#108 Observations while visiting South Korea

Transcript

All right, this is still my initial thoughts and feelings about the small obscure city of Jechon, the healing city in South Korea. I guess it's called that because it has hot springs or healing bats or something. I don't know. I didn't, I did not partake in the healing part of Jechon. I'm more part-took in the coffee shops in the Burger King. But last episode, I was going on a little hike-y hike that then failed because it was under construction. Feel free to go listen to that episode for the full context, but if you want to jump in here, that's all. I went out hiking by the Uremiji reservoir. And now I'm heading home with my other random thoughts and opinions about things that I noticed in South Korea. So, here we go.

Man, there are sure are a lot of cafes in South Korea. That's another thing that became more evident now that I'm here. Now that I've been to two different cities, it's not just a soul thing. I mean, I presume it's basically a world thing. I think pretty much everywhere is just besoten with coffee shops at this point. But there really are a lot here. I really noticed it as I was coming up here toward the reservoir. And just as the normal density of the city faded away. And it was just agricultural fields and stuff. But the density of coffee shops did not abate. Just coffee shops, cafe, cafe, coffee everywhere. Churches and coffee shops, man, they're just everywhere. But speaking of, there's something I can kind of tie this in because I've already brought it up a couple of times. One thing I realized about searching with Airbnb. So I used to just search whatever, just search by price or whatever, just give me all the available options. And generally, I would just get rooms. But I kind of got caught in a weird spot in Toronto once before COVID, where the place was really set up to look like it was a private room. You know, sneaky photography and sneaky description. And then when I got there, it was certainly not that. Like the room I was in was my bed and a divider. And then a bunk bed next to it. And another bunk bed next to that, all with dividers between them. So there was five people in my room. I had the premium bed, I guess, because mine wasn't a bunk bed. But it wasn't just me who got stuck, you know, or misunderstood because other people would book in there and be, you know, be like, what the fuck is this? And like, you know, reject it and get an argument with the guy. And I was there for a whole month, but I actually didn't mind it. Actually, that was the last place I stayed right before COVID, because I remember I actually got along pretty well with the clearly alcoholic guy who ran the place that he was real nice, nice, older Indian guy. And because, yeah, I remember getting back to my hometown and because I left him a nice review, because I really did have a fun time there. I didn't mind it at all. I did say like, hey, you should be aware how this works. But that being said, I stayed there for a month and I had a fun time. And I think maybe he just didn't get a lot of good reviews. So he texted me and was like, hey, dude, thanks, you know, whatever. Hope to see you again someday. And yeah, I remember that was that was my last Airbnb communicate before COVID hit.

But because of that, I did start changing my Airbnb thing to like, checking the little box that says private room. Most of the time, not always, because obviously I stayed in some places in Japan, where I was in shared accommodations again. And I don't know if it was ever worth it. Certainly never went great. I didn't love any of those places. I thought I would try it because I had such a good time at the communal place in Naka, Itabashi. My very first time going to Japan, but on the second time through, it's like, I don't know, paying a little extra for a private room seems like a good idea. But what I realized just now, at least in South Korea, and I think I'll carry this forward, is it seems like it's better not, if you just want a cheap place, it's better not to click private room. It's better just to say, give me every listing and then do the work yourself to examine these descriptions and stuff. Because I was having a hard time finding cheap places, because my initial idea was to go straight to Busan. The reason I had this other idea to come try a smaller city is because I couldn't find anywhere to stay in Busan that was a good deal. It was actually surprisingly expensive, considering I found such a cheap place to stay in Seoul, even if that one in Seoul was the only one. How come there's not even a sort of semi-similar 5:00 equivalent in Busan? What's going on? So I was like, oh, well, let's go to Jeju and instead, here I am. But now, I was like, okay, this didn't work, let's get the hell out of here, let's go to Busan. Still have an hard time finding a place, so I switched the listing and basically right away, things opened up a lot because it just turns out that there are places that even though it is a private room, it's not listed as a private room. You know, maybe it's a private room in a group hostel type of place that just has private rooms, so it just wasn't showing me those places. So once I did that, the listing's got way better in a hurry and this is where being here in like wintertime definitely paid off because I found a place that was a private room in Busan with really good reviews. People are just over the moon about how nice it's a very tiny room, which again, I love. Give me the tiniest room in the world. I miss my tiny room in Yokohama so much. I loved that little place. So yeah, tiny room, but it really well maintained property. Everybody really likes the land lady who runs the place, just yeah, great reviews and was supposed to be $30 a night, which is a little little pricey, but it had the good old monthly discount, which is something I used to find all the time in pre-COVID-air B&B. I mean, like that place in Toronto, for example, that's why I stayed there with the monthly discount. It was like $500 to stay there for a whole month in Toronto, which is an amazing deal. Toronto is very expensive even back then, but it's going to be awful now when I go back. So I mean, it was a weird situation, but hey, it was cheap, but yeah, this one in Busan, it had a huge monthly discount. I booked five weeks and I got 50% off, so only $15 a night. It's like, fuck, yeah, that's what I'm all about. That's what I want. That's like, that's the point of living a one-book bag life. That's the point of not owning anything. It's to just be flexible to be able to travel at these discounted prices and stay at these cheap places. So such a downer, when I first started examining the post-COVID landscape that is so much harder to do this type of thing, hopefully it's coming back. But yeah, that wasn't, that was the kind of thing that wasn't showing up because I was looking for a single, like, an individual room, and this is, in fact, an individual room. But I learned, don't check that. If you want cheap, just say, show me all your properties and then sort it out yourself. I wish there was a check mark for women only. There's so many places that are great deals that are women only, and it's like, oh, well, that's cool, you know? I don't begrudge it. It's just annoying that I have to, you know, it's like, okay, I got to skip that one, and then I can't remove it from the listing. It's like, what about this one over here? Oh, yeah, I already looked at that one. That's the one where you have to be a lady, and I'm not.

But yeah, just open the floodgates. Look through everything. See here now that I'm back at this park in between the two lakes. Let's see where this goes. This is got a little pass to go to somewhere.

Oh, or does it? The green, the green, nope, blocked off. What the fuck's going on around here? Fucking goddammit. So annoying. So annoying. So few places to go.

Man, though, I remember, because my hometown, I feel like, is very comparable to this, where Jetchion has a higher population, but is geographically smaller. So I feel like the two things to Frederikton, New Brunswick, they kind of balance out in a weird way, similar vibe.

And I remember, after I had left my hometown and I moved to Vancouver, the first time I came back to visit, I brought along my Vancouver girlfriend, and my friend Matt, who was still at that point, still in Frederikton, he had gotten a new girlfriend in the interim as well. So we were like, yeah, I doubled date. And then it was like, like, now what do we do, though? Like, no fucking around. What do we do? There is nothing to do. Just nothing.

Like, we just literally didn't know. What did we even do that day? I don't know. I think we just went to a restaurant, hung out way too long.

Well, here's a sign with some mountain hiking routes and stuff, because I mean, there has to be something going on around here. I saw all those people with their hiking clothes earlier. But yeah, I don't know, whatever. It's just too much of a pain to unravel. I'm tired of trying to untie this knot. I'm just tired of it. I don't care. I'll just hang out at the coffee shops until I leave. That's fine. That's fine, Jetchion. Apparently, there is a 900 meter mountain, and then a 945 deeper on whatever, man. I don't really know the distances here. It doesn't say.

I don't care, because even these, I'm sure they're nice, but again, man, the soul stuff with, you know, again, that took a while to unravel, too. But then when it did unravel, those mountains in Buchanan, you can't fucking beat that. And there's Subway adjacent. Like, that shit is insane. It's like the best shit in the world, and it's right by a subway. If I did go on this one of these routes, one of these, I don't know where the fuck I'd end up. Like, it's car country, man. It's the same all around the world, I'm sure. Just some places you're supposed to have a car.

Hmm. Although, yeah, this hiking route that it's showing, none of this, because in the middle is the river where I got turned back.

So yeah, presumably there is a for real peak to peak to peak hiking route somewhere around here, but again, yeah, whatever. I don't care. I don't give a fuck. I'm giving up. I don't care. Too much work. Too much work to figure out what the fuck's going on around here.

Too annoying. I wonder if I'm tired. This really seems like one of those days. Maybe I'm just grumpy. Maybe I didn't get enough sleep. I mean, I did definitely get out of bed a little early because I wanted to get here. Maybe that's also bothering me. It's like I dragged myself out of bed so I could get here early so that I would have time to go on an adventure. An adventure is not forthcoming. Yeah, this certainly, I mean, this has happened to me many times on this podcast where I'm just, I got a weird body. It doesn't know when it's tired, unless I'm truly exhausted. I can't tell. It just comes out as me being grumpy.

That's probably what's happening today.

Anyway, what else I got in these notes? Let's just get through this shit. Fucking who cares? Fucking get through this fucking shit. What are my big, fascinating fucking observations? Okay, well, Google Translate really does work well in this country. Holy crap. It was like lucky if something would translate properly in Japan. Here, it's rare that something doesn't translate. It seems very easy to translate Korean lettering to the point that this Airbnb I'm staying at this ancient inn. It has a lot of stuff where they just took a sharpie and they just wrote stuff on the walls. And it turns out it's all pretty obvious stuff. You know, turn the tap this way for hot water, this way for cold water. But I went around and I tried my Google Translate and it translated almost all of it. And that's fucking handwriting. Just written. Maybe that person has the best handwriting in the world. But I really found that remarkable. I didn't expect that to ever work.

Jeez, another dead end. What the fuck, dude? Okay, wait, maybe it's not quite a dead end. There's some kind of path. No, it's a dead end. All right, fuck it. I'm just going to go back. It is kind of cool. You can walk across. Like I walked just straight from the first time I came to the reservoir, just straight up the street from Jetshaon station up to the reservoir. It's just like a the major road that goes through town. You just follow that. It takes you straight from one to the other. But then on the way back, I found that you can, there's like walking paths through all of the agricultural fields. And that's kind of nice. It was actually really cool the other day when I was walking down it. The sun was going down. And there was just the right level of air pollution in the air that it made the sun look just beautiful orange, hazy orange, as it approached the mountains. And I was listening to a podcast about the old space quest video games as I looked at that sun. And it looked like an alien sun from an alien world. And I was like, this is actually fucking really cool. So I'm going to take that route to walk home. Though it's earlier in the day to day, it's still only three o'clock.

All right, good news. I did find a hiking trail. And I got my mask on because this is one of the steepest, most continuous, upward trails I've ever been on. So let's see as a joke if I can podcast while I go up it. But that requires Darth Vader, but that requires Darth Vader levels of super deep breathing. So I'm going to keep the mask on. So this is at the 15:00 park that's in between the reservoir and the lake with the castle to the west. You just got to poke around a bit. There is a sign. It's right by the washrooms, but there's a just a little natural nature trail that goes up into the woods. Very easy not to spot. And then your ascend to begins. I think this is around 650 meters. It's just straight up dude. Oh, I met some real stares now. So this is very silly. To podcast right now, but I've only got two more notes that are not toilet related. Just see if I can get through those.

I don't think so. I can do this as long as I go at a consistent time. Quite slow path and I breathe super deeply the whole time. But I can't talk while I do this.

It cannot. I feel much better though. Thank God I found this fucking thing.

The day is not lost. I did find a hiking trail finally.

And yeah, I'm going straight up the ridge of a mountain. It's just fucking high. High up and very cool. This is very nice. Oh yeah, talking is so miserable. So let's not.

All right, I made it to the peak. I'm going to talk a little quietly because there's another guy up here with me. But I did just meet a nice older guy who had pretty good English who he's got family in London, Ontario and Toronto. So they got a cool. I lived in Toronto for a while. That girl I was just mentioning actually that took on the date didn't know what to do in my hometown. I met her in Vancouver but she's from London. So I've been to London, Ontario.

But yeah, this peak is 624 meters. Only a kilometer. Only one kilometer from where I started. It's just straight fucking up 624 meters. Brutal.

And the guy said that's only like 30 minutes to the next peak. But I asked is there a way to escape? If I go down that way can I get back to the city? He said maybe he's not sure. But yeah, it's only 330 30 minutes to the next peak. Fuck it. I'll just do that. But my thing that I sort of determined in Japan that 500 meters is about my average comfort zone does seem true because I got up to the point that I could look down and see the lake with the castle. Now I'm looking at the other side and I can see the other, the main reservoir with the little ducky boats. And yeah, they're very far away, very far down. So definitely yeah, just even though I'm only a little bit over 500, I started getting that feeling of like I shouldn't look, I shouldn't look at the sides anymore. It's a little scary. It's freaking me out. And the next bit is downwards. So let me just go leave this fella up here to his thoughts. Man, I have too many layers. Two coats, which is two coats too many. I haven't worn them at all today. But like I said, it was like fucking snowing the other day. I don't know what the fucking do. I've still got my jacket that I've been planning to abandon this whole time ever since I first got to Japan. I was pontificating about abandoning this coat. I still haven't. And I still won't because just those days happen where it's like, oh I'm actually glad I got it. It's cold as shit today. Once in a while. So I'm going to take it to Busan. It's not that hard to bring. But then surely it's not making it out of Busan alive. This coat is finally getting abandoned at that point. I will find something to do with this coat. I don't know if there is like closed donation boxes and stuff around. But this coat fucking sucks. I don't think anybody would want it. It is like, it is on its last legs. So I don't know. I don't know the 20:00 booth way to dispose of it, but I'll figure it out. Not very far down already heading up again. But okay, my last two notes. My last two non-toilet related notes. One of them is based on hiking. I saw two different people, both here in Jetchan, which is known as the Healing City. So I wonder if that is anything to do with it. They're both women, but I saw them on various hiking trails. One of them kind of down on the flat ground and one by the golf course, which is only a little ways up. But they were both hiking barefoot. One of them was walking a dog. One of them was just hiking. And I don't know if that's super common, but common enough that I saw it twice. And I'm a little jealous. I could never do that. It's the cool idea, you know, being next to the earth, being natural. But I remember, I mean, I always had flat feet. Apparently, I had to wear these horrifying devices when I was a kid that were supposed to help correct my flat feet. And I don't know how well they worked. And apparently, I cried my head off whenever I had them on. So my mom didn't make me wear them as much as I should have. Story in my life. Same thing happened to me with braces.

My orthodontist was like, yeah, they seem good now. You don't need to retainers anymore. And my top teeth are fine. They're like perfect. And my bottom teeth got all crooked again. It's like dammit. But it kind of works out well just because of the way my mouth is when I smile. You can't see my bottom teeth. So it looks like I got a perfect smile, ding. But then it's like civilization in chaos. If you saw the bottom teeth, then you'll see the crooked reality. Buh-haha. As with all things, it's like the day that I start worrying about my teeth being a little crooked. I got bigger problems in the self-esteem department. So I don't care.

I, in fact, only ever got braces in the first place because I had such a bad overbite. It was making it hard to chew food. So they actually took two of my top teeth out. And then the braces pulled my whole face like one tooth distance inward. And now I have a handsome chiseled jaw. So I guess I am vain in some degree because I'm like, yeah, that's much better. I'll take it. Like I used to be able to, if I put my molars together, I had enough space to stick my finger like between the space between my teeth. But if I try now, just my fingernail. I'm all lined up. It's nice. But speaking of the many parts of me that are not my feet. So yeah, I mean, I had flat feet enough so that it was identified as a baby that it was a problem. But it never actually started causing me problems until I was an adult. I wonder when that was. I guess I was in my mid-30s where I would wake up and the bottoms of my feet would sting a little bit when I first got out of bed. Then I'd just walk around a bit and work it off and it was fine. But it got worse and worse and worse and I didn't know what it was or what to do. So I had the dumb idea of natural remedies. Let's try to just heal things naturally. So I went to the beach near Vancouver with no shoes on and I just walked through the sand and I was like, ah, this is as natural as can be. Surely this will help strengthen my feet. But it made it much much much much much much worse. I remember there was one night my feet hurt so bad. It was in the middle of the night. I didn't have any food. So I was going to go to a nearby McDonald's that was like a 20-minute walk away because it was 24 hour. And every step was like I was standing on needles like I was stepping on needles piercing into my flesh like not one needle like a dozen needles together. I had to walk so slowly. It took me like two hours to walk there and it hurt every step. It was unbelievable pain.

And I went to see foot people and I got special insoles made and they didn't work.

I've had that happen many times in my life that doctors are sadly ineffectual but at least because I was on the west coast I could actually see a doctor unlike the east coast. But ultimately just trying stuff will work thankfully is just the standard inserts you can buy from any drugstore for planar fasciitis I think it's called and it just elevates your heel and apparently supports 25:00 the middle of your foot. And yeah that was almost 10 years ago and just with that one little change my feet have been perfect ever since. And just pray that the evil doesn't return but it's so amazing just these little stupid pieces of foam in my shoes corrected my debilitating literal inability to walk. It's fucked up. Man this is pretty this is feeling like Japan again in a good way of looking at the other mountains on the other side nice valley and then forested mountains and some power lines cutting through them. Man on the other side I can see a city. The way that the reservoir reminded me of a Hori park this is reminding me even just the tiniest bit definitely feels like Fukuoka but it even feels a little bit like my beloved north Ome hiking course this is really good man I'm glad I found this delightful so yeah I'm pretty jealous of these people that can just take a nice hike with no fucking shoes on because that is not me that is never gonna happen. I will die. My other note has nothing to do with that at all it's I have been I've just been hitting up McDonald's and Burger King to a disturbing degree like in Japan you know I was only just really going to convenience stores and you know that was kind of lame that I wasn't exploring more cuisine but to me the convenience stores were still far from being overexplored but that seems like amazing compared to what I do now at the convenience stores in Japan I was getting all kinds of cool weird shit where the convenience stores here just aren't the same similar to how I was just getting tired of trying to unravel the knot of this town I just got tired of trying to unravel the convenience stores here you know they got chocolate bars and coffee but other than that it's just such weird shit I just got so tired about weird and all this again I just feel like the best descriptor of South Korea sorry if it's offensive but it's weird places just weird I got tired of buying weird sandwiches like why is this potato salad egg salad and fucking strawberry ketchup in one sandwich it's not that bad it's edible but I'm just tired of this shit fucking stop it just you know what the hell is this yeah I've been hitting up the fast food to a ludicrous degree just because I can just go in and use my card and order stuff through a kiosk I ain't proud of it but but where exploring the wonders of the Japanese convenience store to me is like a beautiful dream I just got tired of trying to explore the convenience stores here but I did run into one thing that is really cool because one thing that comes up to all the time in Japan is the ingenuity of various little things all the way down to the packaging of stuff in convenience stores is always clever in some neat way but I found a super clever thing here that out clevered Japan where they have these like kind of macchi roll type things you know they're like a long rice roll with the seaweed wrapping but the package they're in is so genius whether they're pretty fat photomacchi I think they would call it in Japan like a fat roll and you unwrap the top and then it's like a push pop just the way the package is designed and it's so intuitive I figured it out right away you just push up the bottom and it pushes up the roll which is pre sliced into little little discs and you eat the one disc and chew it up and then you push up your your push pop and you eat the next part and it's really cool just unfortunately it's all these weird fucking flavors that I'm like I don't even know what the fuck this is I don't even know what is in this what is this you know it makes me think of there's this joking Futurama where fry eats bachelor chow because he's just such a single loser and he's just like whatever just pour this brown and distinct stuff into a bowl but water on it and eat my bachelor chow and that's what I was thinking of with this thing that it's like I guess it was some kind of tuna filling and just some weird veggies and stuff I don't know then I got one today that was spicy so at least that made it a little more interesting that it was a 30:00 spicy version but it's just just such everything just feels like a random mishmash here let's just put everything in everything and mash it all together it's just fucking weird and like it is definitely the opposite of that that philosophy of like simple really simple clear you know some Japanese food is complicated but a lot of what they do is like just pick simple ingredients and a simple presentation and make it as good as you can this South Korean method is definitely the reverse of that of like how about everything how about just everything that we could put in this how about that and again I mean it's not bad I've never gotten something that I didn't like or that I didn't want to finish but it's just wear me out though to always just feel like a little bit uncomfortable with what I'm eating like why is this like this what is this just not I'm just not clicking in but the packaging that packaging was fucking awesome so amazing I was impressed Alright, well as I continue down this delightful mountain trail, let's talk toilets, let's finally get to this. Because again, I think just being in a second city, at a second place, helped to kind of solidify some of this stuff. You know, I couldn't tell for sure what was just how the soft house and soil happened to be, now can start to piece together a little bit if something is a larger trend that I'm in a whole different city, and I'm seeing similar stuff. So I guess the first thing I noticed is that there's just normal toilets. I didn't know if there would be the super fancy toilets, but just normal toilets. And much higher quality toilet paper. The one thing that really annoys me in Japan, I guess, because they tend to have bidets, but then the toilet paper is like tissue-sint. It is so thin, you really got to be careful that your fingers don't pass through it, that it doesn't dissolve on your hands, because the slightest wetness, even just the wetness from a bidet, is dangerous. But I suppose it might make it more flushable, which that'll come up to. But here just normal toilets, but also normal toilet paper. Nice, sturdy toilet paper. But then I did, I heard that family guy did an episode where they went to South Korea. And I mean, I think it's far from accurate, you know, it's just a bunch of wacky family guy jokes, but one of them was about the toilets. They're at a hotel. And the guy's like, how many ridiculous things would you like your toilet to do? And I thought that was a little, seemed a little off the mark, because I didn't see any fancy toilets, like I was saying in Japan, I mean, even it like subway stations and stuff. Sometimes you'd have a nicer public toilet than you had in your apartment, you know. There's still some just normal toilets in Japan, but there's a lot of the bidet toilets. It's like 50% at least. And here I didn't see any. None at the airport. None in the subway station. None when I got to the share house. And then just wandering through Seoul, all the different places, different coffee shops and stuff. I never saw one. So I just figured they just don't have them. And I was like, hmm, seems a little lazy of the family guy writers. Are they just sticking Japan in there? Are they just conflating the two? You know? But the other day I finally did see a fancy pants toilet with all the bidet stuff here in Jeju. And it was at this indoor amusement place, you know? It's like claw machines and games and stuff. It's like a whole complex that has a big coffee shop in it and a burger king and all this like amusement-y type stuff. And in there, they had the fancy toilet. But it's the only one I've ever seen anywhere in South Korea. So they technically can have them, but they're super duper uncommon. And I thought it was funny as I was thinking about it after I left it. It's like, it does kind of fit. I don't think this was their intention. But it kind of fits with the fun amusement vibe, right? Yeah, we're using the claw machine. We're doing whatever, playing all the little games and stuff. Yeah, I get the fun of spraying water on my butt after I take a poop. Like to me, that's very amusing. That's very entertaining. I loved it. It's like, I missed this. How delightful. And combined with the actual real toilet paper, it was like wonderful.

But it's definitely not common. The other thing that I noticed that I think ties into the thickness 35:00 of the toilet paper is actually right away kind of weirdly. I got slight um, Amsterdam vibes from Seoul. Because in the subway station, when I was trying to figure out how to get a tea money card from a machine and fill it up and stuff, I was hanging around that one area for like an hour. It took a little while to figure out what was going on, went to a convenience store to make some change, stood there eating stuff, whatever. And there was a kiosk there that sold waffles, and that waffle smell. I was like, oh yeah, there you go. That's the smell of fresh waffles. That's the smell of Amsterdam. And then that would pop up in Seoul here and there. There's like a street near the sharehouse at Hapshion. That's like the whole street feels like a street market. And it had some waffle places as well. And that waffle smell totally makes me think of of Amsterdam. And remember me and my friend Chris, we're such little nerds that we went to the red light district, but we just got super fancy waffles with bananas and whipped cream and strawberries and stuff, and sat at the edge of the canal. Just ate our waffles and we were like, isn't this cool? Look at that lady in the window. Good waffle.

But the other thing that gave me Amsterdam vibes in a bad way, very much the opposite of the delicious smell of fresh waffles being baked, is Amsterdam has a serious issue with poop culture.

The washroom culture there is so weird. The washrooms are so hard to get to. Sometimes they have like a lady who sits at a table outside a washroom with a little table. It's kind of like at a strip club, I guess, where there's like an attendant in the washroom where wants a tip. Similar to that, it's like, yeah, okay, I guess this lady keeps the washroom clean and you're supposed to tip her. But not just at some mom and pop place, not just at like a, I don't know, a traditional Amsterdam type spot. This might be at fucking McDonald's. And it's like lady, get the fuck out of here. Fuck you. I have a McDonald's. I got to take a shit. And there was another McDonald's near Bill Maririna that was smaller and didn't have that, you could just go into the washroom. But they still had a little coin box where you were supposed to leave a donation to use the washroom. At least it was a donation because then up by slaughtered station, there was a burger king where you literally needed to put money in the bathroom door to get in. And there was a mall and Amstel Vienn where you couldn't go to the fucking bathroom without paying to get through the little turn style. I hated that. That is the main reason. If I never go back to the Netherlands, that'd be the main reason. I'm a guy who needs to piss all the time. I'm a pee machine. I cannot be put through this many hoops to fucking piss.

I just can't. I can't live like that. And at least if they're available, it's still insane to pay a euro to go piss. But they just weren't even available sometimes. In Outthorn, the mall there, the whole mall. It was a small mall, but it didn't even have a washroom. It's like, we'll just go home. Go home and use the washroom. Or like there's a public park. And Amstel Vienn that had no washrooms as well. It's severely discourages using public spaces and it's horrible. It's the worst thing about the Netherlands for me by a mile. It's a deal breaker. It's bad. But on top of that, they also have these shallow shelf toilets sometimes. Maybe they're not like the full shelf toilets, like they used to have in Germany. But they're pretty close sometimes. Even at places like Starbucks and McDonald's. And like, take that McDonald's by the Bill Merrina. There's always scrub brushes near toilets because there's a good chance that there's going to be a big smear of shit all over the toilet because there's not enough water in the bowl because it's the shallow, shallow toilet bowl. And that cartoon thing of a fly buzzing around shit. I mean, I always just took that as a cartoon thing. Like stars, you know, going around your head after you get hit in the head. But it's real in Amsterdam. There's little flies buzzing around toilets because everything smells vaguely of old poop. And that's where I realized like, I didn't really know what human poop smelled 40:00 like until I went to Amsterdam. And it's so creepy because it smells unbelievably nightmarishly bad when it's new. You know, I've smelled poop here and there. But you never really realize how well we deal with it till you go somewhere that doesn't. And it's just, it's nightmarish to think that that's inside all of us all the time. It's fucking so horrifying. But even weirder is old poop.

Poop that's just on the wind. Poop that is just residual. It's unpleasant, but it has a strangely sweet smell which I never would have guessed. But that's what I learned about in Amsterdam.

When I talk about the Netherlands, it's sort of similar to talking about South Korea. It's like there's so many good things and so many beautiful things and so many great times I had and cool stuff that I saw and neat stuff that I did. But there's these deal-breaker situations, you know. Here it's the pollution and there it's the poop. So yeah, there's this very distinct weird smell to old poop. And I smelled that certain places here in South Korea. Specifically Starbucks for some reason this always seems to be the case in Starbucks, but I have seen it some other places where they don't want you to flush the toilet paper because it might get caught in the system. So you're just supposed to put your toilet paper in the garbage can. And you just get this, it's so so unmistakable. As soon as I went into my first Starbucks washroom here, right away, I was like, I know what that is. I know that smell. And then sure enough, Google translate the sign and it says, yeah, don't flush your toilet paper. And that's not super common, but it's common enough that the washrooms where you don't need to do that tend to have a sign. They tend to have a sign saying, don't worry about it. Just put your toilet paper in the fucking toilet and flush it. It's all good. But there's more than no places where you're not supposed to do that. And Starbucks apparently is one of them. Every Starbucks I've been to here is that way. And it's like, all right, so you can't flush the robust toilet paper through this system. Fair enough. But your job's not finished yet. Both here and in Amsterdam, the work is not over.

You need to sort this out. You need to figure out something else to do.

And then another peak. It doesn't have a height though. Came a kilometer, three more kilometers to something. From here, oh yeah, I can still see the city a bit. Mostly just other mountains though.

But yeah, I'm not quite sure what the solution is, but this is where some push-pop ingenuity needs to come in. I think you need something along the lines of like those diaper genies that parents with babies have where it's like you take a soiled nappy and you just like put it in this. It's like this big plastic tube. And you kind of like, I'm not quite sure how it works. It's been a while since I did any babysitting. But I just remember it's like you goes in and it like isolates it. It kind of just shoves it down into a bag deep down in the bowels of this thing just so you can't smell it anymore and it's out of there. There needs to be some kind of special garbage can for poopy toilet paper. There has to be because it's just shit. It's just paper with human shit on it in a garbage can. You can smell that. It's been, it's very distinct. It's a huge problem. You can't just say throw the shit in the fucking garbage. You just can't. That's not enough. You're not done. Your homework's not done. Keep working on that. It's so fucking gross and weird and I hate it. Don't just think that that's okay because that's not okay. And then some employee has to deal with that. That's like literal toxic waste. That is human waste. It's just not okay on any level. So that's going on around here to some degree as well.

Another thing I noticed that is not a negative. In fact, it's kind of neat. It's kind of a positive. I kind of like it. And it might be because of poop smell. I don't know.

In our room, turn on the hot shower, it was refreshing. I liked it. And then I would notice at coffee shops, if it was an internal, just if the placement of the washroom was just in the middle, and then it just was what it was. But if there was a window, if there was an ability to have a window open, even in the dead of winter, that window is open. Like in this nice warm, cozy coffee shop, you step into the washroom and it's a fucking ice cold. And yeah, I don't know why, but I don't hate that. I like it. It's actually kind of nice. It's kind of a nice feeling. Nice cool washroom. I think that's kind of neat. And yeah, it's like that here. The washroom at this place in Jeju Island as well. So I was like, okay, I think that's enough places. I saw that happen many places. That seems to just be some kind of cultural thing, and it's kind of cool. I don't understand it, but I don't dislike it.

Oh, and is that it? Are we at the end? Yep, only one more thing. But it's something I saw as recently as the very last washroom I was just in at the bottom of this hiking trail. This also doesn't happen a ton. At first, I only saw it at the entrances to Buconson Park. But since then, I've seen it at I think four different public washrooms. And it's having the toilet paper outside of the stalls. So there still always is toilet paper. I've heard of places in like China and stuff where you should really bring your own toilet paper, or maybe India. But I don't know, apparently there's places where you can't presume there will be toilet paper at all. That's not the case here, but there are some places where the big roll of toilet paper is, yes, just outside outside on the wall of the stall. There might be one stall. There might be two or three. I don't know why. Why? That is. Maybe it's just the stalls are too little. Some of them are pretty cramped. I don't know. It's kind of, but just be mindful of that. And before you go in to take a poop, take a look around and just see if there's toilet paper outside. Because if there is, yank a big fucking roll bunch of that out. Make sure you got enough. And then I just hang it on the fucking coat hook that's invariably in the stall. And I got my own little personal stash, my private supply of toilet paper. But yeah, I think if you were unprepared, that could be bad. It could be pretty bad.