#122 Moontan Road in Busan is kinda creepy

Transcript

Alright, this is part two of a particularly long adventure that I had in South Korea, so I split it into two episodes. So if you're a regular listener, you're all caught up that we're on our way to the Moontan Trail. But in case you're just jumping in with this episode, so in Busan, there's this trail called the Moontan Trail that goes along the coastline, and it's a really cool, beautiful walk for a couple of kilometers. But I saw that there were lights all along it. And then signs and stuff saying, hey, come see it at night. Come see the Moontan Trail at night. I was like, whoa, that'd be weird. This is already a cool, beautiful thing. You can come walk this at night. But it was a little hard to maneuver my day to be able to be there at night.

So this is the episode where I finally made it to the Moontan Trail at night. So we don't start there immediately. At this point, I was walking from one of the beaches north of the Moontan Trail, where the path kind of curves around the edge of the shore, walking back down South, the sun basically down on my way to this trail.

So let's hop in in media res. Here we go.

Man, as I walked along the shore, when you get to the points where there's no businesses, and there's no more coffee shops and restaurants and stuff, and you're just looking out at the darkness of the sea. And there's just like a, there's like a big construction rig looking thing, and then there was some kind of ship out there with some lights on it. And that shit just looks so scary. Ghost ship is just floating out there.

And man, it's just must, it must be so scary to be on a boat at night. I guess I was on a cruise ship once, and that certainly was freaky. Just that perfectly flat horizon line in every direction. And you can't see anything. I wasn't scared of it the way I'm scared of heights, but I didn't like it. I didn't like the feeling. And I guess being on one of the rooms, my room didn't have a balcony, but one of my friends' rooms had a balcony. And being out there at night is pretty freaky, because you just look down and see the ocean going by, and it's like, yeah, what if you just fell off this? What if you threw someone off?

Or imagine back in the day being on a pirate ship in the middle of the night, so far away from land that you can't see anything but ocean in all directions. Like a storm would be one thing, but even just on a quiet calm night. I imagine this probably pretty freaky. Even when I fantasize about pirate days, I fantasize about being a shopkeeper in the town who is on land all the time. That's fine. Anyway, one thing I forgot is that there's actually a point where for real road crosses this nice walking trail. It's called Blue Line Park. Maybe that's what the blue car-poor was talking about.

Could it be blue car-port? It meant I don't know. Anyway, I remember this now coming the other way, because I remember I got to here, and I was like, should I just keep walking? This seems like a good time to bail out, but I guess I'll just keep walking along the shore and see what happens, and then that's when I got to Songjong Beach, so I'm glad I kept going. But today, yeah, I'm going up this way. I'm getting the fuck out of there, because I know the dead end is coming soon, the construction dead end down there. So now I'm heading up into the city, and I guess my plan is to just find whatever road, because I'm going to end up going up to the top of the bluffs now. So I'll just try to stay on whatever road is closest to the bluffs, and then hopefully, at some point, I'll just see signage that says, hey, go this way for the Moontan Trail. But at this point, it's a little 50-50, whether or not. So I'm not totally sure how close I am, because I don't, again, I never came out the other side. I took a little side path on the Moontan Trail and went down to the shoreline. So I don't know how far it goes, and what neighborhood it exits into, and as far as the idea of going all the way back to where I originally found the entrance, and then doubling back. I don't think so, because it's only 830, but I mean, it's definitely though, like, around that time that I should be starting to head home. 5:00 You know, it always takes a lot longer than I think it's gonna. And it's real dark out, and this has been a fine adventure. This has been a very nice stroll on its own. So far, attempt number 1 billion to do the Moontan Trail. I'll start from the original beach, the one with the mermaid statue, and I'll start from there, and I'll do this proper.

There's an idea coffee at that beach. I can go, if I go again later in the day, and I just go to that coffee shop, I can hang out there until it's dark. And then, and then complete this quest. It could still complete today, but it doesn't feel especially likely.

But yeah, this city, really pretty at night. It's just really nice to walk through.

Yeah, I mean, besides that one really insane batch of mega pollution, which I mean, cannot be overstated, that was fucking insane. But besides that, Busan has been a big thumbs up. It has been real nice.

Like now I'm kind of walking up a pretty steep street, and there's a bridge up there that spans over a gorge, and it's just fucking pretty as shit.

I don't know if I walked across that the other day when I was trying to find the dentist's office. I think maybe I did.

But I don't know. I still have a very vague sense of local geography and where anything is. But that was a beautiful walk. This is a beautiful walk. Just a really fucking beautiful city.

Alright, I'm starting to feel significantly more confident about this plan actually succeeding today. So, just right, that last thing I was recording, walking up this street toward this really pretty bridge that's spanned up over across it. First off, I guess I walked by a CCTV thing. This has been happening the whole time in Korea as well, and I just haven't brought it up yet. Maybe I just don't notice sometimes because I have headphones in. But there's a lot of CCTV things that start talking to you. Like I just walked by one, and it just started talking, and I have no idea what it's saying. But my presumption is that it's, you know, the pre-recorded voice is probably saying like, hey CCTV here, you're being recorded just letting you know. Because I don't know what else it would be saying. But that was actually a surprisingly public one because it happens a ton on mountains. Upskier mountain areas, or like those, those like gyms that I mentioned that are always up on mountains. I'll just be walking along, and suddenly this thing starts talking to me. It's like, alright, okay, settle down. I'm not here to vandalize your gym. There was one by Englonson on that side mountain that connects to Englonson in Seoul. It's a really cool walk. But there is one point that's a bit barren, like you're kind of just on top of a big rock mountain top, and they did put up ropes to keep it somewhat safer. But there's one up there, and that one, again, I don't know if they're saying anything different, or if they say the same thing every time. But that'd be a good one to say, like, hey, by the way, if you're thinking of jumping off this thing, here's some numbers you can call, there's some people you can talk to. Because it would be a primo place to dash yourself upon the rocks, to end your freaking life. It's pretty scary up there. But then just a little bit past that, I saw, like before I even got to the bridge, I saw a little stone steps going up into the woods with lights. And there was a sign that said 0.86 kilometers, so a bit less than a full kilometer, to a tourism center. And I'm on that path right now, and it's essentially the Moontan Trail. I mean, I know it's not because the Moontan Trail was a little over two kilometers. But I bet this trail, probably if it connects up to a tourism thing, then the tourism thing will no doubt connect up to that to the Moontan Trail. But even this by itself, like this would be fine on its own, because this is what it is, like I'm walking through the woods. Not quite as severe as the Moontan part, like there's a city down below me rather than the crashing rocks of the shoreline.

But it's those lights, all the lights are on. And it's just as weird and kind of spooky as I thought it might be. Because yeah, it's nice that there's lights here, but I'm resisting the urge to turn on my phone flashlight, but it wouldn't be the craziest thing. Because just the way the lights are spaced out sometimes, it's hard to see the actual ground. It's a little tough to see your footing. And this isn't one of those cases where they lay down like some hiking carpet along the whole thing.

This is really rocky and just rocks and roots and just a normal path. Though I just heard a voice enough that it looked up above me, I can see the lights of a building. So yeah, I guess it's very much the illusion of being alone in the woods. But again, it's cool. I mean, it is. It's what I thought it would be, I guess. It's like a very cool, unique situation.

It's a super weird thing to do and to just put lights on this trail and like, here you go.

But I think possibly it's a weird thing to do because it's like, I don't know, it's certainly not the beauty of the moonlight. Oh, the moonlight stroll. I don't know, that's pretty easily counterbalanced with there's no good footing here. You got to be careful where you're walking the whole time and it's really hard to see what the fuck's going on. This is just a weird thing to do. That was my first impression and now that I'm doing it, that is what it is. It's a cool thing. It's unique and it's interesting. But this is a weird thing to do and I can see why other cities are not rushing to make moonlit fucking nighttime rough walking paths next to a cliff. It's fucking weird, man. Anyway, they also said the lights of this promenade turn off at 11.

So get out of here by 10.30. So this actually all worked out pretty well because yeah, like I was saying, I think it's like 8.30 now. Plenty of time.

I'm very, very ahead of the curve. It's 8.51. Yeah, time keeps on slipping. And I'm just accidentally quoting songs to fucking all over the place today. But I got enough time that I can take this carefully, which is nice. That's nice too. Yesterday I was saying how my knee. My knee was hurting pretty bad because I hurried my way down the mountain because it was getting dark. But by the time I got to the station, my knee was okay again. So that's good. Jesus, yeah, like what the fuck? Okay, I guess it's because at this point, there's not one but two of the lights that are out. They've mostly all been on. There's very few missing. But these two are both off. And yeah, the ground is just blackness. Like it's probably made worse because three lights down. That lights still on. So that one's shining in my face. So I can't see the ground at all. I guess that's the trick with this scenario. You really need all of these lights to be on. If you're missing one, God damn, it's like you're just stepping into. It's like in a video game. If the level architecture doesn't load, like the floor is missing and you're just walking in a black void. It's like, where is the ground? The ground is gone. This is weird. But again, I guess I was like I was saying with being on a cruise ship. I don't feel because like I'm very willing to admit when I feel scared. Whenever there's heights, I feel scared. In this case, yeah, it doesn't feel like that. It feels like being on a cruise ship. It just feels like this is just strange. This is just a weird thing to do. All right. I came out into civilization, just all of a sudden, being bang boom. There's a big apartment building and stuff. Where am I?

Hmm. I'm not at anything. There's these numbers. One, two, three, four, five. I'm just between three and four. Three is the Muntan Road entrance ahead of me.

So yeah, the proper entrance or the frontway entrance to Moontan is ahead of me, but there's some kind of entrance here. So that's good, because yeah, I like it. God's saying, I don't think I'm gonna go to the entrance and double back. Especially now that I've had that little taste and I realize this is actually not super pleasant. This is a little, this is a little weird. A little less than magical, a little bit more, just an awkward, difficult hike.

Okay, we got a little pathway down here. Oh, this one does have the famous hiking carpet that is all over Korea. It's like woven hay kind of carpeting that they put on paths. And I wonder, okay, so here we go. So these lights, they're very similar, but they have an actual crescent moon on the top of them, which I do remember from, oh, I see, it's like a moon in different positions. So this one's a crescent. The next one's 15:00 nearly full. So hopefully this is the back end of the Moontan Trail. And yeah, just looking down ahead of me as I go down, they all seem to be on. And yeah, these lights are not blazing my eyeballs, because yeah, there's one of the lights like the path I just got on, and it is blazing my eyeballs, like it's making it ironically harder to see, because it's shining in my eyes.

These Moontan lights, they're lower to the ground. They're not as bright, but it's like a good thing. It actually makes this easier to do. Walking down some little steps. Still pretty fucking dark, though. There's a little falling warning. Actually, this reminds me of going camping as a kid with like the Boy Scout, so the Cubs or whatever. There's this place, Yoho Lake in my home province of New Brunswick, where I remember one time we had to walk back from a lake at night back to the lodge. And the guy kept saying, like, oh, just don't turn on flashlights or anything. This was back when I was a child, so there were no cell phones with lights built in yet. He's like, don't turn on your flashlights. Just let your eyes adjust. And I don't think so, because that was the darkest shit I ever saw in my whole fucking life. It was so goddamn dark, so dark that I remembered it forever. I'll remember it till the day I die. And this has a little bit of that vibe of just like, just these patches of inky blackness, where it's like, you know, just a... I'm just taking it on faith that my foot is going to find purchase that I'm going to step on a thing that exists.

But anyway, still heading down, following the Moontan lights, with their little moon symbols. Yeah, this is very awkward. I guess now that, too, I was just talking about my knee since this is all heading down at this point.

It's like, again, don't go too fast. Try to go slow. This is always how I hurt my knee. But I feel like this is also just an awkward trip because it's just so dark. I thought I would like this a lot more, I guess. I think that's what that must be coming through. I'm sure in the tone. After all this build-up, after all of this, like, oh, this is going to be so magical. This is going to be a magical thing. Now that I'm here, I'm like, this is actually a very... This is a half-baked plan at best. Jesus, the lantern lights, I can see them now. They're still just going down and going down and going down. This feels like some weird level from, like, Dark Souls 2. You know, like, one of the less well-thought-out games where the map is just fucking bizarre and weird shit is happening. And you have to follow the flicker of a firefly or something so that you don't fall into a void that never happens in Dark Souls 2. But I mean, that's the kind of thing that I feel like would happen. Still just going down. Oh, geez. This doesn't make any sense. So there's lights. There's, like, the woven path thing. And then there's official steps. But the lights are, like, at this weird little ramshackle fucking path next to the stairs. So I can't see shit. All right, officially, here we go. Pulling out the phone.

Ideally, one should not need to use their own flashlight to navigate this. Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose? That helps a lot, actually. Should have just turned on my flashlight fucking five minutes ago and stopped complaining.

But yeah, what the hell's going on with that? It's, like, deliberately set up to leave the steps in utter blackness.

Anyway, you don't need to hear me complain for the next 20 minutes while I walk on this path. I think you get the idea. So I made it. I'm doing it. I don't like it. It's better in the daytime. I don't recommend this. Okay, we'll tune in later on when I get to the end of this thing.

All right, this is pretty interesting. I think this could be a good way to end the episode. 20:00 Assume after muntan, I'm going to walk down to the beach with the mermaid and everything. And it'll probably also no doubt be a beautiful beach. And then I'm going to walk to the subway and go home. But this kind of explains why, like, that this is truly a weird thing. This is definitely not a normal thing that I've ever heard of or seen anywhere else of just this attempt to make a trail like this. Some weird, very sort of severe terrain like this accessible at night. And this explains it. So these, you know, these, like, informational plaques that show up all over the world. I mean, I could have read a million of those to you at this point. They're all over the place, but they're usually, you know, a little on the dry side. But in this case, this actually super duper clears up what's going on here. Basically, the Coles notes, the quick version is there's a really famous Korean song from the 30s about the eight greatest sites in Korea. And one of them is seeing the moon from this area. So this is like embedded in the national consciousness that this place is where you go to see the moon. But how do you do that? You know, it's up at the top. It's just like a city. It's just kind of normal city stuff. And it probably helps explain why there's not one but two different trolleys down there. You know, there's the bigger train. And then there's those little capsules that's probably also meant to just chill out on and view the moon or just view the view of the coast in general. But this particular walkway that I'm on, this very strange like now to this part. Like this is where when I can see through breaks in the trees and I can see all the way down to the shore and I can see up to the water, it's more and more unnerving. It's like, yeah, and there's like a big warning sign on the fence like don't lean on the fence. And it's again no shit. This whole thing is so weird. And now this explains why they've contrived to this degree to make this happen is because of this song. This doesn't make sense. This is not an idea that somebody would have currently and be like, you know what we need to do? We need to make sure that people can go down to what is essentially an old animal trail and just let people see it in the middle of the dang night. It's because of this song. So okay, here we go. Let me read this to you.

Hyundai's Dalmeji has been known for a long time through its inclusion in the old song, Dehong Palgyang, which translates into the eight sites of Korea. In the mid 1930s during the Japanese colonial rule, Korea Broadcasting Systems predecessor company, Gyeongsyeong Broadcasting Station, received recommendations from its audience of the most scenic spots on the Korean Peninsula, and subsequently commissioned the song, Joseon Palgyang again, apologies that all my pronunciations will be wrong. In the first verse, the song describes the 12,000 peaks of Mount Gunggang and the high peak of Mount Hala. The second verse describes the sun rise at Siol Karam Grato, and here we are, the Hyundai Nightmoon. The sites covered in the third verse are the Bujian Highlands of Hamjyondo and the Daydong River, Moran Peak, and Yulmide Pavilion in Pyongyang. The sceneries described in the fourth verse are the volcanic lake in the crater of Mount Baikdo, and the raft floating on Amnok River. Joseon Palgyanggal was sung by singer, Song Wu Il Sun, and became popular nationally in 1936. After the division of the peninsula into South and North Korea, however, the name of the song was changed to Dehong Palgyang, moreover, the lyrics of verses 3 and 4, which detailed some of the scenic spots in North Korea, were changed to only include the sunset at Gyeongpude Pavilion in Gangyang, and the bell ringing at Naksansa Temple. The song remained loved by many people despite the changes.

So, that is the most helpful informational plaque I think I've ever seen in my whole fucking life. Because, like, I remember the first time I visited Japan, and I had this crazy night where I walked from Ikebukuro all the way. Well, as close to the sky tree as I could get, oh shit, okay, wait. I walked fucking three feet, and I got to turn on my phone again, because I can't see anything down here. Okay, yeah, and I spent hours walking across Tokyo, and I stopped at the Samita River. And I remember that plaque because it told me that that was the Samita River, which I had never heard of, and I didn't know about. 25:00 And, of course, now, if you've listened to this podcast series, I spent quite a bit of time by the Samita River. It's where I gave money to homeless people, and it felt bad about the world, as well as many fun things. But that one, that one is the best informational plaque ever, because, yeah, this just made no sense to me. Now that I'm here, this, it felt so great in the daytime, like, what a cool thing. What a goddamn neat idea. I can't believe no one else thought to do this. I can't believe no one else had the balls to do this. And then it's just very strange feeling to get here, and to be like, this doesn't work at all. This is uncomfortable at best, and I mean, I don't know, maybe you're not surprised to learn that there's no one else fucking here. I haven't seen one other person, because why would you come down here? This shit's fucking weird as shit. So, yeah, that really clears it up. That super explains what the heck's going on here. Super famous song, Seeing the Moon from this area is not only cool for the area, or cool in some obscure poem from, you know, 17, whatever. It's a super famous pop song from the 30s, that everybody in Korea knows, or at least of a certain age, knows, that it was only about eight things. Only eight fucking listings. Pretty rarefied air. And this made the top eight.

Ironically, it's a little too overcast. I cannot see the moon from here at all. I'm sure it's very nice though. I'm sure it's great.

But. Yeah. Again, I don't know. I mean, I was saying earlier, I don't know that anybody listens to this podcast for recommendations. I mean, I guess maybe. Maybe it's like, I assume it's probably, you know, just kind of like a vicarious travel. Like, hopefully you just find it interesting that I'm wandering around these places. But, you know, maybe taking a little note here and there, right? Oh yeah, if I ever do go to that place, maybe I will try to go to that one place or this other place. So in that capacity, I would say only come to the Muntan Road out of curiosity. It's like definitely unique. I don't think you're ever going to find another, you know, lit up nighttime trail like this. But, I don't think you're going to really like it either. It's instead of just being able to soak it in and just, you know, in the daytime, it's pretty cool. In the daytime, you can just soak in the ambiance and the environment. At night, it's just way too much work to make sure you don't twist your ankle and then possibly subsequently tumble headlong down a cliffside to die. It's just, it's just doesn't, it doesn't counterbalance. One thing is not worth the other thing.

And yeah, just, I underestimated how much these lights would, like at the same time that they're lighting up the trail, they're also blinding you. They're just, you know, doing both. This is not the ambient overhead lighting of street lights high above you. It's just these little lights down at your feet that are right in your goddamn face. Pretty fucking weird, man. What a fucking weird thing. I did just pass, though, exercise equipment. If you need to get your pump on, there'd be worse places. This is a pretty nice one.

But all right. So I did it, man. I did it. And now I'm still just walking along the Moontan Trail. Some say he never escapes that trail. Some say he walks it to this day.

Hmm, well, this is different.

So I'm saying how the lights have the moon at different stages on the top of the lights. So this informational plaque, see this is a good example. This is far too informational and barely has any relevance to anything. This one is information about the moon, the moon's radius, 1700 kilometers, a quarter of Earth's distance from the Earth, 380,000 kilometers, and take 158 days at 100 kilometers an hour. The reason why the moon appears to change shape, the moon orbits the Earth once a month, and in relative positions of the sun, who the fuck cares? Who the fuck cares? That's what you look up in a fucking encyclopedia. That's what you look up online. I don't need to know that. Why the fuck would I care about that? 30:00 I mean, that's a good example of like, that's a well-meaning one. But what are goddamn ways to time to make a whole plaque and just tell me basic facts about the moon? If I didn't already know, I'm not going to learn now. Fucking weird shit. That's how I feel about most of those. That's why I don't read random informational plaques that are all over the place, because a lot of times it does, it's sort of perfunctory. It's like, well, I guess we got to put a thing here. Let's just put a thing here. But it's usually at least vaguely related to something. Like, yeah, no, this used to be where lumber stuff happened 150 years ago or something. That's just facts about the moon. Get out of here with that.

Anyway, yeah, surely I get to the end of this trail someday, but if not, if I'm never heard from again, just assume that the trail swallowed me up and then my spirit was left to roam the earth and all I was allowed to do was to continue to edit and release these podcasts and then this will be the final one and it'll just end right here. That would actually be spooky as hell. And then, hey, did you hear? Did you hear about that guy who did that weird, obscure travel podcast? And then the last episode was about Moontan Trail and then he disappeared and no one ever saw or heard from him again. Well, where it is, his spirit is still on that trail. And if you walk along late at night, you can hear him whispering into your ear about the circumference of the moon and to have celestial bodies work. And he'll bore you to fucking death and then you'll fall asleep and tumble to your death off the side of the tree. Anyway, this pitch is getting stupider and stupider. But all right, thank you for listening once again. Mission succeeded. And yeah, I guess the ultimate lesson is again, don't, don't bother having a mission. Traveling is more fun without a mission. Traveling is more fun when you just fucking ramble around. But at least if I'm going to give myself a mission, I'm glad I pulled it off because it was a little touch and go there. But all right, I'll talk to you next episode. Adios.