#soraksan

[nicky-spell-mash]

설악산. #inkorea #summer #vacation #with_friends #soraksan #nature #mountains #여름 #설악산 #자연 #여행 #휴가 #친구들과함께 (at 설악산 신흥사) https://www.instagram.com/p/BmhglZNhwDUnjejWjH7f93y8d_qyIE833Bpi6Q0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=oaomys250e2q

[ss2photography-blog]

Visited this national park during snowy winter and it’s pretty cold by asian standard. Stopped by a lonely food stall in the middle of hike. And never in my life I was so glad to eat a hot & overcharged ramyun. . 📅: December 2012 📍: Seoraksan Mountain, Sokcho, South Korea 📷: iPhone 4S . . . . . . #ss2photography #ss2phototravel #korea #sokcho #soraksan #mountain #snow #throwback #travel #travelgram #wanderlust #igsg #instatravel #vsco #vscocam (at Seoraksan National Park)

[mycutetravels]

Seoraksan National Park (설악산국립공원) Sokcho, Gangwon-do, South Korea

[thinkj2]

The Journey • Don't stress about the long journey ahead of you. Look behind and see far you've come. We tend to focus too much on how we are always behind and look at our shortcomings and tend to forgot the great amount progress we've already achieved. So pat yourself on the back. You're doing a great job~ Happy Wednesday. Photo taken on my trip to Seoraksan last week. #soraksan #seoraksan #서릭산 #wanderlust #mkexplore #neverstopexploring (at Seoraksan National Park , South Korea)

[thinkj2]

Stand Firm • like a mountain with your beliefs and don't be shaken by what naysayers spout off about #whpescape #seoraksan #soraksan #설악산 #만물상 (at Mount Sorak National Park Korea)

[fframe]

Soraksan, South Korea, 2008

[mangokompott]

Hiking at Soraksan National Park

Our last day in Sokcho started with a nice breakfast provided by our hostel, mixed with some stuff we raided at the convenience store around the corner.

Blue sky, no clouds, warm – perfect weather for hiking! We chose to take one of the local buses to get to the entrance of the Soraksan National Park. In the end it took a little longer as expected. Quite a bunch of people also had the idea of going hiking that day except that they were slowly driving up the hill with their car, blocking the way for the bus…

At least it didn’t take us long to get to the entrance where we bought tickets to enter. We could have also gotten tickets for the mountain railway but that would mean that we had to wait around three hours. It seems people call and get ticket reservations in advance. Well, we came here to hike and not to sit comfortably inside a railway ;)

We decided to take a route that would lead us to a big Buddha statue then to a mountain monastery, to Heundeulbawi a big rock that a person can put in motion and then to the top of Ulsanbawi.

Yeah…Koreans love to be super prepared for any kind of activity. Shops selling hiking clothes were also pretty popular in Sokcho and the entrance area of the National Park.

It was pretty crowded that day and we seemed to be only some of the very few non-Korean visitors.

This is the big bronze Jwabul statue, around 10m tall. In front of it people kneel down and say a prayer or offer gifts to the Buddha statue.

Next to the statue you can buy a tile and write something on it. I guess, it brings luck or so.

Along the way there are a lot of temples, somehow hidden.

The higher we got the more we could see how the woods here have already turned red. This is so different from European autumn!

I did not enhance the colours of the pictures, the leaves were actually really really bright red coloured!

At some point there was a little resting place with ajummas cooking Korean style pancakes and selling cold drinks. But of course the food does not grow on the mountain so there has to be an ajossi getting the supplies up there. What a hassle!

Whenever there was a little more of the landscape visible: picture time!

At some moments you really had to wait because there are some parts of the hiking route where you kind of have to climb up on a rope, so the mass of people had to queue. ugh.

The rock on the right side is the aforementioned “wiggling rock” Heundeulbawi. So far, no human could make the rock fall down, but we could indeed witness it wiggle around.

Nearly at the top! Btw. most of the Korean peninsula looks like this, mountains and hills everywhere the eye can see.

There we go! We actually just went to one of the 6 granite peaks. It’s quite windy, cold and people don’t seem to care if the handrail is really low and you could possibly fall off the top. Just take a picture to prove that you’ve been there √

The small town there is Sokcho and in the background you can see the Eastern coastline and the Eastern Sea/Sea of Japan/whatever you wanna call it.

Time to get down again!

This is one of the bigger temples we saw. At one of the entrance gates there were 4 Cheonwang statues, Kings somehow. 

On the left: Damun Cheonwang with a lute and on the right: Jiguk Cheonwang with a sword.

Those are the other two Cheongwang, Jeungjang with a dragon and Gwangmok Cheonwang with a staff. They did look pretty angry though…and kind of Indian-looking, no?

These places actually have a lot of statues around the whole area…just like this retarded tiger @_@

…on our way back to the entrance! We just make it back in time to Sokcho to get our stuff and catch the bus to Seoul.

But you can’t leave without a full stomach, right? Chinese-Korean food. Jjajang-myeon – noodles with black bean sauce, veggies and meat, a kind of seafood soup and Jjamppong – spicy seafood soup which was not yet cooked when I took this.

Here we go. Spicy red and tasty clams inside! 

After that we hurried to get some more of the delicious hoddeok from the street food stand.

Fun fact: Due to its geographical location ships from Russia (Vladivostok) come to Sokcho, so some of the signs are in Russian!

Bye bye, Sokcho!

[mangokompott]

The Korean East Coast: Sokcho

Autumn came much quicker than I expected. It started to get cold as soon as the sun set but during daytime it was still quite warm. Since autumn is a really nice time to see the trees turn red and to go hiking in Korea, me and some friends decided to spend a weekend in Sokcho (Northeastern part of South Korea). 

We started quite early in the morning. I think, we left between 5 and 6 to catch an early bus to Sokcho.

On our way there we saw this rather ambiguous looking poster of ginseng. Apparently it’s good for boosting the stamina...

We arrived at the terminal, managed to get tickets but on them it said «Gate 4,5»...kinda like in the Harry Potter movies there is another bus parking area between 2 gates. This is even more confusing as a lot of buses leave with just a time difference of 2-3 minutes. 

After around 3 hours of driving through rocky nowhere we arrived in Sokcho, a rather “small” city with around 100.000 inhabitants. It’s really weird to say that because in most Western countries this would not really be a small city. But as most of the Koreans live in bigger urban areas like around Seoul or Busan, this can be seen as a village somehow. Still, there is a lot going on. When we arrived there was a kind of carnival?! Well, most people just seemed to be tourists that came for hiking on the weekend.

After we arrived at our hostel which was really close to the bus terminal, we decided to skip hiking this day due to somehow not so nice weather. So we went on to discover Sokcho.

As I mentioned before, this is indeed like living on the countryside somehow. People tend to have a small garden with vegetables they grow themselves. Nice!

These are spring onion. But compared to what you can buy in a German supermarket, they’re super huge!

Somehow modern architecture did not make it to Sokcho, it seems…

First thing to do? FOOD, of course! Donggasu (Japanese Tonkatsu, cutlet with sauce, kinda like Schnitzel). Tasty and cheap!

This was the market street where you’d be able to get the latest ajumma-fashion, just like in the subway stations in Seoul.

Next stop: Sokcho harbour! Btw. you can see the Soraksan National Park in the background...plus all the clouds. Nope, this is not really nice weather for going hiking!

As the city is directly located at the seaside, you can get a lot of fresh fish and other sea food. You can’t miss it, the smell is…stunning.

Just dry your clothes next to the fish, nobody will notice the smell, haha.

Yup, drying fish on the street. Smells..uhm..fishy!

Yeah, Sokcho is kind of old fashioned.

Close to the waterside was this tsunami warning sign and the way to the next evacuation point. I wonder if there are a lot of tsunamis in Korea? I never really heard about it so far.

This pagoda seemed to be another popular tourist spot. Actually it was made out of rusty metal and concrete…traditional way, of course.

I don’t quite know if these public spaces really get used that often but it seems people like to put furniture outside.

Either you sit on a bench or an office chair OR you just put your leather couch outside.

After our exploration of the city and some more shopping it was getting dark and we got hungry. Notice the tacky decoration?

In Sokcho you would get double the portion size compared to Seoul. <3 Sokcho makes poor students happy!

Since so many people queue for this Hoddeok stand, we thought it must be worth waiting there. Apparently they got featured in a TV documentary or something like that. Plus, it was different from Seoul-style Hoddeok. The dough contained pine nuts and other kinds of nuts, cinnamon and sugar and it was deep fried for just W1000! Good that we were going hiking the weekend, if not we would have just gained weight.

The fancy-schmancy socks made it to Sokcho as well. Animal prints, K-Pop stars and whatever you can imagine. Wear it on your feet and show some pride! 

Good night, Sokcho.