Odaesan National Park

---

Happy Hangeul Day!

Hangeul is the Korean alphabet and it was invented by King Sejong in 1443, during the reign of the Joseon Dynasty. Hangeul Day used to be a public holiday, but it was dropped in 1991. Why you would want to get rid of a public holiday I have no idea? Anyway this year it was reinstated. An extra day off? Yes please!

Anyway enough of the history lesson and back to a lovely day off. We were going hiking and to the beach over on the east coast. We left from Suwon not long after midnight and the bus was full. In fact there wasn't enough seats for everyone and there was at least one person sitting on the floor in the aisle. I tried to nap on the bus, but sleep eluded me as usual.

We arrived at the starting point for the hike at about five am. It was pitch black outside and freezing cold. Also the air was really damp, and my jacket got pretty wet, pretty quickly. We stood around for a while as there was a lot of fannying on going on. We had a nice hot coffee and shared some doughnuts to give us some energy to start. Then we set off. I gave Danielle the head torch and walked behind her. We walked along in the dark and it was a bit eerie. I felt like I was in a horror movie and I was waiting for the axe murder to jump out from behind a bush and kill us. We walked along through some flat and muddy land and then there was a tonne of stairs to go up. The stairs were knackering, but I made it up without stopping too much.

After the evil stairs we continued up and along. It wasn't too taxing as there were no really steep prolonged up hill sections. The sun started to come up, and we could finally see where we were going. It was a bit misty though so we couldn't see any nice views. We made it to the peak, Noinbong, we were took a short break, taking some photos and having some snacks. The view was still crap due to the mist, so we looked at the board, which had what we were meant to see instead. Whilst we were taking a rest and enjoying some food, a little chipmunk came out to play. We gave hi some snacks and he bit Yeri, I think if I've remembered correctly. After taking our photos, by the peak sign, it was time to make our descent.

We hiked down for a little bit and then stopped, as Warren prepared some Samgyeopsal for us for breakfast. It was okay, but as I don't eat a lot of meat anymore, it was a bit too fatty for me. So I made up for the meat with cookies, nuts, and crackers. Proper healthy I know! We stood around there for quite a while and I got a bit bored with the waiting. Some of the others left, but we waited a bit longer. I think the others wanted more meat.

The hike was really nice, however it took a lot longer than expected. It was meant to take about 4 hours, but ended up taking about double that. I'm not sure if it was because it had been raining a few days before and we had to be careful in places as it was really slippery in parts. I think we all fell over at least once. As we started to descend at first me and Ashley lost the others. We stopped to take some photos and we got lucky. The clouds just parted and we could see the mountains below. It was a spectacular sight. Me and Ashley were both in awe. We tried to shout down to the others to come back and see the view but they were too far ahead, and couldn't hear us.

The scenery was gorgeous throughout the whole hike. The leaves were all changing colour and the trees looked beautiful. The leaves were so bright. I love autumn, it's definitely my favourite season. So beautiful. We continued hiking down the mountain, There were some parts with steps, which made a nice change, every now and again. The course we were hiking was following the river down, and there were a lot of gorgeous waterfalls. There were also big cliffs surrounding us to look up at. Korea does scenery right! Me and Ashley got off the trail for a bit and sat by a small river and had a break. We also took another break on a slab of rock in the middle of the river. That was really nice and I took my boots and socks of and dipped my feet in the water. It was bloody freezing, but refreshing. I was sad to put my hiking boots back on.

We hiked for about another hour and a half, maybe two hours and finally finished a lot later than we expected. I was busting for a wee by the end. The bloody toilets were locked up, and the ajumma directed me to a porta potty, although I had to walk through a field of wee to get to it. We met up with the others, we were all starving. We headed to the bus, we stopped off at a restaurant and got a couple of potato pancakes to go and some cans of lager. The lager tasted soooo good. I was so happy to have it.

After what felt like forever, a slight exaggeration, but we were all starving and the potato pancakes, although good, just weren't enough, we were finally on our way. The bus journey took about an hour, helped along with the rest of the can of lager. We arrived in Gangneung, at the beach I had briefly visited the previous summer. We were all grouchy and moaning a tonne because we were all so hungry. Some of the others on the trip headed down to the beach, but we headed to the strip of restaurants instead. We were going to order five different dishes to share between us, but the owner of the restaurant could obviously see the hunger etched on our faces and warned us that doing that would take longer for us to get all our food. A huge thanks to that man. So we changed our order to two kimchi jjigaes, two omurices, and another noodle dish, that Yeri recommended to us. While we were waiting for the food we finished the potato pancakes. The food came and we devoured it. It was really nice, the jjigae was nice and spicy, and the omurice was good. I wasn't keen on noodles, they were a bit bland.

After our late lunch / early dinner, we headed down to the beach. I would like to say I walked, but it was more of a hobble. My legs were buggered after all the hiking. Apparently this is the best / most popular beach on the east coast. It was nice, but it was a bit too cold and windy, so our walk was a brief one. We headed back bus via a little coffee truck for a caffeine pick me up. I think we left the beach around five or six, for the long drive back west. However we had Lady Luck on our side and the traffic was pretty light. We made it back to Bundang in good time. Then it was subway and another bus before I was finally home.

---

Photos

(Limited) View From The Peak
Odaesan National Park