Weekend in Sokcho

My friend Josh's birthday was at the end of March, and my other friend Peter had the idea that we should treat him to a weekend away for his birthday. It was a bit of a last-minute idea, so we couldn't really swing going away for Josh's actual birthday, but we told him our idea then: a weekend in Sokcho, exploring the national park nearby and going to the beach. We booked the trip for the weekend of April 29 to May 1.

Peter and I split the planning of this trip: I found the Airbnb and Peter booked the bus tickets. We headed to the main bus terminal in Seoul on Friday night after work and easily found the correct gate. However, apparently the route from Seoul to Sokcho is so popular that in the 30-or-so minutes we were standing there, three buses came and went. We started to get nervous that maybe we were about to miss our own bus because there were so many of them, but Peter double-checked the time with a driver and he assured us our bus wasn't there yet. It pulled in literally about six minutes before we were scheduled to depart and left at 8:40pm on the dot.

The ride to Sokcho was blissfully uneventful, and we disembarked in the very sleepy town a little after 11pm on Friday night. The walk to our Airbnb was less than a mile, and we probably woke half the town on the walk there since it was so quiet other than our group. My GPS also sent us down an "alley," and I use that term very loosely since I felt more like we were cutting through people's backyards, despite our house being almost on the corner of a normal, full-sized street, so we kept things interesting as always.

When I found the Airbnb, I was really excited to find a beachfront rental (literally, as the sand was just across the street from us) that would fit up to 10 people and it was really affordable. The Airbnb rating was really good, but there were no photos of the third bedroom. There were photos of a room with a double bed, a room with a bunk bed and a twin, and that was it, but the listing mentioned a room with four futons. When I mentioned it to my friends and explained my reservations about booking something we couldn't see (despite the good reviews), Peter and Chloë both advised me not to worry about it because they literally wouldn't mind sleeping on the floor and suggested I just book it. Well, as luck would have it, we learned that the Korean version of a futon is a floor mat, slightly thicker than the cushion you might see on an outdoor chaise lounge, so Chloë and Peter, along with our other friends Keir and Mattie, basically did get to sleep on the floor. After we all had a good laugh at the sleeping arrangements (and the fact that the living room furniture consisted of one rocking chair and about 8 folding chairs), we spent a few hours playing Heads Up! and stayed up way too late into the night.

In the morning, Josh found a really nice breakfast place that happened to be on the way to Seoraksan National Park, our main destination for the day, so we piled into 3 taxis and made breakfast our first stop. Peter asked me as we were finishing up breakfast, "Is the park far from here?" and I said, "Yes, it's like a 40 minute drive or the bus takes even longer," so we decided to take taxis to the park as well. As it turns out, we were only a few miles from the park, but the traffic near the gate at least doubled the travel time. All three of our taxi drivers told us to jump ship at a certain point, so we ended up walking the last bit to the gate and into the park.

Seoraksan National Park is named after Seorak Mountain, the third-tallest mountain in Korea and the highest in the Taebaek mountain range. The hike to the top of the mountain is undoubtedly breathtaking, but it also takes 8 hours roundtrip, so we opted for the cable car to the top.

Cable car tickets are first-come, first-served, so we bought tickets but had more than an hour to kill, so we explored the park in the meantime. The views of the mountains were breathtaking and the weather was perfect.

Hyeonsugyo Bridge

Our group in Seoraksan National Park

According to Wikipedia, this is "the Great Unification Buddha, a 48-foot bronze statue called 'Tongil Daebul.'"

We hung out at a café for a little while and then headed up the mountain in the cable car. The cable car let us out a little bit below the peak, so we then climbed the stairs the rest of the way to the top. I never pretend to be the picture of fitness, so it won't surprise anyone to read that I was last to the top, and the rest of the group was terrifyingly high up on the sheer slope of the peak. I decided not to join them since I didn't want to risk taking a wrong step and rolling down the mountain, but the views even from where I was were spectacular.

Time lapse from the cable car on the way up. Everything was so green and lush!

Selfie at the top!

View from the top. You can see the ocean in the distance!

Group photo at the peak

I took this photo because I could not believe the lady in the pink jacket had these shoes on!! SO impressed.

We took the cable car back down, stopped for a snack, and then it started to rain. We were splitting the taxis among multiple people every time so we figured we might as well do another taxi ride back to town. After calling a taxi and being excited at an only 10 minute wait, Josh and Alexis's taxi got stolen and they ended up having to wait a good 20 minutes in the rain for another one.

The rest of us took harrowing taxi rides to the waterfront (our driver literally got out of the car at a red light to yell at another driver at one point) where there's a Ferris wheel and we assumed there would be a number of restaurants, but the Ferris wheel line was really long and all of the restaurants were seafood-based, so we ended up walking over to a pizza place instead. But thankfully, the rain stopped so we didn't get wet on the walk to dinner.

We ended the night back at our Airbnb and hanging out on the beach--which was, unfortunately, quite a bit colder than all of us were hoping, but it was still fun.

In the morning, I went to the beach again and was there for an hour by myself, on the phone with my sister, before Mattie joined me, then Ailbhe, and finally Chloë. We couldn't stay too long though because we had to check out of our Airbnb at noon. The weekend went by so fast!

Sunday morning on the beach

It was a scramble to get everybody showered and out of the house at the same time (and about half of us ended up taking cold showers because we ran out of hot water), but we made it. We split into two groups to pursue lunch: some of us wanted seafood and some didn't, so those of us who did went to a crab house nearby and ordered soy sauce marinated crab. It was our first time at a traditional Korean restaurant where you take off your shoes and sit on a cushion on the floor, but we braved it together and the crab was really enjoyable.

Soy marinated crab for lunch with all the included banchan, or side dishes

After lunch, we headed towards the bus station and sat outside in the beautiful weather to kill time until our bus back to Seoul. We got on the bus at 4pm and we were supposed to arrive back in Seoul around 6:45. I still don't know exactly what happened, but something went wrong and our bus ride took much longer than it was supposed to. I looked at a map at one point, and we were approaching Seoul from the south, despite the fact that Sokcho is in the northeast corner of South Korea (a very short distance from the border to North Korea). My best guess is that the bus was rerouted around traffic, but who knows exactly. All said and done, we got back to Seoul closer to 8pm, and we still had to make the almost hourlong ride home from the bus station on the subway. So unfortunately the weekend ended on a bit of a low note, but overall it was a really nice time and I'm glad we went.

The weekend we were in Sokcho, there were big celebrations in Seoul for Buddha's Birthday, which included lantern parades galore. I was sad to miss the parades but later that week, we went to visit Cheonggyecheon Stream in Seoul to see the lanterns installed there.

Lotus Lantern Festival at Cheonggyecheon Stream in honor of Buddha's birthday

The last two weekends have been a little quieter. We went to a baseball game in Seoul last weekend, which was a ton of fun, and yesterday we had a walk around the beautiful Bukchon traditional village.

Bukchon traditional village in Seoul

We have a couple more trips coming up within the next few weeks: a day trip to see the bright and vibrant green tea fields in Boseong and then a long weekend in Busan when we have a Monday off from school, so another sightseeing post will be forthcoming in the next few weeks!