With a couple of extra days off for Chinese new year, we decided to head to Seoraksan Park for the weekend near Socho, far east of Seoul.
For convenience we decided to stay in Seoraksan Tourist Hotel which is just inside the entrance of the park. The view alone from the room was worth it…
We stayed in a double room which was simple but incredibly comfortable with the standard underfloor heating.
I’ll admit I’m not the most active person when it comes to the great outdoors, and coupled with the icy footpaths we only went for a short walk into the park. If we had another day I’d definitely liked to have explored more. There are several trails on a map the hotel manager gave us. There’s an excellent coffee shop just past the hotel and large Buddha statue. It was definitely the best coffee I’ve had since arriving in Korea.
We took the cable car (right opposite the hotel) (W9000 for adults) up to one of the peaks.
Not surprisingly there are gift shops, coffee shops and street food at the top. From there we walked for another 5-10 minutes up an icy stretch which had a man made footpath for easier access up to the very top of the peak. The view was incredible even if somewhat spoiled by the hoards of tourists around. This may have been the fact it was new years day though!
If anyone is thinking of going, I recommend bringing some snacks for breakfast/lunch. There are a couple of restaurants just inside the entrance of the park, but they have very limited menus (the American breakfast in the hotel restaurant was awful) and they close at 6pm.
There are busses into Sokcho that run every 10 minutes up to 10.30pm and taxis are cheap enough to get there too. Sokcho itself is a really pleasant city, on the coast and surrounded by mountains it reminded me a little bit of Dublin. We grabbed a pizza and coffee there for dinner on our second night and got the bus (7/7-1) back afterwards.
Getting there:
It’s incredibly easy to get a bus from Dong Seoul bus station. It costs W16,100 (adult) each way and takes about 2-3 hours. It stops once at a lay by with bathrooms and street food. During busy times it’s recommended you book online and you can also select your seats. We couldn’t work out how to book return tickets so we reserved one way online with some help from our Korean co-teacher and Naver.com. We then purchased our return journey as soon as we arrived at Sokcho Bus Station.
Once you get to Sokcho, exit the station and just to your right there’s a bus stop. Take the 7 or 7-1 to the last stop (Fare W1,100 – have cash ready). It takes about half an hour. If you’re travelling after dark, look out for the “Rainbow Road” you’ll pass when you’re near enough to the park!
Cailín meets Korea 