrs in the bus took us close on 6. Luckily Sandy and I had enough time to catch our 2 trains to get back to Yeongcheon.

So ends Nature. On to Culture!