DAY 5 OF 5-DAY stay in Tongyeong

This last day took me to back to Antwerp Coffee, a few art museums, and some lunch before my journey back to Busan. I had to take back the rental car and get a KTX back to Seoul and decided to meet up with a friend in Busan, stay the night there, then take the train the next morning. One of the highlights of the day was the Skyline Luge!

I’d seen the luge tracks while in the cable car on my first day here. The first thing you do buy your ticket; I went for a basic ticket good for two runs for about 20,000 won. Next you grab a helmet from a box, show your ticket at the entrance of the cable/ski lift, then look at the people whizzing down the tracks below you. I was already grinning on the way up like a big kid. It’s quite a way up and there are quite a lot of intertwining tracks.

At the top, at the track entrance, you go either left or right depending on whether it’s your first or second time down. As it was my first ride, I got a stamp on my hand. I went into the enclosure and was guided into a luge. The instructor told me to pull then push the steering handles; this is the breaking mechanism; pull back to break, let them forward to increase speed. He then asked to release the handles and the luge completely stops; releasing the handles fully make the wheels fully retract into the base of the luge, like a dead-mans safety switch I suppose? Next, he told me to follow him as he walked left, stopped, walked right then stopped, then that was it; driving test over!

The run down was super fun. Speedy without being freakishly sketchy. There were lots of turns and a few routes to try on your way down. I had no idea about the routes or if the names had special meanings so can’t remember if any were longer or better.

At the bottom, you enter a kind of calming zone where there are curved luge-width tracks that guide you in and slow you down. Once off the cart, you head back to the lift for round 2. At the top I took the left, veteran’s entrance then off I went again. I had a quick look online while I was waiting at the Tongyeong tracks but couldn’t really notice any big differences, so just chose a different track as a left the starting zone.

All in all, totally worth the fee, and it was probably the kind of place that’d be rammed on the weekends and holidays. The whole set-up was run really nicely and professionally, with English signs around. I saw later that there are seven tracks around the world; Korea (Busan, Tongyeong), Singapore, Canada (two more), Australia and New Zealand.

Places I visited on this trip. Click the ‘door’ icon on the left to see a list: