#138 Walking Jeju Island in the rain

Transcript

Alright, it's the next day. I'm picking up on my circumnavigating Jeju Island plan from where I left off yesterday. It's kind of a cool feeling, just, you know, recognizing stuff on the bus and then getting closer and closer and then seeing, like, yesterday's journey, I just ended at this random statue. And it's like, right, there's the statue. It is just like, it just connects together, it links up in the brain. The hardcore version of this journey would be if I somehow brought a tent with me and, you know, just camped up each night where I was and just did it all in one track. That wouldn't work around here at all, because it's all really developed, you know. It's a pretty small island. There's really no parts that aren't residential. Nobody wants me setting up tents and I wouldn't want to carry one, so it wouldn't work on any level. But yeah, going back home on the bus, and swinging by for a quick Macdonalds, and then just sticking around on the computer at night, and then getting up the next day. And like, it's funny that it just, like, it basically feels the same. Well, it doesn't feel the same as setting up a tent. I mean, that'd be so much harder and so much more rugged and tough. But the traveling part, the journey part feels the same. It feels like I just climbed out of my tent to start the next day's walk, even though I actually came out of a hotel and went to a bus stop and sat on a bus.

But even when I kind of try to get going, try to get myself going, it's still 3 p.m. by the time I get my shit together and get on a bus, and the bus rides are getting longer and longer. But I feel like that's pretty good. It misses the super terrible midday, awful sun. And it's like a reasonable amount of walking anyway. If I got started at like 9 in the morning, I'm not going to walk till 6 or 7 at night. It's not going to happen.

So starting in late afternoon and just walking as far as I feel like walking seems to be going okay.

I'm at a point right now where the shore is like right there, but the road is also right there, the highway. It's a very little break between them.

Here's a little path. I'm going to try to take this little path to get away from the road. But I've learned so far on this track that if I don't see the little indicators, the little arrows or the little ribbons saying that this is the coastal trail, I have a huge chance of ending up in a dead end. So this might not work. Though there is rocky beach here with fishermen, and here's steps down onto the rock. So again, this isn't the official trail. I think the trail wants me to stay on the road, but I'm going to try going on the rocks.

It's going to be a little tricky and hopefully, again, hopefully I don't just get stranded. I just don't want to be near the traffic.

I was kind of surprised that because I just stopped at a random point yesterday, because I had a real slow start yesterday, I didn't stop at like a major area. There is a major area coming up that would have been the logical stop point. Piocian Beach, which I've not seen a single beach on Jeju. It's all these rock shorelines. Such should be interesting. I just stopped at a random spot, but I was surprised today that as I went to ring the little bell to get off at my random stop, someone else rang the bell, and then half the bus. There weren't that many people on the bus, but like four people, besides me, all got off here. So I don't know where the heck this is by the Song Chiang Yo Bridge.

But it's something. Something's going on around here. But this should be kind of cool, because yeah, not only is there this beach, what is the thing by the beach? It's the Jeju Folk Village, which who knows? It's always kind of weird with like tourist-type spots, because I oftentimes just kind of walk by, and I don't really properly take them in. And that's actually one thing I like a lot about this journey is this is designed to just keep walking, because that's my favorite, it is just my favorite way. Instead of stopping and attempting to soak something in and pretending that I am comprehending what I'm seeing when I don't really, I like to just take a glance at stuff and go like, hey, that's cool and keep walking. And this is designed to keep walking. I got to walk around the island. That's what I'm here to do. Anything that I see on the way is a bonus.

So I don't know that I'll do much besides just stroll past the Jeju Folk Village, whatever that is. But the other thing that's cool, obviously with that and the beach, that seems like it's going to be one of the more dense areas, and I'm going to take a little detour. 5:00 I got a side mission. Instead of seeing the culturally relevant thing, I have a culturally irrelevant shallow-ass thing to do, is basically I need to look for a new power converter. And I thought I would check a Daiso. I don't know that there's a great chance I'll find what I need at Daiso. But there's only one Daiso in Seiguipo. And when I was trying to decide today, should I take a day off of traveling? Should I get back to the travel? One of the things was like, I do need to go hit up the Daiso. And then I checked just at a curiosity. You know, I'm definitely getting to the point in this circumnavigation where I'm getting farther and farther away from big city center type places in general.

But just in case, I just typed in Daiso. And there's only one Daiso, the entire loop around the eastern edge of Jeju, between Seiguipo and Jeju City. There's only one. And it's by this beach. It's right by the next leg of my journey. So I was like, man, that's perfect. I was going to go do that anyway. I kind of need to buy like some socks. You know, just some Jeju-esque stuff. There's apparently it's pretty common in humid places, but I've never heard of this before.

The water in my toilet is like red. And I was like, what the heck is this? Just leaving a weird red stain. And it's some kind of bacteria that I don't remember the name of. But it initially made me nervous. I was like, oh, what do you mean? Did that come from me? I hope not. But it doesn't seem so. It seems like it just grows around here. And it can get into people, but it's really hard to transmit through water and stuff. I'm pretty confident it's just something that is just in my toilet. That is not, that I'm okay.

Yeah, it's just this weird bacteria that leaves a weird red color in your toilet. And apparently if I just buy a little bottle of bleach or something, I can get rid of it. And I figure, hey, why not? It might also even just be because I'm staying at this hotel for six weeks, you know. I think normally the cleaning staff would probably clean the toilet. And you know, this wouldn't develop. This could be my fault just because I haven't... had the cleaning staff doing cleaning stuff. So the least I could do is buy a little bottle of bleach and fix up the toilet.

But anyway, I was like, cool. I mean, if one of the things I was going to do is just go do a Daiso run anyway. It'd be nice if I could do this the whole way. I just, whatever I need to do in the day, why don't I just also do it while I'm walking around the edge of the island. But like I said, I think a lot of this, especially coming up after this beach, seems like it's going to be pretty... devoid of stuff. Pretty, you know, again, it doesn't get super rural in Jeju, but ruralish. No more Daisos. But for today, I was like, sweet. I can go do the journey and do the Daiso thing. Awesome.

Yeah, this is going a lot better. Going along the shore. I still don't see the ribbons. Oh, there's one. As soon as I say that. There they are. Everything is back. I mean, again, I don't need them right now.

Just walking along the shore, the shore is the ultimate ribbon, the ultimate guide of where to go. But there do get to be some points where you're kind of walking through the woods and stuff next to the shore, where the ribbons are real handy.

But yeah, this thing with the fucking power converter, I haven't brought it up, but it's actually been a problem from day one. I did not do any research about power in Korea. I thought maybe just because, you know, it's pretty easy in Japan. Japan, it's tricky because they don't use three-hole plugs, but other than that, North American stuff can just plug in in Japan. Although that also do your own research on that too, because I think there's two different power grids. If I remember right, half of the country is on one system and half is on the other. So in Tokyo, you're fine.

But I'm not sure if you go up North. Maybe it is a different power system. But I just kind of presumed that Korea is probably the same.

I didn't even think to look if I needed a power converter. And then I got to Korea, and it's similar. I don't know if it is the same, but it's similar to an Amsterdam, where the plugs are just two prongs. But in Korea, they're additionally designed with this circular design. And it's great if it's a Korean product, you know, like the little kettle in my hotel room. It's just got the round plug with the two prongs sticking out, and it just fits right into an outlet, and it's no problem at all. 10:00 But when I first got to Seoul, and I realized I couldn't plug in my laptop, I just went out and found a 7-11. And I was actually a little lucky that they even had a power converter there, because it's not super common at the convenience stores. I just checked one earlier today, and they did not have one. I did refill my tea money card, though, the first time doing it without a machine. And I gave the guy 600,000 won, six bills, you know, $60. And he took five, and he gave me back the 10. So obviously they only recharge in batches of five. Or then he said he could do the 10 separately, but I was like, no, that's fine. I should just give me the five. But that's good to know, I guess. Don't give them just random amounts. Don't give them 60. Give them 10. Give them 50.

Anyway, this fucking thing I got this power converter, it fucking sucks. And I think it's because it's not a dedicated Korea to whatever converter, it's just an everything converter. Which in some ways that makes sense, because you don't know who's buying this, where they're coming from, what they need it for. But the part, unfortunately, that plugs into Korean plugs, and I was looking at Reddit and stuff, and a lot of people have these problems with most of the power converters that you can find around Korea, if you're a tourist, they just don't fit. They don't have the round part to fit snugly into the outlet. So they're just kind of hanging there. And yeah, they just don't fit properly. And from day one, I had to take like, you know, I have some like hair bands that I use in my luggage. My luggage, just if I need to tie up a cord or something, where I had the hair band around this power converter, and then I had that anchored to the, just the corner of the plastic of the wall outlet. It's just like I always had to develop at each place I've been a different, weird way to perfectly hold this stupid power converter against the outlet, because it just won't work on its own. It just sucks. It's so annoying, because it's just this big rectangle. So it's one thing if you have a plug that's like flat, and you can plug this in like top-wise. But if you have a wall plug and this thing, it just doesn't stay in, it doesn't fit snug. It's really annoying. And it's been getting more and more annoying to the point that I'm starting to be scared that it's dangerous. No matter how I plug this thing in now, and I have a bunch of options in this hotel room. I have vertical plugs, I have horizontal plugs, I have all kinds of stuff.

And it just keeps making weird little buzzing at the best. It makes buzzing sounds like a, like a fluorescent light that's on the fritz. At worst, it literally makes sparks, big crackle sounds, and just sparks going out, and it's like Jesus fucking Christ, like I've got my eye on where is the fire extinguisher in this hotel just in case? Like what the fuck, and it just, yeah, it was bad to begin with, and it's just getting worse. And I mean it was only $5. I don't care about getting a new one, but they're just hard to find. And now when I was looking on Reddit, unfortunately the advice people had was there's tons of good ones. You can get these converters that are only designed to go straight from Korean outlets to North American. That's their only design. They're not designed to do everything for everyone. And they fit snugly and they work great and they're cheap. But you have to order them online before you get to Korea, because trying to find them in Korea, good fucking luck. And some people had like, oh maybe this store, that store, in Seoul. But it was still a big maybe, and I am not in Seoul. So I don't fancy my chances. If Daiso even has fucking power converter stuff, it might just be the same type of shit. And I'm checking the convenience stores, but who knows how long it'll take before any of them have anything. And again, it might just be the same old shit. No, it sucks. Because I have to plug in my stupid computer. But this thing, yeah, like I said, the snap and crackle of it, it's getting scary. I legitimately hate it.

So these little bugs, now that I'm walking on the shoreline, walking on the rocks. Well, there's definitely different types. Like there's a bigger one that just went by, and I'm looking at a smaller one. I looked up like stuff that lives on the beaches in tropical environments. And it was hard to determine exactly what these are. I'm not sure, but I think they might actually be cockroaches. There's like Asian territory, Asian area cockroaches that are different from our cockroaches. 15:00 They're bigger, creepier, and kind of semi-aquatic-y. I think that's what these are.

But there's many things, like I saw the tiny crabs yesterday. Yeah, as I'm walking along these rocks, man, I'm glad I got long pants and my big boots. Because there's little creepy crawlies everywhere. They're all over the place. Just skittering away.

Although, as soon as I said that, now I haven't seen one. Let's see in real time. How long till I see one? Because you know, that sounds bad when I say it like that. It sounds like there's waves of them everywhere.

But yeah, no, I guess like right now, I'm not seeing any. But, oh, there's one. Okay, so that's how long it could take. But that was unusual. Usually it's a little faster than that. There's quite a few of them. Skittering around. So I don't know if you're especially scared of little bug looking things. The shoreline might be a little less pleasant. Oh, this is a pretty rugged fucking part of this walk. Only one fisherman, me and one fisherman.

Walking across the rocks. But anyway, so that's the plan for today. Go to the beach. See what that's like. Detour into the neighborhood proper to check out the Daiso. And then from there, just keep going. Just keep going. See how far I can go. I don't have any coffee with me. I could for sure use a coffee. So either, if I find a convenience store, I mean, I guess that could be good just to check for a power converter. Buy some convenience store coffee. Fuck. This is like tricky. These big rocks that I'm walking over. And now there's like a little mini pool, little mini tide pool in here. This might actually be a great time to put this fucking recorder away. And focus on what I'm doing. So I have my hands. Because this, this is a rugged fucking, this is a rugged walk.

Holy crap. This has been a nice stretch. What the fuck? So I'm still not quite at the Jeju folk village. I just saw an arrow pointing saying I was nearly there. I'm starting to think like by some, again, I don't know what kind of beach we're talking about here. Whenever I get to this real beach, because again, I've seen nothing, but harsh rock everywhere I've ever been on Jeju so far. But I was like, did I walk past somehow? Is that possible? I don't think it is just like, maybe I'm starting to take these distances for granted a little bit where I'm so pleased with how far I made it in three days. It's like, wow, this is totally doable. When I mean, even at that pace, it's still several weeks to do this. It's still many, many days. 200 kilometers is not a short walk. So yes, this is longer than I expected, but this has been gorgeous. I guess what I'm learning now is, I mean, how is this new? Everything in this podcast has just been like, hey, I make some kind of assumption and it's not even close to accurate. Like that's all that has ever happened to me while traveling. I don't know that I've accurately predicted anything ever, but this is no different just because I was in a stretch before that was kind of extra, extra unpopulated with a lot of fishing stuff and fishing plants. And then just looking at the map, you know, not seeing a lot of activity. But again, all I'm looking for is like, Daiso, a dea coffee, fast food, but you know, but those don't exist. But man, this walk has been, yeah, not at all. Not at all that way of just like, it's just lush and beautiful and gorgeous. And I could be also that I passed. Well, I don't know. It's a chicken in the egg. I passed some hotels and resorts and stuff. Are they there because everything is so beautiful or is everything all developed and beautiful because of them? I mean, I think it's got to be just the shore because developed sounds bad. It sounds like developed in a good way, developed in the sense of like more elaborate trails along the shore. And like going through tree canopies and stuff and there was this one like just like a little lookout post almost, but it was this little room with the walls painted inside with all these cool like fish paintings. And there was just a chair in there and you could just look out the window at a view of the ocean. 20:00 And it's like that that platonic ideal of like a what a writer, like some writer would sit here in 1885 and write a novel. I did not stop and do any writing. I just kept on a walk and but yeah, this has been insanely beautiful. So yeah, I guess just and I'm sure there will be more as I go. There will be more areas like that, like the really quiet fishing part. But I guess this idea that I'm like leaving civilization and that it's just going to be that way all along the coast. No, no, no, just because there's no McDonald's does not fucking doesn't matter. It's still like like I guess that's the thing is this walk has been very varied. It hasn't been the same like the complexion and the feeling of it hasn't been the same for more than a few kilometers at a time. You know, it's always ocean coastline rocks and trees and road, you know, in that sense, it's the same the whole way. What specific amounts of like foliage or trees or pretty flowers and like all this kind of stuff keeps changing constantly. But yeah, this has been a real good one, a real good stretch. Pretty as hell.

Dude, I'm still not close. I am really not close. I'm like two thirds of the way to the Jeju folk village.

Maybe that's the thing too is as the coastline curves. I mean, I'm bad at judging distances anyway, particularly on a map. But maybe it's longer than I think it is because I'm not walking straight there. I am walking along the curve of a coastline.

But I mean, all that being said, it's like, you know, it's not even quite five o'clock yet. But yeah, I never would have made it yesterday, not even close. It turns out I actually stopped at a really good point yesterday. So that seems like a good thing to keep up as well, not to necessarily aim for the next big notable point on Google Maps because those are definitely getting fewer and fewer. Just stop wherever. Just walk till you're tired of walking and get on a bus. Bing bang boom. Alright, well, yeah, I guess I got a ways to go.

I still have not found a convenience store. I think I did walk by maybe a couple of places that are potentially cafes. But there's definitely some of these places that I pass where it's that super casual island feeling of like, is there even anyone in there? I think they're open, but I don't see anyone in there. But I got to assume too that's probably a lot of it is that this is like Wednesday.

It's probably a lot busier on the weekends. A lot more touristy folk walking around.

But yeah, I think I'm gonna especially keep my eyes peeled. Surely I can find a convenience store somewhere, even if I have to go off the trail a little bit. Because I could definitely go for main line and some coffee. I'm also, it's really humid, not too crazy sunny today, just really humid. And the nice thing about heading toward this beach and the Jeju folk village and then the city center that's got the Daiso and all that, there will definitely be washrooms around.

So this will be the perfect time to blast my bladder. And then just when it's time to start evacuating, evacuates all, there should be washrooms around. So that's my new goal. Yeah, there's more than tetrapods. Yeah, that is an odd thing. I haven't seen any this whole time for like the last two hours that I recall and there's a lot. Once they start, there is a lot. I wonder like, what is it about this particular part of the shoreline? There are some buildings here that are pretty close to the shore.

Maybe the shoreline was eroding here. I don't know. I don't know anyway. Wish me luck. Wish me luck with my convenience store radar.

Which if we were in Japan, I would probably just be able to hold my arm out and grasp about randomly. And I would accidentally find the handle to open a door to go into a convenience store. There's a lot of convenience stores in South Korea, but not that many. Especially out here, far, far fewer.

Oh, man, this walk. Wait, here's a sign. Pioceon beach 1.5 kilometers, really? Oh. I just can't seem to get there. And I'm feeling it. 25:00 I don't know. I guess it's the humidity maybe. I am lacking the energy. And I did not manage to find a convenience store. In fact, I found the opposite. There was this road that went down onto the Rocky Beach coastline. There was a guy down there in a scuba suit. And then I saw another road down the coast. But I really wasn't sure if they connect because I've made that mistake a few times where it looks like you can walk along the beach. But then there's like a waterway in the middle. But I tried it. And I did make it. But it was the really tricky walking across these big crazy volcanic rocks. Although this one was almost entirely the little crabs. And the little weird bug looking things only showed up at the end. And sorry to offend you. Little bug looking things, but the crabs are just cooler. I just felt better about walking amongst the crabs. Man, though, it is like you'll just see them out of the corner of your eye. And they're just pink and then they've hidden. Reminds me of Dark Souls. Reminds me of the little salamanders that you've got to hit to get gems. And if you don't hit them right away, they're gone.

But yeah, I am slowly approaching this beach and the Daiso. I think I've technically passed the little Daiso dot on my map. But there's no easy way from where I am to get into the city. I've got to go forward some and then hook back.

There's no way this beach is a real beach. I mean, I don't know. They're talking it up awful big. Just like, hey, it's this beach. But like, there hasn't been anything resembling a beach anywhere else on this island. What are the chances? Is there an actual beach? Anyway, I'm going to get to the beach, loop back around to Daiso. And that's it. That's good enough for today. But then I think I'll keep this episode rolling. I'll just continue from here when next I pick up on this journey.

Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. Oh, yeah, I guess that's one thing too. I was saying how nice this walk was. It did toward the end of this walk as I'm finally slowly approaching the beach. One thing I realized that I hadn't realized before because it's hard to realize the absence of something.

But I did find an area at some point that smelled a bit bad in that seaside sense of like something is dead around here. You know, old fish, the old dead fish smell. But it was only a bit and it wasn't very strong.

But I just passed an area that had a little sign, a little placard saying that it was a marsh. And that marsh land is a bit rare around these parts because it's generally straight from the mainland island right to the rocks, right to the ocean. But this was a little marsh area with waterways wide enough for the traditional canoes that they used to use around here. But that marsh area smelled terrible. It really did smell like just, you know, the old dead fish smell. But yeah, that made me realize the inverse of that is that I hardly ever smelled that on Jeju. I think it is just because these shorelines, they're so stark and severe. And the water comes up and the water goes out and it's like constantly moving. Nothing is just sitting there long enough to just, you know, smell bad and everything gets washed away.

So that's kind of cool.

But anyway, yeah, this beach. That's a lot more tired than I thought I was. Like I was just kind of presuming, you know, and I guess I didn't want to push it with coffees because it is so hard to tell if there's going to be washrooms or not. I don't want to get caught having to pee somewhere a little too public. So I was like, yeah, I'm not going to bring any coffee with me just to bottle a water and, you know, I'll probably pass some convenience stores. But there's definitely stretches on this trek with no dang convenience stores. Maybe I should be prepared with a little bit of coffee because it would go a long way right now, just these situations like this where it's like, I only got to get a little farther, but I'm really, whoo, I'm feeling it.

And this has only been two and a half hours of just walking along the coast. You know, as much as I've been hiking on these trips and I'm pretty pleased with my overall fitness cardio level, four hours, if not more, up the volcano. Then down, no fucking way, dude. There's just no way. There's just no way. That was that. More and more I'm realizing there's no way that is going to happen. I mean, I would be only a little more than halfway right now and I would have been walking uphill the whole time. 30:00 That's fucking insane. That's fucking insane. That is not a one day trip. If there's some way I could do that in two or three days, you know, if they had a nice bus like I do with this journey that I could take down, then maybe. But yeah, no, that's, I mean, it is a 2,000 meter mountain. It's not reasonable for me to make that leap, you know, to go from six or seven hundred to 2,000. Of course, that's a little fucking much. But yeah, it's definitely a little fucking much. One kilometer, Jeju folk village.

Just got to think of it like the tunnel, the tunnel by Camine Park. That was 1.2. I just got to walk through the equivalent of that tunnel except instead I'm walking on a beautiful path next to a beautiful shoreline. Still like no mosquitoes either. It's so weird because I'm continuing to have mosquito problems in my hotel room. I don't know how the fuck they're getting in.

There must be a little hole in my screen somewhere in the window screen. But yeah, it's not like the other day where there was like seven or eight. Now it's like it always seems like there's just one. But then I get the one and there's one more. So it's like, oh yeah, that wasn't one. That was really like three. I just never saw them at the same time. But there's always one when I woke up this morning. One sailed by and I was like, who the fuck are you now? Get out of here. But outside it has been zero problem. I have had no insect trouble outside at all. Only in my hotel room for some fucking reason.

Oh, man, as I was walking along, I was like, okay, there's the road. I'll just go walk on the road. But I saw the blue arrow, which the blue arrow is the wrong way. Blue arrow is back to Seguapo. I got to follow the orange arrows. It says, like, wait, what? How am I going the wrong way? So I turned around and looked behind me and saw an orange arrow pointing to nowhere.

I looked at these like, this rock trail out across these flats. That's a restaurant, playing a delightful ditty. But yeah, so as it's been throughout this, it's kind of cool how the arrows make sure you don't miss anything, because on the one hand, because I'm getting so tired out now, it's like, what the hell are you sending me here for? It's like this rock trail. It's quite rough and tricky. But there's all these little statues out there and like stone statues and just like statues made of piled up rocks. And it was really cool. So I'm like, you, you got my back again, arrow. But apparently, that was, or I circled around somehow, the Jeju folk village. I don't actually know what the Jeju folk village was. So if it is anything, maybe it's one of those things like in Japan, there's all these castle ruin sites that aren't really anything anymore. Maybe it's like a former site, or maybe there's just something I totally missed, but there was nothing obvious. And I'll look it up later. But in the distance ahead of me, I do see what does appear to be an actual beach. The beach is real. The beach is a real beach. Amazing.

It would be pretty wild if it wasn't somehow after all this hyping up so many arrows and science pointing to the beach. But yeah, that's a perfect point to pick up at next time, which will be in this very episode. But yeah, let's do a little fade out and then fade back in on a future day. Because for today, I'm going to Daiso. I'm going home. I think it's the humidity really that did, I mean, you know, it was like a good three hours of walking. That's plenty. But yeah, the humidity, especially, I am done for.

All right, I took a couple of days off and now things are severely different. I'm on the other side of the beach where I stopped last time. 35:00 It's a weird beach because it's really long. I've never seen a beach so like narrow and then it just goes on and on and on until it finally gets to where the city starts. It's like a big horseshoe beach. And I guess with the tides, this whole area, it's kind of like even as I walked across it today, it's kind of mushy. It's like a little bit wet. I'm not quite sure how high up the water goes. But the other day, it was really hot and sunny and bright and full of people. Now there's one person I see behind me said it. Oh, no, there's a couple more. Okay. So on the main beach, there's three people total I can see. And then ahead of me, why decided to pull out the recorder? Just wanted to chronicle the surfers. It is super windy. It's raining pretty hard. Really overcast.

And there's just these couple of surfers surfing it up. So cheers to you guys. You're fucking living it up, man. Doing the surfer life. It's cool.

So I think this is probably not a great idea, but right now the wind is right at my back. So if I hold this umbrella to my back, this seems okay.

As I was coming down the beach, I was walking toward the wind and that wasn't working at all. But this seems all right. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see what happens. But yeah, basically I took a day off because I was out of laundry. It's like, can I right just spend a day in the neighborhood? Do my laundry? Oh, yeah, in the power converter. I was saying that like this fucking power converter I had is like literally shooting blue sparks. It's like, I'm going to burn down the fucking hotel. This thing is a big problem. So I went looking for a power converter. And definitely I recommend if you can order a specific Korean outlet to North American converter through eBay or something before you come if you have the opportunity. Because yeah, here all I could find is that one of the 7-Elevens, I did find the same awful converter that I already had. And I was like, I guess, I mean, if I'm desperate, I really don't want to buy the same piece of crap one again. But it can't be worse. At least it won't shoot sparks for a month or whatever. It'll buy me some time. And I mean, I was at one store. They had literally 20 different types of just the Korean plug to USB. The whole wall was that. So like, I get that the North American power converter is like not something that locals need and is a little bit of an obscure item. But when you're selling 20 different versions of just this one thing, come on. One of those could be the slightly more obscure item.

But anyway, what I finally found is latte high mart is like an electronic store. And even that, you know, it's quite large. They had just one converter. And I don't mean just one type, literally one. I got the only one that was on the shelf. And I even asked the guy just to make sure, you know, he's like, yeah, this is it. And it's also still, it's just not designed for Korea. It's so weird. I mean, latte is a Korean company. These 7-11 ones I'm buying in a Korean 7-11. But they are still like worldwide adapters and the prongs that you use in Korea. I guess are the same as like Amsterdam because it's set to, you know, you have to choose Europe. That's the Europe setting. So the trouble is just that it's it's a big square box where Korean plugs are circular. So it just doesn't fit. It just doesn't fit in the fucking thing. But in this case, like I still had to take a hair band and wrap it around this thing. While it's in a Korean power bar, just to hold it snug, because it just doesn't fit. It's the wrong fucking size. Why latte? Why are you selling this in your own country? It makes no fucking sense. But it seems to work. It was like the 7-11 one was five bucks. This one was 15 and it was, you know, way better. It's worth it for the $15 one for sure. It's clearly better. And it's, yeah, it just works. It doesn't shoot sparks and make creepy sounds. So that was nice. Nice to cover. Nice to get that covered. But yeah, then the next day is the day that I always phone home. So it's like, 40:00 it's not a great day to go out a hiking because I got to come back extra early anyway. But then since that was two whole days that I didn't continue on my journey, oh shit, this wind is getting bad. But then today when yeah, the weather's all fucked up and all overcast. I was like, ah, but I just don't want to wait another day. I don't want to take three days off.

Come on. And I mean, it's being overcast isn't a bad thing. That's kind of nice. Get you away from the awful heat that heat was really starting to get me on some of these walks. It was really sapping my energy. Oh yeah, the Jeju Folk Village, by the way, that I just passed in the last segment. I looked it up and it is like a, it's a whole little thing you can go in about historical yet, yet it's cost like $15. So I did it. So I just walked by. That's the whole point of this. It's just a walk by. Walk by everything. Oh man, this wind is getting bad. Oh, I don't, I don't fancy my chances today. But anyway, I thought, oh, it's a bit overcast, but that's fine. Raining, that's not so great. You know, my pant legs are already soaked. Got my little jacket on and stuff. But I don't know. I don't know. This is, but I mean, it's like, this is kind of fucked. I do wish the wind would come down a little. It's that bad combination. Wind and rain. That's the problem. You know, if it was just wind, I would put away this umbrella. If it was just rain, the umbrella, I wouldn't have to fight with constantly. This could go wrong. This might not be great.

But it's also nice in its own way. It's nice to not have the hot weather. I do hate hot weather. It's, you know, that should brutal. This is nicer in a weird way. Just this nice coast and it's all overcast and windy and rainy and the palm trees blowing in the wind.

But distance wise, yeah, I don't know. I don't expect I'm going to make a ton, a ton of headway today. But this is still, yeah, kind of nice in its own weird way.

So I went with little dumb things that silly little things in mind. I wanted to update about the pink creepy pink bacteria that was in my toilet. They kind of looked like there was blood in the toilet. I don't remember the name of it, but yeah, it's a common bacteria around here. I couldn't find them. They said like bleach. Get bleach. But I think that's for people that really have a problem with this thing. Like it's recurring. In my case, it was just that because the cleaning lady has not been cleaning my bathroom. It just, it wasn't really that much. I just had no cleaning stuff at all available in my hotel. So I just bought some generic cleaner stuff. They didn't really have full bleach at Daiso and a little toilet scrubber brush and scrubbed it all away. No problem. Scrubby, scrubby, scrubby. But still, yeah, that's just one of those weird things of like common around here. But I never heard of red stains in the toilet before. A humid weather thing. And now that I've passed this beach, back to just the rocks, the volcanic rocks. Apparently, there are other beaches around the island, but there's certainly a little rare. Oh, I met a guy at a convenience store yesterday. He was buying some stuff. Just asked me where I was from. Had a little chitchat in English. So I told him that I was doing this. Then I was walking around Jeju. He's like, how long is that going to take? It's like, I don't know. Three weeks maybe? We'll see.

Here comes a backhoe driving up behind me.

Oh yeah, I guess I've unofficially logged it with the locals now. Somebody knows about my plan. I have to do it now. But anyway, he welcomed me to South Korea. I said it was a very beautiful place.

Jeju. I did notice though with the weather today, I really have a hard time putting my finger on how the air pollution works here. Where it wasn't necessarily pleasant in Seoul, Jetchon, and to a lesser extent Busan. But it did, I don't know, it sort of started to make sense where it was like these spikes where things were really bad, but then these days where things were really good. Where Jeju is just odd, where it's just never that bad, but never all the way good. It's always just like a little bad. But also one thing that's different with the patterns is usually when it was raining in the mainland cities, it seemed to make the air quality better. But that's just not the case here in Jeju. The weather is actually a little worse today. It was up till like 70. It was just out of curiosity. I checked my hometown. Where is it? On the AQI 45:00 index, and it's free. Not quite zero, but not fucking 70. But yeah, again, you just kind of get stuck in that little thing of like, well, I don't know, is 70 bad enough to wear a mask? It probably is. I'll probably put it back on after I'm done yammering. I was wearing one this morning. But yeah, for whatever reason, this weather does not clean up the air around here. It does on the mainland, and I don't know why. I don't understand at all how it all works. But anyway, still not terrible or anything. But yeah, that nice thing of like, oh, a nice rainy day, and suddenly the air is all scrubbed clean. That just is not the case around here.

Oh, man, my one pant leg on the side where all the wind is blowing. It sure is wet. But again, yeah, whatever. I can still just bail out of this journey pretty easily. Oh, so that's one thing I learned too. So I briefly used Navermaps to learn about the 201 and 202 buses that go around the outside of the island. And then since then, since that's the only bus I've been taking, it's like, yeah, that's fine. But I think Google Maps is actually a little better than I thought. Because even for buses, I noticed the other day, as long as you're connected, you know, and there's quite a bit of Wi-Fi all around South Korea. If you click on the bus stop on Google Maps, it still tells you here's the buses. Here's when the 201 is coming. Here's the blue line that shows all the places it goes. So I don't know, maybe Navermaps can count maps really are worth it and are better. I haven't used them enough to really figure out how they work. But I mean, even if you set them to English, they're very much not English. So I don't know. I feel like Google Maps is pretty good. Once I realized that even the buses are on there, it's like, yeah, I don't know, I think it's fine. I think it's fine. I should put this recorder away because it's fucking raining all over the place. So let's see, I don't know. Let's see. Let's see how far I make it today.