#106 Exploring Jecheon, South Korea, the Healing City

Transcript

Yo, I don't have my proper recorder with me because it was raining when I left the house and I didn't expect to record anything today so I just didn't want it to get wet. But now it's not raining and I think this sounds okay. This sounds pretty good off the phone. So yeah, I haven't recorded in, I don't know, a couple of weeks maybe. Because that is one of the slightly weird things about this podcast, is it really, the idea was really just Japan, which obviously is the main focus. 99% of the episodes are in Japan. I recorded almost every day while I was in Japan. And I recorded a little bit before that in Montreal and I recorded a little bit after that in South Korea. But South Korea is a good example of, I wouldn't do this podcast if it was all like the South Korea stuff has been. You know, it started off quite frankly, positive, you know, it just wasn't going so good. And then it slowly grew on me more and more and more. And now I'm in a smaller city as a experiment. You know, I was just going to go to Busan, the other, the second biggest city, the other famous city. And I couldn't really find a great deal for an Airbnb, I'll get into that though, why that may have been. So then I thought as an experiment, let's just go somewhere small.

Because this is kind of what I want to do when I go back to Japan, is I want to travel more, travel more across Japan, try different various places. And I like the idea of just, I might be able to just take local trains, you know, my experiments with local trains, where I kept getting further and further down the coast. And you can kind of just keep going like the example I was think of was the YouTube channel, Katie and Eric, KYDE and Eric. How that dude went all the way from Tokyo to, I think it's called Lake Bihuah, he went halfway across the main island of Japan on normal rail. So like, what if I did that? Can I just go from place to place to place, mostly on normal rail? Because I'd always heard about this Japan rail pass. I'd never looked into it, but apparently they just hiked the price up. It only lasts for 30 days, you kind of got to use it like a lot to get your money's worth. So in a way that's kind of nice that I just don't have to worry about it. It's like, okay, that kind of is not a great deal anymore. Never mind. But can I just take local transit around? Why not experiment with that a bit while I'm in South Korea? Because I got this nice six months visa here in South Korea. I got a lot of time to just dick around. I can test out things, you know, before I bring them to the main event of going back to Japan.

I'm not sure how well it's picking it up, but I'm basically, I mean, I'm walking through a path, but I can definitely hear traffic or something in the distance, but I don't see it at all. But it's a little bit loud on my end. So if you can hear a weird noise, it's probably a highway or something that I can't see.

But yeah, basically I decided, why don't I just search Airbnb for the cheapest place I can find? Literally just what are the cheapest places I can find anywhere in the country? Because it's not that big of a country, and I don't give a shit where I'm going.

You know, I don't have any preferences. I don't think that's an airplane, but I can't see it either. This is the day of Phantom Sounds. It's quite overcast today, a bit cloudy, although some god rays are passing through onto the mountains. It's pretty beautiful.

So I had two or three places that really stood out as especially cheap, and one of them was Jechion, J-E-C-H-E-O-N. Though this is a good example of, I saw a little tourism video done locally, and I'm probably getting this wrong, but the way they pronounced it was more like Chechon. So that's one of those, the millions of examples in Asia of, you know, just slight pronunciation problems and differences can really make it, can really throw things off. Because Chechon really does not sound like Jechion. So if I said, hey, yeah, Jechion. Oh yeah, you've been from Jechion. I've been there, like they wouldn't know what the fuck I was saying. Whereas if they said Chechon, I wouldn't know what they were saying, you know, very small differences. The way I've heard it described that I kind of like is that your ears also have an accent, you know. It used to, I mean, it's a pretty stereotypical thing, but I like many ignorant Westerners used to be confused by these English loan words that are almost the same. 5:00 Hottodogu, basubaru, like how come we can't bridge the gap between these?

But yeah, I'm just starting to realize more and more. It is just little differences. Just it makes it a different word, you know.

But yeah, I get to take the train, which was kind of nice, because we don't have a ton of trains left in Canada.

And it's a pretty short ride. See, how's the thing too, Nash? Should I say Jechion? Or should I say Chechon? I think I'm just going to, I'll just keep being North American. Hey, got on the train, went down to Jechion. Got it, I'll just say it, my dumb wrong way, I guess. It's only like a 90 minute ride, and the ticket was like 14 or 15 bucks. So I upgraded it to business class for like $3 more just to try it. And it was pretty nice, but I don't know how much that matters, what the difference is. So on my next leg, my next bigger trip, I just got economy class, because I don't know, I don't know, we'll see. If it makes any difference, but probably not. There's a nice little train ride.

And I booked, I was going to just book two weeks here, but then I upset to three, because I'm like, yeah, you know, again, I've got this long visitor visa. Let's just settle in for a bit.

And yeah, I found this really cheap Airbnb.

I don't remember how much it was, but like real cheap, I think even cheaper than to share house and soul. So like $12, $13, $14 a day, something like that. And then I wanted to wait till I got here before I set up the next leg, because you know, you just, I just didn't know what was going to happen. How's it going to feel? I just wanted to experiment with that when I get here.

Am I either going to love it so much here that I want to stay even longer?

Or just love this idea of going to smaller cities, so just book another smaller city somewhere further down the line. Or just want to bail out and go straight to a bigger city like Busan. And that's what happened. You know, the train ride was pretty cool.

It was a little tricky navigating how to buy tickets online, how to get to this station, how to how all this stuff worked. But you know, nothing too tricky. I did watch a YouTube video, because I couldn't figure out just, I went to Seoul station one day, which is where the train platforms are. And I couldn't really figure out how to get from the subway station to where the trains are, which basically just go upstairs. Downstairs is the subway, upstairs is the trains. But it was raining that day. I didn't really spend a lot of time. You know, it's like stages. It's like, okay, I know how to get to Seoul station.

Then I watched a YouTube video of just how to get to the concourse, get all the YouTube.

Then I had to figure out how to read the ticket, where my seat was, the idea, all just little stuff that wasn't that tough. But now that I've done it once, it's like, great, it's like, oh nice, I can do all this really easily the next time.

And the train ride itself is pretty cool, nice little ride, looking out the window.

But the vibe I got, as soon as I got here, is just that, I don't know, I mean, I just didn't know what a small city would be like. What the vibe would be. Because I think it's safe to say that like a small city or small town in North America is quite different from a big one. Oh, there's some civilization I can see down there, over there.

That's where the traffic's coming from. But around here, the vibe I got was basically the small city. It feels to me just like Seoul. It feels exactly the same. It's just a thousand times smaller. It's just teeny tiny. But there's more churches around. But besides that, I can't say I noticed a ton of difference.

Like, as an example, on the one street that I was on, you know, from Hapcheon station up to Hongkik University, just that stretch has like seven or eight Starbucks on it, at least. And the entire city of Checheon has two Starbucks. So, I mean, that's kind of, you know, that's a good, it's actually, I think, a kind of good way to gauge the relative sizes. It's really small. But then also, the smallness was actually a bit of a problem. 10:00 Because I thought maybe, like, oh, small. It'll be more access to nature. But that kind of didn't happen because both Starbucks, for example, are drive-through Starbucks. Which, you know, that's kind of telling. You know, like, when you get to the outskirts of Toronto, you get out to Atobaco and stuff. Suddenly, the second cup restaurants are drive-through, because you're in car country. This was very clear evidence that I was in car country now. So, ironically, being in the smaller city, being a little more outside of the center, it's actually harder to get to stuff like this. You know, like, it took me a while to crack the nut of Seoul and to figure out how to get to the mountains and where the hiking paths were. But then, once I did, there's like a lot of them. And because of the subway, it's easy to get to. And, you know, it culminated in those insane mountains with the snow on top and the ancient temples and the wild dogs that live up there. And it was like a legitimate uncharted Himalayan style adventure. It was like crazy that I would just get off the subway and just go on this, like, literal adventure hike.

Where that's not so much the case here. All of the famous hiking spots and the famous mountains and stuff are not close. You know, you got to drive there or you got to take a bus or a shuttle or something. And I'm a very much an on-foot kind of guy. So, this one path that I'm on right now, this one is very close to my Airbnb, which is right by Jetcheon Station. So, this one's great. It's really close, really easy to get to. At first, I found a little loop that was only like a couple of kilometers. But just today, I found this other part to the loop. And now it's like, okay, I can keep going and keep hiking further and further out. And it's like, ah, this is awesome. But this is kind of it. You know, this is the only thing I really have clear access to for hiking. So, ironically, the Big Bad City of Seoul just gave me a lot more options. It was a lot easier to get to nature stuff and to get the hikes and things. There's a reservoir that's supposed to be really pretty around here that I haven't gone to yet. Because it literally is the other side of town. It's not that long of a walk, but it's long enough that I haven't made it yet. Again, I could just take a fucking bus, but I still just have not. Though the bus stations are so cool, like they're electronic, you know, and they tell you exactly where the bus is, which one is coming, how far it is.

But yeah, this place that gets the fancy bus stops, it's got the LCD lights on the sidewalks to let you know if you can walk or if you should stop. It really feels pretty much just like Seoul, just smaller. So, I guess I'm not really getting a lot of benefit out of this place. But similar to Seoul, again, like a mini-soul, how it took me a little while to get used to Seoul and figure out what was going on. Similar thing here, just a smaller version. At first, I was just walking around not knowing where to go or what to do. Then I slowly got comfortable, figured out where stuff was, got to know how the neighborhood works. I would say my neighborhood, but there only is the neighborhood, you know, that's kind of it. The city is just kind of a strip between a bunch of mountains, so I can't really, there's a limit to how big it can be.

Because the mountains are in the way. Hmm, is this a dead end? I believe it is. Alright, where am I supposed to go? I think I see the other ridge.

But yeah, then I found this place. And yeah, you know, it's just kind of, it's it's okay. I'm falling into that same thing. I'm like, all right, this is all right, maybe this is okay. But the highs of Seoul, just with Bukhonson, that National Park alone, those highs are so much higher than anything I can get access to around here. That mountain is so fucking majestic and magical. And like mountain range, I mean, there's just so much that you can do there and it's so fucking cool. That I think there's really no particular upside for me to just meander my way around Korea and go to smaller places. I'm still going to try it in Japan, because you know, I'm just obsessed with the vibe of Japan. I want to try that in Japan. But in Korea, I don't think so. So I booked pretty much right away, like the next day. I just like, okay, I got my three weeks here. But we're going to Bukhonson next. Let's just go. Next big city. No meandering around Korea.

I was also hopeful that, you know, what people were saying about the air pollution in Seoul, and how it's worse because the air pollution gets trapped by mountains, that may or may not be true. But 90 minutes away doesn't make much of a difference. Like I got a little app to tell me what the current index is.

Anyway, it's a bit better here than Seoul each day, but they're pretty comparable. So it could just be that maybe the country's just getting blanketed in pollution, and there's not much you can do about it. Or maybe, I mean, this place is also surrounded by mountains, you know. Maybe it is that mountain phenomenon.

But Seoul is not unique in that sense. I don't know. I mean, I added Busan to my app too, so I check it every day.

And it's, you know, again, a little better still, but still I think my dream of just going somewhere where the air is just okay. I just don't think it's going to happen around here. Well, you know, I guess we'll see when I get there. So it is better here, but that's another hope I had. Can I just get out of Seoul and not have to worry about the air anymore? And the answer is no.

So yeah, just pretty much right away. I felt like, okay, I just don't have much reason to hang around here. And I don't have any reason to recreate this experiment, because if, if Jechi-on is this similar feeling to Seoul, I'm sure every city feels the same. You know, 7-11. It's all the other various convenience store chains.

There's still a burger king. There's still a McDonald's. There's just fewer. You know, what's the difference? I don't know. Except that there's no subway, you know, which is really fucking me.

So an interesting experiment.

And again, you know, even though my first impression was just like, nope, nope, nope, nope. Not feeling this vibe. Let's get out of here. But now that I've got my three weeks that I'm just puttering around, I am starting to like it more and more, you know? I'm getting to know the place. I'm getting to know where I'm going. I found at least one really good hiking path that's accessible on foot.

And you know, just a little stuff like on the way to this hiking path. There's an unmanned cafe. It's so cool. It's just a little building on the corner with a bunch of really nice seats and it's all super well maintained and super clean and quiet with a fancy coffee machine. And it had no English, but I painstakingly translated it with my phone and just tried my credit card because sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But in this machine, it did work. And then there was a guy in like a side office somewhere, probably watching me on CCTV, who the first time you did come out and show me. Because it was like an ice drink and he's like, okay, you got to get the cup over here, do the ice, then put it here. And again, we know we can't speak each other's language at all, but you just, you rarely need to. You know, I just gave him a little laugh and I thank you. And he, you know, it's just a nice vibe. The guy helping me with my coffee. And now I can just go in there. I was in there today, got a little coffee, just sit there for a bit, wrote a little thing, you know, whatever, you know. Come to the hiking place like I'm starting to dig it. I'm starting to kind of like it.

It is just that different feeling of instead of, you know, as soon as I got to Vancouver, I'm like, whoa, I love it. Once I started visiting Montreal by myself, I was like, whoa, I love it. Even Toronto, I kind of have some criticisms of Toronto nowadays, because I lived there for so long, kind of got burned out. But my initial impression of Toronto was like, I love it. This is great. Japan, super duper loved it, you know. That was like on the Vancouver level of like, I just love this.

South Korea is just not like that. It's like slow burn. It seems like whenever I get somewhere, it's a tough integration. And I spend four or five days wondering what the hell I'm doing with my life. And then it starts to turn around little by little until I'm like having a pretty good time.

Oh, this could be a slight, this is kind of cool. This recorder app thing I'm using. It records in blue when it's my voice, but it records in white when it's just wind noise. 20:00 And I was just up on a ridge when the wind picked up and it was catching a lot of wind sound. I think it's okay now. But yeah, that could be, that could be one big downside to recording with the phone is the wind could destroy.

So I got to be careful. And yeah, I hit a little dead end and I see another route that seems to go deeper in. But I didn't know that this path went this far. I came here just thinking I was going to do the little two kilometer loop. And then I found this other route. So it's a little late. It's like quarter to five. And at this point, it's mid-March. The sun stays up pretty late. But also, yeah, it's supposed to get with the rain this morning. It's supposed to even possibly snow tonight. We'll see. So I think I should just start heading back because it's quite overcast and windy and I don't know what's going on. Now that I know this path goes out here, I can explore more later.

Let this be a lesson to myself also. Just always bring the recorder. Don't worry about rain. You can tuck the recorder away and your code won't get wet. Bring the recorder. You never know. You just never know when you're going to want to do a podcast. Because again, I guess I just, like I was saying, I just don't want to do negative podcasts. You know, if I've got little weird things to talk about, that's fine. But if my overall vibe is negative, you know, I want that to be a very rare event. You know, I think when I first arrived in Seoul, that was worth it because I think it's important to express.

I was quite shocked. I did not expect what I got.

And like I just watched recently, a couple of YouTube videos from different people, both Canadians, ironically.

But that we're talking about their 10 years in Korea that they've lived here. And they're talking about the pros and cons. And just none of them mentioned the pollution. I don't fucking get it. It's just weird. That is not something you can take for granted. When people don't know that's going to happen, you got to tell them they got to know.

But when my general vibe about Jeju Island was still kind of up in the air, you know, I just was like, yeah, I just don't want to record the podcast yet. Wait till I'm having a good day. Wait till I'm feeling good. And today on this path, it's like so beautiful and so awesome. It's like, all right, feeling good. Let's do this. But now I don't have my recorder. And in fact, maybe I should just hold off.

Because this is when they're getting any better. I just don't want this to sound like shit. There's no hurry. I got at least another week and a half here.

I guess just to put a little cap on this particular part of the tale is, yeah, like since I've gotten to know this place enough, I'm sure I will be back to South Korea in the future because I mean, once I go back to Japan, now that I know how South Korea works and I'm familiar with it and it's right here, why not? I was just talking to my friend Brad who used to live in Fukuoka. And he mentioned that there's a ferry from Hakata to Busan. It's like, oh, that'd be cool. That's kind of a neat idea. So I'll definitely be back to South Korea in the future.

And I was thinking, you know, will I, you know, I developed these little infatuations with places, you know, really just because I was here. You know, it's pretty egocentric, but all these like weird little spots in Japan, for example, that were important to me.

They're only important to me because I was there, you know? Oh, I bought this bag from Ouyama Road. Oh, I went to this one specific weird mountain trail. I did this, I did that. Jetchon is, it's on the list now, you know? I wouldn't come back for like three weeks, but now it seems like it'd be a cool thing to just pass by. It'd be cool to stop in for just, you know, two or three days now that I know how the trains work and stuff. Just go to the unmanned cafe, hike on this path, stay for, you know, a half a week and then just go somewhere else.

But I don't know how easy that will be to do because one thing I learned about the trains trying to get out of here is it's very similar to when I was looking into Newfoundland. One of these days, you know, still on my bucket list, got to go to Newfoundland someday.

And I thought because I live in New Brunswick, you know, that's already halfway there from Toronto. Maybe that'll make it easier to get to, but it does not. There's no flights, you know, you got to fly back to Toronto and then forward again, double back to Newfoundland.

Being geographically closer does not matter at all. It's just what hubber you near is what matters. And it's the same with the trains, trying to figure out how to get from Jetchon to Busan. I just kept getting errors, like the website, you know, it's basically just if you ask it to do something that doesn't exist, it doesn't help you reroute or anything, it just gives an error. And no matter how many times I tried to piece together a route, I just couldn't because I think maybe there just isn't one. I think this train line I'm on, maybe it just goes even further east and that's it. I don't know that it, like I don't know the things connect the veins that they have, you know, in Japan where everything seems to connect to everything. I think there are fewer trains here and they're more major, you know, it's not like a local train. It is just a big, big boy train, a big, big giant train. So they only go unlimited routes, limited lines. So even though I'm 90 minutes closer to Busan technically geographically, it doesn't help at all. The only route I could find was to just go back to Seoul and start from there. So I got my little $14 ticket back to Seoul station in the morning. And then a little afternoon, I'm catching a train there and from there you got lots of options. I could have taken the really cheap, really slow train that takes like eight hours or the really fast, more expensive train that only takes three hours. And even it was only like $65. But I went in the middle, I got like the $45 train that's going to take like five hours or whatever.

And again, not a big deal. $14 bucks to get back to Seoul, who cares? I found a Tim Hortons, I found a couple of Tim Hortons in Seoul. There's one right by the station, actually I didn't buy anything. This is going to say like, yeah, stop in Seoul, go to the Tim Hortons. But even I'm not that perverse to just like buy Tim Hortons in other countries. Well, I fucking bother. But it was kind of cool to see.

But the point is, again, Jeju is just not seemingly, unless there's something I haven't figured out. It's not on the way to anything. I don't know that I can pass through Jeju. You see, I'm just like saying it different ways every time, I don't know. But I don't know that I can just stop in here for a casual stop. I think I would have to deliberately travel here and then deliberately travel back. And that just is like, I mean, it's a short trip. Maybe I'll do that. But maybe I won't. I don't know. I don't know. It's not necessarily easy to just slip it into your itinerary. You got to really want to come here.

So I guess we'll just see. We'll see how the nostalgia goggles do. How will I feel? Two years from now, whatever, when I'm back here.

Will I care enough to come back here? I mean, maybe. That's again where I'm right on the the lip. For the first few days, I would have said absolutely not. I don't know. And now I'm like, yeah, you never know. Maybe. Just maybe.

But all right, let's take a little break. Let's pop in. Probably a few days from now.

With the proper recorder. I'll tell you some other travel related junk that's been on my mind.

I think it's about time we talk a little bit about washrooms. That was my favorite fucking topic in Japan. And I haven't talked that much about the washrooms in Korea. So let's compare and contrast, shall we?

All right, a bit of a sudden ending there, but this is one of the cases where I took a break and I didn't record the other half at this episode for several days. I think this is literally the last case of this, though. The case of just like really dragging my feet on recording because I, you know, was like, uh, what am I going to say about this place? Like, I don't want to just complain as I had to wait for a while till good stories built up. I think this is the last time, though, because pretty soon I'll be in Busan and everything turns around a lot once I get to Busan. Then it goes back to, you know, one day, one podcast. But I split this one up and, uh, and I'm going to split it up. I think it's just better to have these split things separate as two different episodes. So there's just a little one, sudden ending, but join me next episode for some more thoughts about jetjohn, little threads that I was like, oh, the, uh, Airbnb 30:00 prices in Busan and toilet culture. And then I just never talked about them. So that's next episode. I'll tell you though, the Busan thing was just because I had my Airbnb setting set to single room, but it's better just to leave it wide open because sometimes there are single rooms, but they're not labeled that way in Airbnb. It just cuts down on options. Anyway, join me next episode for more jetjohn adios.