Friday, March 25, 2011

Palgongsan and Daegu

Korea is a mountainous country, with a majority of the flat landscapes available were used for agriculture and what's left were for the people. This is why in Korea, especially in certain cities (with exception for Seoul and Busan), we can see lots of tall buildings instead of houses with garden. Another reason is that landed properties are simply too expensive.



Seoul is a different story because the land is flat. In my opinion, the reasons why it is so expensive to buy landed properties are because staying in single storey house in Seoul is not a commercially smart idea, by building a few stories more, the landlord can earn even more money through rental or even sale of the houses.



Seoul Mayor, Oh Se-hoon

Besides that, Seoul being a megacity is a center for commerce, the importance of the capital city makes housing expensive. Daegu is different, Daegu is surrounded by mountains and flat lands are scarce so the city needs more space for housing. This is why in Daegu, there's lots of tall crowded buildings.



At Apsan (앞산)



At Palgongsan (팔공산)

Palgongsan in Daegu is a mountain well-known to hikers in Korea. Besides Apsan (I wrote in this blog before), Palgongsan has several temples around the area. However, going up the mountain in Palgongsan is not easy compare to Apsan. In Apsan, we can ride on cable car and there's an ice-cream seller up the mountain waiting to sell her "wares".



We started hiking from Gatbawi (갓바위)

In Palgongsan, it's totally different. We have to hike and hike until our legs turn jelly. Last month, together with friends, we hiked Palgongsan. We started our hike (from Gatbawi or 갓바위) early but since the we hikers were more of strolling than hiking, we reached the peak quite late in the noon.



The view from the top was cool but as it was still winter, the mountain looked so barren. To get there, we took Daegu City Tour Bus from 동대구역 (Dongdaegu Station). The thing about taking city tour bus was that by paying for a single ticket, for every places we went, we did not pay a single cent. Of course, if we counted the money spent for the trip, it might be more but it was very convenient.







Palgongsan is a great place to exercise, photography and temple. If I am going there up again, I will ask "Aladdin" to build a cable car up the peak instead of me hiking up. lol. The hiking route is definately harder than in Apsan. Still, we made it to the top.

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