We weren’t sure where to head after China but flights to the Philippines were reasonable and laying on a beach sounded rather appealing after the tough hikes in China. The price was basically the same if we flew to South Korea first though so that’s what we planned on doing. It’s not a cheap country to visit so we only opted for a week there and flew straight into Seoul. The lady sat next to us on the plane was Chinese but studying in Seoul and she actually spoke basic English and tried to help translate the declaration form for us. She also had a lot to say about the differences between South Korea and home. She hated the food and missed Chinese food, she also said the people are very selfless in China but the opposite in South Korea and interestingly since speaking to someone else maybe it makes sense because they said they were on a metro in Seoul when someone had a seizure and no one helped and just continued like nothing was happening. It wasn’t the best start to get such a negative review of the country but I think she wanted to give us a few warnings too like ‘don’t use these taxis’ and made sure to give us her mobile number incase we had any problems.

The biggest culture shock for us was the amount of western tourists! My goodness what a change from China where we basically felt like we were the only ones. I couldn’t believe what a travel hub Seoul was. We had to travel from the airport to the city centre to a little hostel down a dark alley where the floor was scattered with cigarette butts and business cards for prostitutes. The hostel was actually much better than I expected, it was a tiny room which seems to be the theme in Korea but at least it was clean. Annoyingly the rooms all cost about two to three times more than the rooms in China and yet they’re half the size. It was already past 8pm so we headed straight out for dinner, opting for a pizza that I’ve been craving for so long and boy was it worth the wait.

The following day we had plans to actually leave Seoul and head across the country to the east coast to do some hiking but before we caught a bus there we did a little sightseeing around our hostel. First we visited the Gyeongbokgung Palace, the main royal palace of the Joseon dynasty and built in 1395. They do a changing of the guards ceremony in the morning which we attended and once again had a shock when we saw the crowd was mostly western tourists and not only that but they were all dressed up in traditional Korean Hanbok outfits. The entry to the palace is about £3 but it’s free if you arrive in a Hanbok which is kind of a great idea actually because so many people got involved that it meant at least if you had people in your photo they’d look like a scene from the olden days in traditional costumes.

As soon as the ceremony finished everyone rushed to enter the palace grounds and it was packed with people. We had a look through the entrance and decided it was way too busy so we skipped it and instead went to another palace that we stumbled across which was much more peaceful. The wooden roofs had fabulous detailing on them which I really liked with pretty patterns and flowers. We weren’t allowed to enter any of the rooms, they were only viewable from the open doors or windows but we were surprised to see the rooms so bare with no elaborate art work or furniture to demonstrate what it used to be like. The grounds were also lacking with a lot of dead grass and gravel so it almost felt like a bit of an abandoned sight and just needed some love like flowers and plants around the grounds. There was a secret garden section but you had to pay extra for that so maybe they purposefully ignore these grounds and focus on the paid garden. It was still a pleasant stroll accept for when I lost Craig for 10 minutes and had no way of contacting him.

Our stroll back to the hostel led us through Bukchon Hanok Village where narrow lanes were filled with rows of traditional Korean houses with curved roofs and little bonsai trees in the garden. It was so nice to see an area like that inside the city. It’s a popular spot so they even had staff employed to stand on certain corners to enforce silence so nobody disturbs the locals who live here which I loved. That was all the sightseeing we were doing today as it was time to head to the express bus station to make our way to Sokcho on the east coast.

The bus was very luxury for just a three hour journey with plush jumbo chairs, but you do pay for it and yet again the prices were about double that of China. We planned Sokcho rather well as our hotel was right across from the bus station and 100 meters from the beach. It was an even smaller room with a bunk bed but again, nice and clean so it was fine. Behind the city were the mountains of Seoraksan National Park which is the reason why we’ve come here.

It was a very well organised area with regular buses departing from Sokcho into the national park so we hopped on the 6:45am one for a nice early start. Our plan was to do two hikes in one day so we started with a hike to Ulsan Bawi first, a fabulous cluster a bizarre rocks rising out the top of a forested mountain. We were some of the first people to hit the trail so it was wonderful and peaceful. There were lots of steps to reach the top but they were covered in a sort of rubber matt so it was lovely and springy on each step.

The higher we climbed the windier it became and at the top it was wild! We headed to the various different viewpoints to admire the fascinating rocks that just seemed to appear out of nowhere. Craig said he wanted to sit in a sheltered spot out the wind and have some coffee and I thought he meant the place we’d spotted on the way up so when I finished taking photos I headed down the stairs to the nook between the rocks to find Craig wasn’t there which was odd. I tried calling out for him but the wind was too loud so I reluctantly headed back up the steps, huffing as I did so until I reached the top and suddenly Craig appeared and in unison we both grumpily said “where the fuck have you been?!” Turns out Craig ‘apparently’ told me it was the sheltered spot at the top viewpoint but I obviously didn’t hear that key point and was rather angry about having to walk up and down the steps unnecessarily.

Anyway, coffee and chocolate cheered us both up and we began making our way back down hill where the park was starting to get busier, still nothing crazy though. We stopped to check out the temples which we skipped on the way up, they looked very similar to the palaces we saw in Seoul but with much more impressive backdrops of steep forested hills.

Our second hike was up to Towangseong falls. This route led us alongside a river which collected in pristine, turquoise pools and dropped down dramatic waterfalls. We bounced along swing bridges and made our way up some endless steps where a local man told us he was 78 and then proceeded to beat us uphill. Even though it was half the elevation gain compared to this mornings hike it felt so much tougher and we were seriously struggling to get to the top of the steps. I guess it was our second hike of the day so our legs were feeling pretty heavy. The view was absolutely beautiful from the top though and well worth the effort. The rugged green hills looks like a scene from Hawaii with the waterfall pouring from a ledge in a series of falls.

With both hikes complete we hopped on a bus back to the city, enjoyed an ice cream on the beach and searched for a place to try our first Korean meal. We were rather intimidated by the menus and photos to be honest as this is such a seafood orientated town and they seemed to love popping a raw egg yolk on most dishes which terrified me. We headed into one restaurant though and began scanning the menu with our translator app when the waitress came over with an English menu! Wow, what a contrast to China. The menu even had detailed information like ‘this dish is a little spicy’. In the end the safest option seemed to be Bibimbap which is basically a bowl of rice covered in toppings like pickled veg, seaweed, lettuce, a fried egg and bean sprouts. It appears Koreans are big fans of scissors because the waitress brought our meals over with some kimchi and a soup on the side before sliding out a draw from beneath the table, placing our cutlery down and then using some scissors to cut our bean sprouts into more manageable pieces which made us laugh. I did have to remove the seaweed from mine as I’m not a fan of the taste but other than that we really enjoyed the meal and for £3.50 it was one of the cheapest meals we could find in Korea.

The next day we wanted to explore the coastline north of Sokcho so we set off on a long walk. It was an interesting place because the clear sea and beaches met the city sky-scrapers and behind them were the mountains. We had to cross a couple of huge bridges leading over islands or other sections of land. We left the bridge via an elevator to reach the island of Abai, built by North Korean refugees. The island had lots of little flat-roofed houses with cute flower pots built in the centre of the island, to the east was a pretty stretch of sandy beach and in the middle there was an alley lined with seafood eateries who also seemed to sell penis shaped bottles of booze with creepy smiley faces on them.

We passed a port where ferries head to Russian and we’d of loved to of continued to eastern Russia but it’s just not safe or advisable right now. As we stopped at a rocky headland to gaze at the sea a local man said something in Korean to us before dashing down the rocks towards the sea and grabbing something from the ground. It was some sort of seaweed and he knew just enough English to be able to say ‘appetiser’. He handed us some to try, it was some sort of seaweed which was actually rather nice but I wasn’t a fan of the texture.

Further up the coast was the best beach of the day. The water was clearer and more blue and there were some interesting boulders in the sea which resembled the famous Seychelles beaches. To access the boulder area we had to walk all the way along the road and then back along the beach where we came across a large sign warning us about great white sharks in the area!! Crikey!! We had no idea they lived in the waters around South Korea. We made it to the boulders and decided to take a chance swimming with the sharks, figuring if we stuck to the shallow areas we’d be safe enough. It was bloomin’ cold water but lovely and refreshing. We finished our day with another Bibimbap before catching the bus back to Seoul the next morning.