Chiak-san ("Pheasant Peak Mountain")

Our flights are booked, we're officially leaving our adopted homeland! Temporarily at least. I fly out of Incheon on the 25th of February, arriving at Heathrow around 5pm the same day. I'll then have to get from Heathrow to Gatwick, as FlyZoom only use Gatwick, and book into my hotel. At least it's Oscars night, so I can get pished in my room and watch that. The next day I'll be flying out to Canada. Should all be a little bit tiring, but my little scam to blag a direct flight to Canada across the Pacific has been scuppered, due to a return ticket being located that we didn't even know existed. So, I'll probably be the only person to travel from South Korea to Canada, THE WRONG WAY around the globe. I'll be in Canada for just under 4 weeks, flying home to Scotland (via London, annoyingly), on March 24th. Which is a Saturday, so get ready for boozing people, I'll be bringing some soju. Prepare yourselves.

This all means that we have limited time to accomplish many things which need completed, from visiting places and buying more gifts, to negotiating severance pay and deciding what belongings get disposed of, sent home, or stored in Korea. It also means I have barely anytime to blog about 10 different events, so from here on in, expect a lot of pretty pictures and bare minimum text. Still, hope you enjoy the pictures, and still stop to read the random descriptions.

So Chiak-san....... Finished work on Friday night, and madly raced into Seoul to make the last bus to Wonju. Got to Wonju around midnight, located the bus-stop I'd need for the morning, searched the seedy back-alleys (any area near the bus stations are usually pretty "exotic") for a cheap hotel. Walked past the prostitute business cards on the front steps and checked into the respectable enough Grand Hotel. "Grand" is a stretch. But, as always, the room was extremely nice for £15 a night.

After a piss-poor 5 hours of sleep I got up around 6am, and put on about 4 layers of clothes to protect me from the less than hospitable -21C the weather forecast had called for. That's why I look like the Michelin Man below. Of course, still no proper leg or footwear, and the superglue falied to make any difference to the trainers.

The bastard bus didn't come. I waited an hour and was frozen from head to toe before I jumped into a taxi and departed for the temple Guryongsa.


The now obligatory picture of a sign at the park gate showing the ultimate destination, in this case Birobong. It will help me to remember in future though. The distance here, 5.5Km, may not sound too bad, but this hike was basically straight up from the beginning, no nice meandering valley sections here! And no, I didn't misspell the temple name, this sign is using the old form of Romanization.



The approach to Guryongsa features a couple of bridges presided over by impressive bronze dragons. Legend tells that long ago nine dragons lived in the lotus pond where the temple now stands. Because the area was deemed auspicious, the dragons were driven away, and the temple erected. Eight of the dragons fled to the East Sea, while the ninth went to live in the pool below Guryong waterfall. The picture below confirms the severity of the temperature; every single stream, pond and waterfall on the hike was absolutely frozen solid.




The front gate of Guryongsa, and a statue of Buddha nearby. Chiak-san was once a stronghold of Buddhism, with as many as 76 temples, but only seven remain today. The remains of three mountain forts can also be found on the southern slopes, attesting to the defensive importance the mountain played in centuries past.




Here's the pool where dragon number nine is rumoured to live. No sign of him today though.



Halfway up, the trail turned into an assault course of doom, and stayed like the picture above for quite a while, often minus the railing, and requiring you to climb vertical rock faces by rope with a snowy void to either side.




There was a ridiculous amount of snow on Chiak-san, and many people at the trailhead suggested I was walking to my frosty death, again. It's funny now, being able to understand Koreans when they are talking about you, and turning round and telling them in Korean that it's okay, and I've done the hike before with no spikes. A lie of course. As it turned out, I ended up acquiring some spikes at the summit, and subsequently feasted on humble pie as I realised how useful they were. However, before finding this out, many parts of the trail were overcome by sitting on my arse and sliding down in the snow, as above. Necessary, and great fun also.

About two-thirds into my ascent, I stopped for a Spam sandwich break, and had the pleasure of playing with a pair of tits. Here are some pictures....





Almost at the top, I finally emerged from the forest to find a spectacular view spread out behind me. I surveyed the landscape with a Korean climber as we shared his rice cake and talked about how the Scottish hate the English. He started it I swear. Here are some pictures from near the peak....




The final ascent was tortuously steep, and took on a comedic tone transcending all bounds of race, language and age, as myself and other hikers urged each other to keep going while our bodies screamed to stop. The peak of Chiak-san is charcterized by 3 large piles of loose stones. These piles were created by one man from Wonju, and over a period of 10 years he painstakingly carried these rocks to the summit, acting on orders from his God. With his work completed, tha man died soon afterwards.

This sign says "Birobong 1288 metres".

As well as those pictures of the peak, I took a video so you can get a better idea. I've no idea what the Korean guys are chanting for!




When hiking alone, many Koreans will try to speak with you at rest points and the peak itself, which can often lead to interesting conversations, and quite frequent acts of generousity. On Birobong I spoke to a couple of Korean guys at length, who shared a bottle of whisky with me and their stash of cucumbers. I would never have guessed such a combination could be so delicious. Maybe it was due to the gruelling hike, or maybe the fast acting whisky is to blame for the words "cucumber" and "delicious" ever appearing in the same breath. Either way, it was a feast of kings, and a third of a bottle of whisky did wonders to compensate for the stinging cold. As we said our goodbyes, one of them insisted on giving me his spare ice-spikes as a gift. As I said before, it turns out these things are sheer genius, especially for descending a perilously steep trail of deep snow. Here we are, whisky and cucumber in hand, at Birobong peak.

Genius.

Would you trust this man?

With the fantastic ice spikes attached, and a good old buzz from the whisky, I was literally jumping my way down to the bottom, after following the ridge trail for a while, then descending down past Ipseoksa (temple), which was a bit shabby. As you can see from this picture, Chiak-san rises to a fairly impressive height, roughly the same as Ben Nevis, but is still only something like the 7th highest National Park in South Korea. Bring on the next six I say. If I have time, Jiri-san (1950m) is still a possibility before coming home.

Ain't no mountain high enough. Fuckin' right Tina Turner!

Star Wars Expo, Seoul

This sign in the subway station raised a chuckle, as I'm sure it's a question many expatriates living in Korea have asked themselves on occasion! On this day in particular, our destination was Gangnam, an affluent commercial district of southern Seoul, to visit the Star Wars exhibition at COEX Mall. Stop sniggering. I'm sure Lynne will be keen for me to point out that she was not joining this congregation of geeks and freaks, and was intending to spend the day shopping while myself and Northy indulged our inner nerd.

COEX Mall is a massive place, and for a while I feared, we, two 27 year old men, would have to ask for directions to the exhibition. Luckily, as we navigated the garish neon corridors of boutiques and arcades, the frequency of happy children wielding plastic lightsabres and Jar Jar Binks balloons was steadily increasing. When we saw a few spotty, greasy-haired westerners excitedly walking past us, we knew we were almost there.

The Star Wars Expo cost 13,000W, which is around £7. While that is a fairly small sum of money, it possibly wasn't worth it when you factor in a one and a half hour subway journey. However, it was still a fairly decent laugh, and we got some photos of us having a lightsabre duel, which was admittedly my main reason for going. For anyone interested in Star Wars, and I'm sure most of you reading this aren't, take a moment to picture these exhibits...

• Full size X-Wing.
• Full size Rancor
• Walk-in sets from the film
• Minor actors from the films
• Assorted vehicles
  
• Interactive exhibits
• Jar Jar Binks punchbag
• Jake Lloyd punchbag
• Full size Jabba The Hutt
• Animatronic moving characters.
• Blah Blah Blah...

Well, the Expo contained nothing as interesting as this. I really thought we would be sitting in X-Wings like an intergalactic Leuchar's Air Show. Okay, to be fair, there were some very crap interactive parts, and some of the least memorable vehicles from the films. Still, it was fun, and something different to do. You're still laughing aren't you. Here are some pictures...

(C3-PO and R2-D2. The photos of Northy's C3-PO impression, and my own uncanny likeness to R2-D2, will never be shown)

(Some rubbish vehicle, from one of the rubbish episodes.)

(Ooooh look! Lightsabres.)

(Northy tries to add a bit of excitement to the already riveting exhibit known as "Padme's Birthing Table")

(Managing to lose the title of Most Exciting Exhibit by a wookie whisker, "Anakin's Gurney" had to settle for second place)

(Two geeks and a stormtrooper.)

(The main reason I still have a lot of time for the Star Wars saga, is the joyful nostalgia I harbour from my childhood years of constantly playing with the action figures of the films. No doubting that they were the best toys ever. Unfortunately, while others now sell these toys on Ebay and get rich, I turned into a sick and twisted young lad and set most of mine on fire. A little bit destructive perhaps, but there was no better special effect than a face melting in a charred gloop of plastic. And it smelled great. Anyway, the exhibition hosted many large models used in the films, such as this Millenium Falcon model, and they were infinitely more impressive than the toy versions, obviously.)

(What is this called again? Imperial Star Destroyer maybe? I'm not sure, but this was pretty huge and detailed.)

(Everybody's favourite, Boba Fett.)

(Our friend Brian wanted a souvenir relating to Revenge Of The Jedi, which was the original name for Return Of The Jedi. Alas, there were no souvenirs worth purchasing, except perhaps for the "real" lightsabres which were around £150 each. Sorry Brian, you will have to settle for a photo of a poster!)

(I remember having this figure. He was at a severe disadvantage wearing a flammable robe, and subsequently was one of the first to perish.)

(Jabba The Hutt. Still looking handsome. Like a reclining Rik Waller)

(The very end of the exhibition gave us the chance to push the kiddies aside, and duel it out with a couple of lightsabres like a pair of fools. Fantastic.)

(Darth Waddell. Nope, doesn't sound menacing enough.)

(Queen Northy. Yep, sounds perfect!)

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