Hiking and Halloween

This past Saturday, Jen and Tim and I decided to take advantage of one of the last nice crisp fall weekends by hiking to the top of Bukhansan, a mountain on the northern edge of Seoul. Unbeknownst to us, we were about to live through an experience like no other on this earth.

Hiking in Korea could reasonably be called an extreme contact sport.

Jen and her matching bodyguards

The section seen above is the very very top of the mountain, the home stretch before the summit, reached only after spending the previous 2-3 hours hiking nearly 4 kilometers straight up. The metal cables strung along the side are there so you can literally pull yourself up the sides of steep smooth boulders, as "hiking" somehow ends up morphed into "rock climbing". Now, a hike like this in the US would probably see a decent number of visitors, but let's face it, they'd fall well into the 18-45 demographic and would probably be hardcore hikers to boot. And they definitely would not all be hiking at once. Not so in Korea!! People of all ages were hiking this beast, from 7-year-old kids getting pushed up from behind by their parents to the fittest 70-year-olds you've ever seen, every single one of them decked out in their finest hiking gear (an entire fashion industry unto itself in this country), many of them carrying the hiking version of ski poles. What felt like half of Seoul was up on this mountain with us, pushing and shoving as though we were on the freaking subway. Jen mused aloud at one point that deaths on this mountain can't possibly be an infrequent occurrence; it was just too easy to imagine someone flying over the edge of one of those sheer cliffs after one too many pushes from behind. Climbing Bukhansan was certainly no picnic....

...but the reward was totally worth it. The view of Seoul was absolutely incredible. Every time I catch a new bird's-eye angle of this city, I am blown away by its sheer size and presence, and seeing it from Bukhansan was no exception. We sat on one of the giant boulders on the summit with dozens of Koreans to eat our lunch and soak in the crazy vista in front of us. Jen's cell phone almost took a tumble down the side of a cliff but some awesome quick-thinking Korean man jumped up and chased after it before it slid off the mountainside. I couldn't stop looking around and thinking, 'This is what people in Korea do with their Saturday leisure time?!'  Trying to imagine people in the States doing something like this en masse is nearly impossible. The elderly in particular are in such good shape and high spirits here; they really serve as an example for many of us teachers as to just how we would like to spend our later years, as opposed to the fat, bitter, lazy, angry old people that we're primarily exposed to back home.

After the hike, we celebrated with the standard Korean post-hike tradition, a bottle of 막걸리, or makgeolli. Jen loves this cloudy white milky carbonated rice wine, but I think I like it less and less every time I try it.

Later that night were the annual Halloween celebrations and I was shocked at the sheer volume of people out on the streets. I have never seen more foreigners out at once in Seoul, it was easily the busiest night since I've been in Korea (besides maybe the World Cup). Chris and Tim and I stopped by Jules and Sydney's house party first and then headed out to join the chaos in the streets. I wanted to keep it cheap and easy this year (not that I ever put much thought or effort into my costumes) so I decided that I was going to be Chris for Halloween. Chris is what some people would call a "hipster." Other people would say that his style is something different, not quite a hipster's style, but whatever it is, it's unique. I basically knew that if I dressed up as Chris, any one of our friends would immediately know who I was, and I wasn't wrong  :)  Just threw on one of Chris' outfits and I was on my way! Even though we spent the entire night running into and interacting with the biggest douchebags on the planet, the 3 of us managed to have a really good time and I have to say it was one of my better Halloweens. All told, a great weekend.

Mario, Luigi, Ninja Assassin, Chris as Peter Pan and Jules as Rufio, Sydney as Waldo (where??), me as Chris, and Tim and Leslie as white and black angels.