Korea is not the first place that springs to mind when you are planning a skiing break. But for Nathalie and her family, it is the closest place to go. Here, she describes her three-day break and tells us some of the differences between a ski resort in Korea and Europe. This podcast was recorded on 28.02.2023.
Transcript
Frank Good morning, no, good afternoon, Nathalie. It is, just let me have a look, because I now have the time in Seoul on my phone. It’s now quarter past five in the afternoon, where you are.
Nathalie Yes, yes, that’s right, yes, good morning for you, good morning for you, Frank.
Frank And good afternoon for you, Nathalie, welcome to the podcast, to the show. We are going to talk about your skiing holiday in Korea, and I have to say, the first time that you mentioned that you and your family will be going skiing, I thought, hmm, okay, so people go skiing in Korea. It’s not the first thing I think of when I hear or think of Korea. So that is our subject for this podcast and let me start with the first question. How did you prepare for this trip? What did you do? And did you have to buy or rent any equipment, or did you have your own equipment? Let’s start with the basics. How did you prepare this trip?
Nathalie Yeah, concerning the preparation and for the physical preparation. First, we have not really preparation. If you do sport regularly, you don’t need to prepare you physically. And concerning the material, the equipment, we don’t have ski, but we can rent it at the resort, so we go just with our suitcase, and we rent all the equipment. But we had clothes, ski clothes, and socks, and hats, and sunglasses, and yes, we just have to rent the equipment. But if you want, you can also rent the clothes, if you don’t have to have a new one or to buy something, just to ski one or two days in a year, so you can rent it. But I think that in the French resort, there is also rent of the clothes.
Frank Okay, so that’s the physical side. The other preparation, of course, is in Europe, we know, or those who are into skiing know where to go. They know the resorts in Austria, they know the resorts in Switzerland or in France, and they click, and they book a hotel, and they organize their whatever it is. Is it the same type of planning and preparation in Korea as it was in France?
Nathalie No, I think it’s a little bit different, because we are not in our country, so we didn’t know what we will discover, and that’s why it’s a surprise, and little difficulties to book the hotel, for example, because I do it by internet, but I don’t receive the confirmation, so I have a little message and a vocal phone to ask if it’s okay or not. That was a little bit stressed, not like in France or in Europe, and also the same thing for the transportation, because I must go several times at the station. The first time it was impossible, it was too early, and the second time, okay, I have the ticket for going on the resort, but I couldn’t have the return. It was a little bit stressed, because it was different the first time, and we know that it’s not the same procedure and the same easy, it’s not so easy in our country.
Frank So you could book a one-way ticket to the resort, but you could not book a round-trip ticket, so one-way and coming back, you could not book that, yeah?
Nathalie Yes, because I go by my own. I don’t pass by an agency, a travel agency, so that’s why I think it’s more complicated.
Frank Okay, so moving on, how far away from Seoul is the ski resort? How did you get there? Did you take the train? What was the transportation like, and how comfortable was it to get there? Compare that to Europe, where we all drive with our cars to X, Y, and Z.
Nathalie Yes, here in Korea, we don’t have a car, so I have an application, mobile application, and I found where I want to go, and the application gives me the easier and the faster possibility to go there. So, there is a train, but I think there is so much change to go there, so that’s why the application proposed me to take the bus at the city. I was very surprised to discover the net of the bus in Korea, because just for this resort, which is in the middle of the mountain, in the middle of Korea, there was a bus only one hour. I can choose my departure every hour, I was so surprised. It’s incredible. But the bus was full.
Frank It was full, yeah?
Nathalie Yeah, yeah.
Frank And did you stand out as being the only Europeans on the bus, or were some other European people on the bus going to the ski route, or were they all just Koreans? On the way out, on the way out to the resort.
Nathalie Right, way out to the resort, there was only one woman, European, or American, I don’t know, one foreigner, but in the resort, we crossed only two families, foreigner families, and at the return there was only Korean. So yes, we were near alone.
Frank Okay, so at this point the only challenges that you faced were that you thought you could take the train, the bus was the better option, you had to go back a few times to book your bus ticket because you didn’t go to a travel agency. But were there any other challenges that you faced, or was it simply you had the ticket, you had the departure time, all you had to do was go to the bus station and get on the bus and drive to the ski resort?
Nathalie I think the challenges are to adapt to each situation, observing a lot, because we didn’t know, for example, for the toilets, we didn’t know if there is a toilet in the bus, we had to do before entering the bus, at what time, and if we will have a break in the middle of the trip, this is a lot of questions and we discovered.
Frank So I have to ask this question, was there a toilet on the bus or did the bus stop somewhere for a peepee stop, for a toilet break?
Nathalie So we went just before going into the bus and the driver stopped after two hours of driving.
Frank He stopped in a highway station or a motorway station.
Nathalie We were a little bit not really secure, he told me, yes, just 10 minutes, 10 minutes. Yes. Okay. But we were afraid that he’d go away without us.
Frank Okay. That would be, but it wouldn’t be a problem because one hour later is another bus. And you could say, you could say to the bus, I’m sorry, your colleague left us here. Yes.
Nathalie But we don’t have our suitcase.
Frank So you only had a 10-minute break, but it looks like you managed to take your bus and continue. How long was the drive? How long did it actually take to get from Seoul to the ski resort?
Nathalie Near three hours.
Frank And can you describe a little bit the landscape that you saw? Was it flat and then it became hillier and more mountainous?
Nathalie Yeah, hilly, not very high mountains. I was expecting, I believed that there is a very high mountain in Korea. Because I saw the map and I saw the altitude. I believe, I imagined that it was very high, but not. I was also very surprised about the vegetation, the flora, which is very dry. This is very dry, but the vegetation is very empty, very arctic.
Frank So very sparse, very sparse. There is not many, there are not many trees and many bushes.
Nathalie Yes, there is a lot, but nothing on the tree.
Frank Very bare. Very bare.
Nathalie But very, very, I didn’t see that it was very strange, like there was a fire, you know? Yeah, the tree, but dark, a little bit dark and no green, always the brown of the ground. I understand when I saw this landscape, I understand the picture, the drawing of the Koreans in the museum was really the colour that I found during the trip. And I understand this brown with this dark together for the landscape of the Korean.
Frank So it would be interesting to see if in the summer, that if there are leaves on the trees or so.
Nathalie And we cross also a city or village and I believe to find something more traditional, but not, it was really a simple house, architecture, not a specific mountainous architecture. It was not really beautiful, not like in France or in Europe.
Frank Did you go on highways on autoroutes, or did you go on normal, quote unquote, highways?
Nathalie Highways, yeah. Very beautiful and good road. I think it has been built or rebuilt during the Olympic games, I think.
Frank Oh, that’s 40 years ago. Yeah, 1998, 1988, something like that. This of course, I think was the first time you had really left Seoul, wasn’t it? Gangwa Island being, and the DMZ being slightly different experiences, but this one, a more pleasant, a more relaxing experience. And the first time you actually saw Korea outside of this enormous city with 18 million people, what was that like? How did you feel when you thought, wow, this also is Korea?
Nathalie We were happy just to feel the fresh air because in Seoul, there is a lot, a lot of pollution during the winter, but at the resort, there is not a lot of people. It was very quiet because it was not the school holidays and it was not the weekend. So there is not a lot of people, it was very quiet, but we saw there the people of the town who come for skiing. We were not, it was not different about the people, but just more quiet.
Frank Language. language barrier is a constant theme in your life with your life in Korea. And of course, you were now in a situation where English is probably even less spoken than in Seoul. Did you have a language barrier issue when you were on holidays there? And how did it affect your holiday? Or did you just send your daughter in and say, allez, allez, you translate?
Nathalie Yes, at the resort and at the hotel, we are lucky because there is more English, the personnel. More English and better English understand us and we understand them. There is a lot of explanation in English, so it was okay, it was okay, but we meet sometimes some situation not pleasant or not easy. For example, with the taxi, we have problem because he didn’t want to take the three people, he just want to take two and we said, no, it’s impossible, we don’t separate, but he don’t understand that the taxi are old and they don’t understand the English. So, it was difficult and we are sometimes in a situation when we have to abandon and that is not pleasant and that is very pleasant.
Frank Right, now the next question about comparing ski resorts between Korea and here in Europe, you can tell me anything you want because I am not a skier. I only stood on skis once in my life and that was up in Northern Scotland a million years ago. So I have no really no idea what a ski resort is like here in Europe. So how do you compare the two ski resorts with each other? What differences did you see? What things were the same?
Nathalie I don’t find a lot of difference. We were in a recent resort, so modern, very well equipped, all was new, and it was well organized, I feel that it was well organized and secure, perhaps more secure than in France or in other countries of Europe. I was surprised, for example, to see a lot of nets all around, among all the slopes. There is a lot of signs, there were loudspeakers. We were very surprised to listen on the slope, loudspeakers tell us the recommendation of security in English, but it’s a different atmosphere when we listen that instead of music, because in Europe you listen music in the station, no music, just recommendation. It’s very cold, it’s very serious, it’s not funny. The skiers are very like in Seoul, they are very disciplined, respectful, distant, the skis are arranged in the order,
Frank very tidily,
Nathalie we were surprised by that.
Frank The atmosphere must have been like at an airport with the security announcements, please do not leave your luggage unattended, otherwise we will destroy it if you see something suspicious, etc.
Nathalie Exactly, and I found people, Korean skiers on the slopes, very secure, be careful and we don’t have to be worried about that, because there are video cameras, like in the town, and because there are some personnel of the results were on the slopes and had a mobile radar to take the skiers who skied so quickly and they stop them to explain and to stop.
Frank Did you have a choice of slopes that you could go on, or was there only one slope and everybody went up and down it?
Nathalie No, we had the choice, the slopes are like in the Vosges, there is not a lot of slopes and they were quiet.
Frank They were more gentle slopes, they were not steep slopes.
Nathalie So you have a different colour for the level of the slope, the green is the more easy, the most gentle, and after you have the blue and red and the black, but there was a lot of green slopes, so it was very gentle and some red also.
Frank Okay, all right.
Nathalie But hopefully you can choice, when you are on the top, you can choice of course to take the green or the red, not to be in front of a difficulty that you cannot solve.
Frank Okay, I think I will choose to take the ski lift down again. What was the weather like while you were there?
Nathalie The weather, so in winter, very dry, no precipitation, so no snow on the landscape, only on the slopes. It was artificial snow, because it is very cold, so they can do it every day, some snow, some snow, and it is a very good quality snow, I was very surprised because I don’t use to ski on the artificial snow, and it was a very good quality of snow, and it was well maintained.
Frank Well maintained.
Nathalie Well maintained, yes, but beautiful weather with a very beautiful sun, but cold.
Frank When you say cold, how cold was cold, do you sort of, was it minus 20, minus 25 degrees, like Alexandre’s experience in Serre Chevalier?
Nathalie No, no, no, it was, I don’t know, minus five, but with winter, and when you are blocked on the, don’t have to remember, the ski lift, when you are blocked and you cannot move, and you pass a lot of time on the ski lift, you are very cold. This is the problem of the ski, alpine ski, you pass a lot, a lot of time on the ski lift, but a few times in the slopes in your ski.
Frank Yeah, it takes you, it takes longer for you to get to the top, and then you zoom.
Nathalie Two minutes, it’s down.
Frank Two minutes, wow, okay. All right, and now we come to this interesting subject of food. Of course, in Seoul, you have a choice of restaurants. You can eat what you want, where you want, and if you don’t like typical Korean cuisine, you have the choice. What about at the ski resort? Did you enjoy local food, or could you enjoy something different?
Nathalie We don’t find local food, but I think perhaps because we don’t pass a long time there, and we stay at the hotel, so we have a good, very good food at the hotel, and we went in the village to eat one evening, but the hotel and the Korean recommend us to go to a typical Korean restaurant, but we found the same thing than in town. It was a Korean barbecue, and we had the same thing in the town. There is no raclette or no fondue, but we had a Korean barbecue.
Frank Ah, so there is something you could do for next winter. You could install yourself in the ski resort during the season and open a little French eatery with fondue, raclette, Monte D’or, and everything else, yes?
Nathalie Yes, I would like that.
Frank Okay, now, again, I don’t know of my own experience, but skiing is one part. There is the après ski, there are entertainment activities, discos, parties, and so on and so forth. Did you have the same choice of activities available to you, or is it simply you go ski, you eat, you sleep, you ski, you eat, you sleep, you go home?
Nathalie We were very surprised to arrive in a hotel which was more than a hotel. It was very, very big with several buildings, and there is one for the exhibition, for the wedding, for the ball, there is a lot, a lot of things, and I think it’s typical American, I think, I suppose, because it was a small town in the hotel with several restaurants, with a casino, with a cinema, with a swimming pool, with a spa, a fitness centre. It was incredible, big, very big, enormous, enormous, but not in the village, I didn’t find this in the village. I think it’s new. This was not in the Korean culture several years ago, this is new, that was imported perhaps by the Americans, I’m not really sure, but it seems to be so American for that.
Frank So somebody like me who has no skiing experience, and I don’t think I’m going to learn it at this stage, I could be quite happily entertained in the hotel from morning till night, I could try and win back the holiday money in the casino, I can watch a movie, I can eat in lots of different restaurants, I don’t actually have to leave the hotel. It almost sounds like a Centre Park in Europe.
Nathalie Yes, a little bit. Concerning the activities, there is not the same winter activities than in Europe, they only do ski and snowboarding, that’s all. They don’t have Nordic ski, no snowshoes, no dog or horse sleighing, no ski bar, no terrace, they don’t like the sun, so no terrace and no chair outside. So they are only ski, less than for ski and even academy of the children, but that’s all.
Frank And I’ve got to get back to this, you mentioned on the slope there is a little man with a radar to stop you if you are going to, so did you pick up, did he say to the person you were driving too fast, you naughty boy, drive slowly or did he actually give you a ticket and then you had to pay an ammende, a fine?
Nathalie I don’t know because it’s my husband who sees him and it was very quickly and it’s just a shout that this man was skiing so quickly. So I think there is perhaps something to pay if you ski so quickly, so fast and if you don’t care about the others, I think.
Frank Okay, so that’s new. Alright, now you said that skiing culture is relatively new in Korea, did you notice any differences in the skiing culture between Korea and Europe?
Nathalie I noticed that the Koreans are the same whatever the activities, they like to excel, they want to be the best, they want to do it very well with the very best branded clothes, yes, with the last branded and all at the top of the range. I see that when I swim in the swimming pool but in the golf, the same thing in the hiking, the same thing, they are equipped like a professional and just for the story, it’s like the second time that I listened to an experience about golf where a French goes there with his equipment and at the end of the year or several months after, the Korean offers him equipment because it’s not enough acceptable, it’s not enough professional, so it’s incredible because we look like very poor people who don’t have money to equip them, so they are very incredible. Every time the excellence, even in the shoes, the choice of the activity, for example in the swimming pool, they want to swim and to show the others that they arrived to swim the butterfly, that is a very difficult swim and for the ski, the same thing, they want to do a snowboard. Snowboarding is more difficult than the ski, I think it’s fashion, a snowboard is very current, it’s the activity in the fashion mode, but I think it’s a difficulty, additional difficulty compared to the ski.
Frank Can Koreans, and did you notice this in the restaurants, in the activities that the hotel offered, could you see, could you feel whether the Koreans there were there to relax and enjoy themselves, have fun, or were they there to be better, to improve themselves?
Nathalie It’s the same thing, I think there is no difference, I was surprised to not find a funny ambiance, atmosphere, it’s often serious and yeah.
Frank It must feel very strange for you and your family that for you the idea was you like, all of you like skiing, you want to go skiing, you want to relax, have fun, enjoy yourself, spend time together as a family, and you are surrounded by people who want to be better, that must be very strange to experience this.
Nathalie It’s a big difference between the Europeans and the Koreans, I think, yes, it’s inside them, they have to work hard and to prove, to prove, yes, to master that they can be the best, and yes, it’s very incredible.
Frank Okay, I think you were there, what, three days in total, yeah?
Nathalie Yeah, just three days, yes.
Frank So what was the most memorable moment of these three days, where you thought, yeah, it was good or it was funny or strange, was there a memorable moment and what was it?
Nathalie There wasn’t one moment, it’s just the entire trip was very pleasant because we were together in family and we can do this activity all free, that was pleasant, yes, and perhaps the most was when I go along with Frederic and my husband, with my husband on the red slopes to do more technical ski, that was a good moment, yeah.
Frank Which sort of reminds me, if families go there, are there also activities for children that they can be left alone and be supervised, and the parents do something that parents want to do?
Nathalie Yeah, you have lessons, you are a lot of parks, parks for children, parks for dogs, park for let the children and the parents go outside and do another activity, yes, and what I can say on that.
Frank So your daughter, when she said, look, I want to go and do this, there was something for her to do.
Nathalie We let our daughter in a cafeteria, where we had stopped a moment, we had a break, and we just tell her, just tell us one hour just to ski at our rhythm and it was a long time that we didn’t ski like that, till we have our daughter, we didn’t ski like that, which was a real pleasure after 16 years to recover the technique of the ski.
Frank So the atmosphere was different, you said, because you were there to enjoy yourself and there was a lot of serious Korean excellence and becoming better skiers and becoming better people and that is, of course, very different to what happens in Europe. Everybody wants to go out and have fun and have parties. Did that in any way affect your holiday or did you simply say, okay, this is what happens here, we do our thing?
Nathalie Yeah, no, it does not affect it because it was the first time for us, we discovered and we passed a good moment without that and I think that sometimes it’s an advantage not to understand and that language here is sometimes a positive situation because we don’t understand, we don’t listen and so that doesn’t affect us.
Frank This is, of course, a little strange. I have another client, he lives in Germany and he and his wife have gone to central Norway for their skiing holiday simply because there is not enough snow here for them to do anything and they like to go cross-country skiing, so going on long walks and so they’re going to Norway, which we know is not the cheapest country in Europe and it’s a three-week holiday that they’re taking. So, in Europe, we are affected by climate change. Could Korea be an alternative to go skiing in the winter? Would it actually make sense and be a positive experience to say, I’m going to go to Korea to go skiing? Yes, it’s a 10-hour flight, not the cheapest place, but we have a good ski resort, we have a different atmosphere, we have good quality artificial snow. It must be a good idea to go skiing in Korea if you can’t go skiing in Europe.
Nathalie I think what is save the Korean for his ski, it’s the weather because it’s again cold and that’s why there can be slopes with artificial snow, but I think it’s not extraordinary. We have more beautiful and more great and more typical in France or in Europe and I don’t think it’s a good idea to be skiing in Korea just to ski because it’s very limited. There is not a lot of slopes and this is not very technical or hard slopes for skiing. If you ski well.
Frank So Alexandre who likes to go off piste skiing, that wouldn’t even be possible in Korea?
Nathalie I don’t know, perhaps it’s possible with somebody, with a guide, but I think for having a view his last picture which were very beautiful, I think he will be very disappointed if we came there to ski with it.
Frank So last question, you described the hotel as being enormous with different possibilities, restaurants etc. The hotel room, was it furnished to western style or was it furnished in Korean style? Did you have proper beds, or did you have mats on the floor that you would find in traditional rooms?
Nathalie It was international furniture, and it seems a lot like American really. I have a book, a familiar suite. We have a big bedroom with a couple of windows at 15 floors and we have a salon, a living room and two bathrooms so it was very comfortable.
Frank Without naming any figures, but would you say that if you compare prices between Europe and what you experienced in Seoul, did you get good value for your money? So you paid a certain amount. Did you feel afterwards it was too expensive or was it okay?
Nathalie I think it’s less expensive than in Europe, but you can find a solution. For example, I booked the room by the internet site hotel.com a long time before so we don’t have this familiar suite. We had this familiar suite for a good price, not expensive, but what was expensive was the breakfast and the meal. So I think it’s marketing, it’s a commercial thinking. Bedrooms are not expensive, but they give breakfast and food a meal very expensive.
Frank So breakfast was not included in the room price?
Nathalie No. Even with Hotel.com and booking.com, I didn’t find hotel which had the breakfast included because I think in the Korean culture it’s very different. You don’t take a breakfast when you wake up. You just drink something, but you take a real meal with lunch aside in the middle of the morning and it’s difficult to find something sweet, sugar at the breakfast.
Frank So what did you have for breakfast?
Nathalie For me, it was only sweet with bread. We found here a small croissant and brioche and cereals and cornflakes and yogurt and fruits, but you have a lot of Korean food or so. Fish and meat and special. I suppose you get used to it. If you live there long enough, I suppose it becomes normal to eat a Korean style breakfast.
Frank Okay, Nathalie, thank you very, very much for sharing your experiences with us about skiing in Korea. Final question, will you do the same again next winter?
Nathalie Oh yes, I think we will return because we have a good impression, a positive remember, and our daughter wants to try to snowboard. So why not? And yes, we will be happy because even only three days, it’s really something positive and different. Yeah, benefits.
Frank Okay. All right. So, we will meet again this time next year to compare what you experienced this year and what happened 12 months later. Nathalie, thank you very much for your contribution. And I look forward to more stories from you in the future.
Nathalie Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for your question and thank you for your interest about this trip.
Frank No, not a problem.