#112 Hiking in Busan, South Korea

Transcript

Alright, it's a couple days later. I'm pretty much picking up where I left off last time, where I was at the cool reservoir with all the walkways and stuff. I'm just at the entrance of that park. I got a walkways to get up to it. Last time I looped around and hiked up a big mountain and went around and came in the back way. And I noticed that at the top, at the end of the reservoir, there's a stream that keeps going up into the mountains. And that's been on my mind. What the heck's up there? So today, extremely good weather. So that's my plan. It's a Sunday today, so it's a lot busier here. There are a lot of families because this is a kids' park down here at the beginning. But I think once I get up to the top and get on to the stream walk, I predict a bunch of old people. That's probably me and a bunch of my fellow oldsters. Man, that's really loud. That is not close. That truck. I can hear it's super, super well. It's just some weird advertising truck.

And yeah, the cherry blossoms are... I can see why people say it is so tricky to catch them, why they have the forecasts and stuff. Because I've only been in Busan like a week. I'm not even sure if it's been a whole week. And when I first got here, they were mostly white-colored, which is what confused me a little. I wasn't sure if these were the right blossoms or if these were something else. But now they're about 50% white and 50% pink. So it's like, oh yeah, here they go. Here they go. So I got here at the perfect fucking time right at the end of March.

Again, just to say, just to say that I saw them because in my cold, cruel heart, it means little to me. But at least I can say I saw them. That's cool.

They're not nice. You know, I just don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know why I can't bring them up without being a dick about it. I just don't know. Anyway, let's talk about the dumb shit that I think is interesting. Well, first off, supposedly it was a bit of a pollution day today. And in Seoul, it was extra bad. Here it was only medium bad. So I'm going to put on a mask when I'm done yammering. But it doesn't seem bad. It looks okay.

And I did a little research and it seems that January, February and March are the worst months for pollution in Busan. Because it's been mostly great since I've been here. Only one day that was kind of visibly a little polluted.

So it does seem like it's much better than Seoul in general. And I think I'm coming out the other side. It should only get better from here. Because that is, I guess, my main worry. Everything is really, really good in Busan. But if the pollution starts hitting consistently, that does just have a demoralizing effect that I don't think anything in the world could counteract. It's like when you get poisoned in a role-playing game. It just defeats your soul. Hmm. When I came out of here, I just funneled down. It was nice and obvious and easy. But coming in from the bottom, now I've got a choice. I can go up. Yeah, I'm going to go up on the right. This is, I think, not the cool Ewok Village feeling part. But that part's really busy with lots of people. I'm going to take this other route just so I can talk to myself less awkwardly.

Because yeah, the dumb crap, I think, is interesting. So I just stopped in a convenience store to, I forgot to bring water somehow. Buy some water. Buy some coffee, too, why not? And sometimes you can buy kind of hard-defined painkillers. They definitely keep tabs on them around here. But some stores are just on the shelf and you can buy them in small quantities. But some of them have the stuff locked up behind. It's just normal aspirin stuff. But they have it locked up behind the counter and that's how it was here. So as a guy, I'll just wait a wait till a different store to buy some. But the guy spoke English, like real good English. So I'm like, oh cool, okay. I can't get him rid of this guy. I don't have to just, you know, awkwardly try to point at something behind the counter. So I was like, hey, I grabbed some painkillers, headache pills. But then the thing that kind of cracked me up as we were leaving, because yeah, like his English was real good. But as I gave him my final thank you, he said, bye-bye. Just cracked me up, because it's completely accurate. That's the right thing to say. But I haven't heard someone say bye-bye in such a long time. Probably not since in sync, you know. 5:00 Bye-bye. It's like the term bear naked. You know, it's kind of like a thing a kid might say. Bye-bye. See ya. It didn't just didn't expect it, because everything else, he said, was so spot on. But just those tiny little things, like when my friend Sung-hee taught me some Korean words. Back in the day, E-Samsa-O is one, two, three, four, five. P going high and painkill pa is hungry and tired. And you add a yo suffix to make it more polite. P going high, yo painkill painkill. And then I remember at the time she actually taught me to count up to ten. And she taught me the word lion for some reason, but those ones have been lost to time. It's weird that I remember any of that, but I, because that was 20 years ago. But I forgot the other words. But she always said, I sounded like a kid the way I pronounced stuff. Because I'm sure it's similar to how I thought the city, the last city I was in was called Jechion. And then when I saw Korean people referring to it on YouTube, they called it Chachon. So of course saying Jechion, I don't know if that would make me sound like a kid or just an idiot. But you know, it's like weird when you don't know what you're doing that's a little off. You just, I have no way to tell. I would have to spend a lot more time learning Korean. Or like when people pronounce French words and it's just fucking brutal. Like noir films. New R. Yeah, you know, those new R films. New R is a different word. No French person in the world would know what new R is. Anyway, that's pronunciation. So it's not quite the same as terminology. But yeah, that's just funny that some teacher taught that guy bye-bye. But never got to the point, the, you know, the, the point of those little precise tweaks to let him know like, yeah, but you don't really say bye-bye. That's not quite in the lexicon of grown-up speak.

So yeah, I'm not on the cool walkway. I'm across from it. I thought I would take a picture as the episode image, but it's weird. It's one of those cases where on a picture it looks like nothing. You just don't, you can't catch the depth of it of these walkways that criss-cross up the mountain.

So never mind. I'll find something else for the episode image as we go.

And a little kitchen update.

Last episode I was talking about how amazingly well stocked the kitchen is at this place I'm staying. And they had eggs. And I wasn't sure what to do with the eggs. And then I realized, oh, I could just crack an egg into my ramen. And that's an easy way to eat it. But it turns out the eggs, even more conveniently, are hard boiled or some kind of like baked. They have like a little machine that just like bakes these eggs. They're brown eggs, but then they're brown inside too. They're like butter scotch colored. But they basically just taste like eggs.

I'm not quite sure what the process is. What exactly is done to these eggs. But yeah, it's pretty sweet. I did the double blast this morning. I made chocolatey cereal with coffee for milk, my super cereal, had a bowl of that, and had a bowl of ramen with a couple of fucking hard boiled eggs. Not fucking bad. And there is, it seems, rice in the rice cooker every day. I think the people that work there just make rice and you can just use it. And there's like kimchi in Tupperware in the fridge. So I presume I'm not sure what else you could do with the rice. I think you just could toss some kimchi on the rice. So I mean, maybe I'll do that at some point. And this is all stuff like they have so much of it that yeah, it almost feels like that's where with the eggs it was like weird if I don't use them. It's like somebody has to. So I really didn't feel bad at all about exploiting this situation. I mean, that's what it's for, right? You're just supposed to be able to eat stuff. That's like part of the deal in Korea. When you get a place at a share house, they seem to just a stocked kitchen is part of it. But this one is extra stocked. To the point that there's even bottles of fruit juice in the fridge. And that feels like one step too far. All this other stuff is just ingredients. You know, it's just noodles, rice, a great big Tupperware container, a kimchi.

Fucking shut up. How can one crying kid cut through the air like that?

Someone throw him in their fucking reservoir.

I used to be a pretty bloody kid when I was young. I remember just dumb shit like some Sega master system game that was at a pawn shop when we were traveling. There was not a good deal.

So my mom and dad, I think my dad would have just bought it just to shut me up. But my mom was like, oh no, we're not buying that. You don't just get to have a video game because we happen to come across one. 10:00 And I remember blatant and blatant about it. Just wish I could go back in time and be like, shut up. You are ruining everyone's day. You little dick.

I'm just getting to the top of the low part of the reservoir. I met the dam. I was wondering if there'd be a way to cross over. Because I'm on the wrong side from the lady I bought a latte from the other day. Excellent. So I can cross over.

And if her stand is open, perhaps I'll buy a latte. Fuck yeah, this is nice dude.

Yeah, you can even just tell visually. It just doesn't look that bad. The mountains have like a little teeny haze. But again, like this was not uncommon to see in Fukuoka as well.

You know, it's like zero to 50 is all's good. I think today is only like 70. You know, it's just like a little bit. Where again, I'll put on the mask once I get. If I do any like distinct hiking. I feel like when I'm breathing super heavy doing for real hiking up a hill. Then even on moderate days like this, I think it's good to have the mask on. Just to not pull excessive damaging particulates into your lungs.

But yeah, it just looks pretty. Is that asking too much? That just sadly didn't happen in Seoul.

You know, even up on the awesome mountains of Bukhansan, I'd look at it in the distance and see the latte tower. And it looked, what I said at the time, but it's all I can think of. It looked like a fucking science fiction novel from the 60s or the 70s. It was like an obelisk in the distance of a weird sand planet. You know, it's just like all fucked up looking scary and weird.

But anyway, the bottles of fruit juice, I feel like that's a step too far. The other stuff is just ingredients. I ain't hurting anything but eating those. I'm just keeping the process moving.

But I feel like the bottle of fruit juice is like if you're only staying for a day or two, and you just have one or two. That seems more reasonable because I'm there for weeks and weeks and possibly months. We'll see if I can just rebook there. If I drink one of those every day, suddenly I'm going to go through a hundred of them.

Even if it's quote-unquote included in the price, I don't want to do that. And it's kind of not because I'm staying for over a month. I got the half off. It's supposed to be 30 bucks. It's only 15. So yeah, I'll eat the ingredients. I'll eat a little bit of your rice and your Tupperware container kimchi. But yeah, maybe not the bottled fruit juice. I'll just leave those. That's the premium item. I can buy my own fruit juice.

But yeah, it also made me realize too, like just staying at some of these places and Airbnb's in general, but especially here in Korea where it's so massive. There's so many rooms in these places. It made me realize the economics of it and it's kind of cool where, yeah, I'm only paying half price each day, but these places are really for the weekend. They're largely empty during the week and then during the weekend, they fill right up. Even the little place in Jetchan that only had like eight or ten rooms, eight rooms, I think. No, it had ten. But even it filled up on the weekend and not so much during the week. So if you do the math out that way, if people stay Friday, Saturday, Sunday, more likely just Friday and Saturday. Two days at 60 bucks. Then if I stay the whole week, I'm only spending $15 a day, but the whole week adds up to more. So it's like, oh yeah, like it just, I don't know, I just feel weirdly bad in some ways about, like I'm exploiting a situation, like how am I only paying $15 for this place? It's like really, really good. The amount of amenities and stuff is just out of control. Got my own little shower and everything. But then I realized if you do stretch it out, they are making more money off me in the long term, because most of those rooms are empty, most of the week. So I'm like, oh yeah, I don't know, it's just I'm a guilt machine. Why am I guilty about nothing? It makes no sense. But it's interesting to kind of figure it out.

Oh, here's the latte place, but it's actually really busy. It's really busy right now.

Yeah, and I do actually have a bunch of coffee I brought, but the by-tube get one free coffee. What is it called? Acafe la. Acafe la, just the latte, not the dulce or the vanilla. It's my favorite one. But it's weird to just buy one. When if you just buy two, you get a third one, so my pockets are filled with coffee right now. Way more coffee than I need. But maybe, if I come back this way, and it's near the end of the day, 15:00 and her stand is not busy, then maybe I'll get a coffee, but yeah, I don't want to go stand in line and just get a lot to add. I don't need just to say hi to the coffee lady.

And yeah, now I'm at the point where to my right is where I came down from the mountain the other day, so now I'm heading to the left. Down this little river that just winds up through into the river. So yeah, maybe I don't know what's going to happen here. Will I go up this and just come back down the other side, or will I get to the other side of the mountain and get spit out somewhere else? I don't know, we'll find out.

But yeah, things continued to be cool in Busan, because yeah, I was thinking maybe I should do day on day off type of thing, like spend one day going out and doing a little hiking adventure, because there's so many places still to check out, even just in my immediate vicinity.

And then the next day kind of stay and just go to a coffee shop, go to my official favorite chain, a Dia coffee, because they have an English touch screen that takes credit cards, so I got like a mint mocha the other day. Stuff that I would never, never have the balls to try to order from a barista.

And just go back and forth, one day stay in the city, one day go out for a hike, back and forth, back and forth.

But then I was a little perturbed that I'm like, oh, maybe this idea has already been fucked up because my air quality index app, especially last night. Last night it was bad, it was up to like 90, almost to that 100 level where it changes to a different graphic and a darker color and a scarier warning.

But then today, down to 70, and yeah, now that I'm here, it seems fine.

So yeah, really, I mean, I feel like this is the only thing that can go wrong in Busan, you know, who knows. There's always weird stuff that can happen anywhere, but what it appears is that my only worry, my only fear, is if pollution does turn out to be worse than it seems.

But yeah, it's been almost a week, and so far it seems pretty goddamn good, pretty sweet.

Strange, whooping noises, I don't know what those are anyway. Now let's just walk and see where I end up.

Alright, I lost track of the stream pretty fast of the little river. I was walking along the right side, I think the proper path is on the left, so it's not the thing I can try next time, but I don't know, I did cross over a riverbed thing earlier. Was that the same one? I don't know. Looks cool though, it had that same feeling that I got in Japan sometimes that I felt like I was in Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, you know. That Zelda feeling, I love that feeling, I got that feeling here for sure. But as I was walking around, my prediction was absolutely true. I think those sounds I heard, I believe there's a zoo in there somewhere that I could not see. So that's where all the kids are, but yeah, once I got out into this trail system, all old people, all my age are older.

And I basically just kept, anytime there was a trail that went up, I just followed the up ones, some of them were quite little and scant. But it's just cool, I'm just going up and up and up and up, and I can see through some trees, the city down behind me, it's quite a ways. And I was just walking along this little ridge, this is all pretty easy, not really a little ridge, a normal, comfortable ridge. But yeah, I'm pretty high up and ahead of me is another mountain that's way bigger, it's like three times bigger than the one I'm on now. And I was just walking along thinking like, hmm, it's right over there, like I'm going to go in that direction, what's going to happen? Am I just going to skirt around it? Am I just going to end up going back down? Am I going to go up there? What's going to happen? I don't know, where are these paths going to lead me? Who knows? We'll see. It's still quite early in the day, it's very nice out.

I'm all stocked up with stuff, with liquids and snacks, so we'll see. But I just thought it was cool that I got up here and I saw a flat stone area, not like the one I found last episode that was like a natural formation. This one was definitely man-made, but again, kind of like a boss arena. What are those things called in Breath of the Wild that are like little robots that you fight in the temples? 20:00 This looks like a place I could fight a robot. But as I got up here, I saw a big H on it, it's a helipad. And all of a sudden I switched from Zelda thoughts to Grand Theft Auto thoughts. Now this is like, oh, if this was GTA, Busan would be a fucking good city for GTA. Because you know how they have to shrink down Los Angeles to make it fit? I'm not a fan of the East Coast, Grand Theft Auto maps that much. GTA 4, it is a lot like New York, but it's a pain in the ass just like New York. Vice City is just unfortunately flat. I definitely like the West Coast games, San Andreas M5. Those are the money melon maps, but they have to shrink them down. You could make Busan one-to-one. If this was the Grand Theft Auto map, it would be, it feels like about the size of GTA 5. It would be fucking perfect. And there would absolutely be a helicopter here right now that I could come up in and fly over to the city. That'd be so fucking cool.

And then there's one of these big stone mounds. This one's actually really big. So that brings me back to Zelda mode because now I don't know what is this. When I go over to the mound, would it be like fine doll? Well, I guess finding all hundred whatever's that's GTA. I'd probably just come over here and find some ancient gears or something. If I search this thing. But yeah, what a cool feeling. The helipad up in the fucking mountains. I think I've said this before. But even though video games were a huge part of my life when I was young, I hardly ever play video games anymore. Yeah, I did say it because it was the day I first really properly felt like I properly managed to hike up one of the trails at Buchanan. And it was the snowy ancient steps and it felt like Kings Quest V.

And I was pontificating about how that feeling I used to get from video games. Like, oh, I got to get to the next screen. I got to get to the next level. I got to see the next area. That feeling of exploration, of finding stuff. I get that now from this. And you know, from walking through mountain trails. It just is that same feeling that I just really don't get from video games anymore. I don't know. Video games they just, maybe it's a young man's pastime. But I do think about video games a lot when I'm hiking through nature because I just, this is how I felt when I was a kid when I would rent a video game. And you just want to get to the next level. Like I remember before I owned an Nintendo, we rented an Nintendo for like a week during a Christmas break. And we had Mario 3 before because Mario 3 came out like, it was ridiculous. It came out like two years earlier in Japan than it did in North America. You'd never get away with that shit anymore. But in the pre-internet age you could, but we rented an Nintendo and we found a store where you could rent the Japanese Super Mario 3 with an adapter. It was things that when I went back to school nobody believed me because it's such an outlandish story. What do you mean Mario 3? You played Mario 3? No, you did not. Stop lying. But we did. But I remember right before, like the night before we had to bring it back. You know, we're little kids. We sucked at video games. So we only made it to World 3, the water world where you get a frog suit. And it was getting later and later and it was time for us to go to bed. And the next day the Nintendo was going back. And I just remember me and my brother were like, oh, what do we do? This is the worst. What can we do? This is where the journey has to end, but we just got to this new world. We just got to this brand new place. We just finally got through the desert. And that feeling of what's over the next hill, what's around the next corner, where video games have just become so utterly predictable now that it's like, who gives a shit? You're not going to show me anything I haven't seen before.

Though that is one of my plans when I get back to my hometown. That's when I'll play video games. You know, I'm not going to play video games while I'm traveling. But when I get home and it's just boringsville, that's what I'll break out, Eldon Ring or whatever.

But yeah, because again, it's just, I don't know, it's just a mountain trail. It wasn't even that hard to get to. I just walked to it from my Airbnb. But it just feels so cool to search the trails and find out where to go and then a helipad. I'm like, what use is that? I don't know. I'm never going to be able to use the helipad. This is not Grand Theft Auto. But I've never seen a helipad on a mountain before. That's a new one. And it just feels so cool, man. It feels fucking cool as fuck. All right, I'm going to keep walking toward this giant doom mountain, which I don't expect. I'll go up. But you know, these things look worse from a distance. You know, it looks like a giant imposing death mountain, which it is. But then when you're heading toward it, you know, maybe I'll just accidentally walk up it.

When you're right on it, rarely do mountains feel distinctly like climbing a mountain when you're on them.

I did have sometimes like that in Bukhansen, where I had to go back down, because it's like, I'm literally climbing right now. I'm using all my hands. This is scary and fuck. But that's very, very uncommon for a mountain to be that steep. So we'll see. We'll see what happens.

Wow, that's pretty dang loud.

So I was walking along a pretty, pretty flat, like wide enough for a car, but no cars were allowed on it. Walking trail. That was pretty heavily people. It's quite a bit of people walking on it along the side of this super big mountain. And then I saw little rock steps going up into the mountains. I was like, I'm going to do that. And instantly I was alone. No one else was doing that.

But then part way up, I got to one of those mineral springs, where the mineral water comes out, and they have little ladles and stuff. And I always kind of wondered when I saw them in Seoul, exactly what is the deal? What do you do with mineral water? It's not something I have any experience with. And this one, there was an older guy there who I had to shirt off, and he was like just ladling the water onto himself and rubbing it onto his skin, having a whole thing. There seem to be bottles too. So I don't know, again, I still don't know, do you drink that stuff? Or do you just rub it on yourself? I don't know. Anyway, I didn't want to get in his way. So I took a little side path from there instead of going up. And that just took me along the side of the mountain.

But probably for the best, because it's later in the day than I thought.

Yeah, it's like 4.40 right now.

This one, I'll be up for a while, but this is still a good time to head back into the city and mosey my way back, not to go up a mountain.

But this seems very easy to get to. So I took the long way to get here, because I went to the Cheyup Dong Reservoir first, and wound around up through the mountains. But now I met Cian Amza Shrine, S-E-O-N-A-M-S-A Shrine. And this is the biggest and nicest shrine I've seen yet, I think. I mean, the ones up in Bukansen were impressive in Seoul because they're way up in a mountain. But this one really feels like Japanese Shrine's more. There's a whole bunch of different buildings. There's definitely a lot more shrines in Busan in general. Yeah, there's that waterfall that was making the sound earlier. I guess you can still hear it. And yeah, it's just nice, just nice in general. And it seems a lot less touristy. There are people here actually doing in a bunch of these buildings that are lighting the incense and doing bowing and their observances. In fact, I thought I'd come up to a place where nobody was, but I just saw some people. Maybe I should shot up, maybe I should not be talking right now. Here's another stairway that goes even higher up. Let me go up there, see if each level up I go, there's less and less people. Maybe up at this one, I will be alone. We'll see.

Yeah, it looks like the mountain, Baegyang sun, B-A-E-G, Y-A-N-G-S-A-Ed. And it has a little camera icon on Google Maps for sweet picture view or a sweet photo op. And yeah, this is right by the city. This shrine. So I can get back here easy. The long winding way that I took was cool. Made it feel more adventurous. But that's where the day went. It's like, oh crap, I guess the day is winding down. Because it did take me all afternoon to walk across the city and then up through all the mountains and stuff. But if I just want to come try to get to the peak of this mountain, there are much more direct ways. So that's cool. That's a plan for the future. And I was just about to say I made it to the highest level. There's only one little tiny shrine up here and I was all by myself, but a lady just showed up. So now I'm going to go back down. Leave her to her far more legitimate business than my business of recording a podcast. But I did notice as much as this feels like a Japanese shrine or temple, they don't do this thing that Japan does where they just leave the offerings because I said that when I was in Japan, I don't get that. I don't understand because leaving an offering just means buying some trash from a convenience store and putting it in front of a statue doesn't make any sense to me. It's like, why are you just leaving candy and little juice boxes of wine and random 30:00 stuff? It's just a weird thing to do. They don't do that here. It feels a lot more shiny around here. Like it does feel like I should be shutting up and getting out of here because this actually feels kind of religious. But the other thing I noticed as I was coming down from the little mountain path and connected back up to the main walking path is I did see some shoes that were left there with their socks in them. Like they weren't abandoned shoes. They'd clearly just been left there so people could do the barefoot walking that I first noticed in Jetchan and I've been noticing more and more. It's definitely a thing here in Korea. So much so that the people who owned those shoes to older folk, husband and wife came back down the trail and I saw them head toward the shoes. I'm like, oh, timing. And then at that moment, also I saw a guy get out of his car barefoot so he just left his shoes in his car. So it's definitely a semi-common thing to do the barefoot walk. I'm enough of a pretentious douchebag that I would probably give it a shot if I didn't have such horrifyingly flat feet. It would be the death of me if I did that.

If that anyway, this is really nice. This is a very nice shrine.

And now I'm in a mosey on down into the city. See exactly where I am. Am I far enough to finally necessitate finding a subway? Probably not. I mean, it's going to take a while to get back, but but what am I in some kind of hurry? I'm a fucking dude with no job. This is all I do is wander around randomly. This is a fine fucking wander. Pretty much the perfect wander. Nice day out. Not very scary levels of air particles today. Explored a bunch of new stuff and found a bunch of other extra little appendages. Bits to add on. Things to add to this journey. Yeah, and looking up at this mountain, it doesn't look that bad. Especially going straight up. It's always shocking how fast you get to the top of a mountain. It looked like enormous from the other smaller mountain. Now that I'm right by it, it's not that bad. Not that bad. I'll see you later, big, young son. I'm coming for you. I'm coming for you, Ogan.

Oh yeah, if I head down to the road, do a little loop around. There's the Busan Citizens Park. Yeah, I'm not really that far at all. Couple hours walk at most.

Who has a fair walk back? And even just to get from the Busan Citizens Park to my Airbnb, which is, I don't know, it's by one of the stations. I don't feel like looking it up. I am too exhausted to pull out my phone and start scrolling around. I took a weird route, not the normal route, to hopefully get here. And it worked, but I had to go through a bunch of weird back alleys and down and obscures, staircase and stuff. But as I was walking, I was just thinking like, oh man, well, I've been noticing my shins hurting, the front of my shins hurting for some time now. Taking a day off tomorrow will be a good idea. And I was thinking, should I try to find a coffee shop to stop in and do some writing, but yeah, not only are my shins hurting, but starting to get a headache and I'm just like, oh, I'm just winding down and it's just like, oh, sun's going down. It's like, yeah, let's just go back home and I'll stick with the day on day off plan tomorrow. I can go to a coffee shop and do writing and stuff today, whatever. So I was feeling extra energy free. As I walked by a bunch of old guys who were just hanging out in this weird obscure back alley I was in, like even from here, like, yeah, I have to go up. It's above me because even though there's a major street near where I am, you have to go up this weird staircase and then get to this weird alley. And they were so exuberant and nice about like, hey, it comes down. You know, they were doing whatever, playing a game or something, but they had, I think, you know, some kind of kimchi or something they were eating. And they were like, yeah, come on, it comes it down. You know, not in English, but I was just like, oh, I just, I just can't. I just politely gave them all a bow and just like, sorry, sorry, thank you, but I just can't. But I mean to be realistic, I probably wouldn't. Anyway, you know, just think of all the adventures that a non-interverted 35:00 person could have. The world is ready to embrace you. The world wants to talk to you and meet you and hang out, which is not at all true. Most people just ignore me. Actually, I got a, a lot of weird just, you know, with the old people that do the hiking around here. Even just this morning, I noticed, you know, the, the nodding and saying hello. Usually women will reciprocate, but men usually not. Usually it's just the stone face. If they look at all, it's like a just a, which is like, hey, whatever. That's just what you do. That's how you are. I got to fight through it. I got to be my Canadian self and keep trying to be nice to people and be polite, even if they never reciprocate. But then when people do, when people are like, hey, come sit down. I'm just like, oh, I just, I'm sorry guys, I just can't. I just can't. It takes so much energy to hang out with people when you can't speak to them. And everything is just a pantomime. And I'm sure they would, they would have fed me and it would have been great, but I'm just like, oh, I just can't. But yeah, again, I probably wouldn't anyway, because this happened to me. I remember in Amsterdam, too. I was at some park in Amstelvin. Some guys tried to usher me over to give me some barbecue. And I was just like, just even though they did speak English, I was like, I just, I'm not, I'm just not that guy. It's a shame. I'm, I'm leaving opportunities on the table. I'm leaving experiences on the table. But I think it's obvious at this point, 100 episodes in. This is just how I am. This is how it works. I just walk around by myself.

But I decided, I'd mention it that a nice potential moment happened. If you walk around the backs, the back alleys, maybe eventually someone will invite you for a nice meal, which you can then politely decline if you're a fucking weirdo like me. But yeah, man, I'm dying today. Hold it. God, I am out of energy.

So on that note, join me next episode for another adventure. Not tomorrow. It won't be tomorrow, because tomorrow I'm doing nothing. God damn it. I'm staying in the neighborhood, going to a coffee shop, and that's it. I'm really surprised how much my shins hurt. This is kind of rare. This doesn't happen often. I'm sure happened today. But all right, I'll see you next time.