#129 A sweet waterfall on Jeju Island, South Korea

Transcript

Well, this is pretty cool, so the next day and everything is way better, weather-wise. The pollution levels are way down to like a 30. So hopefully that'll be the kind of thing that'll keep up that it'll be like, you know, maybe a bad day, but it passes in a day. That seems to be the spring summertime vibe, which makes me understand a little better why people aren't bringing this stuff up. After a travel vlogger or whatever, I still feel like those people that do the videos of things I learned after X years living in Korea, it's criminal that those people don't talk about the pollution problem. Like you've been here 10 years and you didn't notice that everything's fucked. You fucking dickhead. But if you're just here to visit and you're just here in the summer, I can see a bit why maybe that passes. I mean, I will bring it up. I think it's still very important because I was a little shocked. But I guess if you're more familiar with Asia in general or just with the state of the larger world, apparently everything's polluted as hell, much more than I understood. You know, I guess I can see why if it passes in a day. Why you might not bring that up necessarily. But anyway, point is today is great. But anyway, left the house just started wandering. I'm right by the harbor in Jeju Island. And I'm not quite sure where I am or where I'm going. My little blue dots not popping up today on my GPS thing. But I'm like, guy, that's fine actually. Who cares, worry about that later. Who cares where I am or where I'm going. So I'm just wandering around a lot of tourists running into quite a lot of other tourists. Because I guess I have been most of this podcast has been during, I guess you call it the low season. You know, now we're getting into actual travel time. But I found some super tall steps, walked up them to some kind of park, some sports facilities and stuff. I saw this one really cool view of like some kind of island in the distance. Oh yeah, and there's like a bridge to some kind of little wooded forest D thing that I don't think I'll make it to today. I'm going the other way. But that's obviously on the docket. But anyway, what made me pull out the recorder is I saw the one cool view. And it's like, yeah, that's pretty cool. And I was walking up this hill. And I saw another like, you know, they have these spots. Where, you know, it's like a frame or just says like, this is a little picture icon of like, yep, this is the place. Come take a picture. And I saw a couple of people taking pictures. And I was just kind of, you know, somewhat cynically thinking like, oh, yeah, sure, I bet it's amazing. Just take a picture right where it says to take a picture. And then as I got a little higher up, I was like, oh, there's a fucking waterfall over there. Holy shit. So I've talked a lot of shit on waterfalls in this podcast. But, uh, but I guess mostly those were in the context of if you choose a waterfall that's very far away and you make an epic journey to the waterfall. That's a fine thing to do. But the journey should be the part that's cool. You know, focus on the journey. Definitely don't put weight on the waterfall at the end because it's not going to be worth it. You know, it's like, yeah, it's a waterfall. That's all right. But getting to the waterfall is the exciting part. However, when you just walk up by accident and see a waterfall, there we go. I'm so grateful to God now as I'm ambling around. Now I'm here by myself. And yet it's like, uh, I'm just like looking down into like across these trees. And then there's like a lagoon down there.

And it's like a bigger waterfall and three smaller ones all together. And it's pretty motherfucking beautiful. And yeah, like I didn't have to do shit to get to this waterfall. Just was accidentally here. This is just a bonus waterfall. So that feels pretty good. That's a that's peak waterfall. Let's see if I can translate this sign. So this is view number eight or notable thing number eight around here.

Yeah, it doesn't really translate properly, but how many waterfalls can there be? I find this on the map? Nope. Maybe there's just waterfalls everywhere.

Well, here's a sign that translates to waterfall observatory. So it doesn't help either. I'm going to do I'm going to do a little phone reset. Usually if I reboot the whole phone, my little dot will pop up just so I can say what this thing is. But, uh, but yeah, I don't know. It's just kind of funny. I mean, I just woke up, got half a coffee in me, hiking up a hill, just to have that sort of slap in the face of like I'm coming up over the ridge. I see these people taking pictures and I'm just like. Tourist, uh, yeah, go ahead, take the picture, take the picture at the picture spot. And then I see it. I'm like, oh, oh, it's beautiful. 5:00 It's fucking amazing. What is that doing here? I did not expect to see that. That's fucking crazy. It's all around here. It's like fairly developed. I'm not far from anything. It's just like city stuff. And then on the other side of the waterfall is more city stuff. And then I can see some mountains and stuff in the distance. It's just fucking wild that there's a waterfall there. What the fuck? That's really cool.

And there's more people. I didn't actually get my picture yet. I'm gonna have to sneak in there when I get a chance because that appears there's not a lot of time in between people taking pictures.

There we go. Thank you, blue dot to your back. Seguapo Chilsimni Poetry Park, CHILS, I-M-N-I. So presumably I'm looking at the Chiongion Waterfalls, CH-E-O-N, J-E-Y-E-O-N Waterfalls.

Cool. Cool.

And actually, if I just keep mosing up around this way, it appears that this park loops up around the edge of the city. And what kind of bring me in line with the idea coffee. So I presume that may be the plan. And then, yeah, if I go the other way, say some island. Sayongyo Bridge to Sayosome, S-A-E-S-E-O-M. That seems like a pretty obvious spot to go to.

Oh, I hear voices in the distance for those people down by the waterfall. Oh, yeah, there's a bunch of them because I was gonna say that's the next question, I guess. Can you go down there? And how does one go down there? I don't know, but I guess I'll just try and see. Yeah, there's a shit ton of people doing something. Looks like a wedding or something.

So anyway, off to a good start, dude. This is some's up, J-J. Yeah, just here you go. Hey, waterfall hater. Hate this one, bitch. Yeah, they got me. I don't hate it. I love it. It's amazing.

Anyway, anyway, I gotta put this recorder away because I gotta be ready for when these people leave. Oh, yeah, there's not even this. You had another group of people. What the shit? Yeah, I gotta just sneak on over there. Snap my little picky picks. Novel pod on Instagram, by the way.

Well, I did a loop around and I think I was kind of near the top of the waterfall at one point. Like, if I looked down through a fence, through some trees, I saw what looked like the top of the waterfall, unless it was a different waterfall. But there's definitely no obvious way to get down to the waterfall itself. So maybe I'll do a little research. I have to do a little googling to see what I can find. It was weird, though, because there was like a lot of people down there. It was a bunch. It was like 30 people. But at the same time, I felt like the people up where I was where we were taking pictures. Again, I'm totally illiterate, but the way they were commenting on stuff had the tone of, what are they doing down there? So it kind of seemed like it maybe wasn't normal for people to be down there. But there was also so many people that, I mean, any of the little, I did go kind of as far off trail as I could whenever I could, whenever there was an opening or there was a little like trail through the woods. And it always just came to, you know, like serious, for real Lara Croft shit. Like I'd have to climb down a cliffside. Like a jungle cliffside is like, okay, no. So there has to be some way to get down there that's actually kind of easy, easy enough that 30 robed people could do that. There was so far away, I couldn't quite tell what they were wearing, but it looked like black and white clothing.

I had the idea of a wedding, but I don't know. Like a church thing maybe? I don't know, anyway. But regardless of that, that'll be something to keep my eye on. I'll just see if that's a thing that, you know, a person can reasonably do. But just on the walk around, I saw two cool things. It was just a nice walk in general, a bunch of different statues and shit. But the coolest one was these sculptures. They were like sculptures of horses, but they were made out of bark, out of dried bark.

And it's so cool. I've never seen a statue like that, but it just felt good. Because like there's a lot of statues in this area and just all around, all around the world.

Oh, here's one right here. In fact, it's just some lady carrying a pot on her back. And you know, this is nice and all, but it's a big stone statue. You know, stone is sort of nature-y feeling, but then when you get like the metal statues, they're very much not nature-y feeling. Where this just felt so natural. It's just so cool. It's just like, hey, you just got old pieces of bark, old pieces of dried wood. If you can form them into the shape of an animal, it's just fucking really cool. It was really cool. That reminds me actually in my hometown, Frederikton, New Brunswick, they have kind of the opposite. They have the least natural thing I've ever seen. It's still cool, but somebody took old tires, like a bunch of old rubber, and they used it to turn it into, so it looked like, like birds, like ravens. But because they're split out on the ground, they look dead. So it's like a bunch of giant, it's right by the art museum downtown. Giant dead birds slash rubber tires. It's just kind of weird and disturbing on both levels. And it's like, what even is this? This is fucking weird as hell. Yeah, I think I'm more or less, I think I've made the whole loop because, yeah, that is the road. I believe to that bridge. And I'm not going to do that today. That's going to be cool, but not today. In fact, I think I'll head up into the city proper from here. But the other thing I saw that was just kind of funny is they still have the emergency buttons and all the bathrooms. And even that, it's kind of cool in a way, because I guess as long as you know where all the washrooms are, it's like a save point in a video game or something. If somebody's chasing you at night, but you know there's a washroom nearby, you can run in there and pound the emergency button. And then I guess it's the test of how fast the police really respond. But in this case, it's just funny because the translation said the English version said, if you press this button bastardly, you may have a financial penalty. It's just thinking like, I wonder what word they put into a translation software or whatever to get bastardly, because I'm trying to think of what word I would use. I mean, I guess I would use fraudulently, but I think they were going for something more mischievous. Like, if you use this in bad faith, bastardly. If you press this button bastardly, we are going to find you. You bastard.

This button is here to help protect people from other bastards. We don't need ancillary bastards bastardly pushing the button. That's just nice because I don't actually see a ton of funny translations. There's plenty of translations that aren't quite right, but not really that many that are like, that's a lemon juice. I would never have thought of that. You know, the joy of a translator that had just come up with something that a person wouldn't come up with. I haven't seen one of those in a while, so bastardly. If you push this button bastardly, so fucking help me. God, you bastard. You bastard.

But yeah, for a first random exploration, pretty fucking red. But yeah, I'm just going to go up into the city now and get a coffee. That's enough, that's enough bushwack and that's enough nature. It's enough waterfalls, but yeah, it was nice. I would say just because of the total unexpectedness of it and just how cool it is that it's just nestled right in the middle of a city park. That's my favorite waterfall so far. It's a really good waterfall.

So I'm walking through the kind of center of town in the daytime now, so I can actually see what's going on. It's not just, you know, it looks pretty with all the lights at night, but now I can actually tell what is the deal. And I think I brought this up a little once before, but I guess I'll bring it up again because it seems definitely more evident now that I've been in four different cities.

That's Korea. One thing I've noticed is that there's no fun stores. Like all the stores are so utilitarian. It's always like, okay, well, right now I'm walking by sporting clothing and eye glasses. And there's another clothing store and a restaurant and a cell phone store and a hair salon and golf. And there's like a boutique clothing store. That's a little more fun. But, you know, none of this is unusual. These stores are everywhere else, too. But Japan always has those occasional fun stores. You know, here's an anime store. Here's a manga store. Here's a store of, like, toys, classic toys. Even the second-hand stores, you know, just the house-op, hard-off, off-house, whatever, all that shit. We'll have, like, classic toys and cool, weird stuff. Video game stores. 15:00 All-manor of just interesting pop culture-type crap. There was just one to go into and look around. And I'm not saying there's less of it here. There's none. There is zero. Zero stores like that. And I know, like, Korean comic books, the Manwai. I saw somebody reading one on the train in Busan. It's the first time I've seen one in the wild. Because I have read a bunch of those on my computer. And you just scroll infinitely because they're made for cell phones. So I saw one being read in real life. This guy just scrolling with his thumbs, scrolling, scrolling, reading the comic. It's very cool, because it makes a lot more sense than trying to read comic books that are based on pages, you know, American and Japanese comics, trying to read those on your phone. It's just kind of weird. I mean, you can do it, but it's not optimal. But it makes me think, like, maybe that's the only experience I have is the comics. But maybe it's just that way with all Korean pop culture stuff. Like, maybe there's just no physical component. It's just internet cafes and online gaming. And comics you read on your phone. And dramas and stuff that you watch at home.

There's just no visible sign of it out in the world. But there really isn't. There's just fucking nothing. And it's just like, what, it makes me wonder, like, what is, what is Korean pop culture?

I mean, I guess it's J-pop and dramas, right? I mean, I guess I know what it is. Because I guess to be fair, if I think about it, in North America. I mean, I guess it's also you could easily visit North America and walk around for two weeks and never see a comic shop. That'd be very easy to do. And I guess that was my initial impression of South Korea. So specifically is that it felt American. So maybe this isn't weird. Maybe it's Japan that's weird. You know, maybe it's weird that in Japan there is an anime store and there is a Gundam store and there's model figures and there's old toys and there's all this stuff. So I guess again, this comes down to, I guess not, not really even a comment on South Korea. I guess it is just I'm inadvertently making a flip-flop comment about Japan. I'm like, man, I missed that about Japan. That shit is fucking awesome in Japan. Giant arcades and stuff. Because other countries, they just didn't got that stuff. They just do not. If you want to go to a store to buy a fancy pair of shoes, no problem. You want to get a suit. You want to get a nice hat. You want to get some golf clubs. Anything boring that you want. We got it. It's everywhere. But if you want something, I don't know.

I mean, I double liked it in Japan because there is that crossover between Japan and North America where it's so neat to go into like a retro store and see all the old toys from the 60s and the 70s. And then once you get up to the 80s, I'm actually starting to recognize stuff. I guess occasionally something from before then. And then in the 90s, we're like one in one. It's like, I know all this shit. And it's just very cool and fun. And yeah, it's just a twist is not the case here.

Like I'm thinking back to the episode I did when I was in Akihabra. And I was like, am I going to go to Akihabra? I guess so. And whatever. I guess I'll go. And then I just had a wonderful goddamn day. Like as much as I am constantly talking about how much I like Japan and stuff, I think I kind of still didn't give Japan enough credit while I was there. Because man, I was even just thinking the other day watching the bartender anime. I mentioned last episode that there's this. This anime called bartender and I started reading the manga because I'm a manga guy just like comic books better. But even just reading that made me think like as much as I like Japan and all the stuff that I do there that I think is fun and neat, there's so many other angles you could take. Like if you're into drinking culture or you're really into food big time or you're into the historical stuff, you're into samurai and whatever. Or if you're just into film, if you're into classic cinema, there's so many, what if you're into calligraphy? Man, you could make a whole trip out of calligraphy. There's so much stuff. Flower arranging, bonsai trees, it never fucking ends. The amount of culture in Japan is wild, it is out of fucking control. 20:00 And yeah, other countries, they just don't feel like that. They really don't. But yeah, now that I've been in South Korea for several months, I mean, again North America, you know, like I say, and you could miss the stuff if you weren't careful. But eventually, if you walked around North America for four months, you'd eventually find a comic shop. You'd eventually find a cool, used store with like cool weird old kitschy stuff. You'd eventually find an arcade, even if it was just like a little one attached to a movie theater or something. You would eventually find these things. They're just not here in South Korea. They're not coming. I'm never going to turn the corner and find that fun cool store to go in. At best, I've seen an occasional used bookstore. That's it. That's it. And it's like, well, alright. Alright, that's what we're doing.

But anyway, the other thing I wanted to mention is that I was mentioning, oh, wait, I'll get into it actually. I'll get into it after. This is really loud and windy. This is a bad combo. Just a little thing I noticed about the hotel. But, oh, right, I am supposedly, I can see that McDonald's down the street that I went to yesterday. All I know is the Adia coffee was near the McDonald's, but I don't see it. Are you here, Adia? The one Adia in town, my favorite coffee chain. There's Paris Baguette. There's composed coffee. It's not jumping right out of me. But we will see. I'll use the McDonald's Wi-Fi to help guide me on my journey.

So, what a shame. So, the Adia is not there. I think the most recent review on Google Maps was, there was one from two years ago. I don't know, none recently though. It's definitely not there. I think maybe it is the composed coffee now. It switched brands. I'm a little surprised because Adia seemed to be very established. I never had a hard time finding them all over the place.

Even in Old Jetchan, there was at least two. Probably more. And again, just the whole reason I like them is because they have, it's so hard to find. It's so rare to find a place with a, it's not hard to find a place with a little touch screen where you order. That's all over the place, but ones that are actually English. Amazing, or sometimes even if it's English, you'll get to the end and it won't accept a credit card or at least the visa credit card I've got. Or a two-some place, that was a weird one where I couldn't make the order because it wouldn't, instead of just giving me an order number and spitting out a little printout, it needed my phone number. It needed to send it to my phone. Because they do the thing they're to where they give you like a puck that lights up and vibrates when you're drinks ready. So I guess that's the phone equivalent to that. I don't know, I guess they just do a paper list, which I mean I'm not against that. But it would be nice to have the option because I don't have a fucking phone number.

So anyway, I tried composed, I'm like, let's see, maybe let's try this, because it wasn't that busy, because it's always like just minorly embarrassing to go stay in in front of the screen and then just fail and then just leave. But it wasn't too busy, so I was like, let me just pop in and try it, but yeah, immediately, no English. So then I could pull out my fucking phone and try to translate on the go, but even at that point just go to the counter and just order the stupid fucking copy, which I think is what I'll probably end up having to do. Looks like that's my future.

Because there ain't much around here. So anyway, I just ended up at fucking McDonald's again. This is right down the street. And I was like, well, whatever, as they get lattes, I got a mick cafe latte, and I wanted to try this thing anyway. It's a burger with a hash brown in it. And the top of it, it looks like a panda face. Let me open it and see what did they do to this to make the bun look like that. It's just kind of burned in, just kind of seared into the top. I don't know what it's all about. I don't know what the significance of this is, but it's like, well, give that a try. Again, anything that's new. I'll try it once.

Yeah, that's a little surprising, a little surprising, not even one idea coffee.

But I guess even the idea of this McDonald's is pretty fucking empty. There were two other people up here in the top floor. One of them left. That's why I can talking louder now. And just me and this one other guy. It is just a small town, I guess.

It's just fucking pretty goddamn small. But I guess it won't be that tough to go in and order stuff. But it just shrinks down. It's just so much easier to just order a latte. Even that is actually not the easiest thing in the world. Sometimes they don't totally understand that I'm asking for a large latte. Yeah, that's the thing. I'm remembering now it came back to me because they think it's large. I heard a lady selling an orange the other day, orangey. There's a lot of febri's ads that have been getting on South Korean YouTube lately. And it's fa breezy. And I mean, they're not wrong. They're just pronouncing it the way it's supposed to be pronounced. If you look up ancient French, it's kind of refreshing because they actually pronounce all those fucking letters that they no longer pronounce. It's sort of neat. Look up like medieval French songs or whatever on YouTube. And it's like, there you go. All those S's that you'd refuse to fucking pronounce now. Yeah, actually used to pronounce. So yeah, they're not wrong with large and orangey and febri'sy. Where are the ones who are wrong? But it makes it just, it's just, I just want to order through a goddamn screen. That's all. I don't know why. Like if you run one of these companies, it's such a little thing. Just one time you just got to get somebody to go through and translate the menu on your machine. And then every single say compose. I see composed everywhere. I've never bought a coffee at composed coffee. Today was the big chance. It was gonna, it could have stolen the fucking grab the rock, stolen the fucking lead.

All you got to do is go through one time. Just get your menu translated. One fucking time. And there you go. And then you can have an English menu. It would be worth it, man. There's Taurus all over the fucking place.

But anyway. At least when I get agitated about the dentist, I feel like that's at least a little bit reasonable to be stressed about because you know it's the dentist. Dentists aren't fun. Dentists are stressful. This is an inappropriate place for me to be a... Oh no, all I can do is just order a basic drink. I can't, I wasn't, it's not like I was ordering anything so crazy. But it's so nice of the idea because I could just get like a mint mocha with an extra shot of espresso and no whipped cream. You know, none of that's a hard order. But man, that's a lot of words. You know compared to just saying large latte please. And probably that'll be okay, you know. So maybe, maybe that one needs clarifying too. A large mint mocha iced extra shot of espresso, no whip, like no fucking way. I'm gonna put the poor person through that. I'm not gonna do it. But yeah, find in these screens that work in English, man. It's a... It's sadly difficult. All I want is a coffee, just one coffee, far from... Anyway, I gotta eat my fucking food here. It's getting cold. What am I yammering about?

Still in McDonald's, the one guy who was here left. So yeah, this is weird, especially in South Korea, but just in general. I'm the only person in this McDonald's on this top floor. I mean, there's benefits to small towns, benefits and downsides. That song that was playing at some serious 1991 Bobby Brown energy, but I was just looking up stuff on Google Maps while I got the Wi-Fi from the McDonald's. Just seeing what other coffee stuff is around here. What could I do? Where can I experiment next? And I just thought this was interesting. Just to sort of point out that I think I'm not just being a prima donna about this, is that that composed coffee I was at. It is not the idea. It's next to it. So yeah, the idea is just gone. But this is a review. There's only a couple of reviews on Google Maps. This is from just five days ago. From Nomi Diderik. One star. And it's, waiter does not speak English. Machine to order in English does not work. Payment with Samsung Pay did not work. Payment with cash did not work because they couldn't make change. So we had no coffee and would not recommend this place. Also because the staff was not helpful enough, friendly. But they probably benefit from the bus station in front of the door. I mean, that's ridiculous. You can't even pay.

Pay with cash. But that's such a perfect example. Like that is the kind of situation I do not want to be in. At least when you're there with somebody else, you know? Do I hear someone? Yeah, someone actually came up the stairs. Someone else is here. But yeah, like that's one of those cases, too, where when you're traveling with someone. That's still an awkward situation and unpleasant. But you know, it's easier to just laugh it off with your friend and be like, fuck, well, that didn't work. 30:00 Let's find another coffee shop. But that's the kind of thing when you're traveling by yourself. It is just so brutally uncomfortable and so you just feel shame when you go in and you like to try to order something and to fail to that degree that you're struggling to talk to the guy and then you make the order and then your card doesn't work. And then you can't pay in cash. That blows my mind. Fuck off with that that you can't pay in cash. Like I'm so glad I knew that ahead of time. I will absolutely not be going there. But yeah, like I just, I just don't want, I don't want to be in situations like that. I just want to comfortably order a coffee.

What the fuck was that?

Oh, it's an employee changing the garbage. Anyway, yeah, I gotta stop talking to myself in the McDonald's now. But yeah, I just, but yeah, again, if that means I gotta come into McDonald's to get a coffee, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm not jumping through these hoops, that's insane. And yeah, dude, not taking cash. Oh, it hurts my heart to hear that. It's like somebody had to go through that. Thank God that wasn't me.

God damn, get your shit together. Compose coffee. What the fuck? It's one thing for your machines not to have English menus, but you can't even pay with money. They will not take your money. Get out of here. It like bothers me.

There's a bit of a weird thing that just happened, but it's appropriate that it happened when I was talking about coffee, I guess. Maybe this is what I get for going to McDonald's for coffee, but I was drinking this little McDonald's latte. They put it in a ceramic mug and everything. And I was like, you know, this is very frothy. This seems very milk-milk-like. So I've been doing this thing lately where I buy little teeny tiny from Daiso, you can get like 30 little tiny plastic forks for like a dollar. And I've been doing that lately because I've realized how much I just despise touching fast food with my fingers. It just never comes off. You can wash your hands like three times and just roast and smell weird.

I love eating my fast food with a teeny tiny fork. So I took my teeny tiny fork and I stirred this thing up thinking somehow maybe all the coffee was at the bottom and there was no coffee at all. This thing was just frothy warm milk. And as much as I'm like, oh, I don't want to have to try to awkwardly communicate with clerks and stuff. My first inclination was just such, such shock and disbelief that I was like, I got to go down and just be like, this is just milk. What is this? But I thought again, and it's like, all right, I did already have a cafe law from a convenience store this morning. This second thing, this latte from McDonald's, this would have done me in for the day. I got to at least try to be slightly reasonable about my sleep schedule so it doesn't get as turned upside down as it had been where I was literally staying up all night. If I have this coffee, that's it for the day. There's no more coffees for me today. So I was like, no, no, you know what? Let's just take this as it is. Let's just enjoy this as an opportunity.

To have a nice warm milk, because once the last time I had that, I can't even remember. I mean, are we talking decades? I don't know when I would have had a nice warm milk. And I remember when Starbucks first started, when it first started spreading a lot. I remember here in that story sometimes that if you got an extra obnoxious barista, if you asked for a latte, and then you got a couple warm milk, they'd be like, well, you said latte. What you're referring to is a cafe latte. Latte just means milk. And then I think some manager types had to be like, hey, you're being fucking idiot. When people say latte, they don't fucking mean milk. They mean cafe latte, you asshole. But Starbucks for any young whippersnappers who don't remember this, when they were first making their big push, I mean, no one knew what grande and venti and tall meant. Because they're not intuitive words. They don't make any fucking sense. And it was very obnoxious and very annoying. It's like, we're not in fucking Venice right now, bitch. 35:00 But I'll have a grande please. A grande cafe latte. We're all used to it now. But there was some growing pains, some obnoxious coffee growing pains. Anyway, that's not what was happening here. McDonald's does not have latte, sauce, the cafe on their menu. Somebody just forgot to press the espresso button on the machine.

But again, karmically, maybe that's what I get for going to McDonald's. And I mean, it was actually kind of good. Just recalibrate your expectations. Like, yeah, whatever. I'm not quite done my coffee searching for the day. This will allow me to still go to a coffee place if I find one on the way home. This seems like it'll work out. And until then, just a little warm milk. But I think that's also a clear sign. Like, don't get lattes at McDonald's, you dick. Don't do that.

Wow, that is wildly loud.

Yeah, I was still poking around a little on the map. And yeah, this place, it really is pretty small. Maybe I will have to just start, well, I don't know, I mean, I was going to say taking the bus, but unless I take the bus the entire hour back to J.J. City, I don't know where I think I'm going to get to. But there's also only one Starbucks here, quite surprising that there's not at least two. And, you know, I mean, I was doing the Starbucks thing quite a bit in Seoul. Starbucks is doable. Still got to talk to a person, but, you know, whatever. But anyway, I went on the little Starbucks listing and just sort reviews by newest, just to make sure it actually exists, just to make sure this place is still there. And the most recent review was the barista speaks English. Yay! So I'm really getting the vibe that I am not the only one in this predicament, that even in South Korea, the land of coffee, where like I've literally never seen more coffee shops in my fucking life. This is not quite carrying over to Segwipo. Even in, even in Jeju, jeez, not only were there coffee shops everywhere, that had the unmanned coffee shop. I love that place. I wish I could find another place like that. That was awesome. That literally was nothing but a little screen you can order from wonderful.

But yeah, my fellow tourists, man, they're feeling the pinch. It's not that easy to just get a nice coffee in Segwipo without many levels of unnecessary barriers. I still can't get over how that composed coffee doesn't take cash. That's fucking incredible. I said thank you very much.

But anyway, as I mosey, just one little thing I wanted to mention, so yesterday I was, you know, get to this, I'm staying at like an actual hotel this time. It turns out I am on the top floor. It's only three floors. And this neat thing, where when you go in, there was a glowing little panel on the wall that said insert card. And when you insert your key card that unlocks the door, it turns on the lights in the room. I'm actually cutting through the parking lot of a church. And it's like, yeah, there's the cross on the top. I bet you dollars to donuts tonight. When it's dark, that thing's going to be blazing red, glowing red.

But anyway, I was only in the hotel room briefly, so I only saw that as the only way to turn on the lights. I was like, hmm, what a strange thing. But then what I realized is there is a panel where you can turn on and off individual lights. But they only work when the card is in the little slot. And there's a TV in there too that also only functions while the card's in the slot. I think just kind of all the electricity in the room is based on that card in the slot. And I think that's kind of a neat system because it makes it so that you can't leave the hotel room with a bunch of lights on. And I think that's kind of cool because I remember like in Toronto especially. I tend to have the power in my name a lot. I guess it's because it's the one thing I can do. I can't really get leases and stuff. I don't have the kind of paper trail that landlords want. But I'm able to just put down a deposit and pay for power bills. So I'm oftentimes the power bill guy in my various apartments I've lived in. And I remember in Toronto especially, there was one summer where I went to New York for the whole summer. And just let the apartments to the other two guys, you guys manage things now. And I was always kind of the dad in a way because I was the guy getting the power bill every month. 40:00 So I was aware of how much it was and how much less it could be if we were a little bit mindful of things. So I became like that dad who was like, we're not heating the outdoors. Who left this light on. I tried not to be obnoxious about it but I was always mindful of it. Always turning off lights when they weren't in use. I was always trying to be mindful about stuff. And specifically in the summer, that apartment did get really hot. But I still would always just kind of jockey the air conditioner. So at least it wasn't just like going with no one's even home or whatever. But I went to New York for the summer and I was not there to look after things. And even with me gone with one less person in the apartment, the power bill easily doubled. It might have been more than double. When it showed up I was shocked. I had to message home and be like, get your shit together boys. What are you doing? And it's because they were just leaving the air conditioner on all day and all night whether they were home or not.

So I'm a fan of energy conservation. I'm a fan of turn off all the shit when you're not home. Don't waste power. But it must be really frustrating if you're running like a big hotel.

Even just like the little place I stayed, the little inn in Jetcheon had signs put up around like, hey, somebody left the water running one night, you know. We got a big water bill like don't do that. But you can only babysit people to such a, you can't really at all really. You just got to hope. You just got to hope they don't just burn through your utilities for stupid reasons. So that must happen like crazy in a hotel just all the little nickel dime things that are just like adding up. So I think this is just a really clever neat system. That when you leave the hotel you got to take your key card because that's how you get back in. And when you take that thing out 30 seconds later boom everything turns off. Like the lights turn off and then yeah I checked the TV today to see if the little red light on the front turned off and it did.

There is a little mini fridge that I haven't used. I wonder if it's on a separate system. You know, wonder if the fridge keeps going or if the fridge also turns off. I mean it would be fine if it did, you know. If the fridge is turned off for a few hours in the afternoon while I'm wandering around, it's no biggie.

But cool. Again, I don't know if that's a new thing. I don't know if that's a unique thing. Maybe this is old school technology that's been around forever that everyone else knows about. But I thought it was very clever and very neat.

Speaking of dice though, they're supposed to be one around here. I think I walked past it.

I gotta go buy some dental floss. Big exciting, exciting adventure.

Man, this day has really become really beautiful. It was a little overcast, a little teeny bit rainy earlier, very windy. Right now, it's super bright out, super sunny. It's like a palm tree, but it looks like a giant pineapple. It's like more... I mean, it just looks exactly like a giant pineapple. It was big. Burns coming out of the top.

On a big stick. All these cool tropical trees. This is super beautiful. So I mean, you know, there's always that too. Maybe this is a good thing.

Just these little nudges away from coffee shop life. Because it also, it ain't a cheap life, you know, just buying a basic latte. It's like $5.50.

And I was having to do it because the weather was bad and the pollution was bad. But since I'm all coastal on a little island and the weather's awesome right now, maybe I should just not be doing this at all. Maybe I'll go in Daiso, get some fucking instant coffee, got a little kettle in my hotel room. Maybe I should just start making a habit out of going to sit by the shore. Do my writing there.

If I'm having to fight this hard just to get a fucking coffee, just to overpay for a coffee. Maybe I just shouldn't. Maybe that's not what I'm supposed to be doing around here. Don't fight the fucking... Don't fight the situation. Don't fight the locals. Don't fight how it is.

This place is just not. It's not as coffee-obsessed as the rest of South Korea. I say as I walk past Cafe Bonbon. Oh, it's not Bonbon. It's Bonbon with an M. But yeah, why fight it? Why be miserable? Why not just go with it and be happy? You know what I'm saying? Alright, I found the Daiso.

All right, just to carry on with the boring, pointless throughlines of this episode, think out I saw a waterfall this morning, dude. What the fuck? What is the rest of this been about? This is about nothing. But this Daiso is the only Daiso I've ever been in that doesn't have a 45:00 touchscreen to let you pay for stuff. Bomber. Actually, wait, is that true? Maybe not. There were actually two Daisos in Jeju, and one of them had the delightful screen, and one of them didn't. So I guess it's not totally unprecedented. But yeah, I had to go through the cache, talk to a human. I remember the very first Daiso I went in, actually. It's coming back to me now. When I needed to find masks, when I first realized the pain of Seoul, and I still hadn't found anything nice in Seoul. So I walked through a real shit neighborhood on a real shit day to a Daiso and found a fucking big box of masks. And that lady brusquely showed me. They also did not take cash. I didn't, I believe. And she brusquely showed me how the touchscreen works, but I appreciated it because then I knew from then on. But this is a little bit of a weird thing where even on their machine, on their machine, it says like Visa American Express Mastercard T-Money. The symbol's right there. So I was like, I'm pretty sure I remember T-Money not working at Daiso, but let me try. I just asked, hey, can I pay with T-Money? No, get the X with the arms. No T-Money. It's like weird. Must have been a previous thing that they just don't do anymore. But luckily, my little Visa debit, which usually does work, but it doesn't always, but it worked. So I got some dental floss at a fantastically better deal, you know, a dollar for dental floss, which is what it should be. It felt like a big dental floss. It's so crazy how the little teeny tiny miniature travel dental floss, the cheapest I've ever seen one is 350, and most of them are over $4 at the convenience stores. It's just weird as shit. You must really have like a kernel of popcorn in your teeth, and you just need this right now, because what is up with that price? But excitingly, I found not only some instant coffee, I found a DIA brand. I'm repping you with DIA. You may have given up on Segwapo, but I'm not giving up on you. You're still my favorite coffee. So I got two little boxes, 12 sticks of instant coffee. I got a DIA special edition and a DIA smoky Americano. Smoky Americano, nutty, chocolatey, smoky. And they have a roasting point, aroma and acidity, which are essentially the same on both of these, very similar. But the other one, the special edition is floral cane sugar and clean. I'm sure they're just going to taste like shitty fucking instant coffee, but I just think that's cool. I get to rep a DIA. I can make one of these in the morning. I've got this little teeny, like 200 milliliter, little water bottle that, especially as it's getting warmer and finding it's kind of inappropriate as a water bottle, because it's so tiny, it's just not big enough. So I'm going to transfer that over. That's going to be my coffee thermos from now on. And yeah, fuck it, dude, fuck it. If the day's nice, if the weather's nice, I'm going to make a little DIA coffee and my little fucking, in my little lab in my hotel, put it in my little thermos. And that's what I'm going to do. Can't fight the feeling. Can't fight the moonlight. Don't fight the hands of the feeds. Stand up for something or you'll fall down for all of the things. Eat fresh. You know what I'm saying? I got a new plan and I think it's going to be fine. Then if there's a horrifying rainy day or a terrible pollution day, then I'll go mosey up to Starbucks or whatever. And maybe I can find another place on the way, but it seems like that'll be a good escape hatch. If that's what I got, that's what I got. And yeah, beyond any of these little teeny weird things, I think it's best to stay focused on the overall vibe, which is a goddamn beautiful coastal island. I'm not going to say paradise, but it's pretty fucking good. It's pretty nice.