Do I have a story to tell! I just got back from Korea's Version of Thanksgiving which is called Chuseok, the break started Wednesday September 14th so we had a very long weekend and nothing to do. Our original plan was to go to Cheju Island which is THE Vacation spot in Korea, however trying to book our flights a week before the holiday may not have been the best idea and we were not able to find anything.
So my German friend and I decided to go to Sokcho, he didn't want to be bored and I wanted to catch Pokemon. If you don't know, Sokcho is a remote town on the North East Coast of South Korea that makes its money from trading and tourism, and since Pokemon Go uses Google Maps, finding pokemon around Korea is next to impossible. However, thanks to a glitch that one town in Korea is home to Pokemon, and more specifically I was on a mission to find Farfetch'd a region exclusive Pokemon that can only be found in Asia!
Although, it wasn't as cut and dry as we had hoped it too be, we were having alot of trouble finding a reasonable priced car rental office, most vehicles had been rented out and the only vehicles available were sports cars and like I said in the post before, I'm not exactly rolling in dead presidents. So I all but gave up hope in being able to go to Sokcho and was getting ready to find a new anime to binge watch for the duration of the holiday break. Than one of the KUBA (Korea University Buddy Assistants) came thru clutch and helped us book a reservation for abut $280 from Wednesday to Sunday!
It was as if God opened the clouds and granted me destiny to go to Sokcho! Our vehicle was the cutest like Kia, basically a mini Kia Soul, we deemed it worthy the name, The Rice Cooker. It was Wednesday morning and we didn't have to check into our hotel until 2pm so we decided to take our time going from Seoul to Sokcho (about a 4 hour drive straight thru). The rental place gave us a GPS for Free! I wasn't sure why at first but was a catch though, the navigation system was in Korean, guess what language I don't speak or read? You guessed it, Korean. I guess the rental place felt bad we were going to be struggling with it so they cut us a break.
We made our way North from Seoul and found little roads to travel on that had nice views, eventually pulling over sometimes to ask for directions or having someone put in an address on the GPS for us. We found an adorable park that had dinosaur type jungle gym that was next to a river, we decided to follow the river on and see where it took us.
If you're from Georgia than chances are you've been tubing down Helen river before, if you don't know what that it's basically a slow streaming river that a bunch of people like to float down in. Well, we followed the river and found something like that...but better...way better. Unfortunately, it seems more popular during the wet season, so there was almost no one in the river, but we found a base deep enough to swim in and took a splash in.
From there, we determined it was about time to head to Sokcho (I was ready to catch pokemon). However, there was no one around to help us input directions into the GPS so as passenger seat it was my job to figure it out. After 20 minutes of fiddling around with the contraption I figured it out! Writing in Korean isn't hard at all when you figure out the letter combination order that words are spelled in, from there it was just a matter of cross referencing the map on hand with the spelling on the GPS.
We got to our Motel and checked in. SO this motel...I found it on a travel advisor site and it was $29 a night, we weren't trying to pay alot and 2 and half stars is fine with me. However, this motel is a couples motel the bed was a round firm mattress and some rooms came with a two way mirror, meaning when you turned on the light in the bathroom, the person on the outside of the bathroom in the room can see everything going on in the bathroom. Thankfully we didn't get that room, but we did have to get a round mattress, that's clearly meant for cuddling but when you're two straight guys you take the Loss and learn to sleep with half your body hanging out the side.
Back to the story so we get there on Wednesday evening, and decide we have the energy to check out the town a bit and grab dinner. We walk around the port, see beautiful sights (i've never seen the pacific Ocean before), and more importantly I'm searching for Farfetch'd!
The Lake where Sokcho is at has a legend to it. In summary there were two dragons, both with the ability to fly, however one day a jealous serpent tricked one of the dragons and stole its ability to fly. The other dragon who was not aware of what had happened to its friend, ascended into heaven. The dragon who could not fly wept and filled the land with a lake of tears so too did the dragon that ascended into heaven, because he could go back to be with his friend. The people of the village prayed to God to make a way for the two dragons to be together again, God agreed but only on one condition, that the people light the lake everyday for all eternity. And so they did, the people lit the lake with lanterns, torches, and to this day lamps, lights, etc. and God made the path so the Dragon in Heaven could descend down to be with his friend so they could be together again, and since that day the town of Sokcho has been prosperous!
Cute right?!
For dinner we wanted to try something new so we go to a restaurant that serves you basically raw, iced fish. It was...an experience. My stomach didn't know what to make of the food I was feeding it, but thankfully he decided to take what he could get and we had no incidents.
The next day, my German Friend wanted to venture farther up North to check out the beaches, and I wanted to catch Pokemon and look around Sokcho. So we part ways in the morning, and I begin my adventure.
I was having a great amount of luck with Pokemon! I was catching alot of uncommon ones that I needed to either evolve or haven't caught before and my number of Pokemon registered to my Pokedex jumped from 101 to 109 in a day!...but no farfetch'd. Eventually came the time, when my friend and I were to meet up.
We went to Sokcho Tower, got a good look of the city and I showed him around the parts I ventured too during my Pokemon Hunting which consisted of a local beach, lighthouse, Observation Tower, and Fish Market! We got dinner at an expensive Steak place but in hindsight we should have seen that coming trying to buy steak in a Seafood town, but it was delicious nonetheless.
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