Seoul, Jeju, now on to Taiwan

My last 2 weeks in Korea have been much more outdoorsy than the first 2 weeks. I went hiking to the highest peak in Bukhansan National Park and it ended up being quite an adventure. I did a little bit of research the night before and didn't think the hike would be that bad since it's such a popular park that it holds the Guinness world record for most visited national park per unit area. The park is also very close to Seoul, so I woke up late and casually made my way to the mountain, only starting the hike at noon. Then I passed this old professor doing a short hike through the park who strongly advised me not to go to the top because the conditions today were icier than he expected despite the warm winter Seoul has been having and it was a little late in the day to comfortably reach the summit. But I'd already come this far and didn't want to give up without even trying so he pointed me in the right direction and gave me one last warning to be careful before parting ways. So I picked up the pace and tried to hike as fast as I could without going too fast and slipping on any ice or snow. It was going well until I realized I couldn't find a distinguishable trail anymore and was pretty lost with no one else nearby. I tried to keep going forwards to the nearest peak in hopes there would be a trail there, but it got so steep I was practically climbing and not hiking anymore so I turned back and had to slide down until I got to a point where the terrain was walkable again. Then I wandered around until I luckily found my own footprints in the snow and followed it all the way back, eventually finding the trail again after wasting about 2 hours. I debated for a bit if I should go up or down, then decided to keep going up since I still had a little sunlight left. As I got closer to the top though the hike got really difficult. It became a rock scramble over big boulders and cliff faces covered in ice, but thankfully there were metal cables staked into the rock otherwise I would not have been able to catch myself when I fell multiple times. Oh yeah also, a wild dog started following me the last 15 minutes all the way to the summit. Just to you know really get me nervous and make things more interesting. But I finally reached the top at sunset, then started making my way down in the dark and thankfully ran into some Singaporean students so I was with a group when we inevitably all got lost descending the mountain. We eventually found an old lady living in the woods who called a park ranger who took us to the rescue station and showed us the way out from there. So it ended up being a much more eventful hike than I anticipated. I think I learned a lot that day, but the biggest thing I found is that the worst decisions make the best stories so poor judgement has the benefit of a more interesting day 😂.

The other outdoor things I've done were also great, like visiting Nami island, Garden of the Morning Calm, Hallasan mountain, Manjanggul lava tubes, and various waterfalls around Jeju island. But none of them were as eventful as the Bukhansan hike so I'll spare you the details. Now I just spent the past couple of days on Jeju island, and caught my flight to Taipei today. I'm excited for Taiwan cause I'm meeting up with a couple of friends there and it'll be nice to see them all and travel together for a few weeks! Also looking forward to spending Chinese New Year in a country where it's a big holiday, so I'll get the chance to see what it's like and how they celebrate it first hand.

Seoul (Click on the arrows to scroll for more photos 🙂):