Surfin’ R-O-K!

Last night I came home exhausted about 12:30am.

Muscles sore, skin sunburned, head aching. I didn’t wake up until almost noon today.

Why?

I spent the day in Busan with the Seoul Boardriders Surfing Club.

You heard me right: surfing …In Korea.

The Seoul Boardriders club makes occasional “Learn2Surf” trips for people new to the sport. 10,000 won pays for a day of group surfing lessons. You’ll also have to rent a board and wet suit for 20,000 a day.

If you have your own board you’ll have a few more chances since there’s only one beach with a board rental shop.

I joined the group over the weekend for the Learn2Surf trip and had a fantastic time.

Dragging my butt out of bed at 4am to pack and get in a taxi to Seoul Station for the 6:10am KTX train wasn’t easy, but my friends and I were able to sleep a bit on the way there. Thankfully when we arrived, the weather in Busan wasn’t nearly as humid at Seoul (even at 6am when we left!). The cloudy sky was a bit of a drag, but we were still optimistic that we were going to have a great time.

Seoul Boardriders is a club organized by Nathan, an Australian national that’s been living in Korea for the last five years. Nathan says he makes about three surfing trips per month, year-round, to all the best spots in Korea. According to Nathan, Korea has same very surfable spots that even the most seasoned surfer can enjoy. He did add, though, that many of them are what’s known as ‘rock breaks,’ and should only be attempted by veteran surfers.

We arrived at the surf shop rather late, unfortunately, and joined the group on the beach just as the on-shore portion of the lesson was wrapping up, so we went directly into the water where the group had started trying to catch some waves.

Tip: if you take the 6:10am KTX train, get McD’s to go then taking the subway to Haeundae and catch a taxi to Seongjeong beach is going to take you too long. You better just grab some kimbap and take a taxi as soon as you arrive.

If you go on a Learn2Surf trip, don’t be expecting to be pulling moves out of Blue Crush by the end of the day. Most of the people on the trip (except for your truly) were able to stand up, or at least figured out how to paddle into a wave and ride it for a short distance. The waves were suitably small for us beginners, though Nathan says that the surf at Seongjeong beach is usually a bit better than they were on that particular day though.

It’s also worth mentioning that it’s a pretty fun group of expats that made the trip. Nathan was expecting better waves as the tide started to go out, so we ordered Chinese food delivered to us on the beach and used our boards as impromptu picnic tables where we chatted and chowed down.

And yes mom, we waited the requisite 45 minutes before venturing into the water again…

Though I won’t be claiming to be a ’surfer’ any time soon, it was definitely a fun day. In keeping with surfing tradition, we even had a mild run-in with the fuzz that got us talking about the cinematic masterpiece Point Break.

The group I traveled with just came down for the day, so around 4pm we took our boards back, got cleaned up, and got some fresh seafood for dinner before heading back to the KTX station. The rest of the Boardriders club, though, had a night out planned that sounded like a lot of fun, but we needed to get back to Seoul.

It was an exhausting day but well worth it. The wet suit kept my sunburn from getting too nasty (I waited a couple hours before putting on sunscreen because of the cloud cover, but it was too late), and I got some good exercise while trying something totally new that I never would have tried coming from land-locked Missouri.

Total cost for the trip including KTX, food, rentals, and taxis for the day was around 160,000 won. You could cut costs by taking the bus, or simply booking your KTX tickets with the group for a discount. If you stay the night, you would probably need about 75-100,000 more to account for hotel, another day of rentals, more food (and drinks with the group in the evening, or whatever else you want to do), etc.

There is a Seoul Boardriders website coming in the next few weeks, but for now contact Nathan at seoulboardriders@hotmail.com