#115 Dadaepo Beach in Busan, South Korea

Transcript

I don't know if you can hear that, but mixed in with the ocean sounds way in the distance is a helicopter. But this is pretty handy. Now that it's getting to be later in the year, it's mid-April now. Just that I'm not running into that problem I had in Japan where it got dark at 4.30, which was it was kind of cool and a weird way for it to be really warm out and pitch black so early in the day. Kind of fun when you're in the city that you just get to go experience the nighttime version of Tokyo without staying up all night. But now that it's like mid-April, it's almost 7 o'clock now and I mean it's getting a little dark. I might be pushing it a little, but this is a pretty small area I met. So even if it gets dark on the way back, I think I'll be fine and this is really beautiful. So this is the Dipo Beach, D-A-D-A-E-P-O. It's one of the subway stops in Busan. And yeah, this is handy because I just had a really weird day where it really took me a long time to get moving today. I didn't really leave the house and start walking around until like three o'clock and I've never taken the subway in Busan except for the very first day. But I stopped in a subway station just because I wanted to check my T-money card. And then once I was in there, I was like, yeah, let's just get on the subway finally and go somewhere because the subway is in South Korea as like a dollar 50. It's a really good deal. And then I was like, oh, this one goes to a beach. It is a lot of stops. It was like 25 stops. It took a pretty long time. But luckily, it cleared out as I was going. When I had like 10 stops left, I was able to sit down and have a quick little cat nap and that goes a long way. So I got to this beach and I was like, yeah, this seems pretty nice. This is pretty cool. But, you know, it's late in the day. It's like five o'clock or whatever. I should probably come back here later before I start trying to explore this area or go along the shoreline or what have you. But then I walked a little ways around the shoreline and I could only go a little ways. I'm not sure when the water is lower. Maybe you can walk along the edge more, but maybe not. I'm looking at it now and it's pretty rocky. But I found a little path going up into the woods and I'm like, oh, let's just go up there and see what happens. And then from up there was a proper path with a classic just old lady hiking. So it's like, oh, cool. I'm not anywhere weird. This is fine. This is just yet another random place where old folk hike.

So I just started hiking around and there were various random signs for military bases. And the first little peninsula, the little peak edge part of this little deforest by this beach that I tried to go to, I did get stopped by a military gate.

But now I'm at another little peak and I'm just looking out at the ocean and looking at there's a a bunch of little islands out in the water. And I can see three, I was going to say three lighthouses, but actually there's one, two, three, I think four and five down the coast. There's a bunch of shit going on here. But yeah, this is pretty goddamn nice. And yeah, and it's not that big and just that I can just do this, even though my day was ridiculous. And it's way too late to be starting this particular adventure, but it's all right. It's all good. This place kind of reminds me of what was that island called in Japan that was like touristy. It was one of the last places that I went. Not Oshima, right? I'm pretty sure Oshima Island is like a for real island that you need to fly to. It's just one of those words. One of those names that got stuck in my mind because Roger Swan went there. I don't have my pre-downloaded map of Tokyo anymore. I'm zooming in on my phone and there's nothing there. Whatever, it'll come back to me in 10 minutes. That's how it always works.

But yeah, this is pretty sweet for my first actual going somewhere. You know, like I haven't really felt the need to get on the subway yet because I could just walk to the reservoir and to all these mountains and all this stuff in Busan. But then if you want to start traveling a little farther, 5:00 definitely pays off. This place is really nice. Yeah, I was going to say it kind of reminds me of that touristy island in Japan only in that it's about that size. It's actually maybe a little smaller even. But it doesn't remind me of that in the sense that this is not touristy at all. There's fucking nothing here. There's the weird little military base and then there's just hiking paths and an occasional stray cat. So in some ways, this is kind of more what I had hoped that other island would be more like. But it is just weird that even just getting to this beach and seeing the view of the ocean and seeing all this stuff and now I'm on the other side and I'm looking at the shoreline and it's all beautiful. It is just weird that there's just something in my brain that would just feel differently if I were in Japan right now. It's so weird because like I'm just stuck in this weird mid zone where the more I learn about actual Japanese society, I'm quite sure I would not enjoy it. Just the the rules, the regulations, the conformity. It just wouldn't fit with me at all. Just hearing little anecdotes about people needing their hanko stamps to do banking. You know, I forgot it at home and it's like, well, too bad. Go across town and get it because your actual modern day ID is not good enough. It's not going to do everything by the books. There's so much stuff that when you just visit Japan, you don't have to take part in at all. You know, you really do just get to wander around and soak it in. But along those lines, not only is it a beautiful place and there's so much stuff I like about Japan as a place and just at that basic, you know, walking around using the subways, going to the convenience stores on that shallow level.

I like it a lot. But there's still like a phantom thing trailing along behind me of just as a kid. The video games I loved came almost entirely from Japan. As a teenager, the manga and anime that I watched was entirely from Japan. As an adult now, I'm traveling to Japan and it's like for my entire life, Japan has just been like my surrogate. It's like my weekend dad or something.

And it's just like warmed its way into me in this weird way that it just feels important to in my own like weird, vague way in my little shallow, skipping a stone across the top of the pond kind of way. It seems important to try to unravel Japan a little bit. Seems valuable. It seems like, you know, it's just this thread throughout my life. It's like how you can't make new old friends. You can't have cultural references, you know, buried deep into your psyche from when you were a tiny child unless you have them. And all I've got really Canada, America, Japan. You know, there's like an occasional like, you know, this Smurfs or some French stuff because I have French, Canadian family and went to French school. There's little things from different nations here and there.

But the mass, the sheer amount that Japan communicated with me is so crazy. It's huge. You know, it's only comparable to North America. And North America has so much baggage. Every day waking up, looking at the news and seeing something annoying happening. You know, it's like, oh, I hate being in America sometimes in North America.

Where if I lived here, I'm sure I would open the news and I would see all the Asian countries doing annoying stuff. You know, I'd feel that, I'd feel worn out by this part of the world, but I didn't live here. I grew up in the West. I'm worn out by the West.

So Japan has these cultural tendrils that got deep into me from way back. And then it just has this novelty of, of just to be frank, I can just ignore so many parts of their society that I just didn't like, whatever. I'm just here to visit. It's not in my business.

And it makes it into this just incredibly intoxicating environment.

But on the other hand, I don't know, I just, it's surprising that South Korea doesn't feel the same, 10:00 even when I met a place that feels the same. This particular rocky island right next to the sea, visually this could be Japan. But my brain just knows I'm not in Japan, so I just don't feel the same.

That hard to describe just weird, magical feeling I feel in Japan. I have felt it here, but I could count on both hands how many times. You know, I've been in South Korea like three months and you know, like maybe ten times. I've had that little feeling of like, oh, this feels like Japan right now. On a day to day, it just doesn't feel that way. And I don't know why, it's so hard to to figure out. I think it is much more a trick of my own brain than anything about the place itself. Hey, Kitty. But this is still pretty nice.

Yeah, I think I'm on my way out now just in time. Sun is going down.

But yeah, well, I got going so late today. It's fucking weird. So I thought it was so magical, this place I met, this little sharehouse in Busan, that I didn't expect to have my own washroom. And then when I discovered that the washroom had its own, like, it was one of those washrooms that doubles as a shower room. And it's like, this is incredible. I had my own shower after the place in Seoul where I had to share the shower with 30 fucking other rooms. Crazy. But I was very hesitant to use it as a shower because it just felt wrong. By North American standards, it's like, you can't just turn on a shower head and you're fucking in your bathroom and just spray water everywhere. That's fucking so weird. You can't do that. But, you know, it's like, yeah, but you can. That is what you do here.

But I learned that it is kind of a bad setup. It's not nearly as magical as I thought it was. This is all going to be, like, pretty obvious stuff that I'm sure a lot of people just know, but it's just not a situation I ever ran into before. So I knew nothing about it. Just about mustiness and humid climates and having your washroom be right there. So near to your room.

Airplane going by. I realized since I came into Busan on the train, I don't know where the airport is here. I got to figure that out at some point.

So these share houses, all three of them, the one in Seoul, the one in Jetchon, and the one here. It's all kind of a similar setup where, you know, it's just hallways, rooms, and they have like windows above the doors in all these places, which I was watching in a YouTube video about like old buildings, like what buildings you still look like in North America, like milk doors. Actually, a new guy in Toronto who had an apartment that still had a milk door, which is just like a little door that leads to the outside of your house. So the milk man can just put the milk in there and it'll stay chilly because it's basically outside of your house. And then you just open the door from the inside and take your milk.

But yeah, there's the name for these windows that go above doors. And they're kind of handy because you can just tell when the lights on somewhere, like the place I'm at now, you can tell us someone's using the kitchen because you can see the light is on. And opening the little window helps a little bit with being in this stuffy room, but not a ton. And I guess that's what the problem has become, is being trapped in these little, little contained rooms. And because it's such, you know, the place I'm at now also has, if not 30 rooms, like 25, it's got a lot. You can't really just have your door open. People are walking by all the time. So you're just stuck in this little room.

And like in Seoul, that was a problem because of the heat. That place, by the way. Because in Japan, you just set the temperature of the hot water to whatever you want. In my case, I like to be about 43 degrees Celsius. And then you just turn it on full blast and there you go. Where in South Korea, it seems like they do that less. The place in Jeju Island did do that though. It was just set to a good temperature. And then the place here in Busan, it's set to 50 some. So you still have to jockey the cold water a little bit. But I don't know why. In Seoul, it was set to like 70 or 80. Because that's what led to when the heater was on and the water pipes were running under the floors, led to this horrifyingly hot environment in those little rooms. There was just no need for the hot water to be that hot. It's fucking strange. Because if you need boiling water, that's from a separate device. Maybe because it's a communal place, I don't know. Maybe some ding back 15:00 in North American who thinks you're supposed to have blazing hot water out of the hot water tap turned it up and it just never got turned down. I don't know. Anyway. In Seoul, being trapped in the room, the problem was the heat. Here it turns out it's the humidity because I just assumed after you take a shower in your like. So I've just got my little room with a little desk and a bed. And then directly connected is this little shower room with a... a toilet in it as well. I just assumed so that the shower room would dry faster and wouldn't get mildewy or anything. That I should leave that door open. You know, it's a little fan that goes in there. But I just left that door open. So it would dry quicker. But I guess what I didn't know was going to happen is that that moisture is not going anywhere. It can only go into the room proper. And maybe there's that little opening above the door. But I also had that closed sometimes just so the light wouldn't come through. Now I've realized I should just keep it open all the time just so there's at least some opening. But yeah, I guess the moisture from the shower was just settling onto my bed, basically. It was just this weird, musty smell. And I didn't know what it wasn't. I didn't know what to do. And then I realized that my blankets were kind of giving me a little tickle in my throat, kind of making me cough a little. And I was like, oh, I guess it's my blankets. Because I guess all that humidity just got soaked up into my bedding. So my bedding didn't feel wet. It felt dry, but I guess I don't know. See, I mean, I'm just presuming all this stuff. I've just never experienced this situation at all. I guess it just developed into a little bacteria or something that smells weird. Because it's not like very strong, but it's just definitely unpleasant and just sort of ever present. It hit the point where I just couldn't ignore it anymore. I'm like, what the fuck is that? And then I kind of piece together what was happening. And it's like, I guess, I guess I have to just keep that door to that bathroom closed. And just assume that the tiny little fan and the little vent in there is enough. And that that water in there will just evaporate up out of there. It seems like there's no good way to handle this, though, because that seems like a lot of pressure to put on the little shower room. It's still not like a very good way to get the water out of there.

And I guess that's why people like they wipe down their shower room right after they use it a lot in Japan. And I presume they do that here, too. But I can't even do that because then what do I do with the towel? I have nowhere to put it. It still will just have to hang around in my little room till laundry day. And in the meantime, get all musty.

But basically that's what I did today. I spent all day doing laundry to clean all my bedding.

There we go. I can see the lights are turning on in Busan. I can see the proper city. I'm almost back. Nice.

I don't know how much time I'll spend down here. Am I just hot back on the subway and back up? Maybe I'll get a coffee. I don't know. It's very pretty though. Very pretty looking.

But yeah, definitely it did help a lot to clean all my bedding. I got all my clothes like just packed away in my book bags. So they at least are not part of the general population. They can just stay out of the air so they don't smell musty. Hopefully when I get back, you know, it did seem noticeably better, but not like immediately fixed. I think, you know, now that I'm aware of it, I'm going to be vigilant about it. But I think a life of gentle mustiness. I don't know how to avoid it. I don't know how to get around this because it's just this teeny tiny little 95% sealed off room. And then it's connected to a shower. And it's just like, this is not a good system. This is bad. And the reason I never knew anything about this and I'm just piecing it together now with no particular experiences to draw from is because I just grew up in this hundred year old house that was like the rectory. There's a church next door to my house. And this was the house that the the priest of a hundred years ago lived in. It's like a great big three story house. For if you count the basement, you know, it's huge. And we only have one bathroom and one shower in the whole place. I guess they did install one way up on the third floor, but it hasn't been hooked up in a long time. And it's just in its own big ass room. And like, this has never been a situation. You know, just whatever moisture there is just easily dissipates because the house is a zillion fucking, you know, it's really big.

It looks like a little casino or something over there.

Some cool lights. And now we got the mix of traffic on the one side of me and the ocean on the other blending together into, I think you can mostly hear the ocean, but that's what the blend of sounds is now.

This is pretty cool though. Busan is pretty good. But yeah, these tiny little rooms as much as I like this set up a lot. And I like how cheap it is to stay in South Korea. And I like just having a simple little room. That's really all I need. And then just the way that they all seem to have little communal like the kitchens are so well stocked. The homemade kimchi at this place. God, it's so fucking good. I don't even quite know what kimchi is. You know, it's just spicy cabbage with like sourness and it's so fucking powerful that if I put some kimchi is what I do. I put the homemade kimchi in a bowl. Not even that much of it because it's so powerful. And then Mr. Noodles on top of that. And I eat the noodles and then whatever kimchi I accidentally get out of it. And the kimchi has made the broth so powerful that then I just take rice from the rice cooker and put that in for the second stage. So, you know, I can like soak up this spicy kimchi broth without just killing myself. It's really fucking good.

But yeah, I'm not sure if having your own private showers actually better. The mustiness is such a pain. It's such a bummer. And yeah, sharing my shower with 30 people was strangely not that bad.

Strange, strange thing. It seems so good at first. Like so perfect. Like this is incredible. This is amazing. And now I'm realizing like, no, this is actually a engineering nightmare.

Showers need to be at a much greater distance than two feet away from your bed and your clothes and everything that you own. I guess really what this place needs is just way more air purifiers because that's one thing too. In Seoul, there was tons of those. Tons of air purifiers everywhere. And they really work. The air was amazing in there when I wasn't being blasted to death from the heat. But all the air was really fresh in there.

That's what this place needs. I need like a little dehumidifier in that room. But anyway, I pieced this all together yesterday and I was like, okay, this is what I need to do. I need to do laundry. By the time I figured it out, it was past 11 at night and you can only do laundry till 11.

But then I just had a classic insomnia day where I just couldn't sleep. I think I said this last episode too. It's just been what's been happening lately, up till 5 in the morning. It's just like, fuck. But then I didn't sleep in especially long. I still woke up, mid-morning. And I just got up, spent all day, took a couple loads to do all this laundry.

Then pulled myself out of the fucking room and then came down here. And yet it's getting quite dark now. I'm pretty much back in the city proper now.

But I feel surprisingly good for having so little sleep. It's probably just that it's just exciting. It's so fun. My first time taking the subway besides the utilitarian first day. The weather's so nice. I don't even have a jacket. I just have a little thermal shirt in my back pocket that I needed a little bit out on that peninsula when it was windy. But right now I don't perfect weather. Oh, it just feels good. And I think I just feel good in general because I had a little chat with my mom about, like, should I actually come home? Does it matter if I come home? And she's like, nah, for fuck it, man. Just stay out there. Do some more stuff.

So I was looking into Jeju Island.

And the weird thing is I just figured like, ah, nice. Now that I'm in this part of the world, everything's nice and cheap. For example, I can get a flight to Jeju. Which is just a little island just off South Korea that just seems to count as a domestic flight for under $50 for a little one hour flight. It's like, fuck, man, that's amazing. 50 bucks.

But then if I try to leave from Jeju to go to like Taiwan, which I believe is the next step in the journey, it was weird trying to leave from Jeju. It's still only like 200 bucks to get to Taiwan. But I would have to transfer through Singapore a 21 hour flight, like a crazy 11 hour layover.

Whereas if I leave from Busan, it's like a two and a half hour flight for the same price. You just go straight there. So I was going to stay in Busan, then go to Jeju, then go to Taiwan. But I think since it's only 50 bucks to fly to Jeju, I got my five weeks already here in Busan. 25:00 Then I think I'm just going to go to Jeju for five or six weeks. Then come back to Busan for my last five weeks or so on my South Korean visa and then take off from here. So it's just like fun, just skipping around, bing, bing, bing.

Anyway, I'm in some park now.

The lights are on now that it's getting especially dark. There's a lot of rabbit imagery in this park. But there's like a fountain light show with corny sounding adult contemporary music playing. So I'm going to go over and take a look at this.

I mean, that was pretty nice. It's like this super fancy elaborate, huge fountain show. Like I saw one of those me and my friend Chris stumbled upon one in Amsterdam. But it was like teeny tiny compared to that. It was very small, still kind of a neat little thing just to see. This one, a huge, huge thing. But the music playing all synchronized up and lighting and it just kept going and going and going and going. And that's where I got my standard feeling like a weirdo feeling. At first I was like, what a neat thing to just stumble upon at the perfect time. Just as it's getting dark. And it's just a free thing, just one of the wonders of a big city. Stuff's just happening like that. Like I remember I was walking around Montreal one evening with my friend Brad and we just stumbled upon like a whole freaking Cirque de Soleil type thing going on. I've seen random bands in Toronto like, oh, I was wanted to see that band. And they're just playing it like, what's that square called?

The one by the Eaton Center anyway.

All right, I saw spooky Ruben, Canadian legend in Kensington Market. But yeah, just, you know, just walking around, cool stuff's happening. But then that song ended and another song started. And halfway through that song I started feeling like, am I allowed to leave now? You know, it just seems like rude. Everyone else is watching so enraptured. And this is like awesome. No complaints. If you want a big cool fountain light show, this is it. It's perfect. But I've been standing here for like five minutes. You know, it's my classic thing of like, I want to be moving. I want to move through an environment, pass an environment to the next environment. I don't want to just stand and stare. Nothing in the world is worth standing and staring at. Not a waterfall. Not an amazing view. Not a light show. Not an acid. So eventually I just backed away, turned around and started walking. Like, sorry, everyone. It's like I'm like the guy who gets up in the middle of the movie. I'm sure no one gave us sweet fuck. No one noticed what I was doing. But I just still felt weird about it. And I was like, yep, there we go. There's my classic brain kicking in again. Give me the best thing in the world. It's not good enough. And the airport must be around here somewhere. So there's a lot of airplanes going by. Anyway, it's for real dark now. It got dark real fast.

The time is there anyway.

That's 7-30. And I was like, I should move my way back toward the subway. No specific plan though, no big hurry. But I got here, I got out of the subway. And the only landmark I noticed at all was an Ediya Coffee. Because Ediya is my favorite coffee shop chain here because I love their self-serve kiosk where you order yourself because it has English menus and it takes my card and it's awesome. Coffee shops are all very nice here in South Korea, but that does it for me. That's my favorite. But I just saw that and I went across to the park and that's it. So yeah, coming back now, I met some different part of the park because it even part of the same park. I guess I was actually, I didn't really go in the park. I went to the beach. So maybe that's, now that it's dark, I'm trying to guess where the beach is. Maybe it's over there? Believe I see people. I don't know, this terrain is extremely confusing because what I'm at now though, just as I wandered. Again, just the awesomeness of big cities.

There's just weird cool shit as you wander. This is like marshland. There's like reeds everywhere or whatever. It looks like wheat. I don't know what it is actually though because it's dark. And I probably wouldn't know anyway. But there's all of these, it's like this walking promenade that comes out over this marshy area. And it's huge and it's all lit and it's kind of got different branches. It's really elaborate. And then there's the city. 30:00 It's like main road that goes next to the water across from me, but I don't see the idea. I do see a Starbucks. And then just a bunch of, again, just the random stores that are just nothing to me. The random stores that just feel like blank storefronts to me like in a video game because they're all just Korean businesses with Korean signs that I don't know what they are. Oh and there's one, I haven't seen very many. Of the classic Christian crosses here. There's quite a few in Seoul and there's a shit ton in Chechen. Especially at night, you start noticing that they're everywhere. I haven't seen that many in Busan, but there's one. There's a nice red neon lit up cross.

But yeah, I have no idea what this is or where it's leading me or what. It's just cool. It's just like the awesomeness of, yeah, it's such a nice thing. I never really knew this when I was growing up because my hometown is relatively small. All I ever heard actually about cities was bad stuff. Like, ah, you don't want to go there. Big cities, they suck too much bustle, too much noise, too much craziness. And that is certainly true in some cases, you know, obviously stuff like New York and to a lesser extent, Toronto, I've grown to have a bit of a tough time with. But they were still very exciting when I first went to each of them. And then the smaller stuff, the Montreal level, the Vancouver level stuff or this city here, Busan, is fucking wonderful. There's so much great shit in a city that just because the population can support all this cool stuff and the tourism industry has a reason for it to be here. Because yeah, I'm just wandering. I see in the distance a bit like a smoke stack and a factory, like, sort of the edge of what is going on is coming up. But on the way there, like, what even is this? It's fucking awesome. Just this weird, beautiful walk on this, this wooden walkway, this prominent thing.

I just, just because I'm stumbling around, like it's the best, where I was thinking about how in Jetshon, I really did like the hiking path to the west of Jetshon station that intertwines with the golf course. But one time I came off it at the wrong spot and I had like a 20 minute walk to get back to town. And it was just like a walk along a terrible highway. And there was nothing there, but highway and businesses and at least I get to stop into a convenience store and buy one of those weird push pop mackey rolls that is just full of strange miscellaneous Korean stuff. But it wasn't pleasant, you know, it's like if you go off the beaten path in a smaller town, you just get fucked. There's nothing there. Where when you go off the beaten path in a mid-level city, there's a huge chance that you're just going to accidentally find something beautiful. Like now I met like an observation deck and there was a couple here, but they just left, so I'm all by myself now. Go up this little spiral staircase.

Yeah, and there's like observation thingies, you know, that you look through. What is this work when you have glasses? Do I take my glasses off? I guess so. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure if I can actually use these. I can't really see much through them. But I don't know what I'm looking at anyway, because it's dark out there.

But yeah, I can just see in the distance. It's a little hazy today. A little teeny bit polluted-y. So that probably makes it harder to see these mountains in the distance. They're very indistinct, but I can see mountains across the water. Over to my left, there's the mountain, or the island that I was on. They really does. Yeah, from a distance now, really reminds me a lot of, I guess it reminds me at a distance of that place, south of Yokohama, whose name has not quite come back to me. It was a very short name. It was really simple.

Was it just Inoshima? Yeah, because I was thinking, Oh, Shima, but it must be Inoshima.

But actually being on it reminded me a lot more of the the islands to the north of Fukuoka, where I went and walked through there and ended up at an observation deck, except those were higher than this one. Yeah, this is really cool. This is a good view, and I can see there's another airplane coming. Definitely the airport's along this line somewhere. And then over to the other side, past that factory I was just saying, does seem like it'd be tough to get over there, because it just looks like road. It doesn't seem like it's inviting me to walk that way, but there's more stuff along the edge of the bay. Yeah, like I have a feeling even though I'm going to end up 35:00 spending quite a bit of time in Busan, especially if I do my little trick of spending my first five weeks here, and then five or six weeks in Jeju, and then back for the last five weeks here, it's going to add up to quite a bit. But I get the feeling this is going to be one of those cities that I probably won't still like won't have properly explored. Whereas Seoul, I mean, there's a ton of Seoul that I didn't see, but I didn't get the sense that I wanted to see it. Like anytime I did go explore somewhere, like oh, let me go to the ancient village that some people talk about, and it's like it's really just this one street. It's kind of alright, but it's not that special. Or let me pick a random landmark, like the statue that's like the big hammer man, just as an excuse. So let's go walk there, and it's like okay, this is alright, and then toward the end, I went to Latte Tower, and that one downright sucks, just walking through miserable city, just to get to this tower. You know, the only parts of Seoul that really did it for me were the mountains. I guess I would do that. I would try to get to more of the local mountains and see more of those, and specifically to explore more of Buchanan. But in general, it's just city, it's just more city, it's just not, it's just hard to get motivated to like oh, I could go see a new neighborhood, I could go see a new part of Seoul. Who the fuck cares? I don't know. I saw some YouTube videos that were like, you know, students and stuff, people that were going to Seoul for university, and they're like, wow, I love Seoul because every neighborhood feels different, although the one I'm thinking of specifically, you know, I'm going to say, do they? Is that, is that so? Is that a thing? I mean, I guess every neighborhood feels different a little. I actually was kind of glad that I was by Hapcheong and Hongkuk University, because it did feel different in the sense that it was full of dance clubs on the weekend, and it was like cool. At least my neighborhood had a cool vibe, I'd like graffiti, and DJ fucking shit going on. But it's all still just like a, a vague spin on big city bullshit. And where now that I think about it, I guess that YouTube video, the lady who made it was very into fashion. And I guess when she was talking about different neighborhoods, that's a big part of what she was talking about. Is this neighborhood, you can buy this fucking dog shit in this neighborhood, you can buy this silk robe, lame ass fucking, and just shit I don't care about. If that's how you're, you know, that, I don't know, the way I interpret what a neighborhood's about, I guess, is different than that. Because yeah, that is, again, that's just one of those things that just glosses over in my mind. I remember one time, like the girl I dated in New York, we went to this specific place. Where was that? It was like in a story, I think, and it was to buy hand-died material, because she wanted to make curtains. Yeah, just all this stuff that I'm like, wow, what even is this neighborhood? What is this store? What are these items that we're buying? You know, it's all just so far into me. I was like, what even is all this? I guess, yeah, other people interpret neighborhoods in different ways. To me, all of that was a blank. Although, you know, we talk once in a while. And she did tell me at one point, she's like, you know, remember those curtains I made out of the fancy pants stuff? And I was like, yeah, yeah, I do. The thin material that looks cool, but was, you know, she's like, yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, I have realized that nice, heavy, dark blackout curtains are way better. And I was like, yeah, I mean, I probably, I don't know why she brought that up. I must have said that. I probably said that, because I just certainly how I feel. You want everything to be dark as the Dickens. So she came around, I guess. It's some later point in life when it was too late for me when I was no longer in her bedroom. That was one thing, though, these little tiny rooms in, in these sharehouses. That's one of the things I thought initially was great about them is being internal to the building and not having windows, just like pitch black. And that's also why I closed the little window thing at the top of my of my door, which no doubt made the mustiness problem worse, because that was the only source of outside light coming through. Once I closed that, it was pitch black in there. And I'd love that feeling. I love it. I love having no windows, because there's no possibility of the sun fucking with you. You can just sleep into like 2 p.m. and you don't even realize it's just like, oh, amazing, I'm a bad sleeper. So I very much love, I love the extreme darkness, but it turns out, yeah, on a longer timeline, it's not a good thing. It's not a good thing to be in a tiny little room with very little openings, very little ventilation.

Even if I did just want to open my door and just leave it open all night, because I mean, 40:00 sure it would be fine. No one cares, no one's going to mess with me.

But it would be semi-weird behavior and the door, like you can't just open it a crack, it would just swing open and just be like, filling half of the hallway with my open door. And you know, who knows, maybe when I get back there, hopefully everything will just be not musty smelling now. But I don't know, I don't, I think even in optimal cases, because then I started to notice that there's these little bags of charcoal, like everywhere, at every little window and every little door hanging from everything in there. And it's like, oh, those must be to absorb moisture. Like this is obviously a problem. It's definitely a thing that happens around these parts. Or in Chechon, there was like a little bit of mold developing in the room I was in. So I just got moved down the hall to a different room so they could take care of that. But in hindsight, it's like, I bet I probably contributed to that because I had some times that I had like some damp clothing and I just like would hang it up and just let it dry in the room. And it never occurred to me because again, this is never the case in my big old drafty house in Canada. Never the case where you get trapped in this little room where the evaporating water has nowhere to go. I've never experienced this phenomenon. And it's a problem. It fucks shit up.

But anyway, that was really cool. It's extra nice that I got here late at night because it made this whole walk way prettier.

Random piano, but it's coming out of a speaker this time.

Yeah, where the hell is this subway? Because now I do need to start getting out of here.

And I don't know where the subway is. I don't see it on my literal map. Anyway, it must be around here somewhere. But thank you for joining me once again for a random wander. Turns out heading down to the beach in Busan. It's kind of smaller than I expected. Like I've kind of run a ground quicker than I thought I would. I don't think you could just walk at length along the beach. But that was tough to do in Japan too. There were some pretty decent stretches, but a lot of it was just kind of weird empty zones or construction or just walking next to a highway. It's kind of weird. Walking along the shore is not always that easy to do. Not ever that easy to do. Actually, I can't think of any examples where that is easy to do.

Be it in a city or in nature. But yeah, even if this is not a place that I come back to a million and one times because I am sort of surprised how fast I used it up a little on this first visit. Kind of did see what there is to see, but it's still very nice.

Definitely worth a gander if you're in Busan.

The Daipo Beach. Not bad.

Yeah, it's weird where Google Maps is especially kind of rough. In South Korea, the programs other people use is Naver Maps and Kakao Maps.

But I think you do need like an internet connection. I briefly tried them. But since I never have a dedicated internet connection, they didn't seem so good for me.

But they apparently are better because Google Maps, it's a little shaky.