#109 Last day in Jecheon, South Korea

Transcript

Alright, I'm picking this episode up, where the last one left off, just a week later. So I met this peak on the same trail I finished off on last week. 741 meters up. That's a pretty good fucking height. Luckily though, just the way this place is laid out, my classic above 500 meters makes me freaked out. You know, a lot of the mountains in Japan got very steep and scary. Luckily, this one just doesn't feel that way. I feel fine. So that's good. But yeah, I wasn't sure exactly what the height was last week because I bailed out right before that marker. But I presumed it was somewhere along those lines because, yeah, it's pretty fucking high because what happened last week, so this trail, I'm afraid I don't know the mountain name. But it's quite easy to find. If you go to the OMG Reservoir, U-I-R-I-M-J-I reservoir, which is, it's probably the most famous area of Jechon. J-E-C-E-O-N is the city I'm in. If you go a little north from there, there's a second lake with a weird artificial castle in it. There's a park in between the two things. So the washroom in the park is on the east side of the park. And there is a path up into the mountains just past the washroom. Pretty easy to find. And I am just north east of Semyang University, S-E-M-Y-U-N-G. And in fact, just a bit southeast of the campground where I got stymied last time. So basically, I started off walking up past the second lake, past the weird artificial castle up along this little river path. But unfortunately, it was blocked off for construction at this time that I'm here. But by the time this podcast comes out, don't worry about that. It will be all over. But I guess I'm basically going along that same route just a little bit south of there because I'm going along the ridge of a mountain instead. But I didn't know this was here or how to get here. I was just kind of exploring around kind of what I've learned about being in a smaller city. J-E-C-E-O-N is very, very, very small.

I compared to Seoul. Two Starbucks as opposed to two thousand Starbucks. I wonder if there's two thousand Starbucks in Seoul. That sounds like an exaggeration, but there might be. There's a fucking lot. I don't know. There's probably 500. Again, that sounds insane, but that's, I don't know.

There's a lot. Five, but they can't be 500. I don't know. Who cares? There's a... Gets you on small. And the irony is, I thought maybe this would make nature easier to get to and more accessible. But it was actually tougher because the subways in Seoul really help you get to all of the nature stuff. So I just found this pass by happenstance because I was on my way to the washroom. But it was like 3 p.m. by the time I started. So basically, I got to this point, which if you see on the map, the Samyang University. Not really that far, but I saw a little ability to bail out, an opportunity to bail out. It was little white ribbons tied to trees with a path going down. So I was like, I better just do that because I don't know what's coming ahead of me. Let's just, you know, it's, again, it's a path. It's labeled how bad can it be. Turns out it was kind of bad. I mean, it was the right thing to do. Because by the time I got down to the ground, it's still quite a long walk back to my Airbnb is by Jetchon Station. It was definitely dark by the time I got to the local McDonald's to reward myself for all my hiking. One huge difference between Japan and Korea. I never did fast food in Japan. I just, even though I only ate convenience store food, it was still, you know, sushi rolls and cool, weird. I don't know, I felt like I ate pretty healthy in Japan. All things considered for being a convenience store guy. The convenience stores just aren't the same here. I realized the other day I saw 7-Eleven and I felt it did not insight joy. I kind of felt nothing. The convenience stores just feel kind of perfunctory here and just like, okay, whatever, I guess. So instead, I do go to Burger King and McDonald's quite a bit because you can just use your little card, use the little menu. So easy. Although that's been a bit of an interesting experiment too. I mean, I've always had fast metabolism. It's definitely slowed down, but I've been eating fast food. I mean, look, I'll just level with 5:00 you pretty much every day. But it's like an interesting counterbalance. I'm a little worried about the sodium levels. The salt level is probably kind of bad. But beyond that, just the quote-unquote unhealthiness of fast food, whatever. You eat it once a day and you counterbalance it with literal climbing mountains. I am doing fine. I have not put on any weight at all. I just have my one fast food meal each day. Beyond that, I just kind of snack. So I'm not eating an especially large amount for the entire day. And I'm putting those calories to use. I fucking love these boots I bought, by the way. I bought these boots in like the the shoe district in Seoul. I don't remember the name of it, but it's a little northeast of City Hall station. And they are fucking wonderful. Hmm, I'm passing some various power type buildings with a barbed wire fencing around them. I passed one earlier. Now here's the second one, but it seems like the path continues along. Okay. Ooh, that's saying I don't feel the heights right now. But looking up at a tower, that does it. It feels bad. My fear of heights is so weird that in Grand Central Station, which is, you know, ground level. You go into the main concourse. You're on ground level.

Zero percent scary. But it has this enormous domed ceiling with little flag poles way up, way up at the top edges of the wall. And I remember I used to stand sometimes in the middle of the concourse like a fucking gawking idiot probably in everyone's way. But if I just stood in the center of that big open room and looked up at these flag poles way up, I started imagining that I was somehow clinging to one or hanging from one. And I could get scared. I could give myself the fear of heights, horrible twist in the stomach just by standing on the ground. Holy shit.

It's kind of how it feels to look up at that tower. But yeah, the other day, like I said, it was three o'clock when I started this hike. So I figured I shouldn't push it because I didn't know what was going to happen. I'm pretty far from town no matter what. Today I got here at about noon and it's about two o'clock now. So not bad well ahead of the sun. So I'm going to continue on and see what happens because what happened last time is 741 meters is no joke. And like I've said many times and will continue to assert going down is worse than going up. Going up was really steep here. The first peak is 640 some meters up and it's less than a kilometer long. So yeah, if you want to get at your graph paper and figure out to get 641 meters up in less than a kilometer, what is the steepest level of that? It's not fucking pleasant, that's for sure. But my classic method go very slow, breathe super deep, and I specifically timed it out today that if I just do that breathing in, breathing out the big like at that rate, if I walk two steps for a breathe in, one, two, that's the in, then one, two, that's the out. Go at that pace, step, step, step. My problem when I was younger is I always tried to go faster than that and I blew up my lungs. Just go slow and steady and it's no problem. So going up, I mean there's its own unpleasantness but it's really not that bad. Going down, just right now I'm going down this little incline and it's annoying. I keep having to watch my footing and careful I don't slip and slide. Going down is worse. So yeah, going down the side of this 740 meter fucking mountain on this whack-ass little trail that just had these stupid little white ribbons once in a while. There's a little windy up here, hope it doesn't mess up the recording but it feels good. It's April now by the way, just became April. But yeah, I was following the 10:00 path down and down and down and down and just every time I caught a glimpse through the trees of whatever was down below me, it was still just so incredibly far down and I was still so insanely high up and all the buildings were still so small and I was like, Jesus, like this is crazy, I've been doing this forever and I'm not even halfway. And then probably three quarters of the way down, you know most of it wasn't that bad but there were some treacherous points where I was definitely using all four, all four limbs, both feet and both hands, grabby-grabby going from tree to tree, make sure that I just carefully go down. There were a couple of pretty steep points but then three quarters of the way down when it no longer fell high up. It got worse because that's when the trail disappeared. Maybe I just lost it somewhere but the ribbons just disappeared. The evident path just disappeared and it all kind of flattened out and it wasn't very steep anymore but it wasn't a path anymore. I was really just going down the side of the stupid mountain and the worst parts were when there was just soil and the soil just had no firmness and I just slid down these parts with the soil and the worst part of that was that soil, like a lot of soil, got in my boots, just slid right in and it's like fuck and it had like a weird smell, not a bad smell but very distinct that it's like I can't just even though these are my rough and tumble boots that I bought if they just had dirt on the outside that'd be fine especially in Asia where you just don't wear your shoes inside anyway but once I got dirt inside and it just had that super rich soil smell it's like man I can't just ignore this. Time to actually wash my boots I had to put the whole all the boot take out all the insoles put it all through the wash and this would have been the perfect time to try. I kept seeing in Japan these cool little washing machines for like two bucks that were just for shoes you just put your shoes in and it washes those and I never got an opportunity to try them but here in Jetchon I can't even find a coin laundromat I looked all over the place there's some like drop off your clothes dry cleaner type places but I couldn't find anywhere to do laundry luckily it turns out my Airbnb once I dug around a bit did have a washing machine but no dryer I have to just leave my clothes to dry so that's part of today's rambles going to be about is that today's my last day in Jetchon so I had to do my laundry yesterday because it's not fully dry this morning not all of it so it should be fine by tomorrow but don't want to risk having dirty clothes on the way man there's another big powerline tower don't look up unpleasant nice view though today's only a bit hazy it's very very hard to mistake Korea for Japan they're just really not the same feeling where I thought maybe they might be just because of my stereotypical view of Asia or my lack of a view of Asia my lack of understanding about anything they really don't feel the same but days like this they kind of I almost feel like I'm in Japan because I'm gonna put the mask back on after this podcast but it's not too terrible today looking out at the the city and the mountains in the distance it actually looks fairly similar to when I was on the mountains of Fukuoka Because I was looking into that a bit. I wasn't aware of the air pollution thing at all, while I was in Japan, because it just never got that bad. And it's just not really an issue in Canada. I looked up to set a curiosity, lists of countries by air pollution levels. And Canada, of course, were a gigantic country with a small population. We're not the top dogs. We're not the cleanest in the world. That's mostly like Finland and areas like that.

But we're not bad. We're definitely in the top echelon. So I never knew this was a thing. I never cared. So I was like, how does it, how is it so bad in South Korea? Not just in Seoul, but here in Jecheon, and I've been keeping my eye on Busan, and sometimes Busan is worse. Usually it's a little better than these places here in Seoul, but sometimes it's actually worse. I was like, how is it the case? It's such a problem here and not in Japan. And it turns out it kind of is a problem in Japan, just not enough for me to have been aware of it. Like when my friend Brad lived in Fukuoka, he was there for a while. And he said there were some days where the air got a little hazy, a little bad. And he said people would blame it on South Korea. And he wasn't sure if they were just like, is that a fair assessment? Is that true? And then when I got here, and I told him how it is, he's like, oh, maybe that sort of was true. They weren't just being 15:00 shaking their fists like, darn, darn, other country. Maybe it's kind of true. But then again, with South Korea, it's generally coming from China or from the desert or both. So everybody's just, you know, shit rolls downhill. But yeah, I started looking at the air quality index in Fukuoka, or even in Tokyo. And pretty much everywhere in Japan, except northern Japan, does seem to kind of still get hit by this little bit here and there. Just not enough for me to have realized it was a problem, because that's what I'm feeling today. Looking at the distance, I definitely saw this kind of a haze, very light haze in Fukuoka, because I remember describing it as, it was the second day that I went up on the mountain near Desaifu. The first day was just beautiful at sunset.

The second day was a little like a Photoshop, is how I described it. So if you turn down the contrast on Photoshop, and everything gets a little hazy looking. That probably was a bit of a bad air quality day that I just wasn't aware of. Because again, this boldly over when I came to South Korea, I did not expect it at all. But it got so bad in Seoul that, you know, you could just see it everywhere. It was just smog, and it made my lungs hurt. And I'm like, that's like, what the fuck? And the other day, I was very glad to not be in Seoul anymore, because here in Jeju, it was like, you know, moderate day, where Seoul, I don't know what the fuck happened. It was above 100, it was like red warning. The little cartoon man is like wearing not just a cloth mask anymore. He's wearing like an actual breathing apparatus, and it's like, Jesus Christ. And if you look at the scale, it's like the old game pro scale. The fun factor, except this is the unfun factor. Beyond that, it gets to like purple when the guy's wearing like an actual gas mask. It's like, Jesus, I wonder if it ever got that bad. That would be insane. And then beyond that, if it goes past 300, the guy's in like a hazmat suit. It's like, don't go outside. Just terrifying that we even have this scale. This could be needed at some point.

But yeah, to go back to last week still, so I'm going down the mountain, getting soil in my boots. Very long, unpleasant bad call, bad call. Like a good call in the sense that I didn't know what was coming. And I needed to get off the mountain. Bad call in that man, there should be like a warning up there. Hey, hey, these little markers we left that look like a trail. It's not going to get you all the way to the bottom. It's like, fuck, that would have been good to know. I must have missed the trail somewhere. It just seemed so weird that it just disappeared. And I was just fucking sliding down a mountain again. I was like, fucking, oh, me all over again. Except bigger and worse. But yeah, then I came out at some weird little gulch, some weird little gulch, followed that down. This little dry stream bed. Climbed up a saw building, climbed up a fucking unabankment. Checked my map and that's when I saw I was at some young university. I was like, oh man, I'm glad it was a Sunday that day. Today is a Monday. It's like almost exactly a week later. But I'm glad it was a Sunday. No one was there because you have just some random white guy coming out of the fucking woods at the back of the university and then just walking through the university grounds. I don't know. It just must have looked fucking weird. Like, what is that? Why are you coming out from there? What is going on?

Man, I noticed too on that day. This has happened to me a couple of times. Where, you know, I guess just hiking and stuff, being physical is good in general, gets the blood pumping, gets you breathing deeper, gets you exercising.

But I noticed not like this happens a lot, but more than never. Where after I get down off a mountain, because there was this case last week here in Jetchon, and specifically as remembering another day, in Fukuoka, coming down off Mount Aburayama, which was quite a long trek down. It was the day that I saw two guys going up, even as it was getting dark.

Man, I hope this wind is not messing up the podcast. It's really fucking windy up here.

But I guess maybe it's just, I don't know, the physicality loosening up my mind or something. I was actually thinking it could even have to do with the actual height. Like, maybe I'm getting high enough up on these mountains that the air is getting thinner or something, and then maybe going back down to a more oxygen-rich environment. 20:00 Maybe it like gets you a little, a little, a little high, a little giddy on breathing? I don't know.

Because I was thinking about like how people say they get more like emotional on airplanes, watching movies and stuff. Anyway, in both cases, just for whatever reason, after getting down off the mountain, and after doing all this strenuous stuff, and after especially coming down off that mountain last week. It was like, again, just so surprisingly hard, much more physically taxing to get down than it is to get up.

Although I did have to go up also, so I was also, you know, paying that off as well in my poor body. But in both cases, I just remember my mind, you know, drifting around to stuff. And I would think about my poor father who passed away during COVID times, not of COVID, but of cancer. And, you know, of course, I think about him all the time. But it's like, it's like the exertion possibly combined with the air stuff. I had, you know, again, I don't know. I don't know the science of it. But I would just imagine being in that hospital room. And it was so vivid and I couldn't stop thinking about it.

And another reason why it was nice on Fuquaoka that I was just on an empty mountain where I only saw two people. And in the case last week that I was at Semian University on a weekend, when no one was there, because I just started crying and crying and crying and crying. I couldn't stop crying.

I felt so bad for my dead dad.

So I don't want to dwell on that. But I just thought it was a bit of an interesting phenomenon that happened again. Once it happened, what if it happens once? It's just a weird thing. Once it happens twice, it's like, oh yeah, maybe there's something to this. Maybe that's going to happen today. It seemed to be pretty distinctly heading down at this point.

I thought I might be on the ridge longer than this, but hey, whatever. I'm going wherever the mountain tells me to go. This is much more of a real pass than last time.

In fact, let me take a little break, not only because this is steeper than I expected, but yeah, this wind. This is a lot of wind. This way till I get a little further down.

All right, I'm only a little ways further down, but I think I'm on a final descent. I think I went the wrong way, quote unquote. I think this is, there was a case up there. They kept seeing signs that were like four kilometers to something, three and a half to something, two point seven to something. And I don't know what that something was, because there was one point where I could go two different ways. One went toward the city, one went away from the city. And again, just because I just don't know what's going to happen up here, I figured I should trend toward the city.

Maybe that was the wrong choice, but again, I don't know, because just not sure when I was looking at like an overall map up here.

There are roads on each side, so I'm like, oh, that's good. There's one of these cases where it's a limit to how lost I can get. But if I did get all the way to the highway on the far end, I mean, that's not great. That's civilization, but that's a very long walk, slowly along an unpleasant highway all the way back to Jetshan. I don't know that that's really what I would want to do today.

It was kind of my worst case scenario, but it's also clearly where the proper trail continues to go along the mountain.

In this case, actually, I think I'm going to come out similar to where I did the other day. I'm probably still going to be maybe more sort of at the bottom of some young university just at the start of there's kind of a lot of farmland in between the downtown and the reservoir. I'm probably just going to end up there at the beginning of the farmland, but that's fine, whatever.

This would be one of those cases where if I came up here a third time, you know, get a little further each time. First time, just discover this is actually here. Second time, go a bit further, third time, go a bit further. I just don't know if there is going to be a third time. This is my last day here. I'm leaving tomorrow and I just, you know, I really don't know. I don't know if I'll be back here. Maybe, maybe not. I just don't know. I know I'll be back to South Korea. Again, I mean, all of my slightly backhanded comments about Korea. 25:00 It's just the facts. The facts of the matter is I'm going to be going back to Japan 100%.

So, Korea is my little runner-up, my little silver medal while I'm already over in this part of the world. Sure, I'll come back to Korea, but I wouldn't fly all the way to the side of the world to come to Korea. That's just where it is. It's right in the middle. It's moderate. In the middle, it's a nice side dish. A nice side dish to Japan, for me, is South Korea.

I'm sorry if there's any super lovers of Korea that I'm offending, but hey, everything can't be your favorite.

But, you know, yeah, this place, I mean, it's not the worst. But, again, it's just like, I guess we'll see how Busan goes, but from what I understand, it seems that Busan has mountains of its own. And it's got the seaside stuff, and even Seoul. Yeah, it's just so weird that you'd think, like that was my big problem with Toronto and New York and stuff, is if you want to go to nature, you can't. You can't escape. It's interesting that in Seoul, even in Tokyo, it's a little tough, pretty long train ride. In Seoul, it's so easy to get to the mountains in Bukansen and stuff. So it's just ironic that even this mountain right here, it's like, yeah, this is nice and all. But Bukansen is like, incredible. So it's just funny that Seoul has that in the number one spot as well. It's actually better for hiking and nature stuff. How weird, how strange, how nice. Once you learn how it all works.

And yeah, speaking of learning how things work, I was here in Jetchon for three weeks, and yet took a week to find the hiking path west of the station by the golf course. It took a second week to find this trail.

And now, end of the third week, you know, I'm starting to learn it a little better, but just no more time.

And like I said last time, it's just hard to pass through here. If I did come back to Jetchon, it would have to be, I guess, if I wanted to go somewhere even deeper on this train line toward Jetchon.

And then I could stop here on the way, but I don't know what's out there. Who knows, whatever, who cares. Maybe I'll be back, maybe I won't, that's the point.

But, you know, I've had some okay times in this town. Every place, you know, feels a little relevant just because it's a place that I've been, a place I spent time in. It's just interesting that now I know how the place works. I always think it's interesting about travel. You know, your brain, I think, just automatically develops an expectation.

When you look at something on a Google map, or you see the little pictures of a place in Airbnb, like my brain just developed.

I knew like, okay, here's the basic layout of Jetchon. Here's where my Airbnb is right by the station. Here's some pictures of what the Airbnb looks like. And I just conjure an imagination in my head of what it's going to be like. And then it's just not even a little bit like that. It's nothing like my expectation, and that's nothing to do with here. That happens every single time I go anywhere. But that other version is just still in my brain. I still have that other version of Jetchon that my brain devised that wasn't real. Even stuff like Chiba. Just remember I developed a little idea of what Chiba might be like, and it was nothing like that. But I still remember the fake one that never existed. Man, the exact same thing is happening this time. The path has basically disappeared. I can sort of see a little trail. It's getting real steep.

Well, let's see if I can continue to podcast while I go down. I'll just go real slow.

But yeah, traveling's a bit of a weird endeavor, just in general. It's a bit of a bit of a sweet thing, because you're just moving on, and it's exciting to go to a new place. I'm excited to go hop on some trains tomorrow and go to a new place.

And Busan, from what people say, it might be. I still have hope that it's going to be my favorite place in Korea. I mean, we'll see, but it seems pretty nice. But what am I going to do on my last day here? This is it. This is my last chance. And, you know, it's all just like silly little things I've been doing here, but it's like, I could go to the little Daiso, buy some snacks for tomorrow. And then over there, there's what's the coffee chain? It's called Ediya Coffee, I think? E-D-I-Y-A, which I only recently discovered. I mean, all the different, there's the coffee bean was the first one I went to, and it was okay, but it is kind of pricey. There's a to some place that pops up all over, and that seemed all right. But Ediya has touch screen menus that are actually in 30:00 English and take my credit card with no problems, because I get a to some place. I tried to use their little machine. It didn't have English, but I figured I had to get to the end, but at the end you need to put in a phone number so it can alert you when your order is done, and it's like, I'm sorry, I don't have a phone number. There's no other option. Ediya has English, and it just gives you a number, like McDonald's does. So I was like, wow, this is amazing. It actually opens up the entire menu to me. I can actually get anything. Like, wow. But I only recently figured that out, so I only went there once. Darn, I hope I don't get soil in my shoes again again, because I'm leaving tomorrow. I don't want to have to try to wash these tonight. Fuck. There. Yeah, that's not too bad. I can at least brush him down if it's on the outside. Just don't want to get dirt inside. This is fucking good. See, I think that happened last time. I just want to have in good thoughts and good feelings about jetchan. This is so annoying. Why did this happen again?

Another upside to soul. You don't start going down paths that just dis a fucking pier, because the paths are actually used by people and maintained. Alright, I just took a little break until I got down to flatter ground. So I just had to really be careful not to get

dirt in my boots. I think I managed, though. I mean, the boots are filthy, but that's fine. I think I might, because every time I go to a new place, generally Airbnb's these days, give you a toothbrush. And even if not, it's a good time to buy a new toothbrush.

If you'll take my old toothbrush before I toss it, just give these boots a little scrub. But anyway, I'm more or less down on the ground now. I didn't actually make it much farther along than last time. Now I'm just a little further down past Sam Young University. So whatever. Again, I don't know. I don't know what would have happened if I kept going. I don't know how much of an epic journey I could have been in for many, many more hours. So this might not be the wrong thing to do, but I'm a little disappointed because I meant to go further along the mountain.

Yeah, this mountain is just fucking frustrating, dude. Everything in soul. Again, soul. It just wins out even on the nature stuff. It's just such an interesting, weird thing for a big city. Everything was so well labeled in soul. It was like, it almost bordered on comical. But I wasn't laughing because it's great. I loved it. It's amazing how you just could not get lost. Everything was so well-signed, posted and so well maintained and so well developed and designed. And obviously they have a way bigger population and stuff. But this fucking mountain trail in Jetjohn is like, oh, you want to go on the trail? Get fucked, did it? Get fucked. Prepare to fail again and again and again and again. And then you can, I mean, to be fair, it took me some tries, I suppose, to figure out what was going on in soul as well.

But I never just got unceremoniously dumped into the middle of nowhere. And now where the fuck am I? I don't know. At least last time I just came out right on university grounds. Now, maybe this is a farm shit? I don't know. I don't fucking know.

Annoying. I thought I would be doing this fucking podcast as I walked along the mountains. La la la la. But no, it's over. It's done. I'm not going back up. That was it. Thanks a lot. Yeah, shit, bag fucking piece of trash mountain. Anyway, the way I've gone from like, yay, mountain to just piss like that is just largely because I am really exhausted. I'm really tired. So that kind of ties in to trying to figure out what I was going to do my last day here in Jetjohn. How do I sign off? How do I say my fairly wells to this place that I'm, you know, at least neutral on.

I don't hate it, but I don't love it enough that I know I'll come back. So yeah, and just die selling coffee shop. There's that. And beyond that, there's the more relevant coffee shop is the unmanned coffee shop that I came to quite love. It's a nice little coffee shop with like three tables, 16 seats. Sometimes there's people there. Sometimes it's just empty. And you can just buy a coffee at a little machine. The guy who runs the place did help me the first time to make sure I knew how it worked. And then I would see him there sometimes and I saw him at the local McDonald's and it's like, hey, that was my dude. I know that guy. 35:00 And I really enjoyed going in there. It's right on the way from Jetjohn station. If you go west, there's like a little police station. It's right near there just south of the Starbucks on the west side of the river, unmanned coffee shop. Right before the hiking trails there. I loved that place. So much so that, you know, I kind of learned how it all kind of worked and stuff. And I saw the guy. The guy's so diligent about keeping it all clean and maintained. When I was there the other day, there was some ladies there who I guess didn't quite know how it all worked because they left their cups when they were done instead of putting them in the proper little cup dispenser garbage. They put them in the container at the door that was meant for umbrellas, but it does kind of look like a little waste paper basket. So after they left and I noticed that, I just, you know, I took their cups out, I put them in the proper place. I noticed that they'd spilled a little bit on the counter so I cleaned it off. It's just like, yeah, I like this little place. Let me help maintain it. So I thought that would be a good place to go. That would actually probably be the best place to go on my last day. That's the place I most kind of liked or sort of took on as my own while I was here. Unmanned coffee shop. I really like that concept because, yeah, you know, it's one of the reasons I've been doing so much fast food. So I don't have to, you know, just talk to the clerks and stuff. It's easier here than in Japan, but it's just when you do find someone who doesn't speak English, it ain't easy. Like, I just realized the other day that even just ordering a large latte, you know, the word large wasn't getting through. They would always ask me separately about the size. And I figured it out. It's because they say large, much like in Japan, they say cakey instead of cake, which again, that's on us. Why do we spell our words that way if we're not going to pronounce the letters? You know, I don't know. It should be large. It should be cakey. But yeah, large and large. Again, one of those things, it's a small difference, but it's a different word.

But I only just clued into that the other day. Anyway, sure is nice to just use a machine and just be like, whatever, don't have to talk to anybody. Talk to the robot.

But I didn't want to do either of those coffee shop based plans just because I don't want to get caffeine in my system. Because I got to get up real early tomorrow, because I got to go back to Seoul and then on to Busan. I got to get up at like 7.30 in the morning tomorrow. And I just need to give myself every opportunity to hopefully fall asleep, which is part of, I guess what I'm doing today, trying to wear myself out a little. But it's not, I don't fancy my chances.

And I'm almost back to civilization, but now there's just like a little gully. I got to get over, not quite sure how to do this.

But yeah, I think, I guess, I mean, again, I'm always sort of a bad sleeper in general, but I think this mainly goes back to that place in Seoul where I couldn't control the temperature. I stayed at the same softhouse for the whole time, month and a half or whatever I was in Seoul.

But the first room I was in had a window you could open, and that was wonderful. Even if you just open the one pane, so the other pane is still closed to protect you from the outside air, but it let the temperature go down. The second room had no windows, and it just got so insanely hot, because I was not in control of the thermostat, and I just couldn't sleep. I was routinely up until three in the morning, five in the morning, whatever.

This is brutal. So that carried on to here, even though I haven't had sleep troubles in that way here. It's everything's been very nice and quiet, but that was just the routine that my body was used to, and I always trend that way anyway. It's easier for me to stay up than it is for me to wake up early.

So it just kept slipping or it stayed around that point, where I was always staying up way too late, and then just waking up. Like in Japan, I would wake up at like nine a.m. almost every day, just couldn't help it, just did.

And then that slipped when I got to Korea until it was more like getting to noon with the heat problems in that place.

Luckily, the days are getting longer at the same time, so it all kind of worked out similarly.

But yeah, now in Jechon, even though theoretically I should be able to sleep better, still just been trending that way. Later and later and later, where for the last week I've been waking up at like one thirty in the afternoon, and it's like, fuck it. How am I gonna get up at seven fucking thirty?

Hmm, well this is difficult. This really is like a little stream, but there is actually no way across.

Unless I literally climb up a rock wall. I mean, there's a branch leaning across it. There's no way I'm walking on that thing. I think I'll break for sure.

Alright, here's a point over here where this seems the easiest to get up.

But yeah, then I had in the back of my mind like it would be kind of cool to go try to do this hike again. It's my last chance. I didn't really think I would.

But luckily, I mean, I definitely was still up way too late yesterday, but I woke up. When did I wake up today? Ten thirty? Like, not that bad, relatively speaking. And I actually took the bus today for the first time. As I was leaving, I saw the right bus to go to the reservoir going by. So I'm just like, alright, fuck it. I've never taken a bus before in Korea, but this was my time. I got on. And it sounds like such a little thing just to take the bus. And it turns out it was. I just had my little tea money card, saw the thing. I was like, I don't know if I could get up, cost a dollar forty or something, and there we go. We're on the bus. But I also only did it because the bus was mainly empty. Because if a bus is full, that's not when I want to learn how the bus works. And I mean, I'm sure it's like a simple thing to take a bus. It's not a big deal. But just when you haven't done something before, it's amazing how many things can potentially go wrong. Like, I always think of in Toronto. I don't know if there's still this way, but the bus is used to work so that the back door of the bus to open, you had to step down on to like the two little steps that go down. You had to step down onto the first step.

I'm just carefully moving these prickly bushes, and now I'm going down the first rock wall into this tiny little river. Little ravine.

But yeah, it was a weird thing. I've never seen that in other buses. And if you didn't know that there was a pressure pad, because it's a little non-intuitive. It's not quite natural to start to step down before the doors are opened. If you're a new person, you'd expect the doors to open, then you step down.

So people that were new to the system, the door would open, and they would call to the bus driver like, ah, back door please. And then everybody on the bus would just start chanting, step down. Because they had to take a step down onto the step to hit the pressure pad. Step down. Step down. You need to step down. And I'm not quite sure what would be a better way to describe that. But step down doesn't do the trick, you know. What does that mean? Alright, I've got to clamber up the other side here. I'm going to put away this recorder for a sec.

Alright, I made it up. I found some, there were some roots sticking out of the side that I could withstand my weight that I used to climb up. Wasn't so bad. Now I'm on a nice little country road, a little dirt road that's about to become paved. I can see the city in the distance. This ain't so bad. This ain't so bad. Expectation is a killer. It's just that I was expecting a bit of a different venture for today, but this is actually pretty nice. Again, I might have saved myself from myself, who knows what would have happened if I stayed up on that mountain. But I guess my thinking was I kind of didn't care, because even if I just got stuck up there all goddamn day and then I had to walk an insanely long walk all the way back to Jecheon, like who gives this shit? Because of my sleep schedule lately. I'm probably going to be up till 3 in the morning, minimum anyway, because I just can't fall asleep.

So who fucking cares what happens today? Who cares if I fuck shit up? Who cares if I do an irresponsibly long journey on the last day? Who gives a shit? If I get back early and get all tucked in and settled, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to be able to fall asleep, so whatever. But this is actually pretty nice. This ain't so bad. Be at the bus. Just I saw that happen so many times. People not understanding just a simple little process of how the local bus works, and you just that second-hand embarrassment every time, and you always knew that person felt terrible. And just hopefully somebody who was standing closer to them could just say to them, oh, you have to step down onto the thing. Because when the bus in general is just saying, step down. It's just not helpful. It doesn't explain what they need to do. The whole situation was terrible. And just stuff like that. It's like, I don't know. Like getting on this bus today. I just can't help but I feel anxious like doing new stuff. I held up my T-money card and just said, hey, can I use T-money? But the guy made no reaction to me whatsoever. And then I saw the thing and like, okay, luckily that worked. Then I went and sat in a chair. And I noticed after, you know, a minute or two that those chairs at the front have different colored seats. Maybe it was just coincidence. I don't know. But maybe that means these are not the seats for you. 45:00 Maybe this means these are the priority seats for old people and stuff, which of course, no matter what. I mean, I always give up my seat to people. I don't even like to sit down. You know, if things have been slowly healing a bit, like I can take these train rides without, you know, I mentioned way back at the start of this podcast that I was concerned a little about taking long flights and stuff because sitting for long periods causes me pain due to assist in my abdomen. That's still the case, but now it's not as bad. It sort of catches me off guard. I forget about it a little bit. Unless I'm sitting in the wrong position for too long and then I feel the stinging pain. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's still a thing. But it's healing up very slowly just enough that I can sort of forget about it a little bit once in a while. So it's not so bad. But then I was observing other people and they were just sitting in those seats. I think it's fine. Again, just, you know, common politeness would be to give it up if the bus got busy, which it didn't. But I was like, I don't know. I could be doing something horribly wrong and I just have no idea. And then how do you get off the bus? Man, the signs on the back door, big hand stop all this stuff. I'm like, what is all this? Does this door not even fucking open? Why are there so many don't, don't signs on this door? I could have tried to pull up my phone, but I'm in public, you know, it's a weird time to start trying to translate stuff. So I just had to wait till someone else got off the bus and watch. And like, no, the back door just opens. Maybe it's like, don't try to open it yourself. Let it open automatically. But it's surprising how much fucking shit you got to know to take the bus sometimes, which is one of the reasons why I just haven't bothered. It's not that bad to walk, but today it all timed out okay. I did finally take the bus and it did get me to the reservoir extra early. So I was like, all right, you know, fuck it. Let's do the mountain walk because it was something I wanted to try to get deeper into, deeper into the mountain.