This Korean City Has Everything 🇰🇷 Beaches, Mountains & Fresh Seafood!

Welcome to Seoraksan National Park. That's crazy. That is crazy. It was so much clearer this morning when the sun came out but this is still very beautiful. I'm just glad it's not super cold because it was super cold where we were staying in Seokcho which is like a northeastern coastal city about 20 minutes from here. I was shivering like it was so cold but now this is about what 8 to 10 degrees? Yeah. Not too bad. How are you feeling today? I'm feeling good. I'm just glad to be outside. Klaus spent the whole day yesterday in bed because she got bad food poisoning. You were vomiting. Starting from 3 a.m I woke up to vomit and then I just I was so sore. My whole body was aching. I was kind of disappointed because we had a lot planned for Seoraksan, for Seokcho, for this area but I'm just glad that one full day in bed kind of helped me like pass that food poisoning. That's part of traveling you know. Our plans always change when something like that happens. Got the ticket? I got our boarding pass so it is 16,000 won per person. Round trip. Yeah round trip two of us 32,000. That's not bad. Not bad at all and no lineup which is good. Whoa so that's where we're going. There are two cable cars running every 10 to 15 minutes. And each cable car carries about 50 people so yeah. That's why it's moving pretty quick. But it's only about five minutes right to get to the top. And the peak up at the top is 700 meters so it's not like the highest peak of this mountain range. But we do get to hike a little bit more when we get up though. Welcome on board the Seoraks cable car. This cable car is now going to depart from Seoraksan and it takes about four minutes to arrive. So much snow. The peaks are pretty epic. Look at that one. That's incredible. It's much clearer up here actually. You know what Seoraksan means? No. So Seo is actually snow. Ak is a rocky mountain. So I think that's what it means like a snowy rocky mountain. That's exactly what it looks like. Even though the cable car was short, five minutes. But it was one of the nicest cable cars we have taken. Yeah that was really nice. Because it's so steep and we're surrounded by these rocky mountains. And are these cherry blossoms? Can you imagine when the season this would be all pink? This really isn't like the best time to be here as in like if you come in autumn it is supposed to be magical. But it's also probably like 10 times the amount of people. But we haven't really experienced kind of like a winter early spring temperature. So this is nice. It's fresh. Look at this. Instead of cutting the tree, they just build the railing around it. In Thailand that tree would be cut down. So there are a couple things you can do once you're up here. So first we're going to walk up this beautiful path. I think there is a viewpoint and it's only about 15 minute walk up. And then there's also a temple where we can go check out if you walk down from the cable car station. And of course there's the observatory deck on top of the cable car station too. So there's not like too much to do up here. But probably enough to spend about an hour. And then once we go down then we'll also visit the temple before. We leave as well because that one is a very special temple. And by then we'll be hungry. Yes. Okay I gotta watch this path. Look at what it looks like. The path ends here. Now we have to go up the rocks. That's so beautiful though. This honestly feels like an adult playground right now. Or kids too. Everyone's like sliding down the hill. On the snow. Or walking very careful on the snow. But everyone's having fun. Not many tourists to be honest. This part is really slippery. Help me. I gotcha. Step on the rock. Did you see back there? The lady grabbed onto me. I was like oh my god. How are we gonna make it up there? Dig with your heel first and pull. Well this is the highest we can go. And there's no one here. Should we eat our bread? Yeah I'm hungry. I didn't eat anything yesterday really. Okay let's find a place to sit. But all I brought was sliced bread. So epic. Well this was a nice addition to our trip this time to Korea. I wasn't expecting this much snow. And we honestly haven't really seen this much snow. In a long time. Since what? Eight years ago? Yeah. Since leaving Canada. You enjoying the walnut bread? It's actually very delicious. It's just a plain walnut bread but I'm so hungry. I have no appetite still so this is the yummiest thing right now. Are we gonna go to the fish market after? Yeah it's a big market with a lot of different things. Can you eat? I don't know you might have to eat most of that. It's okay I don't mind that. Those guys probably hike up here. I guess if you don't take the cable car basically it's free. The park you can walk down and do lots of different hikes. Must be so rewarding. I feel really proud of ourselves already to get up here. Yesterday I didn't think I would be up here. That's how you do it. Real quick. Big thanks to our longtime partner Squarespace for supporting our adventures everywhere we go. Squarespace is an all-in-one platform where you can easily build a website for your blog or business and you can save a lot of time by clicking their solutions tab and start with one of their award-winning templates. And with their design intelligence feature you can use AI to help personalize your site with tailored designs and even assist with copywriting. Plus they have tons of helpful resources in their help center to help guide and inspire you along the way. Just head over to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com slash floor and note to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Now let's get back to the video. So we've now made it to the Seokcho fish market. This is one of the most traditional markets in this area and it's a really big place as well. So I think there's like a basement where you can get live seafood kind of picked and cooked and then you also have lots of street food and produce and also shopping as well. Like basically it has everything so we'll explore a little bit and find something to because we are hungry. I want to eat snow crabs. It's very popular here. It is. Everywhere we go we see big tanks full of snow crabs. Snow crab and king crab because apparently this area, we're close to the east sea, has a lot of crabs. But we can't afford king crabs though because they're usually very expensive. Really? Yeah. Oh see look. These are snow crabs. Yeah. You see the legs are longer and skinnier. Yeah. These are king crabs. Look at the size of the leg. That looks scary. Yeah. That looks super meaty. And he's very spiky too. Wow. Red crab roll. You know how we pay, what was it? Like... $45. $50 in Canada for a lobster roll. You can get a crab roll for $13,000. And twice the size. This is definitely seafood heaven. It smells so good. There's so many varieties of seafood here. Squid, crab, fish, prawns, lobsters, clams, mussels. You have to find crabs. This is really clean for a fish market, for a seafood market. And as you said it doesn't smell like seafood market. See they have crabs here. But there's no like seating. Yeah there's seating over there. Ah. So I guess you choose one and then they will steam it for you and we can eat there. Wow. The king crab really looks much bigger, huh? Should we choose one? Yeah. Yeah? Wow. This is snow crab? Yeah. And how much would this be? $1.44. Oh $140. That's about $140 Canadian. About $100 US dollars. Is that too much for you? That is too much. What about this one? What kind of crab is this then? If this is not... Oh. Oh this one much cheaper. Oh. Is that what you want? Yeah. You get two? Okay. Yeah? Okay. So he just put the crabs in here. Yeah. And then they're just steaming in here. Oh okay. Okay. Okay and then we sit over there. This is awesome. It can't get any fresher than this. And we can have your squid here too. Can we? I think so. I don't think they're mine. I can ask. These are very different side dishes. Yeah. I've never seen this. Look at this. It's like corn salad. Cocktail fruit. Garlic. Pickled garlic. Seaweed. Prawns and steamed pumpkins. Yeah. That's so different. But this is very famous here in Seokchon. Stuffed squid. So they say it's stuffed with vegetables and glass noodles. Some places put meat also but I'm not sure if this one has meat or not. Very nice. This is really good. I like this one a lot. The glass noodles are a bit chewy. It gives it a good texture. Very nice. Thank you. This is beautiful. Yeah, and they opened it already for us. Yeah, they cut everything. The hard part has been done. I'm gonna try the leg. Yeah. As is. I'm not gonna dip in any sauce. Oh, the meat is quite flaky than the crab that we're used to. Very flaky. It looks like imitation crab meat. Yeah, totally. Is this sweet? It's so sweet and fresh. And honestly, you don't need any sauce. But I do want to try the sauce though. This one here. Gochujang? I think it's called cho gochujang. So it is like a vinegary version of gochujang. So it's like spicy and tangy. Are you sure you don't want this? Okay, I'll take that. Wow, look at that. I gotta say crab is my favorite seafood. Do you want to have some sauce on my plate? Oh, no. I thought two crabs gonna be too much. But I feel like I can easily finish this myself. My only thing is that we didn't bother bargaining for the price of the crab. We just agreed to the price he presented. I wonder if bargaining is part of the culture here in Korea when it comes to seafood. But I do see prices displayed everywhere though here. Yeah, we just don't know what the signs say because it's all in Korean. I mean, we could have googled translate. I feel like maybe it's pretty standard. Final bite. I never had this much crab meat in one bite before. That's incredible. That was so delicious. And all that is 70,000 won, which is about 46 US dollars. For two giant snow crabs. And the price he quoted us included all those little side dishes, water. And it was just like a nice setting to eat fresh seafood. Now let's go get some dessert. Some snacks. We got it. The line was so long. It was pretty quick though because one of the steam cake has, I don't know, eight pieces. So the line goes really quick. But then also one person could be buying like... Five or ten. Yeah. This is crazy. Let's try it. It's so hot. One piece is humongous. This was 5,000 won. Oh my gosh. Feel how hot it is. It's the perfect hand warmer right now. And it's heavy. It's steaming hot. Look at that. This is not the same one we try in Seoul, right? No. So this one is actually called makgeolli bread or rice wine bread. Or in Korean, they call it soppang. So it's a fermented rice wine mixed with rice flour to make this bread. Then they top it with some beans. Ready? Three, two, one. It's good. It does have a little bit of that rice wine flavor to it. But because they steam it, so all the alcohol is gone. Wow. You just have that nice fermented aroma. A little bit fermented aroma. Yeah, the aftertaste. This is a perfect, perfect snack. Look how hot this is. Did you see? There are two other stalls selling the same thing but completely empty. But there must be a reason, right? Look, the Veloster. Our old car back in Calgary. This was your first ever car. Yeah, but mine was in white. Yeah, in what, 2013? Yeah. Your baby. This one is not a turbo though. No. The one we had was a turbo. It pretty much looks the same after so many years. Yeah. The design hasn't changed much. This is probably an old model too. But still looks good, eh? Yeah. Eventually, when we went back to sell it, after what? Five years of moving to Thailand, we went back to sell it and there was like squirrels living in it in the front. We only got $5,000 back. Yeah. It was so sad. We bought it cash too. Yeah. $36,000, used it for less than five years and sold it for $5,000. The key is we should have sold it earlier. Yeah. We let it go too long because we were like, we're just moving to Thailand for a year, so we might as well keep the car. And then one year went by, two year, three year, five years later, the price just dropped so much and there was a lot to fix. We learned our lesson. Yeah. Now we just buy old cars. Really old car. So we are now back near where we're staying. So this is Dung Day Beach in Sokcho. We are actually staying in that apartment, the one that says Summit Bay over there. So we booked an urban stay, which is a service apartment. We stayed in one of those when we were in Busan and we loved it. So we thought we would stay at an urban stay again because they have like washing machines, dryers, a little kitchenette, all the amenities you need. It was, it's really good. The room is quite nice. But I liked the amenities and we could catch up on laundry because after a couple days of grilling and eating, you know, like the food, we, our clothes were starting to smell like barbecue. So it's good we could do laundry here. And now we wanted to check out the beach over here. A really chilly beach walk. And it's empty. It's a beautiful beach. It is. But how silly of me before getting here. I was like, oh, I can't wait to jump in the ocean. Not knowing that it's going to be freezing. And also you cannot swim in this water. Why? Because there are great white sharks. No. Yeah. There's a sign over there, a warning sign saying great white sharks. But this is like a summer beach destination for people. Really? Yeah. Why would there be a sign there then? I guess potentially there is because it's like part of the Pacific Ocean. Oh my goodness. Give myself a nice seat. This is a very beautiful city. You have ocean in the front. Beautiful beaches. And we're surrounded by mountains. And you have a lot of good food choices, fresh seafood. Yeah. I think we did come a bit early in the season. Like it's a bit too cold to do some of the things. Maybe like after April, mid-April, May, especially towards the summer. I think it would be so beautiful to spend a couple days here. Do some hiking in the national park. You can enjoy the beach when it's warmer. Actually in the morning when the sun came out, you see a lot of local people picnicking on the beach. Oh really? Running along the coastline here. So there's one thing good about coming during a low season is it's pretty empty. But I would like to experience this when it's slightly warmer. But I'm glad we came here though. Yeah, I am glad we came here too. So if you come to Seoul and you have a few days to spare, definitely make your way here to Seokcho. It's an easy drive, a beautiful drive. And honestly, if you don't drive, you could also take the bus here. It's not as convenient because you also need a car to kind of get around here, I think. But it is still an option for you as well. It's just a beautiful getaway, another part of Korea that we didn't know before. And we're just so glad that we came here. So our next stop after Seokcho is actually Jeju Island. We're gonna meet my parents there to spend a couple days together because it's their first time in Jeju Island. So as always, thank you so much for watching. We will see you in Jeju. Bye-bye!