A Barbed Wire Tour of Inwangsan

Thursday was Children's Day, and all the teachers at my school got the day off. Interestingly enough, next Friday is Teacher's Day and not only do we need to show up for work but we need to do a performance in front of hundreds of our peers. I think they mixed up the names of those two holidays.

But back to Children's Day. It was on the 125th day of 2011 and of all 125 days it must have offered us the nicest weather yet. We decided to go hiking at Inwangsan, near Seodaemun Station in North Seoul. As the Buddha's Birthday holiday is coming soon (another day off next week!), a trail of colorful lanterns led us to the temple at the base of the mountain.

This simple gate marked the temple entrance.

With 25 degree temperatures, the hike up to the entrance had us red faced and tired, but then we were met with our arch nemesis STAIRS, of which weaved through some modest residential homes, the temple, and a bell. Beyond these buildings was the real beginning of the hiking trail.

I'm pretty sure that we did this hike ass-backwards. It seemed like many times we were faced with the decision of taking random trails that led left or right, but with no signs in Korean or English we just kind of chose whichever way looked the most promising. The first place our sweaty asses came to was a spring (to refill water bottles) and an exercise park. In case you like to lift some weights and just go into complete cardiac arrest.

Before long we came to a really big, flat rock where we relaxed, snacked and enjoyed the view.

Inwangsan is a cool place to hike because the rocks are NEAT. It's kind of hard to tell from the picture but the rocks at the top of the above photo looked like they were really defying gravity by not rolling straight down the hill.

After leaving our rock, we chose a trail going left, but were quickly greeted by the first of many bunches of barbed wire on this trail. Soooo, we turned around and found another trail going straight up. At least I think it was a trail... upon reflection it might have just been a path formed by water runoff. Either way, on our way through, we came across a little family of mountain kitties. They were looking a little ratty, but they weren't freaked out by people the way Seoul city cats usually are.

At the top of the trail/water runoff route were were greeted by two fences (one electric!), barbed wire, and a tall cement wall. We took our chances walking the perimeter.

The fence led to another trail where we could see the real top of the mountain, complete with stairs and everything. Problem is, we hadn't the foggiest clue how to get there. It didn't look too far away but we were obviously in the wrong place and there was no way for us to get there. Instead, we followed a path in the opposite direction, which led to the cool gravity-defying rocks we'd seen earlier.

From the rocks we could see much of the Insadong area from above, including Gyeongbukgong palace.

We weren't really sure how to get down from where we'd gotten ourselves, and we wound up basically rolling down another water runoff trail and found ourselves walking along an old fortress wall until we met up with this cool rock. It's called a skeleton rock, but we thought it looked like Castle Grayskull.

From there, we met up with an official trail, and got ourselves back down to the area with the spring water/exercise machines that we'd seen earlier. From there, we took a trail in the opposite direction from where we started our hike. We quickly found ourselves at one of Inwangsan's main sites, which are really just more rocks- ones where mothers traditionally prayed for sons. The touristy sign says they prayed for fertility but, c'mon, we all know they were praying for a boy.

We followed the trail along a little further and found this Buddha sculpted into rock. Meh, I've seen much nicer. Also, the entire exhibit is surrounded in fence and barbed wire.

Now, my Korean is far from fluent, but I'm pretty sure this sign next to the Buddha is asking people to NOT leave pig heads at the monument. We don't see too many signs like that in Canada.

Since there were no pig heads to eat, we hiked back down towards Seodaemun Station. We'd spotted a restaurant there that we'd been dreaming of since our hike began: BBQ Chicken pizza!!!!!! The loyal reader might remember on our annoying trip to Busan several months ago
one of the few trip highlights was this amazing BBQ Chicken pizza. BBQ Chicken has hundreds of franchises in Seoul, so we were sure that we'd be able to get this pizza whenever we wanted, but we were wrong. I can't tell you how many fried chicken places we've gone into in the past few months looking for this special pizza, only to see it absent from the menu. WELL, the pizza IS available at the BBQ Chicken in Seodaemun. While we waited for our order to arrive we were so nervous that it would be different, but it wasn't. It was perfectly, deliciously awesome. It had SAUCE. It had real pepperoni. It was $9! We. Will. Be. Back.

The day was young, so we went to nearby Samcheong-dong for coffee. We wanted to drink our coffees outside in the sun, but finding a cafe with a patio is not easy in Korea, because Koreans don't like sun. In fact, you will probably see as many umbrellas on a sunny day as you would on a rainy day in Seoul. Eventually we found a place (Coffee Factory) which allowed us to trade $7 each (that's almost a full BBQ Chicken pizza!) for basic coffees and a seat in the sun.

Samcheong-dong is an area that we'd been to once before, to see a hanok village, but we'd somehow missed the main touristy district on that visit. We were so surprised at how busy the area was. Maybe this is because of the holiday, but it was seriously more crowded than the busiest day of any of my trips to Disney World. There were clearly some cool, and quirky places to discover in this neighborhood, but after the peace and quiet of hiking, we felt invaded and annoyed. It was time to go home.

Home featured a viewing of the new American Idol, before a trip back down to Gangnam for supper. We tried a place new to us, called Pasha, which serves Turkish food. At first we were put off by the prices (18-20,000 Won for a main), but when the service started we saw that the portion sizes were humongous. We ordered a delicious mixed grill (served on swords), and enjoyed the excellent free soup and salad bar. We. Will. Be. Back.

Before going home for the night, we made a pit stop at Skin Food. Mel wanted to try some BB Cream, and I wound up getting some good stuff too. I bought some beer shampoo, but also spotted another interesting item: Makgeolli body wash! Shopping at this place was making us hungry again, so it was time to go home and get ready for school the next day. Luckily for us, there was only one day of work before we'd be free for the weekend again. May is a good month.

The Great Wall of Suwon

This is what it's come down to: a desk piled high with roach killer. For the last few weeks, our apartment hasn't felt much like a home, thanks to an infestation of giant cockroaches. They've been dropping from the ceiling, crawling on our cups and just generally making themselves at home. It's hard to sleep at night when we can hear them scurrying around our apartment, and when we do sleep we often have cockroach-related nightmares (or worse- I dreamt that we had a scorpion infestation last week!) Anyway- on top of this, the new semester of school has left us both feeling drained and wanting to get away for the weekend, so on Friday night we went to Suwon, our home away from home.

Though we usually stay at the Lucy, we decided to try another hotel on our favorite Love Motel strip- the Pink Panda. We were given the Pink Panda: Black Edition room, though it was curiously decorated with pictures of the Pink Panther and was more pink than black.

Even though we've stayed in dozens of love motels, I'd never noticed that the cars in the parking lot all have their license plate numbers hidden. This helps to keep what happens in the love motel on the down low. I guess most people that go to these places aren't in it for the whirlpool and big screen viewing of Oprah like we are.

We decided to spend the day hiking around Hwaseong Fortress. The Fortress is essentially a wall that surrounds what was once central Suwon. It was built over 200 years ago by King Jeongjo, who had planned to move the capital of Korea to Suwon. That didn't quite work out, but the scenic fortress walls are well worth a day trip to Suwon. We'd hiked there before, but that was almost 5 years ago, so we'd been looking forward to getting a weekend with nice enough weather to do it again.

Just as we were about to start our hike, I was approached as I left the washrooms by a young guy wearing a Samsung t-shirt.

Guy: Hi, how are you? Do you know Samsung company?

Me: Yeah, sure.

Guy: Do you want to do commercial about Samsung electronics? You can dancing with us.

Me: (Nearby, I can see one of his co-horts already getting dressed up in some ridiculous blue costume because he's sure I'll say yes) No, thank you.

Guy: Come on, it is simple dancing. We will teach you salsa (guy starts to salsa dance).

Me: No no no no no no no... have a nice dayyyyy (running away)

I don't like to dance. A lot. Anyway, we started our hike at the Paldalmun gate (there are 4 gates along the wall) which means we started out by hiking straight up 1000 stairs.

Once that part is over, the rest of the wall is an easy hike. There's lots of little towers, platforms and structures along the way to look at (like the one above).

Some more pictures from our hike:

A nice view of Suwon from the top of the fortress.

Lots of flags along the way.

Stopping for a sammich.

Lovely Suwoncheon Stream.

There's an absolutely humongous cathedral nearby. It's black, very gothic and looks like the spookiest church ever.

There are a few random activities to enjoy along the way: there's a trolley ride, museum, dog soup restaurant, Korean archery and even adjoshis playing croquet.

The humorously named Bongdon: five chimneys that puffed out warning signals to locals just in case someone was coming to plunder all of Suwon's famous yumyum galbi.

After about an hour and a half, the trail ends at a traditional food market. There were a lot of butchers set up there, as well at many fruit and vegetable vendors, and the ubiquitous groups of ajummas selling dried things from seeds to peppers to stingrays (as seen above). From the vendors to the little makeshift restaurants with tarps for walls and menus printed in marker on old cardboard, it feels like this area hasn't changed much in the last 50 years.

Yep, you could buy just about anything there, even... pig heads? For a minute it was like being back in Taiwan again, as I don't think pig heads are a very popular food item in Korea.

It was time for us to head back to Seoul and our cockroach nest of an apartment. If it weren't the last weekend before pay day we probably would have splurged on a second night at the Lucy or Pink Panda, but what can you do? I wonder if leaving a pig's head at the front door would scare all the bugs away? It might at least get the landlord's attention for long enough that he might spring for a little fumigation...

Umyeonsan

Spring is here! Last weekend the temperature hit 12 degrees on Sunday, after a few straight weeks of very cold and windy weather. It was nice to just be able to go outside and walk around without feeling tense, cold and just wishing to go back home for the first time since we were in Malaysia a million years ago.

We decided to go for a hike at Umyeonsan, a small mountain near Nambu Bus Terminal Station. Online research said that it would only be an hour-long hike, which was perfect for us. The entrance to the hiking trail can't be missed, either: it's marked by a giant glass disk attached to a pedestrian bridge.

Usually, spring hikes mean muddy hikes, but somehow, it was only muddy in a few spots. There were a bunch of people on the trail, but it didn't feel crowded. There was even some wildlife to see- anyone know what kind of bird that is in the above picture? It was huge, didn't look like it could fly, was colored like a rooster and had a long tail of feathers. Strangey.

Stopping for a rest on the way up. With the mild weather and the exercise we found ourselves hiking in our t-shirts by the time we were mid-way through the trail.

After about an hour we got to the trail's summit, which is marked by a large pile of rocks next to some benches and a scenic lookout. From here we could see the whole city- from the 63 Building on the west to Olympic Part on the East and Seoul Tower and Bukhansan up North. Seoul is such a big city and you can lose your sense of distance and geography when you're always traveling it on the subway, getting out in random places, so we enjoyed the view.

If you click on the panoramic image above you can see a lot more detail.

Normal viewage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zGtV6Gbmv4

Of course, it wouldn't be a hike in Korea without seeing some funny exercise from our fellow hikers. The guy in the video isn't being too ridiculous, but the woman at the end is pretty awesome. She was killing it earlier, but I was too slow with my camera. Anyway, you get the idea. I love Korean public exercise <3

Not to be outdone, here's an ajumma passed out on a tire, who we spotted on our way back down Umyeonsan.

We enjoyed our hike and had a good workout, but it totally paled in comparison to the exercise we would experience next: we went to Costco. In Korea. On a Sunday. The things a guy does for bulk granola bars...

Here's to spring! Woooo! Annyong, winter!

Previous posts on hiking adventures:
Elephant Mountain- my favorite hike
Bukhansan- our first Korean hike (the one where we got lost and came out 2 towns over, broke)
Monkey Mountain- there were monkeys
Gwanggyo- the one where we almost died in the woods, lost and thirsty

Eungbong

Often when we take line 3 north across the Han River (and let's face it, that happens a lot- Myeongdong is up there) we've wondered what was on the hill in the above photo. First of all, the fact that there is a hill there at all is weird because the land along the river is very valuable and lined with high rise apartment buildings for as far as you can see. On top of this it looked like there was some kind of fort, look-out or hut on top that would be worth investigating. There was only one way to find out, so we looked on Google Earth, found out the name of the closest subway station, and took the train there.

After getting out of the station it was only a 10-15 minute sweaty hike straight up the hill. At the top was a pagoda (the "hut"!), a dozen old people and some public exercise equipment. The aforementioned sweaty hike was more than enough exercise for the both of us so we opted to sit around enjoying the view rather than lift weights.

Foreground: a Canadian wondering where the ice cream/cola cart ajumma is on this damn hill
Background: Seoul Forest and the Han River

There was a lot of concrete to admire.

We walked back to Oksu Station where we had directions to Haddon House, an excellent foreign foods store that we'd never been to before. Before heading there, though, we walked down to the Han River to check out the flooding we'd seen from afar on the train earlier. We've gotten a lot of rain lately, but from the looks of it it made for some easy fishing, and there were poles set up everywhere... though I don't know if I'd want to eat anything that came from the Han River!

At Haddon House we purchased some jalapenos to make jalapeno jelly. It's a favorite snack of ours and we've been craving it for over a year now. Unfortunately, it's not easy to buy pectin in Korea so I had to use gelatin to set the jam, which wound up doing nothing but creating 2 weird jars of pepper juice. Everything is an experiment in Korea!