Just got back from a 3 day trip to Songnisan National Park. It was an awesome trip, and if you're in Korea and you enjoy hiking you should really make it a priority to get there. If you're in Seoul you can take a direct bus from Nambu bus terminal, but the schedule is a bit inconvenient so we took a bus from EBT to Cheongu, then a different bus from Cheongu to the park entrance. Took a little over 3 hours, cost about 12,500 won each way. We left a little later than we had planned, so Saturday was pretty much a bust in terms of hiking. We tried, but there were a ton of park employees at the gate telling us it was closed. Instead, we walked around the town, found a place to sleep, dumped our bags, and went back out to explore the town a bit. Had some Dong Dong Ju and seafood pajean for a snack, then walked around some more until stopping for dinner. A few pics of the town, as well as the truck that was driving around selling all sorts of goodies, including dog meat: We found a cute, cheap minbak to stay in. No beds, so we slept on padded mats (called yohs, and quite common in Korea) that the minbak provided. The place seemed to be run by one lady, and she was super friendly and the whole place was spotless.

After being denied access to the park, we wandered around town some more and spent some time making fun of the sculptures in the sculpture garden outside of the campground. Dinner the first night was awesome! I unfortunately can't remember the name of the dish we had, but it was some sort of mushroom stew with all sorts of mountain vegetables, and of course the usual side dishes, rice, and beer. It was a family run place, and the Korean ajumma who runs the place actually goes into the mountains herself and gathers the mushrooms and veggies. We ate soooo much!

After dinner we wandered a bit more, then headed back to the minbak to see if there was anything in English on the TV. We found The Bourne Ultimatum. Total score!!!