130502 Hallasan

so... i'm back to the last trial of the trip - the hallasan T_T

turns out that contrary to what ms xm told me that we'll just be circling the base, i only realised halfway that the base seems to be a neverending slope upwards.

we took a bus to the base, then realised that even the path to the entrance was a torturous slope upwards, so we flagged for someone to save us. eventually a korean did stop and brought us up. YAY! we took it with 2 other chinese girls, and then at the entrance we started the climb.

the beginning was slightly better compared to the other stuff i've climbed since it felt like a walk in the park, but there was still rocky pathways that made our steps difficult. still, after about 5 hours of walking, we could finally see that we're on top somewhere.

and this is the view from the top, where unlike other mountains, it's a whole new leveled land up there!!! pretty fascinating!

but of course to get through it there's some more rocky pathways...

and once you get to the leveled lands, there's another point upwards to climb to see the view...

yep it was pretty windy. it's confusing cos it gets hot when you climb but when you stop the wind makes it cold.

and then at the middle, you can find a canteen...

there's a time table pasted inside for the last buses going off.

you wish there's proper food but they only sell 1 kind of cup noodles. and you have to bring the trash all the way down, not leave it there. GRAH.

still, a hot ramen after a long climb is actually pretty rewarding. we even added an egg to it cos we bought one at the interchange before we took the bus here. lol.

and i was all too glad to see the toilet since i needed a pee after 5hrs of walking.

but the toilet is basically holes in the ground, and you can see stacks of faeces piling your way. and there's no water or tissues!!!! thank goodness xm brought wet tissues!!!

after a short rest, we began our climb downhill. not before we stop at another spot where you could have a top view. not like there's any difference where you view from, but since i'm not gonna come back again, might as well see it all.

oh and we actually saw a lot of group of boys climbing together and one of them tried to talk to us in japanese. lol.

the path down was via another way, and it was chuck FULL OF ROCKS.

and it most definitely didn't help when i was walking with shoes like this. had to tie the sole together using its own shoelace. oh well, makes the adventure more interesting eh?

and we finally reached the bottom after another 3-4hours! YAY!

the sign says hallasan loves you guys. ya right.

and one final photo with Mountain Almighty before we go back to mortal lands.

we actually boarded a company bus to bring us down cos we have no idea where to board our bus at. the uncle was nice enough to drive us after we vigorously waved and chased it. and most fortunately the bus leads us back to our interchange! 

we had dinner at a porridge place near the interchange to reward ourselves for the day. it was about 7+ then. porridge is a high class meal here, it's not cheap at all!

organic mushroom with abalone porridge for xm. i remembered it costs almost 18k to eat this thing. (and trust me it's not worth it)

mine with crab porridge at half the price of xm's. pretty nice!

and then we headed back to our hostel. it's not as nice as all the other places we've been to, and the breakfast is pretty miserable (just toast and jam, and nothing else!!!). but for a cheap price... that's what you get.

but it was our last day here so we checked out the night markets and bought lots of jeju stuff back (hallabongs and hallbong makgolli, sweets etc)