#104 Take the subway to amazing hiking in Seoul

Transcript

Alright, I'm coming down a mountain and I'm past the point where I'm on kind of the back side of this mountain. There was an extra amount of snow, even though it hasn't snowed in over a week, I think. And it's been pretty warm, but there was still snow at the top of this mountain. And I was kind of half-sliding down, trying to be careful I don't die. Now I think I'm past that point. It seems pretty, pretty easy. So I mentioned last episode that I came down off of the mountains of, well, let's see if I can remember all these names without checking my phone, Bukhansen National Park. I came down the mountain at Guggi, G-U-G-I. And I was like, man, this is amazing, this is incredible, this is the best thing I've ever seen.

I think part of that must have just been, I don't know, I guess I was just glad to get down off the mountain before it got dark, because it is good. But in my memory, it was like so green and lush. But of course it wasn't, it's fucking the end of February. Everything's dead. I was back there today and I'm like, yes, it's good, but it's not that good, but it's still good. I would definitely say, for ways to approach the mountain, it is still my favorite one. Guggi.

But I couldn't find a great way to get there, it's not like the longest walk in the world, but I couldn't figure out a great way to get there, because I was just thinking, you know, you'd start from like Hapjion and have to walk, which takes a little time.

But I found a different method, so if you go a little further, there's Muqjay, Hapjion, Nokbion, and Bulgwang, B-U-L-G-W-A-N-G, I'm quite sure is the station's name, that you know, I've gotten off at all these stops and gone on to the mountain in different ways, gone different places. That whole run is just full of different cool mountains, you can go to Anson, you can go to Inwansen, all kinds of cool shit.

But I noticed that from there, there's actually a tunnel, and I was like, you know, if you could go through that tunnel, you would actually be quite close to Guggi. That's like definitely the easiest walk from Bulgwang station across through the tunnel, and it turns out you can do that, you can just walk through the tunnel, that's what I did today. But first, before I tried that, yesterday, it was like, maybe you can just hop up onto the mountain and go up over the tunnel. You know, if you're going to walk in that direction anyway, why not get a little nature in there? So I tried that, and just on the little stretch, just from between Bulgwang station, before getting to the tunnel, I just found there's, you know, various little ways up onto the mountain, so I grabbed one. And it was a really cool day. It didn't get me to Guggi, my thought was I'll just go up to the mountain, and if I see any signs or anything, hopefully I can just trend my way east, and maybe I can even come down through that Guggi valley.

And I didn't make it, but it was still really awesome, so I went up the mountain, I tried heading east, and I just kind of kept getting stymied to the point that there was a literal fence. So I was like, okay, I'm really not supposed to go here. Let's just follow the trail. Everything is laid out so well in Seoul that just follow what they tell you to do, and it'll go way better. So I went up and up and up and up, and I even got to the point where I was saying before how, once you get to the point where you're using all your limbs, all four limbs to climb up, that tends to be when I get a little scared, and I just go somewhere else, or just turn around and go back down. But in this case, it was a little scary, but everything was still like wide enough, and not near any really horrifyingly steep cliffs or anything that I just kept going up and climbing up the rocks, and up and up and up. All the way to the point that I got near this peak that was so insane that people were literally repelling up, or like not repelling. I don't know what you call it, but they had like the gear, all the gear, they had like a line connected to the rock, and they're just climbing up the sheer rock face, just like fingers and toes in the little crack in the rock. And it's like, wow, that's fucking crazy, look at these fucking maniacs, but it was so cool to be able to see that. Within like an hour of the subway, you know, I hadn't been out of the subway for all that long, and I'm watching people literally repell up a mountain, like climb up a mountain for real mountain climbing, like that's the most for real mountain climbing I'd seen yet.

Now here we go, I'm passing a temple on the way down.

I went to another temple today that did not have any wild dogs.

Does this one have wild dogs? No, it does a bell, and much like in Japan, these Buddhist temples still have the swastika or the super L, which it is still just sort of a weird thing, I mean, you know, it's obviously just, it was their symbol first, the Nazis perverted it, but it's still somewhat odd to see it. But anyway, I'm just going to pass on by you temple, I'm not going to stop in. The other temple I was at today though, it was much more like a Japanese temple in the sense that you could go in, and there was like incense candles lit and stuff in a Buddha statue. And they had one of the coffee machines, one of the little 501 coffee machines, but it didn't work. But I was like, yeah, that'd be asking too much, but that would be amazing. I was like, can you imagine, go up to the temple on the top of the mountain and get a coffee. But yeah, from that mountain where people were repelling the final, however long, not great with distances, wasn't super duper. I don't know, the last 100 meters or something. Anyway, I obviously just kept going. And then I got across to the next peak where things were getting, there was an option to go down at that point, but I was like, again, just medium freaked out. I'm like, yes, this is okay, I can kind of keep going. So then from the next peak, I got to turn around and look back and see the peak they were at. And I managed to go one more peak over. And again, a little bit freaky, didn't love it, but I'm like, okay, I'm still pulling this off. I'm still going okay. It helps too that these new boots I've got. I mean, they're much better. My shoes were pretty fucking terrible. You know, they did not have good treads and stuff.

And I'm starting to see, especially like today when I was up on the ice that wasn't, you know, it wasn't new snow at all. It was like just snow from the last week that's been packed down quite a bit. It is quite slippery. I'm starting to see the benefits of the hiking poles perhaps, and I see them for sale all the time. But I'm not sure. I mean, there are times when it would be very handy. But then for the times that it's not handy, I would still have to have the poles with me the whole time. And I did find when I had poles in Canada, they hurt my shoulders. They made my shoulders hurt a lot. Just having to use the poles all the time. And if you have the poles, it kind of removes the ability to really use your hands. Where I do think there's like a lot of benefit to just, you know, the poles are great if you just want to stay upright and stay as a bipedal person. But if you want to scramble around like a little animal, it helps not to have the poles.

And I think that's a pretty valuable part of my arsenal.

Hmm, it is not quite clear how I get down from here. There must be a path that I missed.

Okay, the arrows pointing me this way. Ah, here we go. Okay, I do have to pass through you temple. Of course I do. Why wouldn't I?

Of course the path would pass through the temple.

1.7 kilometers to the information center. Jiong Nung Information Center, J-E-O-N-G-N-E-U-N-G. Where that is specifically down in the city, I don't know. I might be on the backside of the mountain away from the subway. I'm not sure.

But I'll figure that out when I get down there, whatever. As long as I'm off the mountain, it's like five o'clock. Those information centers, I believe, are where the gates are. Those little gates that signify the official start of a hike. 1.7 km is not that far. It's pretty clear. It's all downhill from here. Nice steps and stairs and shit. Should be no problem.

I'm glad all these hikes have been working out. Having this little extra, you know, not getting dark till 6.30 or so, really helps. Because I'm still having problems at my Airbnb that it's hard to sleep because I'm in this room where the temperature is just wild. So I've fallen into this routine of like going to bed at like 4 a.m. and waking up at like 11.30. So that's a solid seven and a half hours, but it's a fit full seven and a half where I just, you know, keep getting woken up and kicking my blankets off in a horrible sweat and stuff. 10:00 But not that bad. I'm surprised that I've kind of adapted. Once I get up and get going and go on these hikes, I feel okay. And today, I especially couldn't miss today because yesterday, it was actually not all the way to red, but like the orange, quite bad pollution level sighted wearing mask.

But today is green. Today is green. Green is good. But the whole rest of next week is not supposed to be green only today and even today when I'm looking out at the distance, I'm like, hmm, I think it's already starting to slip. It looks a little hazy out there. I was like, I gotta, if I'm gonna hike, I gotta go on the day that I don't have to wear a mask. How wonderful. And there's some kind of weird, there's like the sole tower that I've seen all over the place from different angles. But this is some other weird structure I've never seen before. This is where I think I must be on the other side of the mountain. Well, plus I know I'm on the other side of the mountain. It's the gate I was at the other day with the barking dogs. I passed through that gate again going the other way. I went to the temple with the dogs. But then I turned down our route I'd never taken before down the mountain. So yeah. Anyway, it's like this, just this big spiky building in the distance and I have no fucking idea what that is. I'll just try to figure that out. At some point, a big spiked tower.

But anyway, yeah. So yesterday, I got to the peak with the people repelling up, climbing up. Got to the next peak, got to the next peak. Things were getting dicer and dicer and scarier and scarier. But it's because those other peaks, you know, I just skirted around the first crazy peak. The other peaks were much flatter kind of peaks, like not a big deal. I realized I think one of the reasons why I'm so surprised at how harsh these peaks are near Seoul is a lot of the mountain type stuff that I've watched on YouTube. There's this guy, Quinlan, Go North, Japan, who does hiking in northern Japan. And he's always ascending mountains and going to peaks. But there's these really gradual, great big flat mountain tops.

Here's one of the places with the little mineral water coming out.

Yeah, so that's the kind of peak that it's like no problem. I mean, obviously a problem. You got to use snowshoes and stuff in northern Japan. But it's not scary like here where these peaks are like out of a fucking cartoon. They're just a fucking peak, you know. It's like just a big steep ass rock on top of the mountain.

But I did see an exit pass to the Guggi tunnel, which is the tunnel I had not even passed through. So I was like, okay, I guess I'm not. It felt like I'd been on quite an adventure already.

But I hadn't made it far enough east to get past the tunnel. But I could see ahead of me the next peak, even just visually. It looked so scary. Because even these progressively steeper and weirder and narrower mountain passes and stuff, they still all had rope fences or sometimes like steel fences. Always something to hold on to, something to grip onto, something to be sure of where you were going. The next bit, it just looked like nothing. Just sheer rock going around the edge of the mountain. And I was like, oh, let me just go up and see what it's like. And that's exactly what it was like. It was so fucking scary. That's where I went a little ways. And I'm like, nope. Nope. I'm out of here. Because it probably wasn't that steep. I don't know. 20 degrees or something. You know, the likelihood of me slipping and dying seemed very low. But you never know. Sometimes you just slip. Sometimes things are just slippery. It really was just this rock out of a fucking road runner cartoon. Like Wally Coyote would be on this shit. And there was nothing. No, it needed a guide rope like crazy. So I'm kind of rope to hold onto for sure. But I knew because there was fence leading up to that spot, it was definitely going somewhere. They didn't lead me to nowhere. If I just made it around the corner, I'm sure I could have kept going. But it's just, there was just nothing. There was nothing to hold onto. It was just smooth rock. And it's like, this is fucking nuts. You know, it was like a rock high hat that you just had to circle around on. Just if I did slip for some reason, there's nothing to grab. It just would have fallen. So I was like, no way. No way. Nope, nope, nope. See you later. I'm out of here. Fuck this. So instead I went down to the path to the Googie tunnel. 15:00 And I walked down it and it wasn't as good as the proper Googie entrance. But it was okay. Just walked down pretty empty, only meant one guy on that route. And yeah, then I came out at the bottom, at the entrance to the tunnel. So it was funny. I went on this whole adventure that took the whole afternoon up on a mountain, seeing people climb up, being in a fucking road runner cartoon. And then when I got back down, I was only like a little ways down the street from where I started. But it was still really cool. And I saw that you can in fact walk through the tunnel. So I came back today. Today, that's what I did. Got off at Bulgwang, B-U-L-G-W-A-N-G. That's the trick. That's the magic station. Walk to Googie tunnel. And it was a lot better than walking through that tunnel in Western Japan. Because it's still loud, but they had a barrier set up the whole way across to at least separate the walking part from the car part, which really helped a lot with deadening the noise. And it wasn't as long as that tunnel either. So yeah, I just walked through the tunnel and then you could tell I was going the right way because then as I walked up to the entrance to the Googie Information Center to the proper entrance to the park, I was just passing hikers the whole time. And street vendors selling hiking goods and stuff. So yeah, then I went up today that area that last episode I walked down through. Today I walked up through it.

And there wasn't really much in the way of different routes I could take. It was really just the same route. So I just went up the same route and I did take a little side detour to the temple that I'd missed the first time with the coffee machine that didn't work. But then I ended up at the gate. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention this last episode. But at that gate, there was a warning sign I've never seen before in my life. It reminds all over the place of, you know, various things. Generally around here, it's the falling rock warning. Lots of falling rock warnings. Little Stickman Hiker. But this was lightning warning. The little Stickman Hiker guy with this little hiking backpack and hiking pole was getting struck by lightning. It's like Jesus, fucking Christ. What the fuck? I've never seen that before. That's when you know you're on top of a goddamn world. We need to worry about lightning bolts striking you in this skull. But yeah, I headed up Googie, up the mountain. Yeah, if I had to recommend one. I mean, they're all good though, I guess. Like I was saying, Googie wasn't as crazy amazing as it seemed. You know, it's like, oh, this is still nice. This is probably, if you had to pick just one route up onto the mountain. I would say this is the best one. And then once you get up a ways, then there's various options in different places you can go in different routes you can take. And it's not as hard to get to as I think.

Just passing a little waterfall. Now that I realized you can just get off at Bulgwang station and go through the tunnel to Googie. But they're all good. Really, they're all good. I mean, this one I'm going down right now. Pretty fucking beautiful. Pretty fucking great. And there were lots of people. Man, I was passing a lot of hikers today. I got to assume again, probably just because it's like a Friday. It would have been worse. I'm sure if it was the weekend. But I think probably the pollution thing. That we got the little green mark. They even had that I noticed as I entered the Googie Information Center. Maybe they all have this. I'm not sure. But it was like a little LCD screen with the temperature and stuff. Also, the temperature went down. Thank God. It's like closer to zero today, Celsius. Except so fucking hot all these previous days. I'm just dying. Today's nice and chill. So much better when things are cold. Makes hiking a lot more comfortable. You're not sweating your dick off. But yeah, so the perfect combination. Nice chill weather. And the LCD screen also had a little the particle thing. Zero point zero particles today. And a little smiling green face. It's like, hey, no pollution today. I still find it quite remarkable. How the pollution can just disappear like that so suddenly. I mean, it's definitely a good thing. But it seems like the kind of thing that you would expect would linger more. You know, when I was initially researching this, they were saying that it's hard to determine how much is coming from other places and how much of it is domestic pollution. But doesn't this suggest that it's probably not domestic pollution that's necessarily the big problem? Because wouldn't the domestic pollution stay? Wouldn't it hang around? I don't know though. I mean, I don't know how it all works. Oh, and here we go. Here's the sign I can tell you. That gate I was mentioning.

That's the lightning gate. Oh, and there's the temple. I was at Yonge Twisa, Yonge Twisa, Y-O-N-G-C-H-W-I-S-A temple. 1.3 kilometers left to the information center. Nice, nice, nice, nice.

Yeah, last episode I found that cool entrance that I especially liked. And then with a couple little tries, I found that it's actually not that hard to get to. I didn't even have to learn how to take a bus. I will never. You can't make me. You know, it's crazy too. I'm thinking like I really don't even want to take a bus. I'd have to be pretty desperate to take a bus. Because I just don't want to be crammed in with people on a bus on a route that I'm not necessarily sure where it's going and having to pay attention. Like buses, like just that level of crammed in with people and trying to figure out where to stop, where to tell the bus to stop and having to interact so closely with a bus driver. It's a whole to do. I don't even particularly like taking the bus in North America. You know, it's a lot nicer to just take a subway where it's just like out of your hands. Subways just going where it's going. You don't have to you don't meet the conductor, you know, and you don't have to tell it where to stop. Like if you tell it the wrong thing, you tell it to stop in the wrong place or like, I don't know. I was on some bus in Vancouver once that was like some kind of express and I didn't know. So I was like, dinging to stop and the guy had to tell me like, we don't stop. We're going across the bridge to North fucking Van and look up Jesus, alright. Now I'm embarrassed. I just don't prefer buses. But there's definitely no need. It's quite easy actually to get to Googie. It turns out. And here's a little rest area ahead of me and a person there resting. So allow me to turn off this recorder and I'm sure I'll pop back in. If something else happens, if there's another thing to say.

Yeah, so this descent off the mountain also follows a stream. I suppose maybe, I don't know, maybe they mostly do this.

I feel like I'm learning a little bit about mountain geography because again, it's just really not something that existed in any accessible way where I grew up. So especially with Japan, but also here, I mean, the mountains are somewhat different, but just the basics of hills and valleys, you know, peaks and peaks and valleys.

And walking along the crest line, the ridge of mountains, you know, there's like a lot of similar stuff that happens over and over to the point that like in Ome, I, you know, was like a little confident to go a bit off trail once in a while. Because it's like, okay, I think I know what's going to happen or how this geography is going to work or how it's going to go.

So I mean, I guess if you are coming down off a mountain, either it's going to be a ridge, although that's only happened once here. It was the first time I went up a mountain in Buchanan National Park where I pretty much just went up the ridge of the mountain starting from the bottom. Everything else has been in these valleys is where you enter and where you exit. So I guess it makes sense that in the valley is also where the water would flow.

But there's a bunch of stone mounds here. That's definitely the most unique thing about this particular exit. It's still a, you know, I guess two kilometers. It's not a short distance, but it really does feel long as things flatten out.

And it's mostly empty. I've only seen two other people where you're just walking. You don't feel like you're on the mountain anymore. It's all just a pretty gradual relatively flat walk just slowly tapering downward. So you kind of, I guess it's because mentally I feel like, okay, I'm done. I'm done with the mountain. I'm not on the mountain anymore. You have turned around and behind me, like, yeah, that peak. I believe that's the peak I was more or less passing by earlier today. I mean, I started on one side of the mountain and went to the other. But I guess I'm kind of still on the mountain because it really takes a long time. It just goes and goes and goes and goes.

It's the sun sinks further and further and further.

But yeah, there's these stone mounds like really big taller than me, like an eight foot tall, just pile of rocks. And I saw the first one and I'm like, okay, that's interesting. But I've seen like, I don't know, five of them of different sizes. Who the heck knows what that means? You know, must mean something or it did mean something at some point in history. But it's kind of interesting that I haven't seen them around. I've only seen them here. Kind of cool, though.

Man, I was thinking, though, just what I was saying earlier about buses and being crammed in with people. This is one thing that I mean, I shouldn't even say it out loud. You know, I was like, I say it and it's like I'm calling upon the bad luck. But between, I was in Montreal for like a month. I was in Japan for three months and I've been here in South Korea for at least a month, maybe more than a month now. I'm coming up on basically six months of travel.

And I've just been packed in with people pretty much every day on a subway or whatever, just traveling around, going all over. And I haven't gotten a single cold. It's fucking unbelievable. I think I brought this up before. But this is certainly not normal. I wouldn't say I'm super susceptible to colds, but I'm not at all resilient. I mean, I definitely had runs in Amsterdam. Maybe not in Japan. I guess the Japan one was just me carrying my sickness from Amsterdam along with me. But back home or in Toronto or in Vancouver, wherever. We're not only will I get colds that just hang on and just won't go away for like three weeks. Or I'll get a cold that lasts really week and a half and then I get a second distinct cold right, you know, in the middle of that. So then together they last for like, you know, weeks and weeks of being sick. That's happened to me many times. And it's just like, man, this is so wild of all the times when I'm just traveling and I'm around tons of people. And even when COVID stuff started loosening up in my hometown, I noticed I was getting colds all of a sudden because I was just around people. And I spent, I mean, I spent like a solid three years during COVID times barely seeing anyone, just my immediate family mostly. I didn't get sick at all. So my immune system should be not prepared, you know, it's just like, how is this possible? How have I not gotten a single cold? It's fucking crazy.

Maybe I've had a couple little moments here and there where I feel like there's a little something going on in my throat that I don't quite trust. Grab some cough drops or whatever, but it never lasts more than a day and a half and never develops into anything. It's fucking amazing. I guess it's just good to, you know, it's hard to notice these types of things. It's hard to notice when you're healthy. You know, it's not the kind of thing that you generally think about. So it's probably good once in a while to just, when you do realize it, when you do think about it, to spend a little moment being thankful.

It's gotta end eventually. I gotta get a cold sometime. That's kind of a big, big-ish waterfall.

So yeah, whenever it does happen again, just gotta remember that my, I far exceeded, you know, not that there's any karma, not that there's any justice to getting sick, but I far exceeded whatever time I should be allotted. And I just walked by a sign that said, Nature Interpretive Trail and I was like, hmm, this seems weirdly familiar. What's going on here?

And I think it is that, yeah, I'm checking my little blue dot on the map. I have crossed across the mountain, but not in the way that I was thinking. I think I got kind of confused because the first time that time I climbed up the ridge of the mountain and didn't go quite to the top, then I kind of looped around up north and went on some weird subway that I'd never been on before. So that kind of put the idea in my head that you could cross these mountains to the north, but you can't really. That was a specific circumstance that I was on the very western side of Buchansen, and then I kind of looped up to the northwest. But in reality, yeah, you can't go north on these mountains. They go on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever. So it looks like what's actually happened is I've gone east, and yeah, if this isn't exactly the same entrance that I used before, well, it's definitely not because I would remember those rock mounds, but it's very close to the episode I did where I was saying that it reminded me of King's Quest V. 30:00 I'm very near there, so I should be able to just go over to that other subway line to get back home. Yeah, it's not. Again, not super close, but not that far. Soul Sam. And into civilization, there's some people.

Yeah, either Soul Sam Station or the actual Buchansen one. Maybe it's actually closer. Whatever I'll figure it out when I get down there.

But yeah, cool. I've kind of sort of been around here before.

I'm not where I thought I was because where I thought I was doesn't exist. It's not a thing you can do.

Yeah, and this is actually man, pretty nice too. Still just walking down the stream. So yeah, I mean, I guess that's the, uh, here we go. Here's the official entrance. Buchansen National Park. I wonder if there's one of those little 50 cent coffee machines down here. I can go for that. I only have one 50 cent coin. I have no dollars left. I got to figure out how to make more coins. I could either go to a laundromat and split a $10 bill into a crap ton of 50 cent coins.

Or probably a better plan is if I go to, uh, there's a coffee shop chain I found called a Tussum Place that, uh, just for whatever reason tends to seem to be a little less busy than the other ones. And it's really convenient because the lattes there are like $6 even. So if you buy it with cash, you just get four little dollar bills back that you can use in the coffee machines. It's delightful.

I don't see one yet because, yeah, it's one of these things where it's like I have never been here specifically, but it's very similar. Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha! Yeah, it's so strangely similar to the other ones. All right. This is actually going to work. Ah, sweet. We'll go with Cafe Olle. This one's only 400. So I get 100 back. And then once I save up.

For those, I can get another one. Ah, the little coffee in the cup. Goddamn. These things, man, it's one of my favorite things about that. Ha-ha-ha! Most of that's Korea because, like, that was such a strange little thing in Japan where, you know, I'd find those random coffee machines in the little paper cups in airports and train stations and stuff in Japan. It was a nice little treat. But these ones are so perfect because they're still mostly only in subway stations. But, apparently, these entrances to the National Park always seem to have them as well. And it's so perfect as it's a smaller cup. It's just a little bit, because I mean, yes, like, what is it now? Like, five, thirty? Sun's going down. This would be a bad time to drink a great big coffee. Even one of those ones out of the machines in Japan, they're quite large. This is a little 40 cent coffee. It's just one of these little tiny, oh, and this is a cup I've never seen. It says, I like spring.

Because the flowers bloom, and it has butterflies on it, and dandelions. And it's like a small cup, and it's only half full, because I mean, it's fucking 40 cents. But to me, that's so perfect. That's exactly what I want. I don't want a big coffee. They also have hot chocolate in some of these. They have some teas, too. I haven't really experimented with the teas much. Korean tea. I think I got it once. I don't really remember what it was like, though. But some of them, this one does not, but some of them also have hot chocolate. So sometimes, if I just want to get a little warmth in me, but it is a little late in the day, and I don't want even just the tiny little bit of caffeine, can just get a hot chocolate. It's so nice.

This is extra nice, because it really is getting cold on the hands. My hands are very cold, and I have my little gloves on.

There's only one of these machines that has ever failed me, where the coffee that came out of it just tasted burned and weird. Generally, they're pretty good. Sometimes they don't accept the 1,000 WAN bill. It just won't feed in. It's better to have coins.

So there's not that hyper reliability of Japan, but it's pretty good. It's good enough. They generally work. I saw a guy doing maintenance on one of these ones, so refilling it or whatever, and inside it is just a series of powders of just different containers of powder that obviously the powder just gets funneled through boiling hot water.

And this is what you get. So I have no idea what was wrong with the one where it tasted burned, because they're not really brewing coffee. It's just a powder. So I don't know what the fuck was wrong with that machine, but I tried it twice, and both times it tasted bad. But all the other ones, wonderful.

And here's a little silo to put your cups in.

Fuck yeah. Fuckin' aw, so good. So good. So yeah, let's wrap this episode up. Basically, I just wanted to say, if I had to pick one so far, I do think the Googie Entrance is my favorite. But who, man, I'm looking at the map here. There's so many ways, so many entrances to Bukansen National Park. This thing is fucking pretty fucking amazing. You can literally scale mountain peaks if you're into that, but even if you're just like me, you just want to wander with a minimal danger of getting barked at by wild dogs. Mostly the wild dogs seem pretty nice.

Bulgwang Station, through the Googie Tunnel, take it a Googie, but it does seem like pretty much all of these entrances. They're all pretty good. They're all pretty nice.

Yeah, I don't know. It's one of those things where, I mean, my travel advice is it's very subscan't use, because people just don't have the kind of free time that I've got. You know, I got this kind of weird inheritance life where everything I own fits in a book bag. My expenses are low. I'm willing to stay at weird little places that are $16 a night. That's fine. 30 people to one shower, whatever, just so that I can stay in cities for a long time. But this does seem like the best way to approach Seoul in the winter is like if you were only here for a few days or a week, what if it's one of the really bad weeks? You know, what if it's just fucking horrifying the whole time is in vis-à-vis pollution?

You know, that's not a risk I would want to take, but if you can manage to somehow come here for like three weeks, you're bound to get some good days. And I mean, even on the bad days, you could just wear a mask, but it's certainly not as good of an experience. It's just, you know, hard to deny the creepiness factor. But eventually you're going to get a nice day like this where the little fucking, the little LCD face is a green smiley face. It shines down upon you. And then there's, yeah, the other parks like in Wonson with the big wall, certainly worthwhile, certainly a good time.

But Bukhonson, this is the real deal. This thing, this thing is crazy.

All right, wait a second, wait a second. I'm just getting so confused and turned around. I have definitely been here. Not once but twice. I came out of this entrance on King's Quest V day. And then I believe, yeah, I came back here and I came back in this entrance the day that I exited at Googie the first time. Because yeah, I was saying how there's certain similarities to these things, you know, these park entrances and stuff. But it was too exact. Once I got to, I saw a second coffee machine as like this washroom building really looks similar. And then when I got to the second coffee machine, I was like, no, dude, I fucking been here. I've gotten coffee at this other machine for sure. I guess I'm just getting confused because, yeah, my first impression, my inclination with the nature interpretive trail and stuff was like, wait, haven't I been here? But those rock mounds were so distinct. But I guess it's just that there's just so many different routes in this national park. I just didn't happen to go down that one before. So yeah, fucking, yes, I know where I am. I know how to walk all the way to the subway from here. For sure, no problem.

I should probably try to commit that name, Gianniung, J-E-O-N-G, any U-N-G. It's just, it's tricky because, you know, I don't know what any of these names mean. You know, I'll pick up little random things some places like how Aumori in northern Japan is the blue forest.

I don't know why I know that. It just sticks in my mind or how that first neighborhood I stayed when I went back to Japan with the building with the big gorilla. I know that neighborhood means three T houses, but I guess it doesn't matter because I can't remember the name of the neighborhood now off the top of my head.

It'll come back to me later. Every time I can't remember one of these names, I just remember it an hour from now. It's like my brain's got to go through the indexing system. It's like going through all the drawers and cabinets in my mind to try to get the information and it'll pop up in an hour from now. Yeah, it'd be a lot easier for these things to stick in my mind if I knew what that name meant. Yeah, it's kind of funny that I've been here distinctly a couple of times, and yet when I saw that way up on the mountain when I saw the exit, I should have known an hour ago. Like, oh, cool, that'll take me down to that place, but it just didn't even fire in my brain. That that was the word that was the name that I'd gone to before. Will it stick now? Who knows. It has a much better chance now, I was for sure. But yeah, this is kind of nice because I was pretty confident that once I got back down into the city proper, it would only be a matter of time before I got to a subway station, but this is way better. I've been to this subway station a couple of times. I totally know. I know how to get there and know how to get home from here. All the stuff. All right, perfect. What a nice day. What a nice chilly day, freezing my hands off. So let me turn this recorder off. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next episode.