#128 Flying from Busan to Jeju Island, South Korea

Transcript

Alright, I'm at the Busan Airport about to head to Jeju, and I couldn't really find a good place in there. Can I talk to myself? This is pretty awkward. But I headed outside and toward the smoking area. And now I'm just by parking lot, still CCTV land. CCTV sign right behind me, so I still probably look pretty weird standing here. Talking indoor recorder, but I think this is alright. It's better than being inside. That's extra weird. Speaking of smoking, a little bit of a bad day today, like an 80 on the scale. So I'm looking at these mountains in the distance, and yeah, they look, it looks like this city is smoking right now. Smokesville. I know it's all relative. Maybe 80's not that bad. It's not, you know, 150 or whatever. But it ain't great. Overall though, things have been okay. There was that one horrible batch in the middle. Other than that, Busan has been pretty good. Like it feels quick. I was here for five weeks, but that day, I still very distinctly remember the first day I got here, of course, why would I forget it? But I mean, really distinctly. Like it happened two days ago or something.

This went by very fast. And I was kind of thinking like, because initially, my thought was, I'll just stay in Busan the whole time. I was just like, but it was more not as much above Busan. It was like, I'm just happy to escape soul and escape jet-chon. And really, just to not even those cities as much as I was just escaping the time of year, I think. It was just that horrible weather. It was just like, shit.

The pollution was getting me down. So it was a one-two punch, less pollution this time of year. And Busan is much more my style. But then I'm kind of floating in the middle where I do feel like I could stay longer. Like I do feel like I haven't. I was like, oh yeah, I was just seeing on the map today. Yangsan or whatever. And just seeing various mountains all over the place. And it's like, yeah, there's so many places that didn't go. So much stuff I could have checked out. But yeah, kind of right in the middle where I could totally stay longer. But at the same time, it feels real good to be getting going. And I guess since everything I've done has been train stations lately, I haven't been in an airport since I got to Korea. It feels kind of good just to head to the airport. Be at the airport. Do airport stuff. It feels exciting. Like I ride. Cool. It's just a little one hour flight to somewhere. But I'm going somewhere new. I'm doing a thing. And once I get there, I know I got to take the number 600 bus. I know which stop I got to get off at the place I'm going to does seem to be much more of like a real hotel doesn't seem to be hard to find.

I got money on my tea money card. I mean, just it should be a nice easy trip. The biggest trouble so far was here at the airport. I'm taking Jeju air. I wasn't sure if I could self check in because it was all in Korean. So I was going to like literally just pull out my translator app and try that before I go stand and align somewhere. But it was a little weird that there was an English button, but it wasn't until you get a couple of screens in. Then you can choose English rather than at the outset. That's a little odd. But there is English. Fight your way through. There is English.

And I actually got some sleep last night. So that's handy. Not as you know, a perfect night of sleep, but not terrible. But it is such a weird feeling to wake up from an alarm because I just don't often do that. I was in the middle of a dream and I won't regalia you at great lengths with my dreams, but it was a weird one where I was in some like post apocalyptic forest and I came upon this really dilapidated building. And I was exploring around and being like, I guess I could sleep here if I had to. And then somehow that building turned into a super new modern apartment in one corner. And I was like up on the roof looking down through like a skylight at this family. And the family was just really obnoxious, really shitty obnoxious people. I could just tell that they sucked and they were on their way out. So they left and then I snuck into the house and I was like, I had this vibe in the dream that it was okay to steal from them because they were so sucky. And I just went into their house and I went into their bathroom and I was like, wow, this is nice. And then the alarm hit. And I was stuck in that weird little limbo moment where I'm still dreaming, but this alarm is going off and then I wake up and I'm like, oh shit. It's not like a common dream. It's not like every night. I'm like, all right. I get to return to the beautiful world of robbing people in the dreamland.

Or if that is a common dream for me, I don't remember. But it seemed fun. I was excited to explore their house. And I was like, oh, I had to wake up, got damn it. But I can't complain overall. 5:00 Surprising because my sleep schedule has not fixed up. I felt like total garbage is recently as yesterday. And today I feel all right. So I don't have to try to sleep at the airport because this is, I don't think it would have worked that well here. It was great in Calgary because that airport's enormous. There's so many places you can go squirrel away. This one's very small. I'd be super conspicuous. I don't even think there's any seats where you could lay out anyway. It would be weird as shit if I tried to sleep in this little airport. But I'm fine. And that's another thing is the time of day where I'm like, damn, I thought my flight left at 4. It's actually not till 5. Had to leave the Airbnb by 11. Got here a little afternoon. Real short ride to the airport in Busan. But it's just like not that big a deal. Like by the time I sorted out how to print out my ticket and dealt with the weight of my baggage and just got my bearings. And now I'm recording this stupid ass podcast. Like by the time I'm done this, I'll have two hours at most. Again, it's as true now as it has always been. You can't have too much time at the airport. It's impossible. Even if it feels like, geez, I'm going to be stuck here all afternoon at the airport. No, you won't, dude. It's going to go by so fast. And it's so much better than the alternative of being squeezed for time, of just having too much time. Even just on the way here. I tried to use the washroom and my Airbnb and my body is just how it works. It's like it's ready to go or it's not. Nothing happened. I tried to use the washroom at the subway station. Nothing happened. Then halfway to the airport. I just need to poop. Baby needs to poop. So I had to just get off at a random station halfway through. And the washroom wasn't on this side of the gate. So I had to go through the gate to use the washroom and then pay an extra $50 when I got back on the train after. But I mean it was worth it. It was worth a $1.50 to have a nice poop. Get that out of the way. Make sure that's not happening when you're stuck on a flight.

And now it just becomes, I did have a coffee. One last thing before I left the Airbnb ahead, my classic coffee cereal breakfast. Make an instant coffee for the liquid put cereal in it. Yum yum yum. But now it's dehydrate and fast for the rest of this trip. Because I think the bus ride on the other end might be longer than this flight. So anyway, I got a little time.

Dehydrate time. But yeah, once I got here to the airport.

This is kind of cool because I actually got to use some of my previous silly experiences, but in a way that actually helped. So if you think we're back to when I flew from Tokyo to Fukuoka and the carry on baggage could only be seven kilograms. Which on this trip I've gotten a lot better at figuring out what distances mean and what heights mean. I'm doing pretty good on those. Wait not so much because it just doesn't come up that much. I still have a very vague idea of what. I mean, if I hold my book bag right now, I mean, I guess that's about nine and a half kilograms. But I don't really know what that means. So I'm never sure where I'm going to fall on the thing, but that one in that case, seven was absurd. So I filled all my pockets with everything that I owned and I got under seven, which is nuts in hindsight. But this time I did a lesser version. Like this is kind of neat where instead of that insanity, you can do a more reasonable version of that in cases where it helps. Like in this case, with this flight, the baggage needs to be under 10 kilograms. And I think I'm not sure, but I think this ticket I got, which was so cheap, is like $45. But I think it does include a checked bag. I'm pretty sure I could just check the bag. And even if I can't, it's only like $8 to $10 here. It's not like $25. Like it was with peach air. None of it would be a big deal if I didn't make it under the 10, that's fine. But I got so close between my main bag and my little day bag, I was just under 11 kilograms. So what I did, because I always travel with this bags within bag system, which arguably the several bags, I mean they are adding up a little bit of weight themselves. But it's worth it just for the ease of not just having a book bag full of loose stuff, is in my main book bag, I've got a bag with all my clothes in it and a bag with just miscellaneous whatever's.

Those are the relatively big ones, those are the ones staying in here. And between those and my laptop, it's just under 10. It made my bag about nine and some kilograms and then with my little day bag, you know, I got just under 10, like just barely. 10:00 But how I got under that is that I then have a couple of smaller bags, it just have like toiletry stuff. And there's another one that I don't even know what it is, I guess it's just like, it's a mouse. Sorry, I did buy a mouse, a mouse on a mouse pad in Jetion. And you know, just cords and cables and power converters, whatever, that's in a little bag. So those two smaller bags, those do easily fit in the pockets of my jacket. So I just moved those into my jacket pockets, it took me down a kilogram. And now I'm under the weight and it is like, it is magic. It's like these pockets in your coat, they just don't count. It's just like a cheat code, you know, that just doesn't count as your... Because they do count not only your main bag, but if you have a carry on, a little or a little day bag or a purse if you're a lady, it's that count. But your coat just doesn't count. Anything in your coat just magically doesn't count toward the weight. And it does seem like reasonably speaking. Like I must have had, you know, four or five kilograms of stuff in my coat. And I had my laptop hidden under my coat. It was totally crazy what I was doing in the Fukuoka flight. But in this case, it's just one little kilogram of just taking those little tiny bags, putting them in the pockets of my coat. It's not even weird. Like I can go through security like this and it's not weird. It's fine. It's just a couple little bags in my pockets. And it takes me down that one kilogram. So I think this is pretty good. And I mean this is nice because I don't think I can really have much more than this. I'm at capacity for how much stuff will fit in my bag. So even this is just kind of good to know. If I'm at a place where it's seven kilograms or less than two fucking bad. But if I'm at a place where it's 10, I can make that happen with slight little adjustments. I can make that happen. But again, it's nice to have extra time in the day because it still took me 20 minutes of digging around to figure this out. What do I care? I got all afternoon. Just chill, dude. Figure this out. Get down under the thing. Nice.

Because even if I get a free checked bag, when's the last time I checked my bag? I guess it was coming back from Fukuoka. And it was no biggie. Maybe I checked my bag coming to Korea as well. I don't know. I don't remember. But you know, it's not a biggie. But especially for a one hour flight, who wants to deal with all that? I'd rather just take my stupid bag with me. And I managed to make it work. So that's cool. That even that nonsense that I did, it was dumb on that day. And I was very stressed on the way to Fukuoka. And that was like a ludicrous and silly, potentially embarrassing, weird, hermit crab thing. But then I can apply that knowledge and just apply it to the system. And it's like, yeah, but now I know you can put stuff in your pockets. It doesn't count towards your weight. They don't weigh you as a person. And if I do it reasonably, it can just nudge things just a little under where they need to be.

So that's kind of cool. That's handy. But yeah, overall, feeling kind of good. Feeling good to go to a place. Feeling good to just do just to go. You know, five weeks is a long time. I mean, Jeju for six weeks. So I haven't booked anything past Jeju. I figure I'll get to Jeju. See how that is. What if it's so amazing? I want to stay forever. And I definitely like that about Korea. I find Korea very comfortable to travel with it. You know, I was getting better at that in Japan. It's not hard in Japan. It's not bad. I'm really looking forward to next time I go to Japan to taking way more local trains just down the coastline and seeing if I can string that into a trip.

But it's even easier in Korea, just taking those those trains between the cities. Now just the little airport, Sich and fucking little t-money cards. And it's just even though I only took one bus in Jeju, just that I took the one bus. It's like, ah, good because there's nothing but buses on Jeju. There's no subway, but just one bus is enough for me to feel like, okay, I know how the bus works. You know, I get a little worked up about stuff I've never done it before because you just never, you don't know what you don't know. But it's no biggie. Just to do, I guess the only thing I haven't done is, is I always recharge my t-money card in subways and there are no subways in Jeju. But Jeju was kind of like a test of that too.

I've just not having the t-money reload. And in the case of Jeju, I was only there three weeks and I didn't use my t-money card much, so I didn't have to reload it. I probably will in Jeju, so I'll have to do the thing where you go to a convenience store and ask someone to put money on your card. And I found as a phrase on Reddit, like the fucking, here's how you say, charge my card, but I didn't write it down. I feel like it's, I still feel like it's weirder to try to speak a language you don't speak. I just feel like if I, if I really do run into someone who just can't speak English at all, who doesn't know charging the card, 15:00 if I just have money and my card and just pantomime money on card, I just can't imagine it's going to be a problem. But I guess we'll see. But all right, I'm going to head back into the airport and I predict that I will have no problem filling up the next couple hours, because time goes by so quickly.

You Tests, test, test, test, test. Yeah, there's no, uh, this is gonna see if I could talk into my sleeve while I'm in the airport. I mean, I kind of can, but this is a bit weird. I don't know. Maybe I can pull this off. I've only got like 10 minutes of the split leaves. I don't know why. I feel like I gotta squeeze this in. Yeah, one little technique. I forgot about this. I don't remember doing this since I had a pretty long layover in the Taipei Airport in 2019. I'm away home from Japan that first time. That's the last time I did this technique, but I was reminded of it today where I'm sitting here just watching, just watching anime. There's this anime called Bar Tender. There's a 2024 series, but it turns out also a 20, uh, 2011 live-action 2006 series and a manga that started by before that. I never heard of this thing before, but I checked out the new one. And it's pretty delightful. It's just this bartender who, you know, he can just read through your body language in your, you know, the clues about what you're wearing and stuff. Just what drink you need to get you through the trials of that particular day. And he gives you just the right drink and just the right little piece of advice to spur you on to your next day. And I definitely like the manga the best. As always, the manga's always the best. But it's pretty delightful. So I was watching that, but I was just hitting that point where I just couldn't, couldn't really keep my eyes open anymore. So since I've got this book bag with a really stiff back, it's bad for my schooliosis because it digs into it a bit. But it's nice because if you put this book bag on your lap, you can then just lay your head on the book bag, not for an extended period of time because it digs into your legs and stuff. But I set it up, set the alarm for 40 minutes and just gives you just enough time to just pass out a little bit, just to just to get that little drop of a little wee mini nap. And then I woke up a couple of minutes before the alarm even. It was perfect. But then I realized, oh yeah, I probably should have gone through security first and been on the other side while I'm waiting. I don't know. I don't know if there's a time limit. Is there a, how early can you go through? Probably doesn't matter. Probably very early. But I just didn't. I was still on the other side. So it's like, oh crap, I've only got half an hour till this flight leaves. And I just realized, oh, I actually haven't done the thing yet. I haven't gone through the security. And just a little thing, but on my boarding pass, it says Keith McNally, but on my passport, it says Keith Andrew McNally. And the guy was like, no, your whole name's not on this. Gotta go to the other countering. Get this fix. So I'm like, shit, I've been here all afternoon. And yet I still didn't avoid running around at the last moment going from counter to counter and getting stuff fixed. Like, shit, I fucked up. But I went over to the other counter. Luckily, it wasn't busy. And then they changed it to Keith Andrew, like it's one word. Like my first name is just Keith Andrew. And I was like, hmm, I mean, that's actually more wrong. I would consider him before. But that was fine. That got me through. And my big, cool boots that I bought in Seoul, man, the metal detector does not like these bad boys. So my boots got to come off from here on in. But other than that, all good. No problem. And they never actually checked a second time about, like they never did the official check of the weight of my bag. They did that for sure with peach airlines in Japan with peach. They were like, we wish we wish to charge you. Here, they had a little thing where you could weigh. But I don't think there's going to be a second check anywhere. So, but I mean, how could you know such things until you're there. But I think it, I think if you had a heavier bag here on Jeju Airlines, it seems like it would not matter. Unless it's like wild, like you're carrying skis or a cello. I don't think anyone's going to care. But again, you can't know that till you're here. Anyway, they're surely going to start letting people on soon. So I will go.

All right, let's see if I can talk to myself on the bus for a little bit before it gets too full. If it does get too full, I don't know how often this bus leaves, but it's a little empty right now. I had to tell the guy at the start how far I'm going. So we knew how much to charge me. And I'm not sure. Seigupo port is where the Airbnb said to go. I don't even know if I'm pronouncing Seigupo correctly.

But I didn't see that on the listing. I saw Seigupo harbor. Surely the harbor and the port can't be too far away, right. But I mean, even this bus ride, I mean, it's like, I'm at the north end of the island. I'm going all the way to the south and I believe it's less than an hour. The whole freaking island isn't that big. So surely that one city also won't be that big.

But I just got to get there before nine. And what is it now?

638. Shouldn't be a problem. Should be no problem, no matter where I end up.

Man, so with the little domestic flight in Fukuoka, one of the funny things was they had to get everybody into a bus and bust them over to the plane. And I thought that was kind of ridiculous because it was a very short ride. And it's like, I guess though, I guess you can't just have a little line of people, like little ducklings going across the tarmac. And I mean, it was still a bit of a drive in Fukuoka. This one, same thing, had to get in a bus. It was literally, we crossed the street and turned around. Like it was farther than I can spit, but not as far as I could throw a pebble. Like it was stupid. It was just ridiculous. It's like, just walk across the street. But again, I assume it's an airport safety thing that you just can't have people walking across, but it's so close. It was ludicrous. But man, that flight was short. Holy crap. I finished an episode of the bartender show. And then I started watching this other show called a restaurant to another world where as far as I can tell, it's a guy who is a modern day Japanese chef. But there's a way that people from a fantasy world one day a week can come into his establishment. And they're just blown away by his amazing culinary stuff. So he's feeding like weird barbarians and dragon people, you know, very delicious food. But I kind of like it. It's kind of good. And it looks like it's an evil dragon who set this up, set up this plan because she loves beef stew so much. So he hires somebody from the fantasy world to be a waitress. And I just love that mix because I love domestic anime. I love domestic stories. But also there's a chance that they can be very boring and pointless. So just to add in the fantasy element, but with no, you know, no time to crystal. No, I'm the chosen one. I know the magic sword or the land is under the blah, blah, blah. None of that. Instead, it's just a cooking show, but he's cooking for these cool mythological creatures. I don't know. It's pretty good. But anyway, I watched those just an episode and a half anime and we were landing already. It's like, holy shit, that is a short fucking, that's a short ride.

And it's weird getting here to Jeju because the first thing I notice is that it's much more tropical. It's got like those tropical looking trees. But at the same time, the airport feels like every airport. It feels like I'm in Montreal just going to grab the bus to head downtown. Except, you know, in the distance, you can see that things are different.

It seems cool though. Oh, man, so maybe it's starting to fill up in here. I'll wait till I get off the bus to tell you the tale of the guy I saw in the washroom.

It always comes back to washrooms with this podcast, but this guy, man. Anyway, yes, so far so good. I'm in Jeju.

Alright, I made it to Segwipo, which I think that's what I was listening to the voice on the bus when it would announce stops. Segwipo, I mean, I think I'm saying it right. It's not the craziest word of all time.

S-E-O-G-W-I-P-O. Segwipo. I feel like there's only so many ways you can say that, but I have started to realize some of my pronunciations are pretty off here in South Korea. But it's nice. It's nighttime. Everything looks pretty at night, so it definitely looks pretty. And it's got that kind of palm tree vibe. Stop me. Oh, oh, oh, stop me. If you've heard this one before, but I don't know anything about southern trees and palm tree type stuff.

I just know that kind of leaf type from visiting Florida or from watching movies, but it's like that. It has that feeling.

And in fact, it's kind of breezy today. It reminds me a lot of, as I was making my way down the coast when I was staying at Yokohama, and I would go check out the various points on the beach. And I found those surfers. It just has that feeling, the feeling of walking from the beach to the train station. Those little neighborhoods felt very much like this.

So seems good so far. It's weird though that, you know, I've been keeping my eye on the air index thing, and it does seem like Jeju Island has been about the same as Busan. Not so different.

But by happenstance today, Busan is great. It's like in the green. It's below 50. And so is Seoul, which is like, whoa, but Jeju is over 100. What the fuck? It's a little under 100 right now. I don't know. It seems okay. But I mean, I should have my stupid mask on. I'll put it on after I'm done yammering.

But yeah, just bad luck. It's like, I wonder why. What's going on here? Hopefully it's just a weather pattern system is just passing over. But also, I removed Busan and Seoul now from my listing. I don't know and I don't need to know. We'll just take Jeju as it is and not worry about what weather might I have gotten somewhere else. Though I did throw on Taiwan and Ulsan, which I mean, Ulsan, I guess is essentially Busan. But, you know, because I feel like that's where I'm likely to be next. Well, I'll just kind of keep my eye on it a little the same as they did for here just to try to get a vibe for, you know, I'm going to be here. I think the lady said 42 days. I guess though, about six weeks, long as time. So while I'm here, I can get a little bit of a sense of what is going to be happening where I go next. But yeah, I'm quite sure this will pass. And I guess I'm kind of slipping into that thing too of just like, I don't know, is 100 bad? 100 flip my fucking wig when I got to Seoul. Now it's like, I don't know. I mean, it's not good. But I guess I did, yeah, I did actually see people on Reddit referencing this one very famous mountain hike here in Jeju that is supposed to be the best place to see the sunrise, which I will never fucking do. I will never be there at sunrise. 0% chance. But they had to bail out because the pollution got so bad at one point.

But again, that was earlier in the year. Now that it's spring slash summer coming, I don't expect things to be so bad. Man, they kind of undersold that bus ride though. It was a long fucking bus ride. I saw a listing somewhere that said like at the high end, it was like 45 minutes. But that was way longer. It was like an hour and a half. Everything was a bit slow though. I guess my flight was delayed a little and stuff.

But I just barely made it before 9 o'clock, which I guess was a good thing, just so they could give me the rundown of how things worked and they needed a copy of my passport and stuff, which I would have had to do later. So I made it just in time. And I'll tell you about the place I'm staying, but first, the Pee Guy, the Pee Guy at the airport. So ever since first visiting Japan, I mean, I guess there's a certain problem in North America with people peeing on the ground, but I wouldn't say it's a tear. The terrible issue, it's not something I ever really noticed much, you know, just a bit of general dishevelment in the washrooms, but nothing you'd have to make a big deal about or make a sign about or something.

In Japan, every mail washroom, every single one, there are signs saying, please step forward, please stand closer. And I got to assume it's maybe just the footwear culture around here, where there's such a distinct delineation between indoor and outdoor. You know, you've always got to take your shoes off at the Gankan in Japan, and I don't know what they call it in Korea, but they do that here too. More or less. You got your indoor shoes and your outdoor shoes, and it really does seep into your brain, because I think it's a good idea in general. Canada is much more along the lines of generally we don't wear our shoes in the house. I think it's only America that does that for some weird reason.

But today on the plane, this dude walked by with his kid, and the kids shoe brushed my shoulder, and I would never have thought twice about that ever in North America, but I guess I'm so used to shoe stuff here now that it's been all these months, I've been in Asia.

That I had to look at, I just had to look at my shoulders, be like, like I just had the thought of like, what if that kid stepped in dog poop? Of course they didn't, they're in an airplane.

But I just had that weird feeling of like, oh, a shoe touched me, gross, where I just wouldn't have given a fuck before.

So maybe that's the situation, like a really deeply ingrained desire not to step on whatever pee is on the ground. So people stand back a step, and then that just makes the situation worse, because more and more pee is finding its way onto the ground.

Because even I guess even as a kid, I used to always just stand up and pee into the toilet, and I don't know, it just never occurred to me until I was older. Like there are sometimes you can feel like if you're wearing shorts and you pee standing up and you feel a little splash against your calves. Like that shoe is splashing up all over the place, it's actually kind of gross.

But in Asian washrooms in Japan and here in South Korea, they are begging people to stand closer, just begging, and it's not working. And additionally, this is one of those things that I feel like there's probably some women listening that will have had no idea that this was a thing, that they've never heard of this before ever. But at a urinal, this has become common, this used to be like a rare thing, where there would be a design in the urinal. It used to be back in the day like a little soccer net or something, and then somebody devised a little fly design, like a bug, like an insect. And now it's so common, it's all over North America, all over Japan, all over Korea, maybe it's all over the world at this point. It's just become common practice for in the urinal in the men's room for there to be a little design of a fly, because the idea is it's something to aim at. It's kind of our natural inclination to just pee at something, like if there's a little something stuck to the side of the urinal or something, we'll just pee on it to try to blast it off. So I guess just having this design, it just encourages people to aim in the middle, you know, like actually aim at the center of the urinal and not deliberately get pee everywhere.

This seems pretty nice. This neighborhood I'm walking through, it reminds me of the one downtown part of Jetshon, but I think a bit bigger. I don't know, it's hard to tell. I haven't got a good sense of the scale of anything yet. Yes, it's like a little shopping street. This is nice.

But anyway, none of this stuff is working. There's pee all over the ground in male bathrooms in Asia. And today I saw the guy who was just, he was the ultimate example of the perpetrator that is making this happen. Where I was at the airport bathroom, and you know, it's general etiquette not to look at the guy next to you. And there were dividers between us, which there aren't always. This guy was standing so far back from the urinal that in my peripheral vision, I couldn't see his dick, but I could see the stream of his pee very clearly. And I could see that he was like whipping it back and forth like a lightsaber. So it's like, this is the guy. This is the reason. There's pee on the floor. Because this guy is standing war back and pee into the left, pee into the right, pee into the left, pee into the right. So again, like etiquette dictates, you're not supposed to look at your neighbor, but I had to look at this guy. I had to see the face of the enemy, like, who is this man? Who is doing this? The fuck is this?

I'm at a busier street now, and I can tell just by the number of taxis that this place is definitely bigger and more populist than Jetchung. Though, is it, I guess, I'll get into that fast food theory after. Anyway, this guy was just a young Korean guy, a young handsome Korean man, probably in his early 20s. I was like, all right, well, there he is, just a human being. I don't know what I thought I was going to see. 35:00 Some horrible ogre, some demon from the underworld. But yeah, I've never seen someone. So just, it was ludicrous how far back this fucking guy was standing and how completely not in the center of the urinal he was aiming his piss. So much so that I could see it out of the side. Like, I couldn't not see it. It was just like, fuck dude. Come on, man. Come on.

But even just today, on my various travels, I guess it was in the Busan airport where I did think like, ugh. I feel like I'm getting pee on my shoes. This is gross. Hopefully I'll just wear it off. As I walk around, you know, I won't track any pee smell with me onto the plane or something. Okay, yeah, this is definitely bigger than Jechon. It's a little bit late now. It's past nine, so they're closing up, but this is a really long shopping street. I guess why I'm confused. Everything about this seems more populist than Jechon. But, just to do a first low-brow journey, I'm just heading to McDonald's. Fuck it. It's still so weird to me being here to pass all these seven elevens and stuff and see them out the window of the bus and these different convenience stores and just to not be excited. That would be like, you know, I got a little pushback in Japan of like, really, that's all you're gonna do. You're just gonna go to the convenience stores, but those convenience stores, surely I'll branch out eventually in my life. But it is a cultural smorgasborg of amazing shit in those Japanese convenience stores. I didn't even come close to exploring all the odds and ends. And it's still like legitimately good stuff. It's really cool good stuff. Where, you know, here, I just, every once in a while, I do go get, what was the one I got the other day? I got a sandwich that was like, it was like a ham and cheese sandwich with pineapple spread. And like, again, it's not bad. I'm Canadian, so I mean, we invented the Hawaiian pizza. I don't mind ham and pineapple, but again, I've just never had a sandwich like that. And I just wasn't in the mood. I wanted a normal sandwich and they don't fucking exist. I just don't exist. So I'm back in my just insanely low brow situation of like, everything's closing up here. It's past nine o'clock. But even if it wasn't, I don't know how much gumption I've got to go try to go to a local place or figure out anything. So I looked up fast food and it's just like, well, fuck it. There's the McDonald's. Fuck it.

It's on the other end of town, but that doesn't seem that far away. So that's my test. Let's just see how far, how long it takes to get there. But yeah, that's where I got a little confused is there's the one McDonald's, which I think, Jetchon only had one McDonald's as well. But Jetchon had Burger King. And there's no Burger King here. There's some on the island, but none in Segwifo, which is a shame because I have come to enjoy the Burger King a lot more than McDonald's in South Korea. I just like what they do. I like their chicken nuggets better. They're cheaper. It's just good. But I'm going to have to get over it either. I'm going to have to eat McDonald's every day with surely I won't do that. I don't like it's any better to eat fucking Burger King. Or just try to make my piece with the convenience stores and figure out something to do. Or branch out to these stalls and stuff. Which this would be the place to do it, I guess, because there's no subway station. My tea money card is a lot less useful here. It's going to be back to cash. So if I just got cash anyway, it's probably not the hardest thing in the world. To just point at stuff and hand people money. We'll see though. I got 42 days. I got plenty of days to figure out what's going on around here. Yeah, this seems kind of cool. It really does though. It feels like Jetchon. It has a small, small Korean city feeling. I don't know the whole history and stuff. I know Jeju. It's a domestic flight. It's part of South Korea, but it is its own thing. One of these things on Reddit where they're like, hey, you know. You can read up about the uprisings of the past. It'll add flavor to your journey to know the history. But it was just this super depressing fucking thing where like 10,000 people died in an uprising against the government. Yeah, great. That really makes it. That really adds some spice to the journey. It's just sad and depressing. 40:00 I'm not saying it's not important to know about, but it's not necessarily important for me to know about. Anyway, I know about it now, so I don't know. I don't quite know exactly how Jeju relates to South Korea, but it's essentially just another piece of South Korea. And yeah, just these a lot of LCD screens, karaoke places, weird little hotels.

This feels quite a bit like Jetchon. It was kind of cool to go to Jetchon in the middle. Yeah, this is a common thing. I saw all the time. I saw them in the bigger cities too, but especially in Jetchon and already I see one here. Where it's like a dance club or whatever and it has like an LCD sign out front, but it's like sexy LCD girls dancing.

And there's a GS25. You know, I guess that wouldn't be the worst. I'm actually pretty fucking starving. Maybe that's all I got to do. I just need to get hungry enough and then everything seems fine. Starting to think like, maybe I should just go in there. That'll be all right. But let's see, how close am I after this? Oh yeah, I want real close. So yeah. Sigma pose not very big.

I guess that's the thing. It's the size of it is smaller than Jetchon, but the population density is definitely higher. So it's both. It's both things at once.

So the hotel I'm staying at. This is pretty cool because one of the reasons why the bus took so long is it's like a hotel shuttle bus. So it just stopped at every fucking hotel. So we're going through all these big fancy pants hotels and resorts and stuff. And they look very fucking beautiful. The only thing I saw in the way here is there's a Hello Kitty land in the middle of nowhere right in the middle of Jeju. There's this Hello Kitty land, but I don't know shit about Hello Kitty. I never quite understood where it came from or what it's all about or what the appeal is. I guess it's just cool little characters. I don't know.

It's very similar to when I stumbled upon I already forgot the name moon something moon something village that was some weird cartoon that they made an amusement park about.

Anyway, we're passing through all these fancy pants hotels and I'm thinking like, ah, that would be nice. It would be nice to be a hotel guy. You know, I don't mind being a weird little scrabbley together Airbnb guy staying at whatever weird little thing. But if I was just the richest man on earth, of course it would be great to just go to fancy hotels. Whereas the bus rolls in, there's someone waiting to bow to the bus. But what I'm staying at is kind of, I mean by my standards is pretty fancy. I mean, it's probably by hotel standards a really lame hotel because I got it for. Again, I think I got to discount because I stayed so long. It was like 20 bucks a day. And it's like a for real hotel. I got my key card. I'm on floor three. I'm not sure how many floors up it goes, but that's perfect for me. That's just like high enough up to get a little view out the window, but not high enough up to freak me out with my fear of heights. Once I got up to about the fifth floor or so, you know, I don't like it as much.