#120 A chat with a local on a mountain in South Korea

Transcript

Alright, I'm going to recap where I've been and what I'm up to today, but first, here we go, my first look at the map.

Gijan stations, that where I am, it's G-I-J-A-N-G. And the notable landmarks are the Gijan Market and the Gijan Middle School and Gijan City Hall. But a lot of people got off the train here, so I don't know, I can't tell how major this place is. Oh yeah, it looks a little major, so I'm looking at the map that's here at the train station.

Basically, two episodes ago, I made my way to Sang-Gi-On and there was a beautiful beach there and it was a really cool spot, but it was raining and getting dark. And I realized that the blue line had a stop there, so I hopped on the blue line and I got the fuck out of there.

And then last episode, I went crazy, I went all the way to the end, all the way up to Ulsan, and that was a whole very good day. It was very fun, but that was like a whole other city, that's at a whack. So I thought today, I'd go back to Sang-Gi-On where I stopped off at the beach. Oh yeah, you can see, you can see little beaches on this map, little beach down at Sang-Gi-On, but I don't see any more little beaches beyond that. So basically, I thought instead of getting off at Sang-Gi-On, why not go a stop further? But then, I thought, well, hey, why go one stop further? Let's go two stops further and just see where we end up and have an adventure to come back. And yeah, it looks like the next station, Osiria, is really close to Sang-Gi-On, that would have been nothing. However, Gijang, this is where the stops start getting very long. This actually looks like quite a long journey. But that's my plan, yes, I'm looking at this map, what do we got here? So we got this city, got coastline, but no beaches. I don't know if I can walk on the coast or not, is that the best bet to try to get to the coast? There's a golf course in the way, so if I can avoid that, that's a good thing. Golf course is man. Nothing but trouble. And then of course, as you go to the center, mass, it's mountains everywhere. So yeah, it looks like there is a little river that heads to the coast, so maybe I'll just try to get to the coast and see if I can walk along the coast. But I just don't know. I don't know if it's possible, really, on foot, to make it back to Sang-Gi-On.

But the beauty of exploring near a train line is, you can just go back to the train line and bail out, so that might happen. And ultimately, I'm hoping, it's like four o'clock, so I got a, one reason why I'm extending this is I want to eat up a little time because I ultimately would like to get back to Moon Tan Trail, which is much further south. But definitely walkable from Sang-Gi-On, so maybe walkable from here. I don't know, I'm looking at it on this map though, it's pretty fucking far. But it's this cool couple of kilometer trail long path that I found that goes along the edge of the coast. And it was really nice in the daytime, but it's all like set up with lights. It's distinctly made so you can walk at it night. But at this point, it doesn't get dark till about 8 p.m. or so. So it's kind of a good thing, because I was actually trying to get going a little early today, but my sleep schedule is completely off the fucking rails. And it's why it's four o'clock, but I mean, that's kind of a good thing. I mean, it doesn't really matter. If I got there early, I could just go to a coffee shop and dick around. But theoretically, I feel like if I walk from here, if I do actually make it all the way to the Moon Tan Trail, it should be dark. But just looking at that map on the station, because again, I didn't do any research ahead of time. It's like, yeah, we'll just stop there and we'll just see. I don't know, I don't know if this is a thing that can be done. Or I mean, it can be done, of course. But I don't know how easy it'll be on my first try. It's nice to when you walk out of a station and it's like, hmm, which way even is East and West? What's going on? I guess I know from where the train direction came, but I can see mountains. So that's obviously inland. So I'm going to go the other way toward the coast.

Yeah, the feeling I get, because I passed Lotte Adventure World on the way here again. I think that Osiria station must be the one near that. The vibe I'm feeling is very similar to when I went north from Hyjima station in Japan. 5:00 And I went past a Mumen village, that little amusement park, and I just walked up through a random ass neighborhood. That's the vibe I'm getting, the feeling I'm getting. It's the same sort of approximate size. This might feel a little more developed, a little bigger.

Yeah, just a random adventure to fucking kind of nowhere.

I passed an amusement park here also, so I guess that doubles it up. Man, that reminded me too of that day. That was the day that I had to bail out because my hip was really sore and I couldn't really walk well. So let's just take a little moment. That was several months ago at this point. Let's take a little moment just to thank the gods of travel and the gods of aging. That I've been hiking up and down mountains like a maniac since then, because that was my theory at the time that it was mountain climbing that fucked up my leg. But I've done plenty of mountain climbing since then. And I have not had pains like that. Everything's been fine. So cheers to you, gods of travel and gods of aging. Not that old yet. Everything's alright. Hey, there's a Burger King. Man, yes, I watched Train to Busan just yesterday. Good movie. The flood of zombies is very cool, very appropriate to Asia, just a flood of people. It reminds me of when I first got to Japan on this trip, and I happened to be trying to exit Shibuya Station just as Shibuya Crossing was funneling people down in front of me, and it was like fighting a flood of people. That's what the zombies are like in Train to Busan, just a flood of zombies. It's pretty cool. But early in that movie, the guy's eating Burger King, and it's obviously product placement, but it's appropriate, because there's a Burger King. If I was hungrier, I mean, it's better not to eat too much anyway on these long rambling adventures, because who knows where the washrooms and stuff are, better not to fill up, and especially not with Burger King. Anyway, there's a Burger King, a Starbucks down in the street as a McDonald's, so this is definitely more developed to that mumen village area. Was that Saitama? Where even was that? It's all such a... When I think of North of Tokyo, I always just think Saitama, so I don't know.

But anyway, that's today's adventure.

Let me take a little break while I walk through this traffic zone, and we'll pop back in once I've either succeeded or failed to find a route to the coast.

It is a fucking hot day today, which I guess I shouldn't complain, warm weather, clear skies, quite low pollution today. I found a convenience store, got a bottle of water, can hear it sloshing.

I guess the only downside is it's like, woo, the other day when I was walking around without my weather-resistant jacket, I regretted it that day because it started raining on me. Today that ain't gonna happen, but you know, it is gonna get cold once the sun goes down. There's no choice, I'm afraid. There is no option but to have layers, but it sure is rough when it's hot out. What I need is like little capsules, like in really early Dragon Ball, back when Dragon Ball was fun. The very early Dragon Ball was like a gag manga, and it was like fun to read, it wasn't just gritted teeth, people fighting endlessly. And one of the things they had that I loved were these little capsules, and you could throw the capsule, and it would turn into a tent, or a cabin, or like a whole car. It's like, fuck, I could go for some of those capsules. I just need clothing capsules. If I just had a jacket that was in a capsule, I could take the capsule out of my pocket and just buff. That'd be amazing.

But I saw a sign with relevant local landmarks.

And it did have an arrow pointing towards Sungjong Beach, which was one of my potential goals, and it was 14.5 kilometers. It's like, this blue line since it is on the proper train line above ground, and it's not the same as the normal subways around here. 14 kilometers. Between stops. That's a good fucking chunk.

That sounds like too much, you know. My sense of distances has gotten a lot better since I've gotten to Asia. Since I never had a license and I never drove, I was never quite sure what distance is meant, and Canadians, you know, we have a weird mixture between imperial and metric. 10:00 So I additionally had kilometers versus miles in my brain. Since I've gotten here, it's been steady on just the kilometers, and I've gotten a much better sense of how far things are.

And I'm thinking of those early days in Japan when I was at Sung and Jaya.

And if I did a, well, I guess I was going to say like some of those trips were like six or seven kilometers. That felt like a good amount to walk in the day. But I did do it as a round trip. So it was like 14, 15 kilometers. I guess that's not so crazy. That's kind of doable.

But it felt like more than I wanted to do today, especially given that the train system is so cheap in South Korea. I can get on that train and head back for $1.50. You know, I think I would resist going one stop, you know, if I was in like Toronto where it's three bucks a ride. I'm going to not do that unless it's like a significant ride. It's just, you know, again, what's $3 in the grand scheme of things? You can't take it with you. But it would feel pretty weird to go one stop where not even $1.50, it's like $1.40. Given these weird circumstances, that seems fine. So that's my general plan now. It's to mosey around this neighborhood, but go back to that station and then just ride a stop or two. If not to Song-Jeon, then to the other station that's really close to it. But while I'm here, this is still not an especially close goal.

Hmm, actually, it's pretty far too. Just judging visually.

If that's the distance south to that beach, this is still at least half that long. Anyway, there's a point here with the little picture, the little picture icon out on the eastern edge of the map. It's called the Juxiang Dream Filming Site, J-U-K-S-E-O-N-G. Juxiang Dream, maybe it's a music video. Because there's like an airfield in Jechon that kept coming up as the filming site for some K-Pop video.

So maybe this is similar. So I was like, all right, well, there's something. Maybe I could just go to that, see what that is. And unlikely that I can walk down this jagged coastline. I might just have to come straight back.

But let me try. And it was not going well because on the map there's one road that goes straight there. And I did see mentions of some hiking trails.

But the road was not working at all.

It's one of these like really, really narrow little agricultural roads. Quite busy too, quite a lot of traffic because it does seem to be the only road. And if there was like a little space to the side to walk on, I could make that work. But there wasn't. It like immediately turns into a ditch. Very impossible to walk along the edge of.

And I got a little tiny ways down it, but it's just like this is just so super duper obviously not where to walk. And I've been in those kind of awkward bad situations before. But generally like if that's something that happens at the end of the day. Because I took a wrong turn somewhere or ended up in some weird place. And I'm just trying to escape and I have no choice but to be in this bad situation. If I someday get hit by a truck, I at least want it to be like, well, he did spend the entire day getting himself into that dumb situation before he died. I wouldn't want to start that way. Just to be the start of the adventure, it's like no fucking way, dude. No fucking way. This is like, I can't believe how little space there is to walk. You're just not supposed to walk here. So I just started rambling through the neighborhoods near there. Just looking for ways into the mountain.

Which are never easy to find. I had that problem in Japan quite a bit, but especially in Korea. Like some of those mountains in Seoul, it took many, many tries, many different attempts to figure out how to get into the trail systems. Because unless you find the specific opening, the specific way in. I don't know if it is worse in South Korea. I mean, that's definitely a problem in Japan too. You can't just approach a mountain, you know. Obviously. Especially when they're this steep, you got to have the proper way in.

So I just ambled around and found a convenience store and bought a bottle of water. And it's just like, well, I just don't know if this is going to happen. 15:00 Because I'm just in nowhere.

There's no evidence of anything except just apartment buildings and stuff. So that's okay. Maybe this will just immediately fail. Whatever. That's happened to me many times where it's like I got to take multiple attempts before I figure something out. Would I ever attempt this again? It didn't seem likely. I probably wouldn't come back here for round two. So I was like, I hope I find something, but I don't know. We'll see. Whatever. I'm not going to force it. I'm not going to brute force my way up a mountain. I'm not going to walk down the busy street. If I can't find the proper way, then fuck it.

But luckily, I found a park. A totally abandoned park with no one in it. But a very nice little park with a playground and shit.

And a very distinct path up the mountain. I'm walking up like very distinct man-made steps. You know, they're just like wooden, not like the fully constructed wooden steps that they have in Korea sometimes. These are just like square bits of wood laid down and then earth packed in to make steps. But it said this mountain was 229 meters. No problem. Nice little mountain.

And yeah, it does seem once I get to the peak of this mountain. I still will not be even remotely close to Juxiang Dream filming site. But at least I'm heading somewhere. At least it's working. And maybe none of this stuff's as far as I think it is. Maybe it's not that bad. But it looks pretty fucking far. All these distances as you move up the coast start to get a lot bigger.

But this is very nice.

And yeah, the plan didn't fail. So that's nice.

Here's another sign. Let's see what this has to say.

Alright, so there's one direction, 0.3 kilometers to some apartments, and then a little sign that says the apartments are private property. So if you don't live there, probably don't do that. And that's cool because I didn't want to go there anyway. 0.6 kilometers to Bong Dyson, B-O-N-G-D-A-E-S-A-N mountain. I can do 0.6, and no problem. And I just came from the culture center.

Hello. And there's a guy hiking. So yeah, worst case scenario. I'll just go to the peak of this mountain and come back from here. But once I get the lay of the land, I mean while I'm here, I may as well try to push forward. I don't really need to do that other stuff, going to San John Beach and Moontan. I mean, I've still got, like, a little over a week.

Here in Busan, what's the big hurry? This adventure is staring me in the face. I think it's best to see it through. I think it's best to try to get to the Juxiang Dream filming site, because even if getting there and then coming back eats up the day, again, when else am I going to be here? And if it's a photo op on Google Maps, it's probably pretty good. And it's by the coast, which I love the coast.

That being said, though, the photos here in Korea, for example, if you see that little photograph symbol on Google Maps, it's probably pretty sweet because there's all these mountains and stuff.

Where it's a different situation in Amsterdam, because it's like, I don't know if the Netherlands is the flatest place in the world, but it's certainly in the running. There are zero mountains. You know, it's below sea level, if I understand right, the lowlands, the Netherlands. So I always remember like I walked somewhere near one of the photo ops on Google Maps there was the the fault in our stars bench.

And I never saw the fault in our stars nor read it. So I was just like, what is that? They went to Amsterdam in that story. I think I looked it up briefly and I couldn't figure out what the relevance was or what that meant. But a random bench.

It's probably less exciting than the juxtaposed dream filming site, whatever that may be.

So on we go, man, the only other thing that's kind of been on my mind, I mean, this has crossed my mind many times for many years. But it's just kind of interesting, I guess, to see that it is exactly identical behavior in every culture and every single part of the world I've ever been to. Is the people looking at their phone while they walk? 20:00 It's so funny, because it's so obvious, even if you're behind someone. And you can't see that they're on their phone.

It's mega obvious who's on their phone, because all of a sudden they're walking at a third of the normal speed. And they're just ambling around, you know, they're drifting into other people's lanes where other people are trying to walk. And if they're coming towards you down the street, these people are just drifting, like drifting straight towards you. And it's like, I'm already all the way to the side person. I can't go any farther, but then you can tell the moment when your foot enters their peripheral vision, because then they suddenly snap too and move out of the way. It's like, just stop. Will you just stop for a moment while you're on your phone? It's so fucking annoying.

When people try to walk all around their phone, you're just like a, I don't know, it's like when, it's like you're an aunt and you're antennas, like I don't know, stopped working. And you're just, and you're just ambling around at random.

I don't know, it's like people think that they're, that they're good at it, I guess. They think they're the one. Oh, I'm the one who can walk while they look at my phone. No, you're not. No one can. Not from any culture, not from anywhere in the world. Canada, America, Netherlands, Japan, South Korea. I'm sure everywhere. If you're trying to walk while you're on your phone, you're so annoying. You're so annoying, because you're just in everyone's way. You're like a big dumb lump. So I mean, just go step to the side and be a big dumb lump that's not moving actively into other people's looking, you know, attempts to walk.

There's a useless advice that no one will listen to from a random fuck walking up a mountain. But who knows, maybe one person, if just one person ever listen to this podcast and realize it's like, oh, yeah, maybe I do do that. Maybe it's fucking annoying as fuck. Then it'll all be worth it.

Make sure you take that step to the side, though, before you stop and look at your phone. Don't just stop. I gotta admit, that's something I, I guess I was less aware of till I moved to a bigger city. It's always, always look behind you before you stop dead in your tracks, because somebody might be walking right behind you, which is the silly thing for them to be doing. But I think it was like New York the first time somebody just bumped right into me because I stopped. And it only has to happen once and then you're like, oh, it's such an embarrassing situation.

That from then on, it was always a quick little glance behind, then a step as far to the side and out of the flow of traffic as possible before stopping.

Because what can I say? I guess I'm just the most considerate best person in the world. It's not easy.

The summit of Mount Bonde, 0.43 kilometers to go. Or I could go to the side to the day beyond pass, multi-purpose stadium.

I meant 216 meters. Yeah, this is, it's a little bit of an odd area where it's like obviously pretty developed. I mean, if there's a stadium and shit. But yeah, that one road that heads out here after this particular peninsula, man, what a tiny little road.

But I guess now that I found the route over the mountain, that's fine with me. This actually is much better. Much rather do this than walk down the road, of course. So it all worked out in the end.

Well, that's pretty fucking delightful. So I got to the top of that mountain. And the view is really good. And you can see all along the coast and stuff. And that was cool just because, you know, the mountain views are always cool, but it's extra neat when it's by a coastline. You can really see what's going on, the whole lay of the land. And yeah, I was saying that I'm like, I don't know how far this is. This might be a very far track. So it's cool to be able to see all the way to the water. And it's like, okay, no, there's the water. There's the, yeah, I don't know specifically which little finger leading out into the water I'm trying to get to. But it's got to be one of those. And they're not that far. They're right there. So that's no problem. That's all good. Then I saw a sign saying that this was the ancient spot for a smoke signal. And that's something I just had never even thought about. 25:00 But it makes a lot of sense that that's how they communicated way back in the day is that they had smoke signal stuff set up. So in the daytime, it would be smoke signals. And at night, fire signals. And then if it was too cloudy for any of that, then you would just have to take messages from one post to the other on foot. And they said there was like not that many super major signal stations around the country, only like five or six. But then this specific area then breaks down into like 16 semi major stations. And beyond that, like 90 little ones. So it's like, oh, yeah, man, we sure do have it easy now. What the hell?

Just magically transmitting information anywhere we want. Because yeah, like all these little tiny signal towers. Send to this one. Send to that one. Send to that one. I hope that there's no breaks in the chain. If something doesn't work, you got to go high foot over there on foot. And it's just like, oh, man, the past. So that was cool. Just to be I was standing right there as like, wow, this is the spot where they used to build the fire. Like that's pretty fucking cool. And it makes sense that this is a good spot. Extremely clear view from up on top of the mountain. So this was already a double win. Then to become a triple win, a guy came up behind me, a hiker who was a guy who, it was kind of interesting because he, he said he used to live in Vancouver and New York, but he hasn't spoke in English in a long time. And it was very much that like his accent was was strong. So his, his English like it was kind of maybe like on the border of it could have almost been tough to follow, but it just wasn't. I could just follow him like you could really tell somewhere deep in the past. He did spend all of his time speaking English and he just lived in a, you could just tell the way he spoke was confident in a way that even if it's been a long fucking time, he used to speak a fuck ton of English.

And he told me that it was like 1983, he was studying to be like a chemical engineer and he's asking me what I do. And I was like, it's so, I just never know what to say, especially these people with really difficult tough actual useful careers where I'm just like, oh and well, nothing right now. I got some inheritance money. I'm just, just traveling. And he's like, yeah, well, but what about when you go back? I'm like, I don't know, write a book. Let's talk about you, please. So yeah, I don't know if he's been back to North America since then. Like it literally could have been in the 80s that he was immersed in English culture. But yeah, I don't know, I complimented him and I meant it. Just like, yeah, this is like, because he was worried. He's like, man, haven't used my English in a long time. It's probably pretty rusty. I was like, yeah, no, this is, this is fine. Like we talked for a while, like 10 minutes. And I was like, yeah, no problem. I followed everything he was saying, you're good. You're still OK.

And he of course asked what the heck I was doing here. So I told him like, hey, yesterday went to Olsan. You know, see what happens if I go to the end of the line. Today, I just stopped halfway through. This is all fine. And you know, he's just asking me if I like Korean food. I told him about the kimchi at my place. I thought I was staying at this little cheap sharehouse rather than a hotel because he was asking, how can I afford this? And I was like, yeah, it's really not that bad. Like the flight is bad. Now that I'm here, got this little sharehouse. Everything's fine. He's like, oh, I see. So you're not doing like hotels stuff. He's like, heck no, I don't need that. But he's like, hey, do you like Korean food? Like go to the market. The market near here is so cheap. You can get tons of stuff. Which, you know, I didn't get into the details of like, oh, yeah, I do have a mini fridge. I never plugged it in. That is one step beyond what I'm doing.

But yeah, we just had a nice chat and I had to ask him like, so I was born in 79. You were in Canada in 83. How does that make any sense? Because I feel like you look like you're about 50. We look not that different in age. And he's like, oh, I'm 70. And I was just like, looking right at the guy. Sometimes you see people, especially now that I've been riding the subways more. You know, you can see people that are very much trying to maintain their youth. You know, like you can tell that they're dying their hair. Jet black and it's like, you're not fooling anybody. Old man. I can tell you old you are. Not this guy. This guy wasn't doing anything like that. He just legitimately, you know, it's just not like he looks like he's 30. He did look like he's about 50. He does not look 70. I'm like, you know, everything about his. He wouldn't. Like there was no sense that he wasn't telling me the truth. Of course, he was telling me the truth. He's just telling me this little story of his life. But I'm looking right at the guy and I'm like, how are you 70? How the fuck are you 70? What the hell, man? 30:00 But anyway, delightful. An amazing view. I learned a little bit about smoke signals. And yeah, just talk to a guy. Yeah, I don't know. He's seen very happy to just run into somebody to speak English to and just to make sure he's still got it. And he does. But I guess, again, it's not like I'm in the middle of nowhere. I was saying last episode that I kind of sometimes I exaggerate. I feel like I'm in the middle of nowhere, but I'm not. And this is another example. I mean, I'm just on the train line connected to the fucking Busan subway system. You know, it's like. But that being said, I did just stop at a random spot halfway through that I think the average person wouldn't stop it. And then I just started walking to a random place. I mean, in so far as being connected to a big city. I mean, I guess I am kind of in the middle of nowhere. Like who else would he run into even if he does this hike on the regular. I doubt he's running into a bunch of people and he really I didn't ask specifically when the last time was he got to speak English to somebody. But he made it pretty clear it has been a long time. So yeah, it's nice and glad I could have a little a little chitchat with him. It's delightful. And we brought up, you know, just a little because I don't want to like offend the locals. But I was like, Hey, and it's very nice and clear today. Look at the sky and stuff. And yeah, he's the one who brought up like, Oh, yeah, this week pretty good last week. And just let it hang in the air. And I was like, Yeah, yeah, last week was a little scary.

The yellow dust.

But anyway, yeah, a triple win had a nice little chitchat with a local.

Got to be a little bit. What's the word? I got to reinforce the idea that when you're 70 years old, doesn't mean you can't go hiking anymore. It should be fine. Just keep it up. Keep up your basic health and 70 is no big problem. I mean, unless you drop fucking dead, like my poor dad did when he was 69.

But assuming I'm still alive and kicking, he was actually one day before his birthday. How eerie is that? You know, we made a bit of a joke about it. Like, Hey, you know, you can hang on because he had medically assisted to a side. He didn't die, die. It's like, Hey, give it one more day. You could be 70. And he's like, Hey, yeah, I thought of that too. But I mean, fuck that. That's when you know somebody's ready to go. Can't wait one more day for your birthday.

Oh, actually, can you imagine how awkward that would be? Then you got on the last day that you're alive. Then you got like the nurses or whoever's coming to see you. I was actually the last person who saw him from the family. It's already sad enough. It would just be, oh, by the way, happy birthday. He probably made the right choice. Anyway, why am I talking about that? It's depressing. As long as I don't just pass away, I should be able to hike around at 70, because that guy is having no problems. And yeah, then I learned about smoke stack stuff and the view in this point doubled not only as an amazing view, but it's like a to chart a course, press of the wild style. I could see where I'm going, and it's not that far. Though that being said, the sun is going down, so I bid him a due. I took my leave. I'm like, yeah, you know, we got some time in the day, but you know, I was like, I pointed out to where I was going, you know, and if he had been like, hey, I'm going there too. Let's go. You know, I generally still prefer to go by myself 10 minutes if you're hammering his plenty, but I would have been like, hey, fine, I'm not going to say no, but he was not going that way. He's going somewhere else. So I said, well, I gots to go because I got to make sure I make it there and back before it gets pitch black. But yeah, charming, charming and delightful. What's a nice, what's a nice day? I didn't ask him his name. I never really do, but I mean, I guess whatever, whatever. For a one-time meeting, I think that's fine. If I ever somehow bumped into him again, if I lived in the neighborhood, on time too, that's when you go away, which is named by the way. But that is probably the single serving meeting with that fellow, but yeah, how was that guy? 70. Wowsers. Wowsers.

So yeah, it wasn't not at all a hard journey out here. It really looked so much further on the map, which makes me think, how tough is it to get to San John Beach? 14 kilometers. That sounds 35:00 bad. And the sun is going down. Surely, surely, I can't. I don't know, though. So anyway, as I got down here, I was thinking like, you know, hey, there's the mountain I was just on, and I couldn't make out any details from down here. But it's like, you know, if that dude hung out up there for 20 more minutes, he could see me right now. I doubt he did, but if he did just hunker down up there, you'd see little me walking down the street. So what this place is, Juxiang Dream Filming Site, is it's like a little, a little lighthouse or it kind of looks like a chapel. I don't know, there's a real lighthouse out in the bay from here. Lots of rocky rocks out in the water. But yeah, basically, they built this thing for a TV drama in 2009, which seems kind of excessive for a TV show. But when I was flipping through channels in my Jucheon Airbnb, it's very clear. I mean, I guess we all know this already from Korean movies and K-pop videos, but they don't fuck around. Korean TV is beautiful. It looks real good. So it's not so crazy, they would build this whole thing just for one drama. But it's funny because even on the little plackyard thing, they've got all kinds of different sort of movie type stuff. What are those things called? The tetrapods? They're a lot more common in Japan. I don't see them that much here in South Korea, but they're these big concrete things I'm looking at some right now that are like four prongs poking out. And I guess you put them on a shoreline to stop the shoreline from receding. There were so many of them in Japan that I did a little research and it was very inconclusive. Some people say they help, some people say it's just a new way to litter the shore with this other shit that's never going to go away. Beats me above my pay grade, but the little tetrapods down here have little drawings and symbols on them of different, I assume, Korean film projects, who hopefully, it's very windy, but hopefully this wind, I think it's okay in the recording, but anyway, this particular one, even on the little plackyard explaining, it said, yeah, this thing was built for this 2009 drama. So I was like, wow, maybe this was an extremely famous TV show. But then it said, though the drama itself has long been forgotten, they did not mince words. No one remembers this drama. No one cares about it at all. But they left this thing up and now it's a tourist attraction. And it's like, oh, that's pretty cool. Why not? You know, better than just building it for a one-off use and then tearing it down, though there is nothing inside. You can't even go in just empty because it is just a shell building. But that's kind of cool. And again, just as an excuse to walk here, because this is just like a little seaside community, just tons of little restaurants and little stuff going on down here. It does seem like the kind of thing that I don't know how many people would come here. I don't know how many come here now, but at least there's some reason. That's why I'm here. So just as an excuse to hike up over the mountain and come down here and see the seaside, it's doing its fucking job. But then from here, it's like, hmm, I could go north or south, north seemed a lot more inviting, seemed like much more of a distinct path. But, again, that would just lead me to that street that I bailed out of at the start of this journey. I don't want to go up and get stymied by that again. It would be better just to go back over the mountain. But then, if I am going to go back over the mountain, I mean, I kind of got to do it right now because the sun is getting pretty low. Even if I immediately went straight back the way I came, by the time I got out the other side, it would be pretty dark. So I'm not quite sure what to do. I guess I'm just going to walk south down the shore and just see what happens. But on the map, it doesn't look like there's much there. It doesn't look like there's many ways to connect back over to the main area where the train station is. There was a bus stop and one of the rare times when I was like, hmm, that's not the worst idea.

A bus would get me the heck out of here. But I have no idea when the next one comes if the next one even is coming. So I guess I'm just going to walk down the coastline and see what happens. I don't know. Maybe I'll just end up walking all the way to Songjohn. It could be worse.

But the sun is on its way down, so, you know, it could be better too. I smell a lot of if coming off this plan.

But it is really nice down here and this is totally.

Like, yes, I say there's a lot of restaurants and stuff, but it does not at all have a touristy feel like these really just feel like restaurants locals would go to and stuff. Definitely a little higher concentration in the normal, I guess, just because it's seaside. There's a little bit of a touristy flair, but it's pretty light. This totally just feels like little seaside neighborhood doing its thing. But yeah, it wasn't the easiest to get here and it doesn't seem the easiest to get out, either. On foot. I mean, if you were in a car, it would take you fucking two minutes to drive out of here. But I'm a foot man. Okay, here's a map. My last chance to figure out what's going on. You are here, red dot. Oh, there we go. Okay. Let me pull up my phone, do some full translating. Let's figure this shit out. Because yeah, just looking even down, down the shoreline, I just have a feeling the shoreline is going to become pretty impassable if I had to guess. All right, evacuation route. Hopefully, I won't need that. Emergency evacuation site. Hopefully, I won't need that. Oh, the flood area. If it does flood, yeah, I'm in the flood area. Delightful. Unfortunately, this is not a... Here's how to get out of here, map. This is just an emergency map. Wait, though. Okay, so there's a mountain on this picture.

Presumably, that is the mountain I was on. Maybe this is easier to escape from than I thought.

Maybe it just feels like I went a long way because I went up over a mountain.

Yeah, I think I'm not going to go down the shoreline because that seems like it may just disappear.

Yeah, if I just go down this little road ahead of me and hang a right, it looks like I'll connect up to a highway with a walking path so distinct on it that I can see it from this satellite photo. And that seems to go around the other side of the mountain.

Well, I've had worse plans in my life. I mean, hey, it's a satellite photo. How wrong could it go? Stay tuned. We'll find out.

All right, so the mountain that I saw on the evacuation photo was another smaller mountain. It's not the one I was on. Yeah, now that I think about it, of course. I mean, it's not the biggest mountain in the world, but it's bigger than that.

So everything was funneling me back toward that terrible little street that I didn't want to try to walk down because it seems like a terrible plan, especially now that it's getting dark. It's even worse. So I got back to the entrance of the mountain path that I came out of. And from here, there is a map. It's like there's this one. And then there is another one. Down sort of over to the side somewhere. It's probably not that far from here. I'm looking at where I suspect that it is. But it's just getting too dark. The sun is dropping too much. If I had more time in the day, I would go mosey over there and try to find it just for just for a slightly different path back. But it's only, you know, like 200 meters to the side. It's best all essentially the same thing. It's just going to be hiking over this same mountain in a different place. And one thing I have come to realize is when you take these courses in the reverse order, if you do just go straight back, it feels pretty different. It doesn't feel like, oh, here I am just on the same path I was just on. It's all backwards. It's the mirror course.

And I just don't know how else to get the fuck out of here. So no more dicking around. This is a pretty minor little 200-some meters up at the top of this mountain up and over.