Seoraksan

Spent the second day of the trip around Sokcho. After we checked out in the morning from the hotel, we went to a nearby place for breakfast. I swear anything that's warm and hot with soup can just wake anyone up, since I'm not much of a coffee person. Anyhoo, the first attraction of the place was Mt Seorak! It's one of the more famous mountains with temples and a humongous Buddha statue. 

Had our breakfast at this restaurant called 설학산회관, and the food was pretty alright, usual Korean dishes. Really loved the fried egg side dish that came along though. One thing that I really like about Korea is the unlimited (if you're thick-skinned enough) side dishes that you can ask for. So if you really like that particular side dish, you can keep getting it and eating more and more, free of charge! Whereas for the rest that you don't really like, either don't ask for it, or don't take it at all because it contributes a lot to Korea's food wastage. (Incidentally, increasing more and more)

Spent the whole day walking, as per usual. I think I clocked almost twice the necessary amount of 10,000 steps a day just in that day, since we climbed the mountain as well. It was a beautiful place, and as usual I was snapping away. It seemed like we were a tourist group, but from all sorts of different countries all together. It was quite an extraordinary sight. 

As a tourist attraction, you can't expect everyone to be that fit and hike up, do you? As such! They provide a service, and also a great way to make money. Great huh? Of course there would be cable car services. Everyone wants to see the beautiful sights, but skip the tough part of climbing all the way up to the top. 

The cable car queue was pretty long at the time so we went ahead to look at the temples and the huge Buddha statue first. The place was very serene, very natural and quiet even with a lot of human interaction and urbanization, it was still a place that you could feel calm at. The greenery, the nature, and of course, the tourists. I, on the other hand, just continued snapping away on my camera. Hope the pictures appeal to you!

I kinda like taking people taking selfies; just candid

Don't the mountains just look amazing?

After we got out of the cable car, we had to walk around 10 minutes up to mountain to come to this beautiful terrain area that was simply breathtaking. Well, you could continue to go up higher to the summit but it was really steep and I didn't want to risk injuring my camera or myself. So I just stayed where it was a little flatter and took photos!

And now... for some model shots!

Of course there's time for selfies!

Then it was time to go down... back down the same way we came; via cable car.

Selfie :D

After we headed down, we continued on to the temples across the other side. Apparently they're really old, as most temples usually are, and have been preserved. One thing about bigger countries and Singapore, is that you get to see more of history and nature in other countries because of the space, whereas almost everything in Singapore is surrounded by urbanized buildings, skyscrapers and the works.