#113 Exploring a mountain range in Busan

Transcript

Alright, we've got our nice little string of episodes in Busan following on from each other. So last episode ended with I was near the Baegyang-san Peak View, B-A-E-G-Y-A-N-G-S-A-N. And my blue dot isn't actually on that spot. It's between that and bull-ungly on, B-U-L-U-N-G-L-Y-E-O-N-G. So I'm somewhere up in this mountain range, but all the peaks around these parts look about the same. There's nothing noticeably higher than me. And there's a pile of rocks up here that says 614 meters. So I was thinking, like, am I getting less afraid of heights a little bit? Because I was finding in Japan that above 500 meters started making me a little rubber legged. It didn't even occur to me that I was at a high height till I saw that number. I feel fine. But no, I think that's because this is a very, very gradual. This was a very, you know, definitely tiring. Three-quarters of the way up, I was like, oh God, I kind of don't want to do this, but I can't go back down now. Like, this is really wearing me out. And I guess the height was evident because my, I had to pop my ears. I felt like a little pressure change in my ears. But generally easy, I came up kind of a weird path, an unexpected path, where basically I, I took instead of, I found out last time that there is a shrine near here.

So I could just walk through the city and go to the shrine and come up here. And the walk through the city was nice. I found a nice fish market that was just cool to walk through. There were people selling vegetables on the street, which they did in Seoul also. And it seemed like perverse and weird in the wintertime in Seoul because it was so incredibly ridiculously fucking polluted everywhere. The idea of buying vegetables off the street is like, this truly feels like an apocalypse movie. Like, we're just desperately scrabbling for survival. It's just weird feeling. Where here, it's been pretty nice. Some combination of where it is geographically and just because the time of year is getting to be springtime. But people selling stuff on the streets is like, it's a nice feeling when the world's not gray and fucking fucked up looking. But that was still a city walk. So instead, I did the same thing I did last time with the reservoir. It just seems like the most interesting way to get here. So I took a different path through the reservoir, through the mountains behind the reservoir, Chi-Op-Dong reservoir. And I kind of trended to the right whenever I could because I knew this peak was sort of to the right compared to where I went yesterday. But I ended up on the mountain next to this mountain, which now that I'm looking at it from here. Man, is it actually higher? It might be. I guess if I'd stayed on that mountain, I'd be at an even higher peak. See little flags up there. That is like an observation deck. It's a little more developed over there. Actually, maybe that's the peak because I don't see the shrine anywhere. The shrine must be down at the foot of that. So maybe I'm looking at the one I saw yesterday. So I'm two peaks over. But whatever, you know, it's all in the neighborhood. That's funny, though, because yeah, I was just about to say. So I thought I was on the wrong mountain that I was one mountain over. And I was looking over at the big peak. And I'm like, oh, well, didn't quite hit it today. Not going to make it today. But then I found a path down through the valley in between the two mountains. And I passed some hikers here and there, but at that specific point, a lady went by and actually said, hello. So I want to shout her out. She's the only fucking one. So I see you. I recognize. I appreciate it. And yeah, I guess that's what made this seem especially difficult is because I kind of went back to the bottom and back up, I guess, because I went down in the valley between mountains. But yeah, looking over, look at that shit.

Well, that's something else to aim for in the future. But I ended up coming up this weird route. There was very rough and nature. And then I intersected with what was supposed to be the proper way to get up here, which where does it originate? I have no fucking idea. How was I supposed to do this? I don't know. But I got to one of those like woven carpets that are all over Korea where on hiking trails, they have these like, I don't know if it's made a straw or what? But they're just like big, big carpets that they lay out to help you walk. So I was on the 5:00 proper path and then came up here very easy. So all of that is to say that even though this is quite high up and the view is amazing. Yeah, it doesn't feel scary because it's really not steep. That really was the deal in Japan, not so much the height. It's just some of those mountains are treacherous spikes of doom, spikes of death, which Bukansen had some of those too. But yeah, all these mountains here, this is much more. Again, maybe it's a coastal thing. Feels much more Fukuoka. It feels much more Fukuoka-y. It's really hard to say. Fukuoka-y in that, yeah, the mountains aren't that severe. And from up here, I can see I was going to say the other side of Busan, but I have no idea yet how Busan has laid out or really what's where. So it's another side of Busan where there's a river, which I don't know what it's called. I'm still learning all this stuff. I know nothing yet. See a river with a couple of bridges. Well, quite a few bridges, I guess. A few different bridges. A bunch of buildings. Then across the river. No tall buildings.

Oh, well, there's one. Fewer tall buildings. And then like a weird marshland that goes off into more mountains that disappear into the distance. Not very polluted today, only a touch over 50. So I'm not even wearing a mask. Can I feel okay about it? I think it's fine. But as you look deep enough into the distance, layers and layers and layers of mountains, two, three, four, five, six, seven, I can see like eight layers back. That's fucking crazy. But it gets pretty hazy as it goes. And then behind me, there's more Busan. Where even is the ocean? I don't even know, man. This is nice though. Definitely. I mean, I just, just looking at all these peaks, it's just nuts. Like just so easy to get to. So freaking easy. I left the house pretty light today. I didn't get going till a little after 130. And it's still only five o'clock now. So even dragging my feet like crazy, I easily made it to the top of a peak. The sun is still really high in the sky. That's one nice thing about springtime coming. I was always racing the sun when I was in Japan in the winter. Although a few little insects have started poking up. So we'll see if that's a problem because even though it was a very easy winter by luck this year that I was traveling, it was still more than enough to take care of the insects. There were no insects in Japan. So it could be the trade-off. Get more sun here in Korea. You seem to get a noticeable lack of pollution, but maybe bugs are going to start fucking me. You never know. I guess every season has its ups and downs. I'm going to start making my way down this mountain though.

Because yeah, even though the sun's quite high up, it's still on the descent.

Yeah, I haven't booked more time yet here in Busan because I just need to figure out how I'm going to exit. Can I get flights from here from Busan? Is it worth it to go back to Seoul? And if it is, then I'll probably go back a little early. But all I did was just a test. Just basically, what if I try to fly straight from Seoul to Toronto or Busan to Toronto? And there didn't seem to be much difference, but they were both horrifying. Like $1,600. Plus, I'm sure there's fees and taxes and shit. That's just crazy, man. I mean, I know it's going to be like a thousand. I think that's what it was to get here. I don't remember now to get from Montreal to Japan. But that was on a budget airline right before they shut down for the season. Middle of July, it's a lot rougher. And yeah, I just can't spend that kind of money to go back to Canada, which I don't even particularly want to go back to anyway. You know, just got to go back eventually. So I got to look into that more. Maybe there is somewhere else I can go. Somewhere, some way I can split this up just so just so I get something out of that flight. Like there's always the classic going back to Amsterdam, but maybe I will find they go to France, finally use some of my French. Because I don't know if it still exists, but there used to be a flight. Instead of flying directly across the ocean, you could get from a major Canadian city and then fly up to Iceland and transfer in Iceland down into Europe. And it was a lot less brutal.

So even if it costs more ultimately to go stop in Europe and stuff, you know, to get home, at least I'll have done something on the way. At least I'll get something out of it. Flying straight from Busan to Toronto, I won't get shit. I will get nothing out of that except a miserable flight 10:00 and a huge bill. So I got to figure out what I'm doing before I book time here. I don't know, it's just I don't really enjoy setting up stuff for traveling. And it seems so far away. It's like three months before I got to leave, but I've got to book all this stuff a lot sooner than that.

Oh geez, can I just walk over to this other peak? Yeah, these things they seem so epic. Like, oh, there's that other peak. But wait a fucking minute. It does seem in this case. I do not need to go all the way down into the valley and all the way back up. I think I can just skidaddle across here.

Cool. Well, while I'm checking out this other peak, just another random story that I don't know, it's hard for me to tell what's a random event and what is actually a representative of Korean culture because I just haven't been here that long and I'm not exactly partaking that much in any culture, you know, I just wander around by myself. But I was buying vitamins, so there's a guy coming down toward me. I was buying vitamins because I finally ran out. I brought vitamins with me and they finally ran out and I do need like multi vitamins and vitamin B or my poor body feels bad. And the vitamins here seemed horrifyingly expensive. It was like $60 for a little box that came with two two bottles of multivitamins and then each one had 60 in it. But really, I guess it's not that bad. 30 bucks for a bottle of vitamins. In Canada, that would easily be $23 or $24. It's just that I always bought vitamins on sale. So I just wait until they were like 15 bucks and buy some. So it feels like double price. And then they made me buy two at once. So it really was like, man, I just spent $60 on vitamins. But I guess it's not really that bad.

But I got the multivitamins and then I went back later to a different store, different pharmacy to get vitamin B. And a similar thing, they came in a fancy box with two bottles. These ones were 35 bucks each. So $70 for the box of vitamins. And I would have just bought it but I didn't realize I wasn't keeping track of how much money I had. I only had 40 bucks on me. So I was like, ah darn, I don't have enough. Is there like a cheaper one or what can we do here? Do I have to abandon these? And it's hard to tell if South Korea is like if they follow rules or if they're freewheeling, you know? Japan, it's no question. They follow rules for sure. And here, there does seem to be many rules-based things. There certainly are cameras everywhere, like everywhere.

But I was kind of impressed that this guy did not seem beholden by what's the word like, like when you got a certain way things have to be done and that's how they have to be done. Like Chris Broad from abroad in Japan, I just saw a thing he put up about how he was about to go on a trip somewhere and he had to go to the bank and get out money. And he didn't bring his Hanco stamp, his little identifying stamp to his bank in Japan. And despite the fact that he's lived there over a decade and he's had the bank account forever, they can't accept signatures, they can't accept photo ID, they can't accept anything. They need the fucking stamp. They need the stamp so much that he had to travel across town to get the stamp and travel all the way back just to get his own money out of his bank account. You know, that's that's the Japanese way. In Japan, if I didn't have the money to buy the fancy box of two bottles of vitamins, that'd be it. And it's clear that the only reason it's in this fancy box is to look fancy, to kind of help justify, I think this is really high price for these fucking vitamins. You know, you got a nice fancy box. Oh, look at what I bought. I bought a big box of vitamins, even though it's just two little bottles in there. But in South Korea, it was like, no, no, no. This was way more the free wheel and ingenuity. He was like, I'm not letting this guy walk out of here. He has $40 in his wallet. He's trying to buy vitamins. I'm not just going to let him go. So he just cracked the box open. He's like, oh, fuck it. Here you go. Just take one of the bottles for 35. And I was like, I will. Perfect. Thank you. But I asked him, like, is this okay? Because all the vitamins come in these fancy boxes. There were no bottles. So what's he going to do with the half empty box? You know, like this is definitely interfering the protocol of how these things 15:00 are supposed to be sold and stocked and restocked. And yet he had a, I probably caused him a slight problem that he had to crack this thing open and just sell one of the bottles. But whatever, he'll figure it out. He's, despite working at a pharmacy, you know, it's not like I was buying this from, from like a market street or something. The sense, the spirit of wheeling and dealing was still there. He'll just find someone else who only wants half. He'll just find someone else to pedal to bottle too. But I appreciated it. I appreciated him thinking on his feet and breaking the protocol. Because I would have bought two bottles, whatever. Never heard of that backup vitamins. I just didn't realize it didn't have enough money. You don't really expect to need 70 dollars to buy vitamins. So yeah, I thought that was kind of cool. That was kind of a nice little thing. Pliable. That's a good word for it. I respect when someone can be pliable in order to get the money out of my wallet, to that I am trying to spend for the thing that I want to have. Because yeah, that just wouldn't have happened in Japan. I can't even imagine it. No one's going to open up a package and sell you half of what's in there. That's not, that's not how it works. That's not the protocol. Those aren't the rules. Yeah, this was easy. I'm already at the other peak.

Another bigger stone pile, an observation deck, and a signpost. Let's see what you have to say to me signpost. Such a weird feeling. Yeah, there's the flags that I was like, are those little white flags? Now they're right here. Yeah, let's walk over. You can hear some flag ASMR.

And there's the stadium. So that means that mountain. It's the first one that I found. My Airbnb is down in that little pocket somewhere. That mountain behind it, I tried to get to one day. There's some kind of university up there. I happened to be there on a weekend. So all of the, uh, everything up there was closed. And there was no apparent way up into the mountain. Oh, there's the reservoir. I can see a little touch of it. Wow. This is fucking neat. Yeah, I can easily see the entire route that I took today. So where's the citizens park? Oh, there it is. Yep, yep, reapers. That's everything. That's everything I've ever seen in Busan. That's the area. This is as far as I've been. The citizens park to the reservoir, up to these mountains behind the reservoir. That is the totality of my Busan experience. And I can see it all right now. And there's another helipad ding, ding, ding, found one, grandfather. Yeah, so good. This is, this town is so cool. It's just really, really cool.

So let's see. 1.5 kilometers is sort of back toward roughly where I came from. It's called Barum Hill. 1.3 kilometers. Borung Nyong Pass. B-U-R-U-N-G-N-Y-E-O-N-G. That's where I was supposed to come up, but I somehow came up midway through. Hmm. And then if I look this other direction, it appears to just go down, but it claims that 0.75 kilometers from here is the Agent Bong Peak, AEJ-I-N-B-O-N-G peak. Well, let's head that way, I guess, and see what happens. But I don't see no fucking peaks over there. I see nothing. Ooh, doggie. Oh, now there's a view. This has got to be one of the little fucking, oh, this feels scary now. Ooh, now I'm on an official, you know, wooden platform with do-not-lean signs and kind of a drop, you know, like a 15-foot drop ahead of me, but then way down. Ooh, way down, but you can really see a lot of Busan from here. I guess that's the ocean over there. Everything just kind of disappears into a haze. I don't know. And yeah, as usual, I don't tend to hang around at these places much. I just like to pass through them, pass through an area. That's an extra good reason too, because yeah, this one wonders. There are height signs anywhere around here. It can't be much higher than the other one. It seems about the same, but again, I guess it's just the steepness. Yeah, 642 meters, only a little higher, but where that observation deck is, I mean, I guess that's what makes it such a good observation deck, that one feels steep. 20:00 That is quite the drop, but quite the view. Yeah, let's mosey toward this other supposed peak with the ultimate goal of getting the fuck out of here.

But yeah, delightful, man. The one day on one day off plan is working real well. Yesterday, was my day off plan. Just went to a coffee shop. A dia coffee. Absolutely my favorite.

The first one I found was coffee bean. It was okay, but a little pricey. A two-some place. It's okay, but the machine isn't in English. So in both those cases, it basically had to order from people. I guess I'll fit up some Starbucks, but they're identical to everywhere else. A dia is also one of the local brands, EDIYA. I think I read that there's 3,000 of them. I'm not sure if that's in Seoul or in all of Korea. Maybe just Seoul, because they seem to be everywhere. They're not hard to find. And yeah, they have the machine from heaven. It has English menus.

And yeah, like I got, well, I was all like, I ordered a mint mocha the other day. Wow, I would never do that if I had to talk to the employee. And I was thinking back to that. And it's like, that must sound so ridiculous. Because it's true. I'm not going to add any extra words. I don't need to add. I'm ordering a latte, and that's it. Because even that, latte, you know, they pronounce it a little different. I'm not quite sure how to say latte properly. But large is supposed to be large. You know, there's a lot of English speakers in South Korea. But if you do catch somebody who isn't, everything is hard to understand. It's just everything. So I'm not going to order mint mocha. I'm just not going to do it. You know, maybe it seems simple, but nothing is simple. So not only did I get a mint mocha, I got an extra espresso shot in it for 50 cents. And I could just know whip thing all through the menu. God, do you imagine explaining all of that? I could do different temperatures if I wanted to. Like, it's just why I put somebody through that. You know, they don't even have a tip culture around here. So it's not like I can leave money in their tip cup if I go talk to them in person. They're getting nothing out of this deal. Except having to deal with my fucking my illiterate ass. So idea. God bless you, idea. I love you. Your machines are so good. You just pop your little credit card in. Because yeah, that's the thing too. Most of when a thing does accept your credit card, it seems pretty easy. Because I don't have like a full credit card. I've got like a debit card that works as a credit card. So there's no statement you pay off. It just takes the money right out of your account, but it basically works as a credit card. And you know, it works in McDonald's. It works at Burger King. It worked at the unmanned cafe in Jetchon. The only place that was weird is I used it at this one Starbucks in Jetchon where I had to go through a bunch of extra steps. Luckily, there were English speakers there that could explain to me what was going on. I had to pick if I wanted to pay in Canadian funds or Korean. So I was like, I guess Canadian, right? It's a Canadian bank account. I'm like, what the heck? What do you mean? What happens if I choose Korean? Anyway, then I had to electronically sign. You know, with just the little plastic pen, then you scribble some shit. And I was like, what the fuck is all this? Anyway, Adia, you just pop your card in and if you've ordered your stuff, gives you a number. Then the person makes your stuff and the number pops up. And yes, they thank you. And you got to drink. It's the best. So anyway, yeah. Adia from here on in, that's where I'm going every day. It's just the best and there is enough of them around. Even like, you know, you can check them on the map and some stuff will pop up. But there's more. There's more than what's on the map. So just keep your eyes peeled. Oh, there's the next peak. I see it. It's not that far. Well, I guess it's less than a kilometer as the sign said. But if I can find a way down, I'm taking it. I'm at that point now. Take the first route down.

It's enough peaks. How many peaks does a man need us? So there's two different peaks today. But yeah, then today was the day on. Day on. Here I am. Here I am at the peaks. Tomorrow, day off. Go find an idea. Instead of the coffee shop, try to finish my fucking novel.

Ah, yeah, this is neat. Man, this is one thing that is pretty common in South Korea. Are these views? These mountains that are just like right in the fucking city. So you just walk along and you can just look to either side and just see the city below you. It's fucking cool as hell.

Man, it's so weird that I'm forgetting the names now. I knew all those names in Seoul.

Because it's, yeah, mainly the one with the wall that this reminds me of.

That I could look up, but whatever. Whatever. These names will all come back to me next to my man's soul. I know I've said this before, but it remains true. When you don't know the language at all, man, these names are so hard to remember because they're all just abstract sounds. I mean, there's so many bongs and jihans. I looked up dong and I think dong just means neighborhood, generally. San is clearly a mountain. I mean, they do that in Japan as well, right?

But anyway, all of these prefixes and suffixes that are probably like very easy to remember, if you know Korean, but to me, it's all like I got to just hard remember every word.

It's very hard to do. Looky here. It's a little veranda, little gazebo-looking thing. Oh yeah, the cherry blossoms. So they're already, even though it's only, what day did I get here? Has it been a full week? It must be a full week by now, but they're noticeably passing already. Like there's some cherry blossom trees I'm passing right now that there's still some clinging on, but they're, they're almost passed. And yeah, I was watching I started watching a lot of people on YouTube during COVID who do the walking around Japan videos. And I'm still subscribed to some of them. So those videos just pop up. So I was like, oh, look at this. There's people walking around in Shibuya looking at the cherry blossoms. There's a lot more cherry blossoms in Shibuya than you would suspect. Here's a proper map. Nice. I can get down from here easy. And then somebody else had one from the Maguro River. And I was like, ah, cool. Like I had never known what the Maguro River was. But if you cast your mind way back, that was one of the first walks I did when I got to Japan. Just because it happened to be near my Airbnb in Sang and Jaya. Wow, a washroom. And a little observatory like, you know, the eyeglass thing you can look through. I found one of those in Jetchon. And you could like literally just look into the windows of apartment buildings. It was weird because Jetchon's just not big enough really to have this type of thing to have a spyglass. Busan is though. And from here, you'd never be able to see anything, any particular details. Oh, there's the ocean. Okay, that's the ocean for sure. So it's not quite in the direction that I thought it was. But anyway, yeah, these YouTube channels had their nice Sakura walks. And I'm like, oh, that's pretty nice. Not bad. Pretty much identical to what it looks like here in Korea. They seem to be basically the same same sort of drifting white pink blossoms flowing through the sky. But then I was surprised that one of the guys was like, all right, we got one more day of this tomorrow, a postal more video. And then that's kind of it. That's like, really? It's over already. And then I realized like, yeah, I guess it is. Even just walking around today, like they're still around, but it's such a ludicrously short time, ridiculously short time, like less than a week, a week maybe? Oh, another helipad. This isn't even the one I saw before, is it? It must be. How many fucking helipads are there right here? I don't know. Anyway, yes, I mean, I guess again, this is like, it's like a personality test. Maybe because of the teeny tiny little sliver of time when you really get to see these cherry blossoms, maybe that makes one more dedicated to the idea of like, I got to be there at the right time. I got to see him. It's my only chance. Whereas I, again, I'm just going to reiterate what I thought before. It makes me feel even more so that you should not worry about it. It's not worth getting stressed over. It's not worth making plans around. What if you fuck up? What if the weather's different? What if you get here and you miss them? Just forget it. It's just fucking forget it. If you see them good, if you don't, who cares? That's my advice.

Ah, there we go. Okay, so this next update is mere minutes later. It's, uh, I just went in, it took a peak. And then I was like, ah, well, this next peak, I mean, it's right here. It's so close. Like, what the hell I might as well just hop up there, even though it's noticeably getting a little dark now. But the reason I pulled out this recorder is that a guy in a fucking bicycle just went by. I was like, what the hell? I'm on top of a mountain. Dude, what is happening?

And then I just saw at this next signpost, 3.5 kilometers down, that it looks like basically just is it paved or is it just gravel? Anyway, just a nice, quite easy flat route. A nice little basically a road. So yeah, if you take the proper way up here, it is mega easy.

You can literally bicycle up here, but that's a first. I have never seen somebody on one of these mountains on a bicycle. That's some Grand Theft Auto shit also.

Because I've certainly done that in San Andreas, energy TA5. I'm going to ride my fucking bicycle up the goddamn up the side of the mountain.

And now I've seen it in real life. I don't know, this next peak seems close, but the sign said 1.2 kilometers to something. Presumably just the next peak and the next peak. I just need to stop, I guess. It's a little too late in the day. Whatever little cut and dried model was in my mind. I've like, oh, here's the, here's that shrine. Here's a mountain and then a second mountain and that's as far as my brain went. But in reality, it's Endless Mountain, After Mountain, After Mountain. Non-stop mountains. Getting pretty fucking windy too. I finally, I had my my extra coat, my one coat too many, that I realized I really didn't need in Japan. But I kept it the whole time, just in case, because you never know. Since I'd never been to Japan in the winter before. And it turns out I got off easy. So I still don't know what'll happen next time. But it didn't make it out of jet-chon. I finally get rid of it.

Oh, this is, again, nice. How nice. What a nice view. What a nice peak. But now there's a little sign that says 4 kilometers to the next thing. That's, that's plenty. Bailing out. Going back to where that bicycle guy came from. I'm taking that route down. He had served me well that coat, because it was like a hand me down coat that had a bit of a tear in it actually. So I mean, I was busy, you know, it was just someone else's garbage.

And it turns out I never really did need it. I mostly needed it just to fill my pockets full of stuff when I went through the airport to Fukuoka, which was a stupid plan in the first place. But that's the nice thing about hand me down so I can hand clothes. And especially clothes that are starting to fall apart. There's really no guilt about getting rid of them. I try to hold on to stuff as long as I can. I keep everything as long as I can. I wear it down to the bone. I've started buying like proper hiking socks and athletic socks because I've realized that I'm just destroying my socks. There's just holes in the heels of all my socks because I walk like a lunatic every day or currently every second day.

But it was nice to have just in case, just in case things had gone well like they probably should have gone on a normal winter. Maybe I wouldn't needed that coat. But it was so mild that it was just my insurance coat. But anyway, nowadays it's getting so warm. I'm just kind of wearing a normal hoodie and even though it's windy as hell, I do have a thermal shirt tucked away for another layer. But it's not actually cold. It feels fine. Oh yeah, this is paved. No problem. Still impressive though. To bicycle, 650 meters up a mountain. Yikes. Not too bad on the hiking because I just really go slow. I go like really slow, like an old man's slow. So it's not too messed up my knee, but also because I just hate that feeling of sucking wind. I hate that feeling of being winded. And as long as you just go real low, you don't feel that way so much. But a bicycle, yikes. That would be a tiring endeavor. Where's he going to, by the way? I wasn't really paying super close attention as I walked along that path. I mean, it was pretty, pretty easy. And like I said, it had that sort of carpet type of deal on part of it, but surely not all of it. Can you really ride your bike along this mountain range? That's fucking nuts. And the little curvy road keeps going. But here's some stairs. I'm going to take the stairs. Alright, so yeah, again, I just, 35:00 this probably could be an episode, but I just don't want to quite enter. It's kind of fun to just see what'll happen next. What's the next time an anecdote happens that I want to pull out my recorder for? Let's see. So let's fade out now. Do a little time jump and see where I pop in next. Wow, those stairs were short lived. Now I'm just walking down rocks. Man, and it's a long way. But anyway, I'm going to trust that this is not one of these jet-john situations where three quarters of the way down, they just abandoned me and I'm just clinging to the side of a mountain. That seems like a small town thing. This place I'm in had a dang washroom up there. That was nuts. Alright, fade out.

Alright, it's a bit later the same day. It's all just today. In Japan, I always felt like each day was more than enough, packed full of more than enough stuff to make a podcast. I just kind of presumed that it's not necessarily the case now that I've left Japan. But I think it's become pretty obvious that there's enough stuff going on. In general, but especially in Busan.

That if I decide to break out this here recorder, whatever crap happens to me on the day, is by my standards of what I consider an interesting podcast. Good enough. Oh, that's a really good mural I'm walking by. There are various murals I've seen around Korea. A various quality. Some of them are really cartoony and weird and kind of silly, but they're still cool. This is like a really well, really giant painting of the whole city. Is it even this city? I mean, it must be, but there's a bridge that kind of, I don't recognize. It's got like a big central pole and you know, the wires coming down. I'll keep my eyes peeled. That's probably a bridge somewhere.

But anyway, I made it down the mountain and I'm back in the city proper. And as I was going down, I was going down the rock steps, fume into the mountain. And they eventually led me to like a parking lot and proper washer facilities and stuff again. And it was getting darker and darker, still not quite dark right now, almost though. But the roads had some gates put up to keep cars out. I think because it's, you know, getting to be later in the day, I think I could have skirted around the gates and just walked down the road. But I found another little path through the woods. I'm like good enough. Boar warning, but that's fine. I can't be that far from the city by now. I've keep going down and down and down. And it eventually led to like this rain gutter. It's weird how, you know, things just happen as the terrain is changing, especially when things are mountainous, like they are in Asia. You just got to roll with the punches because you just, you can't just go wherever you want. You got to go where you can go. And you should particularly go where someone went before you, where the path leads. Don't try to go off on your own. It's probably not going to work out.

So I got to this rain gutter like a concrete rain gutter. But one side of it was wide enough that you could walk on. And then there was a big fence beyond it and a really steep drop off down to like an apartment complex. So I was definitely close to civilization, but there was nothing I could do, but walk along this rain gutter. But I'm like, well, I mean this path led me here. I guess this is what I got to do. But I've never walked on something like this before, very unusual. And then I walked along it until it started heading downward. And at that point, someone had tied ropes to the trees along the side that you could hold onto. And I used them. They were handy, you know, just to make sure I didn't lose my balance. It wasn't extremely steep, but but definitely awkward footing because it's like this weird rain gutter, which currently had no water in it. But I assume during rainy seasons and stuff, it's probably full of water. And yeah, I was just holding on to this rope and making my way down this thing. And again, like I was saying, you just roll with the punches. You just do whatever you got to do. It wasn't until I got to the bottom and popped out at the edge of some deserted children's park that then I could kind of look around a bit and see a bus go by and realize I'm in civilization. But just look back at the weird little corner of the park where you would never think to go up there. You'd probably never notice it, but I just came down it. I set out loud. I was like, what the hell was that?

What the hell just happened? But then all of a sudden, you're just back in town and Paris Baguette 40:00 and traffic going by and just in civilization. And it's all kind of cozy because you know, it's getting dark. Don't want to be up on the mountains when it's dark. And then weirder still, so I'm like, all right, who the heck? I seem to be pretty far away on the map. I'm like, well, this is going to take a while, but whatever. Nice stroll through town. Very low pollution today. Feeling good. Have a nice walk home. It'll take a take a couple hours, hour and a half maybe.

But as I was walking, I realized, wait a second, I've been here before. I thought I recognized a grocery store that I recognized just because it had garbages out front. But because this is CCTV land and stuff, which is like, yeah, you know, it's pretty clear you're not supposed to use their garbages if you're not a customer. But I was like, is that the same place? You know, because I currently have a back pocket full of garbage and an empty tea bottle, like, you know, always looking for garbages, much like in Japan. There was quite a few garbages in Seoul, but also tons of garbage in Seoul, you know, one big gets the other. Busan and Jeju Island was pretty hard. Pretty hard to get rid of garbage. But then it walks a little further and I saw like a kid's playground that was shaped like a castle. I'm like, all right, I first sure have been here before.

I know this place. But how and why? You know, I started trying to run through the previous times I'd been on the mountain and where I came off. I mean, it must have been when I came down from the, yeah, I was just going to say, I tried to think it through when I just gave up. I was like, I don't know. It's all such a blur. Who cares? It doesn't matter. I recognize it. That's good enough.

But I just realized it was when I came down from the shrine. Because yeah, I must have passed just by the shrine on my way down. That makes sense. But also, random little thing in that park. Oh, so I mean, this means that cool fish market I walked through. I'm heading back toward it. But it's almost 7 p.m. They must be shutting down or shut down by now. It was cool, though, just to see all the, it's probably weird and cruel to keep all these fish and crabs and stuff in all these tanks. But it looks neat when you walk by. I don't know how cruel is it to keep fish? What a fish feel. I have no idea. I was a lady making a big vat of kimchi. Oh, yes, so I did since there's like a big Tupperware container of homemade kimchi at my Airbnb. I just took some, a couple of the boiled eggs and some of the homemade kimchi and just put it in, in a, an instant noodle bowl. And man, it was fucking delicious. God damn, it was good. You know, the instant noodles themselves, you know, the fucking cheese shut up.

You know, the instant noodles themselves are a lot better than North America, but you know, they're still just freeze-dried noodles. Yeah, you add in some natural ingredients, some kimchi, some eggs. Man, it goes a long way. It actually was delicious. I'm going to have that again when I get home. But anyway, this park had a robot in it, a non distinct generic transformersy robot. But that made me realize I did see the other day in the Busan citizens park, a big field with a big Gundam-looking robot, not as big as the Yokohama one, obviously. But pretty big, pretty big robot statue. Again, I'm not quite sure what stripe of robot it was meant to be. But then I noticed near there, there's all these different pop culture statues, a bunch of the more marvel heroes. Hulkbuster armor, that's what it was. So it was, yeah, it was a real thing. It was Iron Man and his big Hulkbuster armor. And I've seen quite a few Captain America's and Spider-Man's. They pop up kind of all over the place just to advertise random shops and stuff. Are they officially licensed? I wouldn't bet on it, but that's kind of a thing. It's happened enough that it's finally sunk in. There's something going on with Marvel comics in particular or around here. They seem to be very popular. And here's another random little market.