The post has come! I’ve just received the photos and videos so I can write this post! I was so excited about this trip and I hope this post can help a lot of people, because personally for myself I had trouble finding the right place and the right agency to engage.
The company that I chose was ulsanpara.co.kr they have an english website too, although the English is not perfect. Because Mr Lee’s written English is poor, on email he is going to sound rather… un-legit in the way he promotes his school. But don’t worry, from personal experience he’s a great guy and his team was very kind to us!
There were plenty of options around but because I was in Gyeongju and was heading to Ulsan, I hunted down this company! I’ve written the contact details etc at the bottom of this post.
So we started the day getting up early to eat breakfast before heading towards the meeting place at Taehwa hotel. It was kinda funny because we alighted at the bus stop right ouside Taehwa but couldn’t spot it and walked around the roundabout everywhere before finally realizing that it was right under our noses sigh.
A while later he turned up and brought us to the van. At this point Amber and I were still at that state of preparing to run if necessary HAHAHA, but after that we found out it wasn’t necessary. He was very friendly and spoke decent English, telling us there were 9 other Koreans coming along for this trip.
le paragliding van
The other Koreans came within half an hour’s time and then we were off! He chatted with us a lot and told us his travels from young, he’s litterally been everywhere including both Singapore and America – he really liked talking about Singapore! He said he had brought 5 Singaporeans before me in total, so i was the 6th haha. I was telling Amber that seeing Mr Lee talk made me both envious yet happy. It’s rare to encounter someone who has lived his life the way he wanted to and is still living the way he wants to. He’s had many years of work traveling as an engineer, and now he’s running his own paragliding school. And just by talking to him you can tell how fondly he talks about paragliding and his life. How often do we meet people perfectly contented with their lives like that?
Mr Lee told us that we were going to go to a new mountain that day and that we were lucky. That mountain was open because of an upcoming competition that weekend – usually it was closed. we drove up to the mountain but it seems like the winds were not in our favor.. Amber and I kept catching snippets of his conversation with the rest. Haha. It followed with a lot more driving to random mountains and landing areas and it seemed like that day really wasn’t favorable enough 😦 It wasn’t just Ulsan Para, there was a team from Busan as well and i got the feeling that they’re all acquainted and they typically help each other out by updating the conditions of various mountain locations. I fell asleep at one point and woke up to see that we were stopping somewhere. No idea if it was a landing or take off point but we all alighted and sat around while they talked and discussed about the weather.
The view from the place we stopped at!
It looked pretty and we were looking forward to fly in this area! But nothing was updated so we just sat in the warm sun and basked in it. A lady came over and asked us if we prepared lunch. We said we didn’t and she brought boxes of chocopies and asked us to take more :’)
We told her and some others from the team where we were from, and she was commenting in Korean how pretty we are. Haha. This is why I love Koreans, they are always so kind with their comments :’) She sat down with us at one point of time and told us in Korean that she is a hair designer and she closed her shop that day to follow the team to the mountains. I was quite surprised and did begin to wonder how many of the ordinary people meet have stories like these to tell. What kinds of lives do they lead outside of their work? I also hope to become someone like that, that apart from a career that I love, I would indulge in life and find things that make me happy. Let’s hope so~~~
After so many chocopies that she made us take, there was still no progress on the paragliding part. The team was still discussing and at one point they were climbing trees for idk what reason>???? the shoes they had on for climbing was cool though.
After that they all packed up and said they will go another place, i guess because of poor wind conditions. We headed back to the car and was offered some more food by the rest of the team LOL.
Bananas and chips!
We then took off again and went to search for more mountains. This time, we finally found somewhere to settle and we alighted again. I’m not sure what mountain this is but I know that it was somewhat a hiking and biking spot for the locals. There were tons of young children biking up and ahjummas and ahjusshis hiking up when we were driving.
Mr Lee took some test recordings from the camera lmao i didn’t think he was recording and i was cold, sorry for mah faceu. And then suddenly we were all getting ready! I dont think it was an official take off area for paragliding but everyone just took out all their equipments and Mr Lee started getting Amber ready for her flight!!
Amber getting prepared. Or was it me?? can’t tell omg
The flight itself is about 20 minutes long and we landed in the field a little ways off from the take off point. They give you a camera to hold the entire flight and they sent the files after that! I was looking through the photos and videos captured for mine and Amber’s flights, it was awesome! The camera quality was good (i think it was a gopro), our videos turned out so high quality and stable 🙂 To me, the photos and videos are important and it’s one of the reasons i would encourage paying a bit more to find a school that provides this service 🙂
with Mr Lee! Thanks for being a great host!!
All dressed up!
Amber in ze air
Me in ze air
love this photo of amber that i took~~~~ altho abit dark and i lazy adjust heh
Paragliding was a lot more peaceful than we expected. It was slow and i think the main part of it was seeing a good view. So i’m glad they brought us to that mountain which had a splendid view. At one point Mr Lee would do some stunts and tricks which included a very fast spiral downwards that got mucus all over our faces. I’m being gross here but it’s true it happens because it’s cold up there……..
He compiled our flights into a video which was cheesy HAHAHA. He also sent us the raw unedited version. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvo-JSFzzFg Clicky to watch Mr Lee’s cute edit. Wind was very loud though LOL.
After our flight as we were waiting for everyone to finish, the team invited us to their table and fed us AGAIN. LOL. This time there were rolls of kimbap, grapes, coffee and bottles of coke. Haha. They were super nice to us and even gave us a blanket to keep ourselves warm.They made us feel so at home and also they were really funny, poking fun at all their team mates flying haha. I think they rarely have girls signing up to fly, especially girls without their boyfriends haha.
It was all over soon and it was almost 5pm at this time. We met up at 10am so do expect that it might take up most of your day, particularly because the winds are unpredictable so it might take time to find a good location. we all piled back onto the van and he drove us back to Taehwa hotel. He offered to drop us at Ulsan train station since we were headed to Busan to have dinner with Amber’s pastor and his wife, but we decided to go Taehwa instead since we can take a quick, affordable bus to Busan from around that area.
A Korean couple that was with us heard the conversation and called up their friends to ask about getting to Busan! o.o They told us they will bring us to the bus stop, so after Mr Lee dropped us off they drove us there! We were so surprised at their initiative and kindness :’) It all turned out well. We managed to rush to meet Amber’s pastor and his family, and had some really delicious chicken in Busan.
Yumz.
We rushed back to Busan bus terminal and caught the 8pm bus back to Seoul! Phew! Amber invited me to stay at her place sine we reached back pretty late at the bus terminal, but i really just wanted to go back to my bed in the dorm and have a good bath so i turned her down. She is really kind, love this girl so much. (And I miss her so much too, I’m typing this in June 2015 lol)
Type of Paragliding: Tandem Paragliding
Location: Ulsan (about 4-5 hours from Seoul, 40,800won for two-way bus ticket)
School/Agent: Ulsan Paragliding School
Price: 100,000 won / person
Flight Duration: Approx. 20 min
Website: http://eng.ulsanpara.co.kr/
Contact: Mr Lee Sang Cheon | ds5nfd@hotmail.com | 010-5510-3502
Mr Lee speaks English so you can contact him in English.
How to reserve: Just send him an email stating when you want to paraglide and for how many people. He will ask you to transfer the money and let you know where to meet.
How to retrieve your photos and videos afterwards: Mr Lee would ask you for the best way to send your files. Most likely he would upload to the site and send you the link. You can access the files from the home page under the videos header.
darmawanders 