#135 Can you walk the circumference of Jeju?

Transcript

Hey, welcome from a rugged coastline on the southern coast of Jeju Island, South Korea. The special self-governing province of Jeju. Figured maybe I'd pull out the recorder, kind of as an excuse just to hang out on this beach a little longer because the path I'm on has taken me away. But I'd say I'm functionally better. Last couple episodes, I've been a little under the weather. But yeah, about five days of being sick, that's not bad at all. After all this time to finally get sick and that's as long as it lasted, I still consider that a super win. That is functionally close enough to like not getting sick at all. And it didn't happen on a travel day. Yeah, just zero complaints about that. That's good stuff.

But today I'm doing a little experiment that I saw this thing on the map. I'm down at the southern Seguapo, is where I am. Near the Seguapo port. Between the two waterfalls. I saw this thing on the map not far from A or B and B called the Hill of Storms. And I was like, yeah, even though I'm a little under the weather, I can get to that. And it was this incredibly beautiful walkway built into the cliff side by the shore with all these different various views of amazing stuff. The Hill of Storms itself was but one of many great awesome things. And then I was looking at Google Maps and I saw that the little dotted trail line. It just went on and on and on and on. And I realized it looped the entire island of Jeju. Which is not an especially big island. I mean, it's all relative. But I think there's like half a million people here. There's a 2,000 meter volcano in the middle.

And I had this wild thought of like man, because like they go all out with their trails in South Korea. Like mountain trails and stuff. If there's a tricky part that's difficult to get across. From Seoul to Busan to here, you know, maybe not so much in Jeju. That one was a little too small. It was pretty rugged. But if there's a tough part during a hike, there's a good chance that some hiking authority, whoever is in charge of this, will literally build a walkway out of wooden planks or build steps into a mountain. It's the easiest and in some ways best place I've ever hiked is South Korea. It's just like man, everything is so well sign posted. I've never... Have I ever felt like I was lost? I don't think so. Nothing's come into mind. Whereas, you know, in North America or Japan. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. I get lost all the fucking time. I never know what the fuck I'm doing. So when I saw that dotted line, I was like, is this like the craziest tourist thing of all time? Could you draw someone in with the promise of hey, you could hike around the whole fucking island, my man?

And I was thinking like, could I do that? That'd be so nuts. My initial thought was to set up different hotels all the way around the island in advance just because it would be cheaper. But then I realized I think in this case, cheapness would have to go out the window because that would be such a rigid like you have to get to the next leg of the journey in time. What if something goes wrong? What if you miss one? What if you just got to do laundry? What if you just need to take a day off? It'd be way better to just get hotels as you went and just pay the premium price. Just pay for the hotel on the day.

But either way, I was like, I mean, unlikely that this is something I would do, but it's such a wild idea. It's so cool. And I was thinking like, man, if there is a walkway comparable to this one by the hill of storms all the way around the island, it's just insane. That would just be crazy.

But if anybody would do it, it'd be South Korea. But then as I walked along, I did get to a point where the trail was no longer by the coast. And you had to go up into a city. And I just bailed out that day. It was like, that's good enough. Let me head home. But that was the first sign that maybe that would not be possible. And then I thought about the other way. I have been the other way along the coast a little bit, not very far, but just enough that also it's just, it's like cliff sides. It is rugged, giant cliffs. There's no fucking way you could walk along the coast unless, unless they literally did make an Ewok Village-style walkway like around, they would have to make it around the entire island. So I started to realize, like, this was a wild idea. This idea I had in my head, just because there's a little dot around the island on Google Maps, that doesn't really mean, you know. 5:00 That is a pretty wild thought that I had. It was probably not true. But just to make sure, that's what I wanted to do today. It was like, let's just go a little farther. Let's just see what happens. So it's quite late in the day before I got started. But that's okay because it's also summer now and the middle of the day is miserable and hot. So it's kind of good to miss that anyway.

But I was surprised that when I went back to that walkway with the Hill of Storms, if you just book it, if you just walk at a normal tall guy pace, I got all the way. You know, what originally took me the whole afternoon of ambling around and looking at stuff and stopping to record podcasts in my case and taking pictures and soaking it in. That took all day. In this case, I got back to the point where I originally bailed out in just over an hour. I couldn't believe how fast it was. And it was kind of cool because I'm walking along. And there's still all these insane views of the coast and the cliffs and these crazy rock formations. You know, see previous episode, The Hill of Storms for details.

And that would be a super bizarre thing to do the first time you went. That would just be sociopathic behavior. Why would you do that? Why would you just walk at a brisk clip past all of this amazing stuff? That would be stupid. But since it was already late in the day and I already saw it once and I had a different plan for today, I had to get somewhere farther before the sun goes down. It was cool because I'm still like looking over and seeing all this amazing shit. It's just going by way faster. I'm just not stopping to soak it in. And it's own way. That was actually fun too. That was also an interesting experience. But I was really surprised how fast I got here. It was like no problem.

Oh, actually, I thought the path was taking me away from the coast but not quite yet. I just saw a guy go by who's doing his little daily calisthenics or whatever. Oh yeah, okay. I don't have to go back up yet. Nice.

But yeah, basically what I learned today is that my initial thought that this would be more of a sawtooth trail is true.

It definitely is not a trail that just goes along the coast. Certainly not for the whole island, not even for especially long stretches. And again, I think that is just kind of by necessity because this coastline, I don't know what it's like on the other sides, but on the south, it is a rough, rugged, rocky coastline. It's super beautiful. But you literally would need to just build walkways around the whole island. The natural ability to walk along the coast is only for occasional bursts here and there. So the path takes kind of a tooth shape where you go along the coast. And then you got to go up to the main road and it's not a short walk. Like you got to walk way up, way up. I was like, really? We're still going. And in some cases, it's I think not just because of the coast itself. It's because there's like resorts and stuff. It's clearly property that is not public. So you got to go all the way up to the main road and then walk some ways along the main road. Though there's plenty of bus stops, which is nice, easy to bail out. And then all the way down to the coast.

And then yeah, I'm like on another one of the coastal parts now. And this is actually pretty nice. This is a more natural path section. And who knows? Who knows how long this will go. But next time it forces me up to the main road, I think, you know, again, I'll just, I'm going to bail out for today. And I have no idea how long that'll take, but it's definitely coming. That's definitely the way it just goes.

So it's one of those things that it's like, yeah, this coastal trail, it is super nice. And I do actually think, I think this wouldn't be a crazy thing to do. I think trying to walk all the way around the island would actually be really fun and really beautiful. And even the parts where you do have to go up and walk through the city, I mean, it's still a fucking tropical palm tree filled, amazing city. It's not bad.

The vibes on Jeju are real good.

And there's definitely no worry of getting lost.

If you ever need to make a turn, there's like arrow signs. And then all the way along, there's these ribbons tied to trees. And it's the same as the coastal trail in Busan in the sense that it's blue and orange. So maybe that is just the coastal trail shorthand. And yeah, even the parts where I got to go up into the city and go through. 10:00 I never for a moment was like, I wonder where to go. I wonder where I'm supposed to go next. So I bet it probably is that way, like pretty much the whole way. I feel pretty confident just because they take shit so seriously around here as far as hiking. I bet you could go around the whole, the whole damn island and not get lost. And in my mind, I'm thinking like two weeks, but I'm not really that good at judging big distances like this. Maybe it's like three weeks. But yeah, I don't know, it's like it would be a weird silly thing to do. But I think that's kind of like, I think now that I've scoped it out a little, it's like I think though. I wouldn't tell someone not to do it, you know? It actually seems like that actually seems fun. That actually seems cool. But in my case, you know, I don't really do stuff to try to like, you know, just to say that I did it. I feel like that's kind of a dead end, no matter what you do. I've brought it up many times, but I mean, you could, you could fucking hike Everest. And I feel like the best you're going to get out of people is a momentary like, oh, yeah. Oh, you did that. No matter what you do in life, waiting for somebody else to give a crap is a long wait for a train that is never going to come. So I just do stuff that I think is cool that I will remember fondly. But you know, it was a passing idea.

It was just a passing weird plan. Maybe walking around the whole island, maybe that's the part that's a little too much. That's the part that feels like a stunt. That's where it's like you're doing something just to try to make somebody think it was a cool thing that you did. But it might be neat to just go on it. Well, I guess actually the best thing to do would be like once with all this like having to set up different hotels and different places. I guess really you could just get up in the morning and just walk as far as you possibly could. And then the bus ride back still going to be like, you know, less than two hours. No matter how far you get. Because it's just not that big of an island. That would probably be kind of cool. If you did start in the morning, it would be kind of neat just to see how far could you get on the coast in one day.

But anyway, this is all theory crafting. This is kind of interesting too. There's all these islands out in the water. I read a plaque about them the other day. There's three of them. I think there's one of them. Maybe that you can go to. But the other two have a rare plants on them and they're like nature reserves. No one's allowed to go there. But it's pretty cool because you know, you just see them from all over the place out in the bay in the water out in the ocean.

But I've passed the third one at this point. It's behind me and I can see a little bit of the second one peeking out ahead of me. I don't see anything. I wonder. I wonder what the rest of the coastline is like. Are there various islands all about as you go around Jeju or is it just ocean? I mean, that's pretty also in its own way.

That fucking crazy flatness of the ocean, just the infinite distance. But that's what it looks like so far.

And at this point, I'm literally just walking on a rocky beach. It's not a path at all.

Yeah, I don't know. It's weird. Like, when I first, today, just when I first realized like, okay, yeah, you do have to keep going up into the city. And I thought, yeah, okay, well, never mind. Never mind, I don't need to do this. But now as I'm on it, the more I go, I'm like, actually, was that so bad? Like, it's definitely worth it. Going up into the city for a little bit wasn't even that bad. It's fine. It's still a nice city. It's city, you know, it's not even a city out here. It's like tiny little communities.

And then you get to come back down to the coastline. This is actually beautiful as fuck. Ah, and there's the arrow. There's the arrow. Still guiding me on my way. I guess it also kind of ties into an idea I have for when I go back to Japan. Is I loved so much when I was in Yokohama going down to the southern coast from there. And just traveling farther and farther and farther. On the train. And seeing how far I could get. But then I always had to come back every day. And I was thinking it would be so neat to just keep traveling along the coast. Just keep going and just go to a new Airbnb. So I don't have to go back.

And this is essentially the walking version of that because this is what I do every day anyway. I just go pick a neighborhood, go pick a target, go pick a thing, and just go walk around and see what I can see. And then I just go back home.

So what if I set it up so there was no going back home, you just go on to the next home.

Again, like when I went from the airport in Jeju City to Seguapo, it took a little longer than I expected. I had heard it was supposed to be an hour and I feel like it was more like 90 minutes. But that's clear across the island around the volcano. That's one end to the other in 90 minutes. And there's shit tons of buses all over the place here. Piles of buses. So if anything went wrong with my walking journey, it's not like I'm walking through the goddamn outback. I could just get on a fucking bus. I could take a taxi to the next place. Through the fuck gives a shit a very easy plan to opt out of.

Man, I'm starting to like this more and more. Again, like this time is the recon mission. This time is the first time on Jeju what's going on around here.

But man, for next time, I feel like this is not the most insane plan I've ever had. I can see two of the islands behind me now. Yeah, now it is getting late quarter after six. Sun is on its way down. I should probably bail out pretty soon. But I made it to Bioplan port, B-E-O-P-H-W-A-N port.

Which, yeah, I'm looking on the map. There's Seguapo. Now let's zoom out. Let's look at the entire fucking island of Jeju.

Yeah, you know, I've walked to like 2% of the way around the island. Maybe 1%. Yeah, let's say 1%, but still it's like two and a half hours to do that.

What the shit? This is not a big island, bro. This is nuts. Like this is again a great example of something you could never really do in North America. I mean, I got plenty of relatives. There's a place like Campobello Island, for example. A lot of my relatives live there in Eastern Canada. Dear island is near there. Like they're pretty small islands. You could walk around them, but they wouldn't be set up to do that. They would not have a little dotted trail on Google Maps like saying, go ahead, no problem. You can do this. We're not only can you totally do that in South Korea. They do set everything up for you. They make sure there's arrows, they make sure there's guidelines and ribbons and you're never going to get lost.

But you're also just always near a convenience store. You're always near a bus. And this is what I like, dude. I love this mixture of I like, you know, going and doing the hiking life and the like active life and you're going outside and you're traveling and you're doing a thing. But you're not on the fucking Appalachian Trail talking to murderers and taking your life into your hands and getting lost in the woods and never coming out. And this is the unbelievably safe version. This is the there is never going to be a YouTube video about what happened to that Canadian guy. It's not going to happen.

It's just hiking along the edge of civilization. But it's still really cool.

Yeah, I'm going to let this idea percolate in my brain because it's like, it's so cool. Anyway, that's my recon report so far.

My initial crazy plan gave way to like, oh, no, that's a silly plan. Don't do that, which is then given way to, but actually, maybe it's a great plan.

But yeah, man, it's definitely like, I'm never going to be like, you know, the guy who I don't remember his name, but like the first guy to go across the Antarctic to the pole by himself.

Where he had to keep his own poop in bags on his sled because there's not enough bacteria in that part of the world.

That if you poop on the ground, it just stays there forever. He had to take all his supplies with him and leave nothing. I'm not, I'm not the guy. I can't even go up the fucking volcano here. That's not, that's not for me.

But walking along the coast like right now, I'm walking by a coffee nine. Stop drinking bad coffee. Americano for 3,500 won. National barista champion Kim Jin-Ku. Like, what the fuck? That's the kind of hiking adventure for me. I want a hiking adventure where despite the fact that I'm going around an entire island, I never want to be too far away from a national barista champion. 20:00 And around here, that's totally doable. Shit, this is nice. You know, my plan is to sort of start bailing out of this adventure because it's getting dark, but I just keep wanting to go further. I just want to see what the next little lake is like. See what the next part is like. Yeah, like again right here. I'm at a point where it is just, it's not high cliffs anymore. It's really near the water, but it's just rocks.

It's just such crazy rocks. You can never really walk over there. So I'm just walking through a little parking lot behind some businesses. But it's still right by the ocean and it's still fucking beautiful.

But all right, I guess I'm just going to keep walking and see. I'll just let my, I'll just, I got candy to my heels, baby.

Let the boogie take me. Is it going to take me farther in this trail? Is it going to take me up to the bus route?

I can't hit in my heels tonight, baby. You know, I can't hit in my heels. You know, this boogie is for real. Oh, a stamp. More stamps. What does this stamp even look like?

I've been seeing these stamps around and I've never stamped one.

It's like a little, a little picture. I see it's like a little picture of the shore in the name of where I met. But I can't quite read because the stamp is much to be. Yeah, the stamp system's a little weird. It does seem like somebody was really into the idea of the stamps at some point and they have not maintained the stamps. Yeah, the stamps are a bit in disrepair. Oh, a washroom. That's nice. That's another great reason to stop. That is, I guess, one thing. There's not a ton of washrooms on this trail, particularly by the, the shrine of storms, the hill of storms. There's like no washroom at all in that whole stretch. But there's just enough as I'm going around. I'm like, ah, it's just enough. As you get to the more rural areas, maybe that would be an issue. But so far, it's been all right. But okay, I'm going to go because I got to go pee.

All right, it's the next day. Let me just say this name while I'm by the sign because I will forget. I can hear it. I think I'm nearing it. So yeah, I saw that there was a third waterfall. There's the two waterfalls near Segwapo that cost a couple bucks to go see. And there's the one in the grotto that I have not seen yet. And there's the one that empties directly into the ocean that I did go see. And it's for sure worth two dollars. But I saw that there was a third smaller waterfall. This must be it. And yeah, I didn't really know where it was. I didn't clock the info. But it's right by the waterfall that empties into the ocean. And in fact, I'd say this one also, essentially, empties into the ocean. I'm right by the shore. Close enough anyway, but it's way smaller.

This is like a fist this size. It's just a little teeny waterfall. But it's really nearby. So hey, why not? Why not toss it in? It's just from the big, bad waterfall. Which many, I mean, it's hard for me to remember these names because I don't know. Obviously, there's a lot of recurring terms that if I knew any Korean, it would probably help me understand what these things mean. But it appears the bigger one is the Sugwapo John Bang Waterfall. And this is just so John Bang Waterfall. So maybe so just means adjacent to smaller version of a little brother too.

I guess they basically have the same name. But yeah, from the parking lot, basically I wanted to try the coastal walk I was doing yesterday. I was like, let's try going the other way. Let's go up the coast the other way and give that a little test. So I went to the waterfall and I just was spying for the signs that designate the coastal trail that are orange and blue arrows. Unmissable. But yeah, from the parking lot, there were the arrows, the signs. I didn't notice them when I was here the other day. So I started walking along them and in mere minutes, here I am at another a little baby waterfall, a little tiny waterfall. 25:00 But yeah, you can get down to the shore and there's people not surfing around here. It's scuba diving. I see some scuba divers. And there are a lot of different scuba diving businesses right across from my hotel. I've said my window. There's a scuba diving business.

So this is kind of cool. It really is just a tiny version of the big one. I'd say the big one is well worth well worth two dollars. This is definitely not a replacement. Don't just come to this little crappy one. But if you're already at the big cool one, why not also go to the little crappy one. I'm sorry, waterfall. I shouldn't call you a little crappy waterfall. That's not cool.

Yes, it's still super nice. This is actually reminding me a lot of the beach, the Leonardo DiCaprio movie, the beach, which I can't recommend the movie necessarily. It's got a lot of stuff I like, but it definitely doesn't come together as a complete film. I was a huge Danny Boyle fan after train spotting came out. So I was keeping up with all the stuff he was doing, one of which was the beach. But as with most of his non-trainspotting films, up to and including train spotting too, you know, there's always like, oh yeah, there's stuff I like about them. But they don't stick the landing. The beach is no different, but the novel, the beach. It was the first thing written by Alex Garland, who in subsequent years, he's become pretty famous.

And it's excellent. Man, the novel of the beach. I've read several times, and I super recommend it. It is really good. So even if you saw the movie of the beach and you weren't totally sold, give that novel a try. It is really good. You know, just about a traveler, kind of an asshole of privilege similar to myself, you know, he's just got the money to travel around. And the normal tourist stuff, oh, it's just not good enough for him. He's just like, ah, here I am, just where everyone else is.

So he learns about this. It's, ah, it's just like a protected island, where people aren't supposed to go. But a bunch of entitled dickhead western tourists go there and set up a whole little community, and it doesn't go great.

But it's a really good book, and there's this one part in particular, where he's diving. He's diving through some underwater caves, and he gets lost. And it is, I think, legitimately the scariest thing I've ever read in my life. It just really gives you that horrible, claustrophobic, I'm about to drown feeling of being trapped. Underground, trapped underwater, trapped in the dark, trapped with no air. It is goddamn it. It's so scary. It's brutal. Man, speaking of the beach, though, I mean, that's where I could, I could not only identify with that protagonist, because, you know, he's a third generation dickhead, who, ah, doesn't have to worry about money necessarily, has an easy life. Just as an entitled person, just a lucky person on the earth, obviously, that's pretty similar to my circumstances. And just because Alex Garland is my exact age, you know, he had a lot of references to Game Boys and fucking Rampage and Street Fighter 2.

But also just that desire to get away, because just there, if you could, ah, if you heard the uncut audio, I had to keep pausing. I just cut out a bunch of dead air, because there's this one guy. I don't know who the fuck he is, but he was coming toward me when I got to the waterfall. Then he was coming up behind me, so I let him pass. Then he went down this path, and I guess came back, because he passed by me again. It's like, fuck off. Fuck right off my man. I am trying to do a podcast. And what are you doing? You're buzzing about to, like, a weird insect. This way, then that way, then this way, then that way. Fuck off, man. Fuck off. Get out of my face.

Yeah, maybe your mileage will vary on the beach. But man, did I identify with that? I have everything, and yet I want a little more. I want to travel the beauty of the world, and yet I want it all to myself. That's one of the many things the movie just didn't have time, I think, to get into necessarily. 30:00 The book's really good with that. It's really good to examine that, that type of person, not a bad person, just not a great person. And then put them under some stress, and rather than heroic results, you get the other thing.

But yeah, yesterday I kept walking along the coast, and I got to this point where it was really flat. Instead of the cliff sides, it was just like I was more or less at sea level, just a little bit above. And there's just the rocks spread out on the shore. And there's a bunch of older couples, so I'm sure we're just locals that were all just walking along. The sun was on its way down. And it was just delightful. I was just like, tra la la la la la. Walking around doing nothing. It is so wonderful. But then it was getting dark. So I was like, yeah, you know, it's probably about time I bail out. And I saw a sign pointing back to the waterfall that said it was about six and a half kilometers to get back. So I'm like, yeah, right? That's not too bad. I decided to take a different route. Actually, I went farther up into the city just to take a different method, see some new stuff. I passed a World Cup Stadium. And an Aeroz Museum. And I was like, I found some Wi-Fi and like, let me look that up. And it's like, this is one of the smaller of the numerous sex related museums in Jeju. So I was like, huh? Apparently there's a whole underbelly of sex museums around here that I had no idea about. And since I'm generally not a museum guy, I foresee that I probably won't go to any sex museums. But hey, I guess if you're into that, to me a sex museum is those porn stores in Japan. That's what I call a sex museum. Look at all this physical media. Look at all these fucking DVDs and blue raising physical books. But yeah, apparently that's a thing that goes on around here. But as I was heading up that way, and that was a nice walk in its own right, walking back through the dark, nice little stroll. But I was thinking, yeah, instead of that seven kilometers home, what if I did just keep going? What if it was just seven kilometers further on down the road? What a cool idea. And now that I'm heading the other way, there was like a little tangle up by the waterfall where there were businesses and stuff. But now it's very similar. I'm just in a rocky path, walking along the rocky shoreline. All these beautiful coastal views. It's like, yeah, this is, this is really cool.

Here's like a, oh, wow, a mini, mini waterfall. If the other one was a fifth of size, this one is a fifth of size of that. So it's very small. But there's really no path. I got to walk along slippery rocks to get across here.

Okay, let's take this slow. Let's not fall in the water in real time. No problem. No problem. And there's the ribbons telling me I am going the right way. I love it. Now that I'm going the other way, yeah, like this is also great. It's much more cliffy here. But yeah, there's still just paths and arrows. And like, I'm super confident you could easily do this. You could walk all the way around Jeju Island for sure. I don't think it'd be a big problem at all. It would be super fun and cool. And probably wouldn't even really take that long. But if I was to just go from hotel to hotel all the way around the island, I need to carry my fucking bag. I just didn't even think about that. And yeah, this is awful pretty. But again, yeah, there's buses all around Jeju. And yeah, the longest bus ride you could ever take. I imagine two hours, like from all the way east to all the way west, maybe it's probably the longest bus ride you could ever theoretically take around here.

So all these other rides would be a lot shorter. I mean, I could do this now, basically. Maybe that's an idea because I am still here for another month.

I got a whole month left here. What if, what if I just like say today, for instance, I just go as far as I'm going to go, a clock where I was at. And then I could just come back here on the bus and start again from where I ended. Like, there's really this would be a very easy area to do that.

And maybe it doesn't quite have the exact purity of like I literally started walking and I walked all around the outside uninterrupted.

But yeah, the only way to do that is to carry my stuff. And I don't have a lot of stuff. It'd be very hard to have even less stuff. And I think it wouldn't matter. I think if I had half as much stuff as I have now, it would still be too much. And it would still just destroy my poor shoulder to do that every day, day after day after day.

But yeah, I still haven't actually taken a bus here on Jeju, but they're everywhere. There's a shitload of buses. And through it all are the orange and blue ribbons constantly reassuring me that I'm not fucking up. Although in this case, I mean the waters right there. I'm walking by the shoreline. There's a certain, not a certain, there's a large natural contingent to this and to make sure you know you're still going the right way and you're on the right track. But man, yeah, this shit is beautiful. See, maybe that's the idea. I mean, I think I was maybe just way over thinking it. Oh, set up all these hotels ahead of time. But I can't even do that this time. This will be for like, I don't know, couple of years from now. If I'm back in Jeju Island, I could do this thing.

I'm like setting up a lot of hurdles that are not necessarily that sensible. And would they make the journey better? Maybe, maybe not. Like maybe it just doesn't matter.

So what if I wake up right where I ended off the day before or if I take a little bus ride? Who the shit cares? What fucking difference does it make? I can still go along the same coastline and see the whole thing. I just love this trail. It's so fucking nice. So I think I'm realizing like whatever, whatever the path of least resistance is to see more of this trail. That's, you know, I don't want to lose sight. I'm losing sight of the forest for the trees. I'm making up these weird rules about walking in a continuous circle around the island when that's not what I care about. It's the physical actual trail that I like and that I want to see. I want to see the whole goddamn thing. I want to see every bit of this trail. But yeah, I don't care. I don't care how I get to each section. I don't care if I do it continuously. I don't care if I do it all now or do some of it later. I do it in pieces. Who the fuck cares? That's not the part that matters.

So yeah, I'm sorting it out in my brain. But yeah, I think that's today's plan. Just go as far as I can go. And it just feels better to an active version of this plan starting from now because it's like the difference between I got a month here, a month is a long time. Even if I do take buses to specific points in order to continue this journey and even if they are increasingly far away, I do have the time. I got the time to do that if I want to. Should I so choose, whereas on the other hand, the other plan of like setting up all these hotels and stuff would be the reverse. It's like well, I literally can't do that for at least a whole month if not a return journey to Jeju.

Fuck that. So thank you for joining me while I unravel this plan in my mind. Man, I just, I mean, I guess it's, I guess there's no point in trying to describe. That's been one of the weirdest things about this podcast from the get go. How do I describe this stuff? But I mean, if you just look up anything about the coastline of Jeju, it's all, you know, the world's full of pictures and YouTube videos and stuff.

But just, I guess just take my word for it that it's beautiful. Every time I look through some trees or there's an opening in the foliage or I near the shore and it look out, it's like there's rocks and there's crashing waves and there's the islands out in the fucking sea. But beyond those like specific three islands, there's no other ones that I see. Everything is just infinite ocean. Oh, actually, I think this island is a different one. I don't think I could see this one from my neighborhood. Yeah, I know that there's like the three near sagwapo that are like a famous trio, but who knows how many islands there are out here. But it's weird, yeah, like beyond these islands that are quite close to the shore, out in the far distance, there's just nothing. Just fucking nothing. It's just infinite ocean.

But yeah, every time I'm like, God, I wish I could describe that. I wish I could send a mental snapshot into the brain of the listener. Like this shit is so beautiful. I guess that spurring me on too is like, yeah, why put this off? Why make up a plan that allows me not to do this? It's so beautiful, it's so cool and it's just right here. It's just a path. It's not hard to get to.

It's well labeled. Just do it. Dog. Just fucking do it. But anyway, let's stop back in later and see how far I got. I might mosey up into civilization next time I'm nearer because it wouldn't kill me to hit a convenience store, get an iced coffee and maybe like, I do think my favorite thing in South Korean convenience stores is these cream buns you can buy. You can get like green tea, matcha ones. Yesterday I had one that was just normal cream and salt. And there's like a chocolate one. And they're still like not amazing. Like again, my apology South Korea, but even though like even my favorite thing in a South Korean convenience store is way, way worse than the average thing in a Japanese convenience store.

I'm afraid that's just how it is. But I do like those things. I could go for one of those right now. But anyway, fucking beautiful fucking shit dude. What the fuck? So nice.

So I've been walking along. I went past a little like fishing areas where there's like pears and a lot of nets and stuff. But I mean, I'm not like far far. I'm still like if I just bailed out now, I could easily walk home from here. I'm still relatively close, but I'm noticing terrain shifts where I'm going through these little areas where, you know, there is an occasional little ice cream store or a cafe or something.

But a lot of it is just sort of not much. Just a little coastal stretch that's mostly just residential. But then it'll pop in even if just for a little bit to full on civilization where a bus went by. I only saw the one bus, but hey, one's all you need. I wonder about that. If I just got on a bus heading in the general direction of Sagwipo, what are the chances it wouldn't go there, right? Probably they just all go there. It's probably a bus depot. I guess maybe we'll find out. More famous last words. But also past one convenience store, the happy to see you brand. It's the only one I saw, but hey, you only need one. I got by to get one free a cafe la. My favorite bottle coffee. And I got one of those little cream buns I was just talking about because they don't always have them and they, it's always random what variety they'll have. So this one was Jose fresh cream. Delightful. And then after that, it passed right back into residential fishing type stuff.

But I saw a new island out in the distance that I've never seen before. This one's way flatter than the other ones. But it's the last one I see for some time. But this is kind of interesting. So now I'm coming into like much more of a proper city. I'm sure this is probably a city with its own name. It's looking pretty built up.

But the coast. Here's a restaurant playing music.

But the coastline curves now. So I can see what's coming. And it's like, whoa, whoa. That looks far like I'm really going to walk all the way to there and then to there and then to there before things finally disappear into the distance. I mean, I know it doesn't matter. The walk is the walk. Nothing changes about it. But I hadn't been able to see it before and just the way things had been curving. Now I can see quite a ways and it's like, whoa, that looks really far.

But I mean, that's the weird thing about hiking anyway. I was saying about the volcano. The idea of going up the volcano seems so cool, but then when you see video of it, it's like, oh yeah, when you're actually on it though, it's just a normal path. It doesn't seem that crazy besides the occasional big cool view where you can see a bunch of stuff. Walking along a coastline, it's no different than walking anywhere else. Just walking.

There's a glimpse of the scope of it. It's not something that happens in a city. You're never really aware of how far you're walking.

But yeah, there are also some people who went by in a car that were, this seems like in Canada, this would be like an annoying teenagers or people in the early 20s, yelling out the car window. Older people don't do that. So here it was older people in the sense that they're, you know, in their 30s or 40s. But they weren't yelling out the car window like in Canada where they'd probably just yelling insults or some weird thing. They were nice. They're like, hello. I was like, oh hi. And one of them said, have a nice day. Is that were disappearing? So I was like, thank you. You too.

That was nice. That seems like a nice little sign that this idea of just wandering along the coastline. If you need a vibe check, is this a thing that's cool to do? So far so good.

It seems nice. Now though, of course, because it would probably make sense to just buy one coffee. But when it's buy two, get one free. Of course, I got to buy three. I didn't drink all three yet. Actually, my fridge at the hotel starting to fill up with coffee because I'll get like three coffee and drink two of them and just take one home. And it just sits there.