Glamping - Some Scenic Views of Ulsan

At the end of our beginner Korean class, our teacher introduced to us and offered us the opportunity to go on a free glamping trip! The office of foreign relations (or something like that) at City Hall planned and paid for a trip for everyone that had taken the class (and our foreigner friends) to go on a bus tour of Ulsan to see a few of the "12 Scenic Views of Ulsan" and to spend overnight glamping (glamorous camping). They provided transportation, food, lodging and even blankets, and it was all 100% free. The only thing we had to bring ourselves was clothes and alcohol.


We left on Saturday at noon and our first stop was the bamboo forest located to the west of the city on the north side of the river. I was super glad to be able to come here because it had been on my list of things to see for a while at that point.













After the bamboo forest, we went to see "Standing Rock", there wasn't as much to do here because there wasn't trails to walk around in like there was in the forest. So we just hopped off the bus, took pictures for a few minutes, and then we were back on our way. The stop after this was suppose to be a small hike to a waterfall at the base of Sinbul Mountain, but apparently there was some sort of construction going on that disallowed us from doing the hike so we had to go straight to the glamping resort from here.



These are the giant and awesome tents that we got to stay in. Each one slept 4-5, had a large bed, a small cot, and a heater.





That night, we had a giant fire in this pit and were able to all stand around drinking and singing Christmas songs late into the night. Shane, Jaryt, Andrew, Matt, one of the Korean volunteers and I were the l were the last ones to go to bed at around 3:30 in the morning.


For dinner, there was UNLIMITED food (but we didn't need to ask for more than they gave us). It was Korean BBQ without a fan to suck in all the smoke and the room got SOOO smokey. Everything was delicious, but our eyes were watering and lungs burning from the smoke while we were cooking it.



The next day, our first stop was Ulsan's Petroglyph Museum. Here we got to see all sorts of wall carvings from ancient times in Korea. This museum is the only one of it's kind in all of Korea.






Outside the museum, we took a little hike down to a gorge where we got to see real like carvings on a wall in the distance (we got to look through binoculars). We also go to see the mountain that looks like a turtle. It has a shrine atop its "head" that was built in respect to a Korean leader that was banished for having different views and he wrote a very famous poem in his banishment or something.



After the museum, we headed back towards the city, but got to stop for a lunch of bulgogi and spicy tofu soup on the way. After lunch we went to our final stop of the trip: the Ulsan Sports Complex. Here is where I saw my first soccer game at Munsu stadium. This complex is where they help the Fifa World Cup in 2002. It's located in Mugeo-dong (where the University is), very close to Andrew's house, so we decided to leave from here rather than being driven back to city hall and having to find our way home from there.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Korean Baseball Games

Image
Now that spring is here, one of the fantastic must-have experiences in Korea was a baseball game. And, wow, are they exciting! It's nothing like baseball games I've been to in America. First off, you're allowed to bring in whatever kind of beer and food you want - no having to settle for gross and ridiculously overpriced beer! Secondly is the ambiance. Each side has one of these stages with several dancers and an announcer. The home team gets to advertise theirs on the big screen, but each team is equally loud. They cheer and sing and dance through almost the ENTIRE game. When your team is up to bat, the whole crowd (on that side that is rooting for them) stands and chants, sings and does hand motions all lead by the announcer and the dancers. In this particular game our team, the LG Twins, was losing by quite a bit. But even in the last inning, no one failed to cheer their hearts out at the top of their lungs. If anything, they cheered LOUDER because we were l
Read more

A Korean Wedding

Image
Two weeks before the event itself, the landlord of my apartment (whom I know very well and am friendly with) messaged me to invite my neighbor and I to his son's wedding! This surprising method of invitation was the first of many things I would learn about Korean weddings. Firstly, there are 2 types of weddings: "traditional" and "western". Traditional weddings are extremely rare, barely anyone opts to have them anymore, but many of its little practices still show through in the Korean interpretation of the "western" wedding. This is the wedding hall in which I attended the wedding. As you can see, it's very showy. The center aisle and the front area is actually a stage. These giant halls are rented for just the ceremony. A business or building that runs them usually has several and on a given day (especially Saturdays), there are usually many weddings going on at the same time, and 3-4 lined up in the same event hall for the same day, get
Read more

Seoul Trick Eye Museum

Image
Our last day in Seoul for the long May weekend, we went to a couple places. The first, located in Hongdae, was the Trick Eye Museum. It's an amazingly fun place set up purely to take funny and awesome photographs due to the optical illusions painted in the space. Each work is accompanied by instructions and an example photo to show you how to take the best picture illusion. Here are some of the ones we took that worked out the best.   In addition to our purchase of a ticket to the Trick Eye Museum, we received a complementary admission to the ice museum next door. This place was smaller, but it was fun, too. It was SO COLD inside though (obviously it needed to be).
Read more