Seoraksan

South Korea is a roughly rectangular country, and we've decided to do all four corners. That meant travelling all the way from Jeju (the southwesternmost point) to Sokcho, in the northeast, which was a bit of an arduous journey since public transport in South Korea is confusing! The journey was further complicated because we needed to stop off in Seoul en route to submit our applications for Chinese visas. Fortunately this was a painless process, and we're hopeful that we'll be able to pick up our approved visas when we're back in Seoul later this week.

In the meantime though, we've spent the weekend in Sokcho, the gateway to Seoraksan National Park. Seoraksan is widely considered to be South Korea's best national park, so it was on our 'must do' list. Dan has been singing 'Seoraksan, you don't have to put on your red light' for days to get in the mood. The views of the north of the country on the 2.5hr coach from Seoul were stunning, so we had high hopes.

Dan wanted to do a long hike across the national park, scaling the main peak, so he started early to give himself enough time. Meanwhile Chelsea took the very steep path to Ulsanbawi Rock. Unfortunately for Dan, South Korea has been experiencing torrential rain, flooding and landslides at the moment (which we've somehow managed to dodge), and the long hike was closed. So he ended up coming back and going up Ulsanbawi too, meaning we did the exact same hike but separately. Still beautiful though!

Back in Sokcho town, Chelsea went for a walk around the lake, which included a mud path for foot massage and wellbeing, unexpectedly fantastic. Her feet felt amazing afterwards: top hike recovery. In the evening we went for a few drinks and found a recently-launched, open air pub on the waterfront, with just a handful of people drinking. After ordering drinks, the bartender came to tell us that we could go into the nightclub area for free. This was behind an industrial sliding door that you had to pull a lever to open. Inside was a cavernous warehouse with blue strobe lights, pumping club music (all automated, no DJ), oil drum standing tables... and no people. This whole setup, a complete ghost town. It was bizarre, but we're glad we found it 🥳

With that, we're on our way back to Seoul to see some friends and wrap up our Korean adventures in the big city.Read more