#117 Haeundae Beach, Busan is a beautiful neighborhood

Transcript

Alright, I'm at Haeundae Beach, H-A-E-U-N-D-A-E. On the green line, that's one thing I don't know if I ever mentioned that in Seoul, but the subway lines all have numbers, but they also have colors. Very handy. My Airbnb is on the orange line and to get to the beach I was at a couple of episodes ago, that's the orange line. If you head out east on the green line, that's how you get to this beach, which is a pretty nice sized beach and you can see skyscrapers in the distance and a mountain covered in this mountain, whatever it is, it is covered in buildings, like all the way to the top. And then out in the water is a statue of somebody holding a like a periscope, like a spyglass, spying at the skyscrapers that in ancient days they could only dream of. So the insane pollution has passed. It's kind of a flip-flop of the weather, while the insane pollution cloud was descending on Busan. The weather was really hot and warm and sunny at the same time, where now it's flip-flop to where the pollution has passed and now it's cloudy and overcast and windy. It was raining yesterday, but I mean, yeah, that's a good trade. It's kind of a bonus anyway. Hot sunny weather is kind of not that great. It's a lot more comfortable to walk around when it's overcast and the pollution thing. I mean, jeez, I'll take any weather if it doesn't have the pollution. It was weird to watch, so that was the really, really intense pollution cloud that apparently hits every spring and was way worse this year than usual. So bad that I saw a video of Japan. It went over and just landed on Japan. It was like almost as bad and it was stuck here for like four days. But to watch it go from 250 AQI, which is so nuts way higher than any of the pollution levels that I saw when I was in Seoul, then down to 150, then down to like 75, and then down to 30. Yesterday it was below 50 and raining and I'm like, fuck, right on. Now today it's not raining, but it's about 50. It's right on that border of like, yeah, maybe not perfect, but I mean compared to 250. I mean, that was just so insane. So that's nice and it's also nice that it is nice to have the time of year changing where it's pretty late in the day today. What time is it? Yeah, it's past 6 p.m. right now and I just got here. I was really slowly in the house because you know, I'm a weird sleeper at the best of times and it's been, things have been drifting more and more. Although I guess there were plenty of days in Japan where I was up all night as well. But when the pollution cloud hit, it really, I was like, well, fuck this. Like, I legitimately shouldn't even be going outside. So I stayed up all night one of those nights until like, I went to bed at 10 a.m. And I think that might have been the first time during all this traveling that I didn't go outside at all during a day, you know, that next day. I didn't go out. I woke up, you know, at like 6 p.m. like this time and I just stayed inside. That's the right thing to do on pollution days. It's just hard to stay inside all day.

See, yeah, this is a fantastic improvement. So much better. Well, what brought me out here? Still little, uh, little stresses, still things, you know, that's where, uh, you know, I do. One of the reasons why I started this podcast was because I wished I had had more of a chronicle of my first time visiting Japan in 2019, because I just had Inid Verden audio from, uh, and I was doing a writing podcast at the time, which I'm still doing, how to write a novel. So I inadvertently got some Japan audio. And I was like, I really, I enjoyed listening to that stuff during pandemic times and remembering Japan. And I was like, man, I should, I should do a proper travel podcast. And it's been paying off. I mean, it's nice that there are some people listening, hopefully it, you know, kind of paints a nice cool word picture in your brain, or you can imagine stuff. But it's really kind of neat for me, even just to listen back to this stuff, because I remember exactly what it was like, things that I would have forgotten, you know, I'll just bring up like some, some stupid weird intersection in Chibai or something. And I'll be like, oh, yeah, that place. I remember that. I'm soaking it in 5:00 right now. My eyeballs are doing the job soaking this in so that I can, you know, I'm sure in the future, I won't remember all these details, but I'll basically remember the three skyscrapers.

And the Weston-Josun hotel behind me. The sea to my right with the statue with the periscope.

Some road to my left, but it's far enough away that I can't hear it. I can only hear the ocean.

But I do think it might have been weird if I had done a podcast in 2019 because a big part of that trip to Japan was losing my passport and having my bank card expire both together at the same time. And then just sort of sitting in that stress of there was nothing I could do about the bank card. It turns out all I could do is take a lot of money out of the machine, take the maximum amount out of the machine every day until my card expired. So I think I had like eight or nine hundred dollars in cash. And it's like, well, this should get me through. All I got to do is buy food. Everything else is already paid for. And then as far as the passport goes, that was a little weird where, you know, I got the ball rolling and they gave me a temp passport for when I was in Fukuoka and then when I came back to Tokyo, I got it. And it's like, this is all probably going to be fine. But, you know, there's no way to hurry it along. It just is going to happen at the speed that is going to happen. And I do wonder because all that stuff didn't seem like, like when I think back, I don't remember that stuff. Or I don't remember it being that bad. But I know at the time, it was very stressful. And I really am, I don't handle stress well at all, you know. I don't know, chicken in the egg. Like, is it because I live such an, I'm sort of easy life where I just float around and I live off of my dearly departed dads inheritance money that I'm so bad at this. But even before this, when I did actually have jobs and pay all my own bills and I wasn't willing to mooch off of my family, I still lived a life where I just like aggressively avoided working full-time because I felt it was too stressful. And I quit jobs if they were too stressful. And I just did stuff like I just think that I remember one time living in Vancouver. Seemed expensive at the time, but oh man, at 2005 Vancouver prices, they seem amazing now, but at the time it seemed expensive. I remember I bought like a giant bag of no-name cornflakes that I was just going to put in Tupperware and accidentally spilled a bunch of the bag. And instead of just sweeping it up, instead of like I got time this evening, I picked each flake up off the floor and blew it to get any dust off of it or any whatever from the floor and put each flake in the Tupperware. And I was like I'm not throwing this out, fuck that. In the same behavior, but it's like if you if you want to live cheap dude, you can fuck and do it. And I guess that's always been my feeling is like I would rather go like I'd rather have less and have to do less. I've just never handled stress well. School stressed me out like crazy. I mean it's the main reason I never went to university. I don't particularly believe in the value of post-secondary education as far as a piece of paper goes. But it's mainly just I'm like, fuck this. I did this stress of school for all these years. I'm not doing more. I'm certainly not paying for the privilege. Fuck that. And I legitimately think as I got older and as I kind of learned more about the world and how systems work and places work, I'm like, you know if it really came down to it, I could be homeless. I could make this work. I would rather do that than have a stressful job with pressure. But someone yelling at me, I just hate it. I do not I just don't handle stress well.

I just don't. So that'd be one thing with if I had a podcast in 2019, would it have been you know there might be big stretches of it that weren't that fun to listen to if I was just stressed out about not having a passport, which I was. Even what little audio I've got from back then when I listen to those times, it's like, I don't even like listening back to it. I can hear the stress in my voice. Speeches I guess a little bit small. I'm halfway across it already. Those three skyscrapers are extremely close now. It's still very nice though. Easy to get to. But yeah, what brings me out this way is just another of these small stresses. As you know, I was a little stressed out about the fucking pollution last episode. Now I'm stressed out because I gotta go see a dentist. 10:00 And it's not a big deal, but about a week ago I noticed it's just this weird thing when I I was flossing and it felt like there was something between my teeth that wouldn't come out. It was like just I still don't understand what's happening. It's like a little floating thing in between like my molar and the next tooth back.

Basically, it seems like one of my fillings is a tiny touch loose. Like I can kind of jostle my filling a little, which is certainly not good. And it hurts a little bit.

And this is one of those things that will not at all seem like a big deal when it's all done. But you know, just as it stands, it's like, I wish I could just go back to my dentist back home. That would be a lot easier. So it's like, oh jeez, gotta go to a dentist in a foreign country. I've never had to do that before. And then there's the smaller gradation of I'm only here in Busan for two weeks. Do I try to squeeze in going to a dentist while I'm here? Do I wait till I get to Jeju? Because I'll be in Jeju for six weeks just if I have to follow up appointments and stuff. Instead of trying to squeeze everything into two weeks, it would be a lot nicer to just do it in Jeju. But I mean, Jeju is a little island. There's not going to be as many dentists. It's obviously a lot easier to find English-speaking dentists here in Busan.

And as far as like dental problems go, it's really not like an emergency. Like I could wait for two weeks. It's not crazy because it just, you know, mostly doesn't hurt as long as I'm careful with it. It should be fine, but you never know. It could all go to shit in a moment, you know. At any instant, I suppose my feeling could just fall out and I could be in Painsville. I don't know. It's just, you know, the reasonable thing to do is to deal with this sooner rather than later.

So I hopped on the Busan Reddit. Not a very happened in Reddit, but just asked for recommendations for English-speaking dentists. I can hear music in the distance. I don't know where that's coming from. And I walked by some people making a sand sculpture of a building I don't recognize, but it's a pretty big sand sculpture. Pretty cool. I wonder how they do that so that the wind doesn't destroy it because it's pretty windy. But I guess there's something, some part of this sand sculpting technique they must do. Like I'm sure it's not just packed sand. They must do something to keep it sturdier. Pretty nice though. Another great thing about big cities. It's so cool. You just walk around random places and you see cool statues out in the bay and music is just playing and people are making sand sculptures. It's like fucking awesome. That's so cool. Nothing like a mid-size city, you know? Like the super duper mega cities. Little bit super duper and mega. Small cities. Little bit small. But Busan-sized. What a good size. What a good fucking city.

So anyway, I did get some recommendations, though, on the Busan Reddit, very nice of them. And they were saying that, you know, it's generally not that big a problem anyway. Even if you have to use translation software, nobody's ever had a problem with their dentist stuff. But some people did recommend specific dentist they've been to, which is always good. You know, it's like, yeah, I've been to this person. Their English is more than good enough. It's all good, I recommend them. But all the links are always on Naver Maps. I use his Naver Maps here, not Google Maps, and Google Maps is a little lacking here. But I still use Google Maps because I don't have a data plan, you know, just as far as a pre-downloaded map, it still works better for me. Naver Maps pretty much needs a connection, so I never did stick with it. That does solve, though, it was because I'd heard Naver Maps and cacao maps. Everybody's given me links in Naver, so Naver's the winner, for sure. I feel like pretty tough, where they'll give me a link on Naver Maps, and sometimes I can't find the place on Google Maps. It's just like, this is still very tricky, and then it's tough to, like, even if the place has a website, the website might not be in English. And I could just go try to find these places and just roll in. Hey, awkward foreign guy here, but it's very clear you're really not supposed to do that, that it's way better to sort out an appointment through some other method. And, you know, you can do, like, different chat programs that they have here, or even just messaging people through Instagram, various examples people had of how they set up appointments. But ultimately, yeah, it was really just even with the recommendations, having a pretty tough time navigating, like, how does this work? Where even is this place, and how do I, how does that, I don't know. So I did just do a Google search, where I just kind of poked around some of the dentists and just looked for reviews that were not translated from Korean, like, English reviews.

And the one that stood out the most was New York smile, or the dontics. I think it's called the lady who runs it, did her orthodontic training in New York.

And there was a ton of reviews from English people saying, like, yeah, this lady's English is heck, good English. Highly recommended five stars. And they had an English tab on their website and everything. So I filled that the little form. Just asked, you know, I'm only here for two weeks. I think this is a relatively minor thing I need to have done, hopefully. Any change you can squeeze me in and, you know, then it's just waiting for a reply. Hopefully I hear back, you know. But that's why I'm out here is that that dental clinic is in this neighborhood. So I'm like, all right, that's a good excuse to come out here. Just let's see. Let's just see if I can find the place.

And then I realized if I got off the subway three stops early, I'd be at this beach. And it's better to come to the beach while it's still light out rather than go to the dentist's office while it's light out and walk to the beach when it's dark. Let's see this beach first. And it is getting darker and darker. But then if it gets dark, you know, I just want to go walk by the dentist's office. Just assuming I hear back from them and assuming I do get to have an appointment, instead of having to find them on that day, if I can just go walk past and be like, yeah, there we go, just to know where it is.

But then again, you're just floating, just floating in the, you know, that was a few hours ago that I sent that. And yeah, with the magic of South Korean internet, you can just, you can just get Wi-Fi at random times and random places. I'm just trying it now. And it's like, oh, yeah, there we go. I'm just connected to Busan free Wi-Fi even though I'm just standing on a beach. But I'm afraid no response.

But yeah, just kind of stuck in that middle zone where it all just kind of, you know, it's all just basically okay. No big emergency here. There's upsides to waiting till I get to Jeju. If I can't squeeze it in while I'm in Busan, then I can't squeeze it in while I'm in Busan. But I guess I did what I can do, you know, I did message up place. I'm just waiting to hear back.

You know, there's a limit to how much you can do. You just got to do what you can do and then wait for the gears to turn. And then I got out of the house and I came down here and now I'm walking on the beach and, you know, I mean, obviously my advice for feeling less stressed is not useful to anybody because everyone's life is more stressful than mine. It just is.

So if you have like legitimate stress, I have no advice at all. Obviously. I would crumble under your life, whoever you might be. But, you know, just that I, last night I did the Reddit due diligence asked for the Reddit advice, did my Reddit research. Today I sent a message to a dentist. Now I'm out of the house just to get moving, to get walking, go see a new part of the town, go see a new part of the city. And this part is particularly beautiful. That always makes me feel better.

Going to find the place. So I know where it is. On the subway over here, I did a little bit of riding. That also made me feel better because I just let everything go to shit during those pollution days. Stayed up all night goofing off. Didn't do anything useful with myself.

And yeah, I just on balance just feel a lot better. But it's impossible to feel totally better. You know, this feeling is just floating. The stress is just floating. But there's no way to stop it. Just got a float. Just got to let it float. Just got to let it be there and just eventually something will happen or nothing will happen. And I'll start the process again on Jeju.

In the meantime, as long as I keep my teeth clean and I'm careful, hopefully it should be fine.

Man, look after your teeth though. It's not that I don't look after my teeth, but I didn't look after them well enough. Because as with everything, as you get older, your body just, you know, deteriorates more and more. But that also includes your teeth. I went out of my way before I left Canada. Like, let's make sure I get my eyes checked and they've stayed the same, actually. They're identical. I didn't even need a new prescription. So that's nice. But I did need a couple of small fillings put in, one of which is this one that is kind of fucked now. But I feel like when I was a kid and I'd get a filling, it's like, there we go, ding, ding, ding, everything's great now. Where it just didn't seem nearly that clean this time. Getting these new fillings was just like, yeah, it's better than having a couple little cavities that are starting to form. 20:00 But there was weird pain while the fillings settled in. I had to go back and get one adjusted. Now this is happening.

But yeah, again, I don't want to, you know, I think I'm just, I'll just report on what's going on, I guess. Here's what's happening now. I have to do a real thing while traveling. I have to actually go deal with the situation. But don't want to dwell on it. Don't want to overly complain. It just is what it is. It's just what's happening.

And I guess I just got to, well, I mean, there's that thing, that idea. It's such a nice idea. It's a shame it doesn't work. That idea that like, that you should be able to put your own problems in perspective. You know that there's so many other people in the world with so much extra stress and so many other problems that it should be easy to put your own problems in perspective and to realize that they're not that big a deal. But your body just doesn't care. Your body doesn't know that. Your body doesn't care about anyone else because on the way here, I literally saw a guy missing a leg. He was walking on, on crutches and one of his legs was missing at the knee. He kind of had his knee, what was left of his knee, like wedged into one of the crutches and was just going along.

And it's like, well, let me look at that guy. He's missing a fucking leg. How can I give a shit about my very minor dental situation when that guy right there is missing his leg. But your like central nervous system just doesn't care. It doesn't care about that. You know, my conscious mind can be aware of that all at once. My autonomic nervous system does not care. It just knows that I'm feeling stressed. It's like, God damn. There's obviously a survival value in human beings being this way, but it is funny in this modern world when things just aren't a problem and things aren't hard. And none of this is difficult and it's all going to work out in a million. There's a million different ways that this can all work out just fine. And almost no chance for it to legitimately become a problem. But I can't feel it. I can't feel it. Anyway, I'm standing at the foot of those skyscrapers now. I'm at the end of the beach. What a nice fucking beach. Anyway, I'm going to head up into the city now and just go find the dentist's office. Just go walk past the dentist's office. And then from there, it's right at the end of this subway line. Good time to just hop on whenever. But I don't know. I don't know what else I'm going to do today.

But yeah, fine fucking beach. I guess I saw this on the mountain I was on a few episodes ago that was not that big. I mean, I guess on the 600 meter mountain I did see over this way a bit. But I got a much better view as I was coming down that 200 meter mountain. Even though it was a much smaller mountain, midway down there was just a perfect view out here to the water. And yeah, it always been meaning to come out here. Now that I'm here, it is fucking beautiful. Super nice.

This building is called Busan X the Sky. It is pretty tall. I guess this is like an observation deck to look out across the water.

Fucking windy as shit, though.

Jesus, yeah, let me put this here recorder away. But anyway, yeah, pollution has passed. Things are beautiful again. The city really is beautiful. And yeah, I mean, I guess this is, I have been gone a long time, you know.

Like when I visited Japan last time, I did go to Amsterdam for a little over a month. I think it was beforehand. But that still only added up to four and a half months. Where this time I had the three months in Japan and I've been here over three months. So I'm already half a year gone, over half a year gone. With no real end in sight, it's inevitable. Eventually, stuff like this is going to happen. You're just going to have to go see a dentist or do something.

Again, I should just be thankful that it's very minor. It's not like I got to go to an emergency room or something. It's not even an dental emergency. It's just, yeah, I hope I can get this done. But again, my frail, tiny little human body is like, where are you? You're somewhere weird in the world. You don't really know how things work. I heard a theory once my friend Brad told me this theory and it could be.

Because we're so disconnected from our means of sustenance, hit behind a wall. So maybe a little less windy. Finish up this last little point, last little dumb thought. But since we're disconnected from our means of sustenance, like if you were a farmer or something, you'd at least have a direct connection to the crops in the ground that are your livelihood.

Where, yes, a lot less windy down here. But where nowadays, you know, money is so abstract. Even like, if it was always abstract, but at least there used to be like a gold standard and stuff. We don't even have that anymore. We got nothing. It's all so abstract. It's just numbers in a bank account. It's all just so weird. And then it's additionally that way for me because I didn't even, at least, you know, my mom and dad went to law school and got diplomas and started a law practice. They have a connection, at least, to the wealth that they have. I got nothing. I'm just, it's just funneling down to me. I'm that terrible third generation. The first generation works really hard. So the second generation can go to a good school. And then the third generation is just a pile of shit that does nothing. And that's me. So it's all super abstract. And like, somewhere deep down in my subconscious, my subconscious knows that. It's like, just in this weird place surrounded by people I don't really know.

No one here has any actual reason to care about me. There's nothing, you know, there's no reason for this to be alright to do this. This would never have been alright at any other point in human history besides the modern era. But I'm in a spot now where it is alright. And it's really not a big deal. But it's hard to convince your scared little lizard brain that that's the case. Like I was even just thinking today on the subway, on the way here. You know, I've been learning a bit more, researching a little bit more about Korean society and kind of this idea that they've got like the most stressful arguably the worst side of both Eastern and Western philosophy. You know, they took this sort of most shallow part of capitalism of like just caring about owning things and how you look. Sorry to have just sounds offensive to Korean society, but this is what I've heard. Whereas at the same time, the Eastern side, the sort of confusionism of it, the, you know, the individual is not that important that the group is what matters. But like they've also taken that to the extreme, whereas like you cannot fail. If you fail the group, you don't get a redemption arc. You've just failed. And the suicide rates are like the highest in the world here. It's just a very stressful place that I'm watching. I just saw some guy on the subway that made me think of that. Just some guy in his 20s that I'm just thinking like, man, his life I bet is so stressful. But he kind of has to put up with it. He has to deal with it because his battery is connected to this country. He needs to succeed here because this is where his sustenance comes from. This is where his wealth comes from. This is where his future comes from. Where me being here or in Japan or wherever, I'm connected to a different battery. I'm just connected to some battery back home and the money just funnels into my account from back in Canada. And I can just walk around and I can just view these places in a completely different way because I don't need to deal with it. I don't need to succeed here. It doesn't matter. I'm connected to that battery back home. That's where my money comes from. That's where my little abstract number comes from. These people don't have any choice. They got to deal with the stress of this place or of Japan or of whatever country. You know, it's just so different. So different. And what is the point I'm trying to make again? I don't know, just that I just wish I could better appreciate how easy I've got it. And I just, it's so hard to do. I'm like asking something of myself that myself can't give me. But it's a good opportunity. You know, it doesn't matter why you're stressed. It doesn't matter why you're feeling pushed down or put upon by the world. It's a good opportunity to just be humble. Just be humbled by the world. Don't try to pretend you are in control. Don't try to pretend that you got it covered. You don't. You don't. You don't have control over your teeth. You don't have control over the dentist. You don't have control over anything. Just be humble and try to just go with the flow.

And just be a fucking leaf in the stream. And everything will be okay. Trying to pretend that, why should it be easy? Why should anything be easy? And I feel like an asshole even saying this because this is easy. This is easy. My fucking life is so easy. It is not okay for me to pretend that this is stressful.

But again, I'm just repeating myself. You know, it doesn't matter. You can't think my way out of any of these situations. Doesn't change how I feel. Doesn't matter. My body's gonna feel the way my body feels. But anyway, yeah. I mean, there we go. I talked about it. That's enough. Now let's not focus on that anymore. Okay. Alright, I'm gonna put this away because I'm back in the wind and go exploring a bit.

Well, this is pretty freaking nice. So if you keep going along the shoreline east of Haeundae Beach and the Busan X, the sky, which turns out that building is so notable, it's got its own Google Maps entry. You can keep walking along the shore. And there's actually construction right now. So I only made it halfway and now I've got to turn around and go back. But it was still completely worth it, even just to go and get stuck and have to come back. There were a bunch of signs warning that there was gonna be construction. I was like, yeah, let's just see, though. Let's see what happens. And yeah, they weren't kidding. But this is fucking gorgeous, man. Being on the seaside, it just talk about fucking adding value to your city. You know, just the mother nature is just giving you a hell of a boost of just like, hey, just want a big stretch of everything being incredibly beautiful. There you go. Like it's really rocky. I'm on this like boardwalk that goes along theoretically goes the entire way around all the way back up into the city. Again, by the time you hear this, I'm sure whatever construction is being done will be done. And this is really fucking good. It's still a bit light out, not quite dark. And yes, just walking along this, actually my little fear hides one off at one point because it's a little bit steep to get down to the ocean side. Only for a bit. Most of it's very nice. Just, yeah, these big rocks and the water crashing onto them. And I'm just on this boardwalk walking along it. And there's the beautiful ocean, like one of these points where you can't see anything. It's just in endless, the perfect line of the horizon, just looking way out into nothing.

Now that I've turned around, I can see the city in the distance, walking back toward the city. Also stupid, beautiful in its own way. Now that the lights are turning on slowly, it's turning into that nighttime view. This is really cool. And so obviously, I'm a pedestrian. I'm all about walking. But there's not one but two different trolley things going on here. There's like a big more of an official big trolley, you know, like the size of a San Francisco trolley. And there's little booths where you can buy tickets. And it's gone by once or twice with some people in there to gander out. But then above that, there's a second track even higher up that just has these little tiny pods, like probably only big enough for like a couple people. You can probably squeeze four in there, I don't know. But they're pretty small. And it goes really slow. And they just inch their way along. You can just look out and see this amazing view. So I mean, if you're into buying tickets and taking little little rides and stuff, this place is the best. It's kind of got everybody covered. And I would just prefer to walk regardless. Again, such a big part of, you know, like I was yammering about stress before get that body moving, you know, get get fucking get exercise. And like to me, walking is so valuable. It's not at all. Like if I have the option, if they gave me a free ride, I would still prefer to walk because walking regulates my mood, really makes me feel better. Like thank God, this isn't another pollution day. If I was just sitting at home in front of my stupid laptop, still trying to regulate the must, the musty smell from my Airbnb, which is not working. Trying not to be stressed out about stuff like it's an impossible task where once I am out and about breathing the air that I can actually breathe today and just soak in in the amazing view. But importantly, walking, walking, moving.

Yet again, the podcast that tells you everything you already know that has no useful information to impart. But nothing takes your mind off of your problems like getting some fucking exercise and seeing a new part of a city. And man, this is, it's so fucking beautiful. Fuck, this is nice. I might go so far as to say, this is the nicest thing I've seen anywhere in South Korea so far, this shoreline. I can't think of anything else, like nothing else is jumping to mind. There's a lot of like great mountain views. A lot of times up on mountains where I'm like, wow, that's pretty fucking good. 35:00 But you just can't beat the fucking ocean, you cannot beat it. Still got a mountain on one side, you know. Still got the mountains in the distance, got the city in the distance.

But just the water splashing on the waves in the rocks. It's probably also not coincidence that every night I sleep with rain sounds. You know, my choice of white noise is rain. And if I want to switch it up, it's the shoreline. It's just waves on the shore. And growing up on the east coast of Canada, I wasn't right on the ocean. A lot of my relatives though live in like St. Andrews, which is right by the ocean. I had a big river, but it was a really big river.

And yeah, it just feels good to be by the water. And I really haven't done much of this here because like I've only taken the subway a couple times.

There's oh, now that the lights are lightened up, yeah, I can make out the city seems more distinct, the parts of it. This bridge that I'm seeing in the distance now, I didn't notice it before because the lights weren't on. But now that it's all lit up, that's definitely the bridge I saw from the 200 meter mountain. Where it didn't look that far, it's like I could probably walk there, but every time I think that it's the three hour or four hour walk.

And yeah, the subway, it's a little, it's a little bigger than it seems. It's like the trips are longer than they seem like they're going to be. Because I think when you look on the map, Busan doesn't seem extremely big, but the subway stop really frequently. There's like a subway stop, maybe not on every block, but maybe every two, three at the most, like there's a lot of stops. So to get to the beach the other day, or to get to this beach, you know, we're talking 20 stops, easy.

But whatever, you just get on the subway. And like I said, I did some writing on there, you just spend the time doing something else. It's not excessive, it's not like a crazy long amount of time. It's not quick, it's not like a nice, quick, easy subway ride, it does take a little while. But yeah, man, this is so fucking nice. So yeah, after I've got like a couple more weeks here in Busan, and then I booked like six weeks in Jeju, a little more expensive. It's like 20 bucks a night instead of 15 that I'm paying here, but that's still whatever, not that bad. Again, for a nice private room, not any of this sharing bunk beds and crap. And that is one thing that is very nice about, I think it was just last episode I was talking about this, but how... Very evidently less busy in South Korea. Like in Japan, it definitely behooves you to plan things out in advance and to try to book things as early as you can, because your options dwindle so quickly.

It is a lot more casual in South Korea, like I didn't decide what to do after Jeju until I got to Jeju. I didn't decide to go to Jeju after Busan until I got here to Busan. I'm not going to decide what to do after Jeju until I get to Jeju. You know, I can just get there, I can scope it out, and then I can decide, do I extend Jeju? Do I come back here to Busan? What do I do? Go somewhere else? Jettison entirely to a different country or whatever, it doesn't matter, it's like nice to not have to worry too much because there's going to be options and they're going to be an okay deal.

But yeah, along those lines, I mean probably what's going to happen. After six weeks on Jeju Island, I will probably come back to Busan for my last like five weeks on my visa, and then somewhere else I'm thinking Taiwan at this point.

Though when I was researching pollution, yeah, it's like now that I know this is a thing, you know, and it was even happening in Japan to some degree I just wasn't aware at that point. I was too ignorant to know what was going on.

Here we go, here's a place I can cross over, across the train tracks. No trains coming, no trolley is okay, so yeah, I'm going to cross over and head up into the city proper.

But yeah, people were saying like, you know, some of the less helpful people of the internet, but I mean they were still helpful in the sense that I'm still gathering information. I like, hey, you think South Korea is bad. Check out this, check out that and things that came up often were India. They're like, hey, you go to India, it'll blow your fucking wig back or Hanoi. I saw several times in Vietnam. People saying like, Jesus, yeah, I know what you mean about. It's weird that travel vloggers and stuff really just never broached this topic. I mean, it's not weird in the sense that they want their travel vlogs to look pretty. 40:00 But this one guy was like, yeah, like, I was a little annoyed by all these YouTubers with their beautiful hikes, where I was in Hanoi and like, you can't hike if you can't breathe. So it's like, okay, Vietnam or at least Hanoi, something to be concerned about. Then on the other side of the world, Mexico City came up many times. Like, your fucking clothes will be the different color after you walk around Mexico City on the wrong day.

But yeah, it's just evident. It's just that I've just lived a charmed Canadian life where I just didn't know about pollution because for us, it's a different situation. It's acts of God, you know, it's like forest fires or when we get pollution, it's not a common thing. Now that I'm more aware of it, it's like, yeah, I'm going to have to be mindful of this everywhere, everywhere I go.

I won't be shocked again. It was just this time, I guess. I didn't know what I didn't know.

But anyway, assuming I do come back to Busan, that's where I'm kind of not sure I was just going to come back to this Airbnb I met. That seemed like the obvious thing because if you book it for a month and I would be able to, because I got five more weeks, then you get the 50% off. If it's only 15 bucks a day, it's a good deal.

But I'm not sure because the mustiness problem that I was describing before, since the room is like, you know, just imagine a closet that hasn't been opened in a long time, that musty smell. Because these share houses in Korea are just tiny little windowless rooms, and this one has a shower room directly connected to it. So imagine a big walking closet, and then next to it is a smaller closet that is just wet. And that humidity and moisture did not mix well with the lack of ventilation. Just unpleasant musty smell. And they do have some air filter type, do you midifier type stuff in the hallways, but not in the rooms. So the musty smell never got as bad as it was initially, but it's just like vaguely there to the point that I started just wearing a mask while I was inside, because it's just an annoying smell. I just didn't like smelling it, and I wore it at night and stuff. So I got to the point where I was just like, you know what, I'm just going to open the door to my room. I mean, it's awkward. Everybody can just look in as they walk by and me sitting there at my fucking laptop. But I just need some air to flow through here. But it's still, it's just not enough. This is just not a fixable situation. It's just a badly designed sort of place.

I'm kind of moving up the side of these stairs up, up them out in a bit. Man, and now it's darker now. Really good view of the bridge in the city from here. Fucking shit, this is pretty. This is so fucking pretty. So yeah, it's weird though, because this is right in the middle, where basically all of my Airbnb's have been kind of all or nothing. It's been like, yes, this place is great. I would love to come back here. Or, hell no, this one had super packed in accommodations with bedbugs. This one had a train going by all the time. This one had intense heat. I was thinking about that Airbnb I stayed at near the sky tree. That one was bad whenever there were people there who were snoring. But other than that, I didn't hate it. The one that was above this fancy restaurant where they served wine and mushrooms. And I used to always record myself going down through the restaurant every morning. That's like, I might go back to that one.