While traveling

Currently I'm on a long bus ride back to Seoul from Busan. It's so freaking long, about 4.5hrs if the bus doesn't stop. I realized long bus rides are really good for self reflection. Been thinking of certain things recently while I'm on the bus, and I like it, the pensive me.

I've been really busy lately. After I finished my midterms last week, my friends and I headed to Inje for some outdoor sports, like white water rafting and bungee jumping. Bungee jumping is really cheap in Korea, about 40,000W (45 SGD) but the height is quite short compared to other countries. My friends wanted to do bungee jumping. Bungee jumping wasn't one of my to-do list in Korea and I don't think I would ever have the courage to really step off that platform and face the icy water beneath me. I went white water rafting with the guys instead. It was quite fun despite me being quite cautious. I can't swim and I didn't want to fall into the water x_x

The water was so clear!

My friends didn't want to try bungee jumping in the end so we headed to Sokcho for the night. This was in preparation for Seoraksan. Seoraksan is a famous park in the Korea and has a series of mountains. The highest peak is the Dae Chong Bong which stands at about 1.7km, the third highest mountain in Korea. Not wanting to squeeze with the crowd, we headed to Seoraksan at about 4+am and started climbing at 5. It was pretty scary as it was still dark, really dark. Darker than in singapore. One of my friends bought a torch light and we began the ascend. Oh my, we climbed for 5.5hrs and we still didn't reach the peak. Previously, I've saw online that it would only take 8hrs in total for both up and down. I was very very very wrong. The uncles and aunties who passed by us when they came down the mountain told us we at least had another 2 hrs to go. It was majorly depressing cus my thighs hurt so much and I took more than 1 second to climb up each rock. I used so much effort and I felt like dying. Finally, the girls decided to go down cus we need to go to YangYang for the salmon catching festival. The guys were staying for another day so they persevered. I WAS SO GLAD that we were heading down! Even the descend took quite long, about 3.5hrs? I really really really wanted to die cus I was so tired and my whole body was like crumbling.

At the highest spot ever.

Autumn: the supposedly best time to visit Seoraksan for its foliage

Pretty autumn foliage.

Bye Seoraksan, I never want to see you again.

Subsequently we headed to YangYang to catch salmon using our hands. This is one of the highlights of their festival! For 25,000W (28 SGD), we were given gloves and some time in a shallow pond with artificially released salmon. The salmons can really swim, I went after a few but I couldn't catch any. Finally, a kind Singaporean guy caught and released a salmon into my direction and I caught it with my bare hands!! Haha. After that we paid to butcher to cut up the salmon and we brought it back. So, I'll have salmon to eat for awhile :)

Me and my catch :D

That's pretty all that I did last weekend. I came back last sat night and went on a free tour on Sunday morning to Buyeo, Jeonju, Suncheon, Yeosu and Busan. I'm currently returning to Seoul from the tour. can't wait to be back in my room ^^ Will blog more about the free tour soon