• It was warm & overcast • Heundeulbawi trail • Ulsanbawi trail • 873 meter summit

The rest of the pictures from that day can be seen here.

Some girls were hiking in shoes like these	Sitting on the trail
You can commemorate your hike to the top with a gold metal.	If a medal's too much, how about an Osama Bin Laden bandana?  I wonder how many they sell in a year.
View from the top	Is it Chip, or Dale?

But here I am! I feel like I am walking through movie sets. There are castles everywhere and even the sidewalks and cobblestone streets seem like something out of a Hepburn movie. Yesterday I looked at a flat in the building where Beethoven died. Everything is grandiose and sparkling.  The streets are filled with beautiful men with their arms around beautiful women who are wearing perfect beautiful fashion magazine clothes that they've bought in beautiful stores.  People are sitting underneath pristine statutes or in sidewalk cafes sipping wine or expresso and smoking cigarettes in a way that looks almost sexy.

Yesterday I saw a four year old in gucci sunglasses...and not the 200 baht ones like I got on
Khao San Road I can pretty well bet.

I thought this was pretty funny...  I remember a couple years ago, when Renee decided to adopt the phrase "man alive".  She wanted to consciously use it in her every day speech.  (i.e. "I went to the bank, but man alive, was the line long!")  Other than from her, I've probably heard the phrase less than ten times in my life.   So, it reminded me of her when I read it used in a blog by a reporter covering the Republican National Convention.  [Unconventional]

In addition to beer, leather couches and billiards, the "Loft" offers haircuts, manicures, massages, makeovers, waxing and mini-facials for the press all week. And, man alive, if you thought journalists loved cheesecake, just wait until you offer to wax their upper lips for free!

	They aren't this bad... I made them hold hand.  It was a re-enactment of something I've actually seen.

The first line of the Korean War monument said: From ancient times, Japan, the country across the sea, has invaded our country repeatedly whenever they had the chance.

We took a taxi to the base of the waterfall, and walked 15 minutes to the actual falls itself.  Along the way, there was an area with tons of rocks stacked on top of each other.  It was the biggest collection I've seen in Korea.  I'm sure there's a Korean name for this, but I don't know what it is.

After pictures at the waterfall, the three of us started walking down the mountain that would take us back to the area where there are "too many young people".  There are a lot of bars and restaurants in the area because they get a lot of university students who participate in MTs (membership training).  The training is just a weekend retreat for university students to bond and get really drunk together.

There's quite a few people in the late afternoon, but more were starting to come as the sun started to set.

Each person is holding a case of beer, that will be consumed that night.

The three of us go and get a drink and wait for the local bus to take us back downtown, where we're supposed to meet up with Glyn.   Before dinner, we decide to have a drink at Family Mart.  We walk around most of the dakalbi street/Myeong-dong/downtown area and can't find a single convenience store.  After about 20 minutes of searching, we finally found one in a relatively obscure area.  They didn't have any alcoholic beverages that I wanted, so instead, I bought a bottle of "Confidence."  Glyn then met us for dakalbi, minus Rafael, because she was sick.

I don't think Chuncheon dakalbi tastes "that much" better than other places I tried, but the spices were good and the duk was fresh and soft.  The dakalbi restaurant near Kwangdong University in Kangneung, is just as good, plus they have the seaweed soup I like, and free ice cream.  We stuffed ourselves, then made plans to go to the Kangwon University area for drinks.  Glyn had to go back to Rafael, who was at their hotel.  So the three of us went looking for a bar I heard about on Dave's ESL - Hard Rock.  The cartoon map we had didn't make the University area look too far from where we were, so we were going to walk it.  As we started our trek, we asked a Korean man on the street if we were going the right way.  He told us that the University was really far away, and that he'd give us a ride.  Far?  I think a Korean' s perspective of far is different from a Westerner's, but we decided to accept his offer.  It turns out, the University was  prety far away, and would have taken us a good 45 minutes to get there.  As he drops us off, we gratefully thank him, and make our way to Hard Rock.  The story's quite long already, but this is where it gets interesting. 

Buy The Way

We found out that the bar is only around the corner from where we were, so I suggested sitting down at the convenience store, "Buy The Way" and have some drinks first.  We all bought an alcoholic drink of some kind - drinking and relaxing as we people watched.  15 minutes into it, a guy at the next table gets up quickly to run over to his friend across the street.  I noticed that he drops his camera case and I scurry across the street to give it back to him.  He looks really grateful as I hand it back to him.  Later, he buys us 3 cans of Welches for the good deed.

We continue to drink and see a lot of commotion right in front of our table.  Some university guy is trying to run away as a lot of people are running after him, trying to cover him with flour (aka: antiquing).  We figure it's just his birthday and his friends are trying to have some fun with him.  We see him trying to run away, as he's now covered in flour and water.  The whole scene wasn't too much of a concern, until we see 5 or 6 guys surrounding him and kicking and stomping on him while he's on the ground trying to shield himself.  He makes his way up and starts running again as more people chase him and throw raw eggs at him!  At this point, I start to get concerned because I'm thinking, "Why would your friends do that to you?  Physically hurt you?  Maybe they're not his frineds"  Then I start thinking that maybe it's not his birthday, and a group of guys are just trying to beat him up.  The group passes by our table again, and Christa and I get up this time, following the crowd to see what's going on - with cameras in hand.  I only got one photo of the guy on the ground being kicked, because after seeing it up close, it felt wrong to take pictures of someone being hurt.  I started getting angry at the guys kicking this poor guy, but stayed back, because I didn't know what was going on and didn't want to get hurt myself.  Christa had also snapped some photos, and I remember somebody from the crowd, saying something about "waygooks" taking pictures.  I think that's the reason why they stopped. 

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