Little red company hats. MT (Membership Training) is a peculiar Korean tradition. Every year (sometimes more than once a year), employees of the same company, students of the same school, members of the same club go out of their home towns to motels in mountains or on the coast for a big party where rivers of soju and tons of barbecued meat are consume. The idea behind this strange custom is to have people create strong bonds and a sense of loyalty to whatever it is they belong to. On Soyo, there was one such group, all wearing red baseball hats and numbers tied to the fronts of theri bodies. They blended in nicely with the red lanterns strung along the road.  

The Seven on Soyosan,April 22nd

From left: the Kangs, me, Georges, Paul, Shannon, Sohee
For more Soyo pix click on the link:
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Soyosan is one of my favourite mountains in Korea. I went there for the first time with Chang-dae and Clare on a bitterlly cold winter day. Although freezing we reallly liked being in the fresh air enjoing the crunching of snow and ice under our crampons. Then I went there alone a few times in the spring and fall. It's easy to reach from Uijeongbu train station, a half hour ride on a usually packed train.
Yesterday there were seven of us: Georges who's back from Lebanon, the Kang siblings, Sohee, a new guy Paul from N. Zealand and me. We left the train station at 9:20 and started our hike at about 10:30, covering the 9km hike in about 4,5 hours, including the half hour for lunch and numerous photo session breaks.
Soyo offers a good workout. First one has to go up to the ridge conquering a very steep incline. From then on it's walking along the ridge that dips and rises sharply up and down. The best kind of the interval workout you can imagine. Just when your heart rate goes down a bit you raise again by having to climb.

No matter, Soyo is enchanting, covered in azaleas and cherry blossoms, new greens, and wild flowers. We even spotted a chipmunk, which is no small feat in Korea where wild life practically does not exist.
After the hike, CD not being present, we didn't opt for the grubbiest restaurant, but the one with a nice view of cherry blossoms. The mushroom soup and seafood omelette were great, and dong dong ju was not bad either.
Being a bit tipsy it wasn't easy to ride back on a packed train, but thankfully it didn't last long.
I went straight home and watched a silliest Korean movie ever. I can't tell you what it was about, except that it had some good-looking people whose only goal was to trick one another in a seduction game.

Cherry blossoms

What other image represents this part of the world better than cherry blossom? They are extraordinarily pretty.

Blue and white and has nothing to do with the navy.  

Pretty in pink, a lantern against the cherry blossoms 

Swaying in the breeze, a red lotus lantern.  

Huge gold ones...  

Green and pink...  

The waterfall at Jajaeam framed in Azalea blossoms.  

The Cave guardian. Inside the cave there are a thousand Buddha statuettes.  

A Far-East Asian image: cherry blossoms and curved roofs. This actually is just a guard post building at the entrance to the park on Soyosan.  

In honour of Buddha's BIrthday, millions of lotus lanterns are hung all over Korea, in buddhist temples, lining the streets, swaying off tree branches. Here, they serve as a canopy at Jajaeam, a little hermitage on Soyo, where a high priest retreated to repent for the sin of having an affair with a princess.  

Me and my 'patriotic' T-shirt (the Korean soccer player Jung Hwan Ahn).  

An Asian image: a gnarly pine tree, delicate azaleas and the horizon obscured by the mist.  

Camp Casey is one of the largest U.S. military bases in South Korea and the one closest to North Korea. From the ridge of Soyo, one can observe the daily life of a military camp below. Here, through a curtain of azaleas. 

Spring is the the time when all over Korea royal azaleas explode in their vivid pink, white or red blossoms. Soyosan is an enchanting place at this time of the year (as it is in the fall when Japanese maple set the mountain slopes ablaze)  

Like a monet painting, except that this is real and in the middle of the woods.  

Royal azalea and pine needles obscure the view.  

Holding on to dear life: a bunch of violets growing out of a rock.  

Seein chipmunks in Canada is no big deal - they are everywhere. In Korea, however, it's nothing short of a sensation. This fellow seems to be posing prettily for us.  

Althouhg in the rest of Seoul, cherry blossoms have been blown off the branches leaving space for delicate green leaves to grow, on Soyosan, they are still very present 

AT the entrance to the park, some cute kiddies where playing by the pond.