Travel plan idea blog

In Sokcho and Connected again

I should have a proper blog entry for you soon. I missed a couple of days because the "pension" (a kind of fancy motel in Korea) we're staying at, Dog Hill or Dog in Hill depending on which sign you read, didn't have WiFi in our first room.

Now we're moving in to another room and here the WiFi works.

It's been an interesting two days so far. Part of that is because of Dog Hill Pension but most of that comes from visiting our friend Nasra who lives in the area.

Our first night in the area we went out for Sashimi. You pick out the fish, they smack it with a baseball bat, and then they slice it up and serve it to you. My wife picked a Sea Bream. It was caught in the ocean (not farm-raised) so it was expensive for a small fish. My wife talked them down from 80,000 KRW to 70,000. I'm guessing that's around $60.

You eat in a small restaurant that looks very cheap: dispoasable wood chopsticks, disposable plastic table cloth covers, toilet paper instead of napkins (the norm in Korea actually in less expensive restaurants), etc. But they give you the fish you picked out, some blue fish sashimi, some seafood soup, and some lettuce.

The Sea Bream, or Porgie (my wife only knew the Korean word so the dictionary gave us these two translations) was a bit chewy but didn't taste fishy at all. Actually a lot of fish tastes much less fishy raw.

That night we tried to watch dexter season 2 on DVD but the DVD in our pension room wasn't working. We called the owners but they said they had no idea how to work it so we were stuck. That would be unacceptable in America but not so much in Korea. Kind of like the military helicopters flying overhead throughout the day. In America I don't see anyone putting up with that but in Korea it's just the way it is.

Anyway, we went to bed before 9:00 PM and slept almost 11 hours. Must be the country air. The next day we met up with Nasra (after taking one of our dogs to the vet). She showed us a great resort where we would love to stay one day called Sol Beach. We checked out their cafe and walked around a bit. We even got our feet wet on the beach and after rinsing them off we dried them with air pressure guns like they have at ski resorts.

We went to a tofu / seafood soup restaurant for lunch where we met up with one of Nasra's friends. Then we went to Seoraksan, one of the more famous mountains in Korea for a cable car ride, some hiking, and a little picnic.

On the mountain we met a Japanese woman backpacking around Korea alone so we invited her to spend some time with us and had dinner plus went to a singing room (we do our karaoke in private little rooms in Korea).

Now it's day 3. We plan on driving to the DMZ after we finish moving into our new room (the old one was really weird so remind me to tell you about it sometime) and then meeting up with Nasra in the evening.

Posted by James Trotta at September 4, 2009 8:49 AM