I FINALLY got my snowboarding fix in. After hearing about all of my friends back at home going boarding (and being super jealous), I found a weekend I could actually make it to the Korean slopes. Thank god I decided to teach in a place that has mountains.
Saturday morning at about 8:30am, Shaun and I took a bus to Muju from Namwon. Almost 2 hours later we made it to Muju (thanks to the non-express bus... about 4 or 5 stops later). The free shuttle to the resort decided to pass us up, so ended up taking a taxi... which happen to be a lot more expensive than in other cities. As we got closer to the mountain, we saw the streets littered with rental shops. I'm not even sure if other businesses exist because all you could see for blocks were skis and snowboards. We stopped at the end of the row of ski shops and walked into the first store we found. The people working there were very friendly, spoke decent English, and even offered to drive us to our hotel. We rented everything we needed there: boards, boots, outfits, goggles. It turned out to be about 70,000 won each for two days worth of rentals. Insane right??
By the time we got our equipment, checked in, etc, it was about 1pm. Not as early as we had hoped to get on the mountain, but fortunately the slopes in Korea are open until 2am!! Instead of purchasing a day lift ticket like back at home, the day is broken up into different sessions (and closes for 2 hours in the afternoon to plow the slopes): early morning, morning, afternoon, evening, night, late night. So, the amount depends on when you want to ski but is still relatively inexpensive compared to home. AND if you pay with your KB or NH bank cards, you get about 20% off of your ticket purchase.
