What do snow, 850 stairs, and 200 naked Korean men have in common?

The answer is: all things I encountered this weekend. I would like to explain the 200 naked Korean men first but that would be going out of order. So let me start from the beginning.

The snow is easy to explain. I woke up Saturday morning early and started my day the best way possible: getting to talk to my wife on Skype. Once we said our goodmornings/goodnights, I threw on stuff and headed out the door to find that it was and had been snowing. The mountain behind the camp was covered in a fresh layer of powder. While this may be great for a day out of snowboarding, it's not so great for a day of walking around and exploring. Oh well, wasn't gonna let a little snow stop me.


I set out to find a disc golf course that I had found online. This was located by the World Cup Stadium that I had previously visited. It turns out that there is a whole lot of stuff to do around that place. I know this because I have my travel guide book to Korea told me so. The Korean travel book also is what led me to my encounter with 200 naked Korean guys, but I will get to that soon enough. Anyways, it turns out that the particular disc golf I was looking for was on the top of what I consider to be a mountain. Needless to say, it was a bit of a haul. On the way up, in addition to snow the wind started blowing. This was no light breeze either. It was blowing hard enough to make is slightly difficult to walk into at times. After walking for 45 minutes I finally reached the top and found the course. At this point the wind was blowing so hard that I couldn't even play. So I turned around and back down the mountain I went.

At the bottom of the mountain I noticed something I hadn't seen on the way up: stairs. Not just a couple stairs but hundreds of stairs that went up the other side of a mountain. I don't know about you, but if I see a set of steps like this the next logical thought that goes through my mind is, "I gotta see whats at the top." So up I went. And up. And up. And up some more. The total count once I reached the top: 425. Between the steps themselves and the wind trying to blow me off the steps, I was beat. The view at the top was worth it though. I got an amazing view of the Han river and the metropolitan Seoul area. As the old saying goes, "What goes up, must come down." Back down the stairs I went. All 425 of them, for a grand total of 850 stairs.

By this time I was freezing and wore out. I headed back to the World Cup Stadium to go into what my travel book said was a hot spring fed public bath house. This is where the 200 naked Korean men come into the story. There is a public area in this place where you can walk around and enjoy some different amenities such as foot massages or just relaxing. When you are in this area you wear what looks like a short sleeved prison jump suit that they give you when you go in. When you go back to the locker room though, that is where the hot spring fed pools are. There is no clothing allowed in this area. So I said screw it, threw off the clothes, and went in to enjoy the spring fed pools. If you truly want to feel out of place somewhere, walk into an area such as this and be the only naked American guy standing there. You would have thought I had an arm growing out of my head. Anyways, I just ignored the looks and hopped into one of the pools. Freakin awesome! Talk about muscle aches just melting away. After I couldn't stand that any more I went into the sauna room. This was not a typical sauna room. This was a modified pizza oven for people. I lasted about 3 minutes in there before I was certain my skin was melting. I went from there into the cold room which was basically a walk in freezer. A little bit of a shock to the system but it felt good after all the heat. Then I repeated the cycle a couple more time. The tour guide book said that doing this will leave a person with a feeling of euphoria. I thought it was B.S. but man I tell you I felt amazing afterwards.

So that pretty much concludes my weekend out. I spent the rest of my next day getting things ready for work and all that boring stuff. I will include some random photos of stuff I saw along the way. So, until next time...