Seoraksan Mountain

Over the Lunar New Year holiday (that's big here) my compadres and I took a long weekend to travel to the mountains. Seoul is on the West side of Korea, so we hopped a bus and traveled 4 hours to the infamously beautiful east coast.As you'll see here, there's a beautiful ocean. The name of said ocean is under debate: the Koreans call it the East Sea, and the Japanese call it the Sea of Japan. There's also an island (well, a rock, really) between the two countries called "Dokdo" that both countries claim as their own... Geoff and I enjoying a refreshing beverage on the beach at dawn . We took the night bus, so we arrived at 3:30 a.m. Just in time for some barbecue and beer! We stayed up until 8:30 a.m. Frisbee was played on the beach.
A view of the beautiful snow-capped mountains through the buildings. This city is called Sokcho. Tallest peaks in South Korea.
The crew (Nicole, me, Geoff, Les and Gilles) in front of a ginormous Buddha. We are in Asia! I asked a passerby to take a group photo for us. On the first attempt, she took a nice shot of us, but cut the Buddha out. I thought it was pretty obvious that we would have wanted the Buddha in the background. But you know what they say about people who ASSume....
Les totally ruined the picture below. Sheesh, can't you find some other sacred palace grounds to walk on?
Anyway, we were there for three nights (if you count the first one where we just were on the bus and beach). We hiked a bit. It was nice to get out into the fresh mountain air. We did our share of partying, playing games, bowling, eating, and singing at noraebang. We also went to a true Asian arcade and played some video games in the middle of the night...Dance Dance Revolution was quite a workout! Geoff is oddly skilled at it...he kicked all of our asses. No comment.