#121 The seashore temple Haedong Yonggungsa in Busan

Transcript

Alright, today I got off the blue line in Busan one stop before where I got off yesterday, which even though it's only one stop, it feels like a different world. Because the blue line, it's an above ground train. And the stops are so far away from each other. So this is, I would say Osiria Station, but I heard the voice on the train say it different, but now I don't remember what they said, so probably Osiria. But it's all in caps. Like what's the other one? Bexco? I don't know, something about it being all in caps is cool. OSI, RIA, Osiria Station. Makes it seem, I don't know why, like why some of these things are all in caps, but it makes them seem special or something. And right across the street from here is the Lotte World Adventure Park, which should probably be Lotte Adventure World. That would roll off the tongue better. Lotte World Adventure Busan.

That is not my plan, but I bet if you had kids and stuff, that would be cool. That would be a cool place to go wander around. And it's just cool to go buy it just to see, you know, just to see cool, weird castles and stuff. I'm just looking at the map outside of the station. And I am here. Songjeon Beach is where I'm heading, which is one station south of here, but one of the rare times that the stations are very close, probably because of Lotte Adventure World. And then there's up north, Juxiang Dream Filming Site, where I went yesterday. Man, it's far away. Just on this fucking map of just what's going on in the local area and all these little different touristy places you could go. Yeah, it's pretty far to get to Juxiang Dream, even though that's only one stop. Yeah, that station, by the way. Juxiang, or Juxiang, it's like a weird word to try to wrap your tongue around. G-I-J-A-N-G, but I looked into it a bit, how you pronounce it. And it's like Kijang with a K sound. So I looked into that a little more, because I'm like, do J's just come out as K's? That's easy enough. But that is not the case. It's one of these things where, depending on, you know, just the way they spell these things out in English, does not really correlate to what they're saying. It really correlates to what's happening in the Korean. So it depends on what, it just depends on where certain letters are placed is what sound they make. So G's sometimes make a G sound, a hard G. But if they're placed around certain other sounds, then they make kind of a soft K, which isn't really something we have. But it's not like Kijang, it's Kijang, Kijang. Like you're just stopping, you're, you're, uh... The air from coming out of your mouth, making a little K sound. But it totally reminds me of French. There are so many weird rules in French about how you pronounce something this way, unless the, literally the next word changes how you pronounce the previous word, and you string sounds together. And it's all this stuff that I learned when I was a kid, but it's like, dude, if you didn't pick that up in school, like it's so many rules. It seems easy to me, but if I had to learn it now, it would be a nightmare. So I kind of feel like that's the situation I'm in with Korean. I thought like, oh, I can probably remember these, these little things. You know, when you see a G, just say a K, or there was another one that I saw somewhere, you know, a D sounds like a T, I believe. But it doesn't though. Like I'm not really getting any farther ahead. With these, these hardline rules that may not actually relate. Like if I, if I'm not gonna go deep enough in to actually learn what the rules are for when to say what sound, I'm probably better off just sticking with my, my dumb, North American, you know, awkward pronunciation of stuff. If I start trying to guess what the proper pronunciation is, but I don't know the underlying rules. Like what's the sense? What's the sense in that? At least if I pronounce it wrong in a consistent, fanatical way, that would probably be better for everyone than me just really saying things wrong.

It is interesting though, just stuff like that where I was watching a video recently about a lady, I wish I could remember her name. I really like her channel because she's about my age and she moved to Japan from Australia because she went there when she was 18.

For a long time, for like 18 months and then moved back to Australia, started a family, had kids, now the kids are grown up, now she's in her 40s and she's like, fuck this, I'm going back to Japan. So she literally moved to Japan and bought a house and is doing the whole thing and just chronicling her adventures about moving to Japan.

And like it's a little weird that there was this decades-long break but, you know, life ain't over yet, fucking just do it.

But she was describing when she first came to Japan when she was 18 and she had a phrase book and she could read the phrases out of the book but no one could understand what she was saying because she didn't have any of these underlying grammar rules, she didn't know anything worked. They basically had to start teaching her like she was in kindergarten, just start from the bottom at UAO, learn all the stuff.

And this is probably why my friend Tsunghi, who I met back in the day at a coffee shop job, my first Korean friend, who taught me how to say hungry and tired and count to ten and I can only remember how to count to five now. But I still got those, Pigo and Hayo, Pigo Payo, Ili Sam Sao, but she always said I sounded like a, like how a little kid pronounced this stuff and I assume this is kind of probably what she's talking about. It's probably stuff like this, like there's little underlying rules that I don't know and little flourishes I'm supposed to be putting on certain parts of the word or accenting things certain ways that I just don't know. And it's funny that it's because I know French that is kind of, kind of stopping me in my tracks. I mean, I've sort of realized that I actually enjoy being illiterate when I travel, it's kind of nice.

When you walk by people having a conversation and you don't have to deliberately ignore listening to them because it's just so hard for your brain not to listen in and I don't want to listen in and I don't care. Or having your eyes drift to advertising and signs and stuff.

It's like a great gift to be illiterate, just have all that swing by, which is definitely a weird take. Like if a genie came down and said, hey, you want to just be illiterate, I'm sure 99 people out of 100 would be like, that's amazing, yes please. I'd have to really think about it. The great gift to me is illiteracy. But even these small inroads into learning little bits about languages, just because of my experience with French, it makes me know what I don't know. You know, it makes me aware of how deep this goes, how many little things you need to know, how many little rules you need to know before you're even close to doing anything correctly in a second language.

Which is, it's like, well, I'm not even going to try to cross the moat, I guess, because like I just, I don't, you know, I'm only, I'm just like I'm vaguely interested. I'm interested in a passing way.

But if you want to go in on languages, you got to go all in. And I don't want, I'm not going to go all in.

But anyway, a few episodes back, I found, maybe it was only two episodes ago, but I found this trail called the Moontan Trail. This whole area of, of Dungbeck Island, and then across to Hyundai Beach, and all along that coastline all the way up to Sungjong Beach. Just excellent, the whole fucking area, everything about it I love, so I've just been exploring that little area more and more. So I found this thing called the Moontan Trail, that is this, you know, it's marked on Google Maps, pretty prominent, and it's like this trail, this two kilometer trail along the edge of the coastline, and it was really cool. But I went in the daytime, and I saw a sign there that claimed like, hey, we kind of made this, intending this to be a delightful moon light walk. It's like I really, because I'm kind of on a trail on the edge of a, not quite a cliff side, but it's, it's pretty rugged. But then I realized like yeah, there are lights all along this thing, how wacky.

But it's getting later and later in the year.

It's like the end of April now, so it takes a while for it to get dark.

So I haven't made it back there in the dark yet, so today I deliberately dragged my feet a lot.

I laundered all of my fucking bedding and stuff, because my little Airbnb room has a real, real humidity problem, a real mustiness problem. So it's like, hey, I'll just stay in and I'll do that. And I did a little podcast editing and stuff. I didn't leave the house till after four. And I've been kind of overextending. Like, let's go have an adventure somewhere else. And then as part of that adventure, I'll try to roll it into the old Moontan Trail. And then I just have too much, too much adventure, too much other stuff happening. 10:00 So today I left the house late, and I only went to Osiria, which is really close to Sungjeon Beach. And then the walk from Sungjeon, it's not exactly close to go down along the coastline.

Back toward Hain Day Beach, but it's like not bad, you know. And it's just, it's just like a walkway, a platform that they built that goes all the way around the coastline. And that connects straight up to this, this dang Moontan Trail. So it's a little after six p.m. now. I got a couple hours till it gets dark. And that's the plan. I'm just mosing down a nice little river toward Sungjeon Beach, which was also just where I, you know, the first time I got there, I kind of bailed out there. That's the end of that day. So to be kind of cool to go back there now, start the day more or less there.

See it in better weather. It's a lot clearer today. It's a bit windy, but I got my coat and my hood, so it's actually nice that it's windy, so it won't be too hot.

And yeah, I'm just going to walk my way down around the coast. And I should get to the Moontan Trail by the time it's dark. And I finally get to see this thing, because it's like, it's a little weird that I've been building it up so much. It's like not that big of a deal. It's a little two kilometer trail. But I just do think it's going to be really neat, because I can't think of any equivalence to this.

You know, like I guess you could walk through parks at night, and those are generally lit.

But as far as a relatively rugged mountain trail with lights set up, that's pretty weird. I can't really think of another place where I've seen that. And this one, additionally, is kind of on the side of a cliff. It's like, this is going to be cool. This is going to be weird.

And I get to just soak in a little bit more of just some neighborhood I've never been to before, because yeah, I just went too far. I mean, in a good way. Yesterday was a really cool, fun day. But going two stops away from Song John Beach was way too far. It was really far. It was like almost 15 kilometers away.

So now that I'm only one stop away, I'm not sure what the name of this river is, but it's just this little river that's pretty much just a...

just a touch west of Lotte World, and I'm just walking down that river.

Yeah, I'm almost at Song John Station already. So if I just keep following this, I'll get to Jucto Park.

Hmm, maybe I should try to hang a left here, head east, because there is another temple. Hey, Dong Yogunsa Temple. East of here, out on a little island peninsula area.

Yes, since I'm here, let's go try to do that.

But anyway, yeah, relatively minor adventure today, but I just want to make sure I actually pull this one off today, because you know, I still got a week to go in Busan. I'm at the point now where, since I'm heading to Jeju next, if I've got socks that are a little on the... I've gotten a little worn outside instead of going into the laundry bag. And now they're officially going into the garbage. I've been destroying socks. I'm just eating through them like my sweat is acid.

We're just something about how I'm wearing my boots. It's funny that my skin isn't being slone off the amount that I'm fucking wrecking these socks. But yeah, that's one of those little signifiers that it's almost time to travel to the next space. It's like I'm not going to try to keep these fucking socks got a little hole in it. I can make that work. If a sock has a medium hole in it. It's like, hmm. Now it's like, nah, you know what? These socks are going into the trash. And I'm sure there are still a million things I could do in Busan and tons of weird little random places I could be exploring. But this is the only one officially on my docket. A thing that I came across and was like, oh, that would be cool. I got to make sure I do that. And then I keep somehow not quite doing it. So today, let's do it. There's a Nikia out here, by the way. I haven't seen one in South Korea before, but it's same as anywhere. A great, big blue building. Aikias of the world. All identical except for the Ikea.kr on the sign outside. I'm sure in Canada, that's a .ca. Alright, I'm going to Mosey. See if I can't get to a seaside temple that I haven't made it to before. Oh, and there's 15:00 behind the Ikea. I can see the edge of the roller coaster for a latte world. That's kind of a cool, a cool landmark. Because it's actually, it's really tough to use. You can kind of use mountains as landmarks around here. You know, you can generally, like just yesterday, I could tell which way was inland in which way wasn't because of the mountains, but but not really because then on the way to the coast, I still had to go up over a mountain. It just kind of luckily worked out. Because yeah, like right now, I'm walking toward a mountain, but I am walking toward the coast. I guess it's just that there's more mountains behind me. Like in Vancouver, for example, you can totally navigate by the mountains because they're so enormous. It's like, okay, well, that's, that's north. Those are the mountains. So as far as local landmarks go to navigate by a castle-filled adventure land. That's pretty cool. That's a good one. Man, I don't know anything about the history of Ikea. I know they're Swedish. That's all I know. But man, I'm so interested in like capitalism stuff sometimes. Like I read a history of Walmart once and like all this stuff that it's very easy to take for granted. And we definitely live in a in the Western world at least. We really live in a world that is a super duper critical of business. And just so we really just take it for granted so much. It's like once you've become an established success, now it's okay for us to just try to crush you and just hate what you are and what you do. But to become a big established business is so fucking hard to do and so fragile. And man, yeah, just that Ikea is fucking everywhere. They fucking nailed it, dude. Like why is there an Ikea here? How did they pull that off? It's one thing that they transplanted to North America, but they're just fucking everywhere. Good job, Ikea. Nice work. Others may hate and despise the corporate business-y capitalist world, but I will give you your flowers. I salute you. I never go to Ikea. I don't know that I've ever bought anything there. I think I've been to one once ever, but you're clearly doing something right. So cheers to you. Yeah, Alan Key, little fucking weirdos. Okay, I'm just rambling at this point. Let's try to get to the temple.

Well, that was pretty fucking unexpected. So yeah, the Heidong-Yogonsu temple, H-A-E-D-O-N-G-Y-O-N-G-O-N-G-S-A temple. Because most of the temples I've found in Korea are kind of, you know, they just kind of seem like they're just sort of there. It didn't feel as deliberate as in Japan, I guess. There's a lot fewer of them, and yeah, sometimes it just feels like, you know, this has just always been here. So here it is. It's still here, you know, and along the sea shore stuff. I mean, as recently as yesterday, that thing was hard to get to. That weird little spot I was at, and I had to trek over a mountain to get to it. And then there's a lot of these smaller, they're not like full temples or just little pagoda type things, but those are all along the shore. Basically, that's kind of what I expected this to be. Just kind of, here's just another little thing, here's another, like an excuse, an excuse to go walk out to this particular point along the shore. And just by the way I happened to be wandering, I found a little path, and it was similar to yesterday. And I guess this has happened quite a few times, but these paths that definitely go through someone's property, you know, like definitely pass through someone's farmland. That's the case here too, but they always do make it very clear. This is a trail. It's okay, you're allowed to come here. Lots of ribbons, maybe a sign, you know, just like, it's all right, don't worry about it, you know, we got an easement, we got a plan, we got an agreement that you can walk through here. And I saw classic travel and blonde lady coming the other way down through this path, so that double confirmed, like, okay, no problem, you can do this, you can walk here.

But then I walked along this path, and it really was just nobody else was here. There's occasionally little ways to get down to the shoreline, I should be going to go down right now, because I'm walking back now. Can I walk along the actual shore proper? I don't know. 20:00 But yeah, I was walking along, and it's just a, just an empty trail, and then it went through the woods, and I was walking through with like, trees over top of me, and it's getting darker and darker, and I was like, this is just, it feels pretty weird. You know, I'm just like, it feels like you're just trekking through the woods. But then when I got out on the other side, that is the busiest temple I've ever seen anywhere in Korea by a lot. Hey, dong, you're going to the temple. Like, I did find another quite large temple here in Busan, up by the reservoir. And it was a little bit busy, but it was really was like locals that were mainly doing worship, you know, is what I tended to see there. I didn't see anyone else like visiting, where this place is tourist central. Tons, I don't know if I've ever seen that many tourists in one place anywhere that I've been so far in South Korea. Oh yeah, look at this. All right, I'm down on the shore. And from here, I can go across the rocks. There's some other people out on the rocks just staring at the sunset. I can walk across here to a beach, and then I think from there, there's a path, at least up to, uh, back up to the road if I can't stay on the shoreline. So good enough, three and a half kilometers from here to, uh, two-song John Beach, which is where I was trying to get to, to sort of start this journey. It's getting darker sooner than I expected, but that's fine. I should be able to walk from there to the Moontan Trail in the dark if I have to. And then that'll guarantee that it'll be dark when I get there. I guess this would be a good spot to watch the sunset, but I don't have the patience for such a thing. So I'm just going to keep walking, and I'll just absorb the sunset as I go. And I guess you can't, I mean, it's kind of down. I can just see like purple, purple haze over the mountains in the distance.

Yeah, and I can see a beach with some hotels, but is that the beach? I guess not, three and a half kilometers is a little too far. The, what was it called? The coolest hotel or whatever? I think this is a sub beach on the way to that beach that I'm looking at. It's hard to tell though, all the little beach inlets and stuff. They, uh, hard to tell one from the other. For me, but yeah, I got to this thing, and this temple was just fucking hopping. It was happening. I was shocked. I mean, there was like easily 200 people there throughout this thing, and it, uh, it listed itself as the most beautiful temple in Korea, which I, you know, it's, it was nice. It was pretty cool. Being on the coast was nice. It was a nice place to make a temple, but I feel like the temples way up in the mountains of Bukhansan, I mean, those temples themselves weren't as nice, because they're just kind of there. You know, that's a good example of like, there wasn't much going on there. They're just kind of there. The dogs lived there as much as anyone else. But as for beautiful natural scenery, I don't know. That's a, that's a toss-up. That's a tough one. Is it the coastline? Is it being on the jagged rocks of the coast? That's the most beautiful. Or is it the just fucking insanity of being way up in a mountain? I think, uh, I think for me, I got to go with the mountain. The mountain is just, is just wild. It just feels like you're in a dream. It feels crazy. Where I love the shoreline. I think that's been pretty obviously. I feel very good when I'm by the water. So I guess I don't need a temple. Yeah, the water is fine. If anything, maybe the temple's getting in the way of it. But anyway, I didn't expect that. That I went from like, should I be walking through the woods as it gets dark? Where am I going to? Should I just skip this part of the journey? What the fuck is this? This doesn't, it's seeming like a bad plan. And then it just flip flopped of like, oh, jeez, actually, this is so easy. Now I'm in this temple with a convenience store next to it and a big parking lot and stuff. And somebody asked me as I came out of the weird path in the woods, some guy with his, with his significant other was like, did you just go through from there? Like, what is that? So I just showed him on the map. Like, oh, yeah, there you go. See, it goes through here. It's not lit, but you got like an hour sun. You could make it. But I showed him where it went. And he's like, oh, okay, cool, thanks. But he did not go down it. Because probably he was parked in the parking lot, you know, coming through on footwood and help. But anyway, that was all right. That was one of those things again, I don't know. Not like anyone's really listening to this for like recommendations, I assume. But that one's like a neutral one. It was certainly nice. But I wouldn't say like, wow, go out of your way for that. It's just like, hey, yeah, if you're around, that's unexpected. That's kind of cool. And there's some people, I've got a fire going on 25:00 the beach. But I have to go down near the water to go around them. Or I will get smoke in my face.

But yeah, it's amazing how fast that stuff can change. Where also on the way back, it's like, that really was not a long journey. That was a very short little path. It only feels weird because the sun's going down and I didn't know where I was going. That it felt a little like, oh, I don't know about this. Then on the way back, I realized, oh, that was a really short path. That is no problem.

But it's also surprising how you just only need to go a little ways off the beaten path to just be away from all the tourist people. Because yeah, those people making the fire on the beach, they have a little tent too. They're all Korean. I just passed a Korean family, good daughter, mom and a dad. And there's another little family over there. And just like, just locals, just locals doing beach stuff. Where minutes ago, I was right by the the parking lot full of travelers of tourists. Even this late in the day, I was very surprised. I busy that place was. But yeah, that was pretty cool. Suppose though, now that it is getting dark, I mean, I assume that the walkway that goes down around the coast is lit, but I actually don't know, it probably is. If it's not, I suppose maybe this will be a little tricky. But in that case, I can just head up through the city and walk through that way. And then it'll be a case of what, what side of the Moontan Trail will I enter from? Because the entrance I know for sure how to get to is the one that's farther away. I'm not sure where the closer entrance is. Well, I find it who knows, but especially in the dark, I might just literally have to just overshoot and then double back. Wow, this is cool. So from this intersection I met, I can see the castle of Lotte World. And it's starting to get lit up because it's dusky now. Oh, the street lights all just turned on. So it's like purple and pink in the distance. It's the way you can see the castle of the magic kingdom, like the Disneyland castle. The way it's set up that you can just see it, you know, in the distance. That's how Lotte Castle looks. It's like, there it is. Come one, come all, come hither, come adventure. But all right, I'm gonna eat some convenience store food now while I walk. It was nice that there was a convenience store right by that temple, very handy. But the prices, yeah, he jacked them prices, man. It's like, like I got a bag of chips and it was $3. Basically, it's like an extra dollar on everything. But for the convenience tax, that's fine. That reminds me, too. I was saying how my current little mini quest that is utterly failing is to try to find somewhere to buy deodorant in South Korea. And I just can't for any price. Or that's not true. I found what seemed to be deodorant at all of young, at the all of young store. And it was like $28. Two for one. But still it's like 14 bucks. It's like I just, and I'm still not even sure if it was the right thing. Anyway, I forgot to mention that yesterday when I was just randomly wandering around in the middle of nowhere and I stopped in a convenience store to grab a bottle of water, they for whatever reason, they did have deodorant. But it wasn't like a stick deodorant. It was like roll on deodorant, which is not my favorite kind. Anyway, but it was a little teeny tiny, like, you know, the little airplane flight size one that should be like a dollar, you know, like the dollar store thing. And it was 10 bucks. It's just like, what is fucking happening? Why? What is the deal with deodorant? It's South Korea. It's fucking weird. Like vitamins have been a bit expensive, but not crazy. I mean, vitamins are just expensive anyway. So they're more expensive, but I didn't feel like that was like bizarre or anything. The deodorant thing is fucking bizarre. It's so hard to find and it costs you a tiny fortune. It's just fucking strange.

But all right, on with the journey is the sun goes down, the purple haze, all in the distance.

Excuse me, while I kiss this guy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All right.

All right, I finally made it back to Songjong Beach after all this time of sort of overshooting 30:00 it and skipping around it all this time. It's been a few days, but man, it is beautiful. So it's fully nighttime now, no surfers. I don't know if you can, I mean, it seems like you could surf right now because yeah, it's just really beautiful where there's like a million hotels here. And I can see why it's such a beautiful little crescent of beach. And just all down the coast, seeing all the lights and then the big dark mountains in the background, this is like a fucking beautiful spot. And I don't know anything about surfing, but it seems like you could surf. Maybe there's just not enough waves actually. The waves are pretty small. Maybe it's both. But as I was walking down the beach, there were some dudes doing exercise. And they're the only like super jacked guys I've seen so far in South Korea where it starts off doing pull-ups, push-ups, whatever beach equipment. You know, there's like exercise stuff all over Korea. And I mostly just see older people up on the mountains, you know, doing mobility exercises with the exercise equipment. But it was interesting to actually see some muscleheads, some fucking some hunks of meat. Because I do always hear about how image-focused South Korea is. And you know, everyone's trying to be all pretty.

And I don't know. I can't say that that seems especially evident. It still seems like, you know, there's, there's, I don't know, let's say 30% of the population does seem pretty concerned that they are dressed their best and put together and looking nice and everyone else is just kind of normal. So I don't know if that's more than other cultures seems, seems about the same to me, but I guess I'm also not a part of it. And I'm not, not exactly paying the closest attention. But those muscle guys made me think of something that has been floating in my mind the whole time I've been here. And it just keeps getting confirmed more and more every time I walk by a new gym is the signs outside of gyms in South Korea are fucking absurd. They're just, it's just stupid. And you should see the fucking Photoshop jobs they do on these, these fucking pictures outside of gyms. It's the worst photoshopping I've seen ever in my life. I've seen Photoshop's from fucking, I've seen Photoshop's from the 90's that are better than this. It's always some, you know, it's all like super compressed and weird looking and everyone's features are all not quite human looking. But it's just like literally just pasting somebody's head on and they have this weird habit of making the women and the men both look weirdly childish, these weird little terubic childhood faces. And then just put on a body that would make Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 70s fucking jealous. Just the biggest, most rippling body. And then they just stand the proportions also to make it all weird looking like like a shape no human could ever have, especially on the men, but also on the women. And this head that doesn't even remotely look like it could possibly really be the head that goes on that body. And, you know, some of these signs are better than others. There's this one across the street from my fucking Airbnb that I just hate walking past because it just looks so gross. It's just this weird big meat person that looks like they're made out of fucking beef jerky with veins bigger than an average person's muscle. And then this terrible job of just slapping this gross little terubic grinning head on there. And it's like, what is this? Who the fuck? No one in the history of the world is believing that any of this is even a slightly realistic representation of human life. And I really don't mean that in the sense of just like, oh, let's just tweak a thing here or there. Let's just bring in a waistline here. Let's broaden some shoulders there. You know, I mean, I'm sure this happens all around the world. Everybody wants their gym advertisements to make you think like, hey, if you come to our gym, you could not only look better. You could look just a little bit better than reality. You could be like a superhero. That's fine. That's what everybody does. Take that and turn it up 300%. And that's what they do here. It's just fucking flat out stupid. Every time I see one, I'm like, that is the stupidest 35:00 fucking shit I've ever seen in my life. Who the fuck thought that was a good idea? But they all do it. All of them. So if you ever come to South Korea, keep your eye peeled for that. Put that on the bingo card completely laughably ludicrous flat out stupid looking advertising outside of a fucking gym. It's fucking weird. It's so weird looking that it like creeps me out to walk past. I'm like, I hate looking at these abortions of humanity, these horrible monsters. It's just like, fuck. Who the fuck would ever want to look like that? That's the other thing. How is that enticing anybody? Like, oh, great. If I go to this gym, I could turn into a literal demon from the fucking underworld. It's the worst. Anyway, this extremely beautiful walk along this beach made me think of that. The beauty and the ugliness. But yeah, as I come to the end of this beach, this is where the end of this beach. That's how Chibi Doki, the vtuber, so that she doesn't swear.

She always says beach instead of beach. Come at me beach. But I'm talking about an actual beach. As I come to the end of this beach, then I'll have to go make my way up to the wooden walking trail that goes along the coast. And like I was saying, I don't know if it's lit or not. I don't even know, I don't see it. I don't know how to get to it. I guess I'll just have to take the exact route that I took to get to this beach the first time. Sounds so weird. I can't say beach anymore.

And yeah, I'll just reverse take the exact reverse track of last time or also get lost. And then even if there are no lights on that thing, I mean, it's just a walkway. It's just a walkway. It only goes forward and back. So if I have to walk it in the dark, I will. But I mean, it's probably lit up. But anyway, Sun John Beach, real good beach, what a good beach. I had that feeling of that little feeling of like, man, if I, you know, someone granted me a house, if they gave me the key to Busan and we're like, you can live wherever you want. I'd be like, yeah, give me that please. I want to live by that beach. That place is fucking awesome. That's like my little thought experiment for how much I like in neighborhood. Like I'd like to live by Musashi Itsukashi Station in Tokyo. But realistically, speaking of beaches, I'd want to live in the beach neighborhood in Toronto.

But luckily, realistically, I'd rather just move around to different places all the time and not live in any one place. So that's convenient because that's what's going to happen until the day I fucking die. Indigent man. But I write continuing, continuing on the journey. Man, it has dark as hell now. What time is it? Yeah, it's only quarter to eight. It's not really that late. Yeah, I think this was an okay plan to just start this adventure very late in the day, just to make sure that I actually do it because yeah, if I gave myself the whole afternoon, I would have gone and flung off to some other place and found some other thing. You know, what's that over there? It's a world of distractions. So this seems to be working out okay.

Man, it's funny to like realize like what weird assumptions that you might be having that then when you're in the moment, you're like, why was that even a question? Why was that even a concern that doesn't even make sense to be concerned about with like this fucking walkway? Well, I was like, yeah, I'm not quite sure how to get to it or whatever. Like, I'm just going to go exactly how I did before because I just came down some little stairway off of the trail and behind some seafood restaurant and then walk down a street. Like, I definitely got off it at an odd point. But what was the like, how could I ever have trouble finding this thing? It's a kilometers long walking path that goes along the entire coast and it's right next to railroad tracks. So, I mean, you kind of can't help but find this thing because you can't cross over the railroad tracks because there's a fence. And right next to that is this walking path that's before, you know, many, many, many kilometers. So that's kind of funny and silly and then will it be lit? What the fuck do you mean will it be lit? Like, the whole point today is that I'm going to a really sort of semi-bizarre thing of a sort of rugged mountain path, which is lit. If that's fucking lit, 40:00 why would there not be lights on the super major walking path that goes along the entire coast? Like, it's just weird. I think it's partially just because nighttime. Things do just feel different at night. In the daytime, it's way more like, I'll just stumble around and wander and whatever happens happens. At night, I guess it is a little more like, you know, I'm sort of, there's less options, you know. It's like you do kind of need to go somewhere that is already set up for you. You can't just wander through the darkness. But yeah, like, of course, there's lights everywhere. This place is lights grand central. And it's fucking so beautiful. Like, it's beautiful in the daytime because you get to see the water and the rocks in the coastline. Now all I can see is darkness out there and, you know, an occasional ship. But all of the little businesses and coffee shops and restaurants and stuff along this route, they're all lit up. Yeah, this shit is fucking beautiful as hell. However, I also remembered, hmm, is this the point? Should I, should I get off here? Is that I totally forgot that this actually currently does not go the entire way. There's construction halfway through. So at some point, I do need to get off of this and head up into the city proper. So I met one of the little trails now where I can cross over the tracks and go up some stairs, but it, man, it sure does look dark up there. And this is a point where I can just see mountains and stuff. The city's up there somewhere, but it's far enough a way that I can't see it. Let me try to translate this sign. 0.9 kilometers to what? What do you got for me? Should I, is this where I'm going? Or do I go somewhere else?

Blue Carpore, P-O-R-E, it doesn't even make sense. Usually, everything translates very well in South Korea. This is a rare occasion of, of not. I don't know, I'm going to go up a little ways and just see what's up here. But I also noticed along here, yesterday when I was on that mountain and I saw the two different trails. There was the orange trail and the blue trail. And I just saw those signs here as well. So I think what I was on was actually part of a bigger coastal trail path. That obviously you can't follow the exact coast the whole time because there's plenty of spots on the coast where it's either just rocks or some industrial concern or something, so it has to weave its way up. So at that point, if you were walking on whatever the super long coastal trail is, you would have had to go up and through that mountain. So that's pretty cool.

I don't know the details of that, but apparently there's a real long coastal trail that seems very tough to keep tabs on of where it actually is. Apparently, there's one of those in northern Japan where they more or less manage to tie together miles and miles and miles of coastline. But a lot of it is like you literally got to climb up and down ropes and stuff and occasionally just go up onto a highway and walk along because there's just nothing they could do. There's a guy Quinlan, his YouTube channel is Go North Japan. He did some videos about it. And it seems pretty cool. You can even arrange to have packs sent ahead to your hotel and stuff because it takes days and weeks to do this thing.

Hmm, all right, so now that I've gone up these steps, now I am at Total Darkness Trail.

But is this where I came down the other day? I don't know. Blue Carpore. What the fuck? Anyway, 944 meters, almost a kilometer to Blue Carpore. Anyway, yeah, I'm not going through here, because it's dark as shit. And the mention of a kilometer, that's not, that's not good. So I guess I'll just keep walking along down on the main thing and to see what happens. But yeah, I forgot that this is under construction, that I technically can't just walk along this thing all the way to the beginning of the Moontan Trail. All of a sudden, I'm getting the feeling 45:00 that this might fail again. I might not make it. I don't know.

One of these days, God damn it. One of these days, I'm going to do this. I'm going to make this happen. This, oh, maybe this is Ediya, sort of. I mean, this sort of speaks to how I like to travel in general, I guess, just to wander around. You know, two days ago, I went to Ulsan without knowing what Ulsan was. Yesterday, I just got off at a random train stop and just started wandering around. This is kind of a good example of, like, if you have too distinctive a target and too distinctive a plan, it's kind of a pain because this is fine by itself. You know, it went to that other temple. I saw a lot of adventure world, walked on the beach, now I'm walking along this thing and it's fucking pretty nice. It's just trying to get to this one specific area. This is fucking me up. This is making this difficult where if you adjust to wander, if you just wander in general, yeah, this is where I mean, this is like a one-off thing, like a one little specific thing I'm trying to do. But I definitely don't vibe with, I'm sure this is obvious at this point, but when people have a very distinct itinerary, I noticed that a lot while I was recently on Reddit way more than I usually am for various South Korean-related questions.