Last weekend we once again headed for the slopes of Korea for a weekend of snowboarding.

This time we went on an organised trip and went much further afield to one of Koreas top resorts, Phoenix park.

Phoenix park was, much bigger then Bears town and had ….. wait for it….. real snow!!! It even snowed while we were there!

We left Seoul early in the morning arrived at the resort around lunch time and boarded for the afternoon before being assigned to our rooms.

As soon as we arrived at the slopes we headed for the highest lift we could find: only to get to the top and realise we has a choice of a very busy green or a black run. For those of you not in the know green is beginner, blue beginner/intermediate, red intermediate/advanced and black for those who want to face imminent death! So the black it was! And on our first run of the day.

The black turned out to be a pretty good, challenging but not deaf defying, although I got the impression Kat and Em would rather have taken the green.

After spending the afternoon exploring the slopes we had a break, some dinner and checked into our room before returning to the slopes for night boarding.

We were assigned to a room with three Korean girls which was pretty cool because there was supposed to be eight to a room. Chatting to them we found at that they were all English teachers who had been working at the same school but had recently resigned because their boss was “crazy” – something we could all relate to!

Arriving at the room we opened the door to the room to find a massive empty space – there weren’t any beds! It was a traditional Korean style Ondol room, which means  you sleep on a mattress on the floor. Since arriving in Korea I have always wanted to sleep in an Ondol style room so I was pretty excited, and unlike Kat an Emily slept the Korean way with just one mattress instead of two!

The night boarding was fantastic, less people meant we could board at our leisure carving up the slopes, and smaller lift queues meant we got more runs in. We had to leave the slopes at 10pm to give back our rental boards. But when we went to bed, at 2am, we were amazed to see the slopes still open.

After we finished boarding we tried to find someone up for going for a drink but to no avail. So we headed out to a bar alone. In the bar to men were sat at the table next to ours. As they came to pay one of them asked where we were from. It transpired that they had had A bet as to weather we were from America or Europe and the one who lost had to pay the bill! They came and sat with us and chatted for a while. One of them was the marketing manager of the resort and have us free sauna passes for the following day.

After having a few drinks we went back to our room and found a part in full swing next door. Despite being exhausted we decide it would be rude not to check it out. But to all of our relief shortly after we arrived the threw everyone out so they could get some sleep.

The following day we were lazy and slept in until almost 11am leaving us just enough time to pack up and get the bus home.

* Posted by j150vsc on 30/01/2007.