#147 Walking across Jeju City, South Korea

Transcript

Alright, so I'm officially halfway on Circumnavigating Jeju Island. I'm at Jeju City. I did make it home okay last episode, by the way. So yeah, it seems like eight o'clock is still a pretty good benchmark for when I should be getting on the 202 bus. I think it is now. I got to switch to a different bus because I'm on the other side of the island. But take that back to Jeju City, and then if I catch the 181, back to Segalpo. You know, it goes pretty late, so there should be no problem. But still, eight o'clock seems like a good rule of thumb, not to just, you know, excessively push it. Not to push my luck. It is weird though, like yeah, that whole side of the island now. It was kind of neat because every day, despite the fact that that trip was getting longer and longer and longer. But it was still kind of neat to just like glance out the way window and see all the sights. Like, oh, there's that place. There's that place. There's that place. There's that place. Now it's, I guess it's over. I guess I'm all done with that side of the island. Now that I'm taking a bus straight north to Jeju City and continuing on the second half, the other crescent. It's like, uh, fairly well. East side of Jeju Island. You know, I'll miss you. We had some good times. But, you know, maybe some day I'll miss you.

I'll do this in the reverse. And then I'll see you again. But yeah, since I'm in the city, good opportunity to do some city things. I was going to swing by the dentist, but coincidentally, the dentist has a half day today. I think it's a Wednesday today. Man, I've also been looking for, I try to go to 7-Eleven to get money. I'm only out of the ATM because they have latte ATM machines. You can only get 100 bucks out, unfortunately. But, uh, I believe in Japan, I could get at like 300. But just that I know their machines work with cards and stuff, foreign cards. But I've gone by three different 7-Elevens today. And none of them have ATM. So that's definitely less. Because even though there are a million convenience stores in Japan, they all have ATM. That's not guaranteed in South Korea. But yeah, that stereotypical thing about how guys don't want to go to the doctor or whatever. I mean, it's, I'm totally one of those. No question. Great apprehension. I really love putting it off. I would love not to have to go. So when I saw that the dentist was closed today, it's like, uh, darn, the dentist is closed today. And, oh, good. I don't have to go to the dentist today. That was just so stupid. I don't know how to explain it. It's just, there's a way I'm unfortunately wired. But I did still get off the bus early and just go walk by. Went walked by the dentist office, found the building, found that I need to go around the back. And then there's an elevator. And on the fifth floor is the dentist. Oh, here's a bug spray. I haven't seen that since Busan. Hey, it looks kind of green from this perspective. And yet people are just sitting in the bus stop getting sprayed on. Some guys just walked in, raise their hands to it. Like, yay, the spray. Still don't know how to feel about that spray. I do hate mosquitoes. I hate them with all my heart. So I'm happy to massacre them and their babies. But I don't think I want to walk straight through bug spray. It still feels very weird to me. So yeah, in the meantime, I guess now I'm just going to go walk across Jeju City. I'm not going to particularly try to stay by the coast because it doesn't seem like that's really very possible. There's a, you know, a shipping yard thing. And then a lot of it is the airport. So I think I'll just be walking through the city normally.

But yeah, also I notice some things at this staying at a hotel for such a long time that have been there a whole months. I've been noticing and learning some weird little things about modern hotel stuff. But maybe I'll try to yammer about that if I can get to a less trafficy spot. I don't know. I don't know what's ahead of me. Jeju City is definitely not enormous. I don't think it'll actually take me that long to break the orbit of the city. But we'll see. We'll see if I can come upon a spot with a bit less traffic. And if not, this will just be a trafficy episode.

Oh man, it is so fucking hot out and it's not even full blast today. It's actually a little bit cloudy. It's a little bit visually. You can even tell it's like slightly unsunny, but just the humidity and shit. I think if anything is going to do me in on this, if I don't make it around the island, because I got a solid month left, a little over a month, in fact. But if I don't go every day, you know, it's still, what is that, you know, say 15-ish days, but I could squeeze in more if I had to. I don't think that's going to be the issue. That seems like it's probably a pretty good, you know, it'll be, I don't think I'll have a lot of time to spare, but I should be able to make it around the island. But maybe the heat, I don't know. It's only going to get worse. It's not even July yet. If I do give up because of the heat, I think that's reasonable. But we'll see. It's just frightening that it's like, man, today feels like full blast, and it's not. It's not full blast. I'm not prepared for this. Because it's one thing it's weird being from Canada. I'm not physically actually able to withstand cold any better. Probably less than a lot of people, because I'm really skinny. Like my upper body in particular has no insulation. My legs do pretty good. Be it hot or be it cold. They don't get too bothered, but my upper body overheats easily and freezes to death easily. But I think just growing up in Canada, my idea of what's appropriate is different. So a great example was when I lived in New York, I dated a girl who was from Florida. So we met in the middle in New York, and yeah, in the summer, she was fine. I mean, while in the winter, I was fine. And I think it is just that our brains are just trained. You know, her brain was trained to think that this kind of humidity is normal. You know, you can go to the fucking grocery store in a bikini top and flip-flops, and that's normal.

Whereas my brain is trained to think like, always have extra layers. Always bring a thermal shirt. I don't care what time of year it is. And when it gets cold to a certain degree, it's not that I don't notice it. I just carry on. It's just like, that's fine. Whatever I'm supposed to. My extremities are supposed to be numb right now. This is supposed to be hurting my face right now. So probably it's the same thing on the other side. It's not that she could withstand heat really any better than me physically. She just carried on with it. Whereas, yeah, to me, it was like, this is in fucking sane. How is this possible? So yeah, I'm in the, this is insane part right now. I'm just like, what's going on here?

But it's weird. So I walked by this the other night when it was dark, so I didn't stop. So I did just stop in to see what it was. It's called Samsung Yo-Yo.

I know I've made the reference before, but these names, they're all so similar. But S-A-M-S-E-O-N-G-H-Y-E-O-L.

And it's a 16th century shrine with exhibits. But walking by in the daytime, it appears to be a ticketed thing. You know, again, it's probably okay. I'm sure it's kind of interesting in there, but it's all hot and stuff. And I also, I just spent my last, I had five $1 bills left or, you know, $1,000 bills left, and I just spent them at a convenience store. But, I mean, I don't think I was going to do that anyway. And in fact, next door is this park, Shinsan Neighborhood Park, which I've been through a few times now. More and more though, I really respect that, that museum in Chiba. It was like several floors big. It was really interesting. It had all kinds of cool stuff about the Chiba clan and about life going back to the 60s and then going back to the 20s and then going way back to like pre-gun eras. And it was totally free. That one would have been, you know, that was the one where I caught eyes with the security guard at the front and I was just kind of stuck awkwardly where it's like, okay, I'm in now. I'll just do whatever. Let's just make this not awkward. How much does it cost? I'll pay any amount. I don't care. Just tell me and I'll pay it. Because, you know, I just feel so awkward talking to people when I can't speak their language. And that was, in fact, a very awkward, difficult conversation. But in the end, it turned out to be free. And that one totally was worth five bucks. Like, totally. What a great museum. I like want to go back there.

But speaking of the five bucks I just spent at the convenience store, the thing I discovered last episode, it is totally perfect. It's the idea of buying one of the lattes that comes in its own little plastic cup and then using that cup to hold your popsicles. It's perfect. 10:00 So I bought just a Starbucks cafe latte, which is funny. I bought this one thing that cost $3 instead of the cheaper varieties that were like two for one. Because I just don't, I don't want three lattes. What am I going to do with them? I only want one. So it's like ironic that I'm paying more because I only want one cup. But I just go into that thing down. And then again, just like I said last episode, but the whatever the deals are for the ice cream container, the ice cream bar thing. It's so complicated. It's absolutely nuts. I finally pulled out my phone to translate one part of it because my precious melon bars are not a two for one. This was the happy to see you convenience store. But they were on there. And I'm like, so what is it trying to tell me here? And it's if you buy five of this gaggle of items, you get 50% off. And if that's 50% off all five, I mean, that's a good deal. But five is a lot. So what I found though that was a buy one get one free is a plum popsicle. And man, it's really fucking good. So I think that's kind of neat too. Like even though I'm just getting, you know, bullshit from the convenience store, I'm just buying candy. But still just to just to drift a little bit into stuff that we don't necessarily have in North America. You know, it's hard to find if at all possible to find melon popsicles. I suppose maybe if you were in one of the Asian parts in Vancouver, maybe you could, I don't know. I feel like if I had to find a melon popsicle in Toronto, I'd be out of fucking luck or Montreal. So plum popsicles are similar. I've never seen a plum popsicle in North America. And they're super good. They're just like sour plum flavor, but not extremely strong with the sour. Just delicious. Just really nice. So yeah, gun down this latte opened up both of the popsicles and just put the popsicles in the cup. So they're mostly still holding up pretty well. They're not really melting that fast, but it's just if you're holding them in your hand. Like there's more than enough dripping off them that that would have got all over my wrists and all over my arms. And then you're just rushing to eat it and it's a pain in the butt. And at the end, I'll have a little bit of a soup at the bottom that's a sour plum mixed with a little tiny bit of Starbucks coffee latte. That might not be the best mix in the world, but you know, just whatever, just a little bit of liquid at the bottom to guzzle down. But just having it in the cup, just holding the cup in your hands is way better. Because even, yeah, these things are so cold that if you get the ones that don't have sticks, it's hard to hold them. They're so cold. It's like ridiculous.

I think they have like little bits of actual plum in them as well. And it was like two bucks, two for one. Three dollars for the latte cup and two bucks for two popsicles. Five bucks even. It's so neat to not only going back to cash. It's just kind of a nice thing. It's kind of neat to be able to use cash because it's so awkward in North America. But for it to cost just exactly five dollars. It's like awesome. Here you go. Thank you. But yeah, I should eat these because like I said, I get some hotel yammering to do. But if I yammer all that out, my fucking popsicles will melt. So I'm going to eat some popsicles and keep mosey in through Jeju.

This seems okay, by the way. Now that I've been to this city a few times and just little bits here and there going through it.

Because numbers wise, it's nuts. I don't remember the specifics. I doubt I have Wi-Fi right now, but I do hold on.

Because I saw that Seguapo's population was 50,000 people, but that's not even Seguapo. They consider the whole southern half of the island to count in that number, which makes sense. Like when I tried to catch a cab the other day and just, yeah, like nothing is happening anywhere. Everything's empty. The southern half is very quiet. Whereas, oh, that's not as many as I thought. Jeju City, for some reason, I had it in my mind that it was like a million, but no, it's half a million people. But you know, that's still 10 times more. But it's not like crazy. That's still quite a low number for an Asian city. And it does feel that way. It's bigger than Seguapo. It's got more stuff, but it's not huge. It's not enormous. You know, like walking into it didn't take that long, and now walking out of it's not going to take that long either. I feel like you could walk across the whole city probably in like 45 minutes. So it's not bad. I mean, I guess I wouldn't strongly recommend either. You know, I'm not saying like, oh, you should really go to Seguapo. I really like Seguapo. Like when I got back the other night, just felt really good. Just to walk through it at night, and I'm starting to actually know the neighborhood enough to get back to my hotel without needing to map anymore. Which is amazing that it took this long, but it's, you know, everything's complicated. 15:00 But I don't feel like staying in Jeju City would be a bad idea. You know, it doesn't have any of this like, oh no, you're in the city feeling. You know, there's more traffic. It is a bit louder. But being next to the airport, I don't hear really any planes. So that's surprising. That's good. And yeah, it seems fine. It seems pretty good. Depending on what you're doing here on the island, you know, if you're going to go heck up Halasan, or if you want to do the Ola Trail in the more traditional clockwise manner or whatever, it seems like staying in Jeju City would be not at all a bad plan. And yeah, a lot easier to get back to at night. But Segwapal, I'm glad I stayed there. I like Segwapal. It's fucking cool.

But I would give them both the official stamp of cool.

All right, I made it down to the shoreline in Jeju City. Pretty nice. I'm not sure what's going to happen as I approach the airport, but I found the little Olle Trail markers, so if I can keep track of them, I'm sure they will lead me where I need to go, but no guarantees there, because I lost some twice already on the way down here. It's just weird how easy it is to not see one of the turns or whatever. A lot easier when you just follow in the shoreline and the arrows are optional. Man, though, my little cup system, so excellent, because the plum popsicles melted very quickly to the point where the popsicle sticks wouldn't stay in them anymore. So I mean, that all would just be such a disaster if I was trying to hold the thing and eat it. But since they're in my cup, instead I just got two big slushy lumps of plum popsicle in the cup that I could just slowly eat and it's fucking delicious. And in fact, I think I'm about ready for some more pretty soon. But yeah, I went and rinsed out the cup, tucked it away, and I kept it for future popsicles. Such a good fucking method. Such a good technique. I love it. And then as I move my way down to Jeju, I'd get to some like extra developed parts. Like I got to this part where it's like, wow, there's a big LCD advertising screen, which I guess I did see one of those over on the east side of the island, but it's pretty rare. And a Starbucks and an idea and an underground shopping street with air conditioning. It's like, I'll take that. Thank you. And I maybe think that thing I just said about 45 minutes to walk across Jeju. That's probably wrong. I mean, the actual borders of the city, it's a bit fuzzy. And I just have a bad habit of not, I mean, just because I'm out walking all day long. So I just think things are shorter than they are. It's no doubt longer than that.

Because I'm thinking of like, when I was stranded waiting for the bus, didn't it say the average person can only walk three kilometers in an hour? Surely Jeju City's not... Surely Jeju City's not only... What the hell is that? All right, I don't know what the fuck that noise was, but hopefully it doesn't come back. Yeah, surely Jeju City's not three kilometers wide. That's probably a lot bigger than that. I just shouldn't try to put numbers on things. It's not my strong suit, but let's just say I would still consider Jeju City. It seems like a small city bordering on medium. It's like just at the edge where it's just about to become a bit medium-sized, but I feel like it's still not quite there. Oh man, this is pretty nice. Close enough to the airport now, that there's airplanes, that's not the nice part. But there's like a suspension bridge. But there's a suspension bridge here. Yang Yang pond. Y-O-N-G. Y-E-O-N pond. Yeah, this is very picturesque, very pretty.

Oh yeah, and this is leading to Yang Duam Rock, Y-O-N-G-D-U-A-M. That's what I was kind of heading toward. I saw that there was at least this one point on the shore with a little photo thing. So I was like, yeah, right? Well, that's at least head down there. And I had my suspicions that I would bump into my old friend, the Ola trail markers, which I did. And yeah, this is pretty good.

This is pretty nice. Let's see if this thing freaks me out to walk across. Hopefully not. It's 20:00 not huge. I think I'll be all right. But I do traditionally hate suspension bridges, but this one's pretty small and it's not super high up. The last time I really remember being on one of these was in Vancouver, in West Van, and it was fucking scary. Yeah, this is no biggie.

Oh, there's that bump though, that nice bounce just from walking across.

Oh man, yeah, and like the waters got that deep blue green, that blue lagoon aqua look.

I know problem. I wasn't even scared. How nice. What more can a scaredy cat ask for?

All right, Ola trail. That way, huh? I think I'm already breaking up with you. It's pointing me toward a bunch of stores and stuff, but the water is right here. I'm going to go walk along the water side. But yeah, being at this hotel, the Pine Hill Hotel in Segua Pove, it's been pretty good.

And it's been kind of interesting just being there long enough to kind of observe things about the operation of the place. So because I'm staying in giant month-long increments, it ended up being about two and a half months, I think, total. It's only 20 bucks a day and it's got all the stuff that you need. Very nice hotel accommodation type shit, especially after these. You know, I've been pretty pleased with these share houses in South Korea because they're mega cheap. And I generally really don't mind being crammed in with a bunch of people, but for 20 bucks a day, it's nice to just have my own little room with all my stuff that I need and it's all good. Because you know, I rented some full apartments in Fukuoka, for example, and those were nearing on nearly $50 a day. So, you know, they were great, but not cheap. 20 bucks a day, that counts as cheap. Even though the share houses were like 15 bucks a day, and in fact, there even was a $15 hotel in Segua Pove. But I feel like 20 is just fine. But it seemed that, you know, I booked this through Airbnb, even though it's a hotel, and it seemed that if you don't do the whole month, I believe it was $30 a day. But I guess I'm not sure because the big advancement that I saw is they brought in this big machine into the lobby, because it's always kind of intermittent to whether or not there's a person there or not, whether there's someone at the counter or not. Sometimes there is, but I'd say over half the time, there is nobody specifically manning the hotel.

So, they brought in this machine where you can just use a touchscreen, and you pay for a room, and it spits out a key card, and I went and just to try it just for a second, you know, I've just pressed the English button, scrolled through the menus, and it was $40 a day if you do it through that machine. I'm pretty sure it was like 20 bucks if you stay the month, 30 bucks if you just in a normal, slightly in advance way, and then it seems to be 40 bucks if you just want to roll in there, use the touchscreen and just get a place that night. I'm much worse deal, but I think that's a good example though of how it is a pretty nice place in the sense that it's basically a $40 hotel that I'm getting for 20, because I'm just hanging around. And then after they installed that thing, then I noticed one of the other places in the neighborhood, I just was peering into the lobby as I walked by and they had one too, so maybe that's a sort of common thing to have the little touchscreen, but I learned even more about how the sort of automated hotel works in a slightly unfortunate way, although ultimately it all worked out pretty much okay, is that I haven't had a single key on this whole trip. In Montreal, it was a key code, and then everywhere in Japan was either a key code or Norahiko's house in Chiba, he did give me like a card, like a fob style card to use on his door, and then here at the hotel it's a key card.

Everywhere else I believe that I stayed in South Korea, it's all door codes, and that Dan and Korea guy who I was watching on YouTube who was the Canadian guy who used to live in South Korea, he did an apartment tour and his apartment was that way too. I think the world of keys 25:00 is just basically done for, although in Eastern Canada I definitely had keys, we're still we're still using keys there, we're still in the past in Eastern Canada, everyone else though, it's a keyless world, and it's generally kind of cool, you know you just leave the house and you come back and you just put in your code and it's just like nice, when it works it's all super smooth, but Harkin and Wayback to the early days of this podcast, my friend from India, Ranjit, he had problems with getting locked out of his room at a Montreal Airbnb and there was nobody actually nearby, not even in the city, they could come help him, and he was stranded outside for many hours. So this was similar, luckily it all worked out better for me, but last night my key card just didn't work, it would make the little green sound but my door just wouldn't open, and I had noticed once in a while it took a couple of tries, you know, it just wasn't quite working, and I don't know if it's a problem with the door or if it is just literally that the battery is wearing down because I've been in there so long, normal maintenance has not been done in that room, I don't know enough about key card stuff, I in fact only started researching it in Montreal, this is cool, there's a bunch of walkways down by the rocks but I don't know that it goes straight through, I'm just gonna stay on this road above the shoreline, I got plenty of shoreline in my future, just in case it might go all the way across, but the walkway kind of disappears behind some rocks, so if it is just a dead end and I have to walk back up here, I just don't want to do that, it's too hot, it's too fucking hot, and again today's pretty cloudy, today's actually kind of nice and it's too fucking hot, but yeah I just could not for the life of me get this dang door to open, so through my little Airbnb messagey thing, luckily I connected to some internet because also my room's internet doesn't work unless I'm inside with my card key, my card key in a little slot that turns on all the power for the room, we're officially by the way close enough to the airport that I'm constantly having to stop till our airplanes go by, but that's the price you pay for an accessible airport, the airport here, it's even closer than the Fukuoka one, like it's just part of the town, that bus I took from the airport, it's not like if you take a bus from the airport in like Toronto, or even taking the train, it used to be a bus in Vancouver, now there's a Sky Train, used to take a real long time in Vancouver, but yeah I'm used to the trip from the airport being a mighty journey, it was super easy around here, but the price of that is airplanes, so yeah luckily I connected to some other rooms Wi-Fi and message through Airbnb that I couldn't get into my room, and this was like 9.30 at night, and the response back is like, oh oh, there's nobody, no staff on location, nobody can come help you, and I was like, oh man, because I wasn't quite sure how that worked, because one time I did lock myself out of my room, like I left my key card in my room back, and I realized right away, so I just went right back, and again there was no one at the front desk, but the lady just came out of a room somewhere on the first floor, so I thought oh maybe she lives here, maybe she just lives in one of the rooms here, but no it seems like there is just an office back there, but at night nobody stays, so in this case the solution was kind of bad, where they were like yeah we can't, we can't send anybody till the morning to let you into your room, I mean the solution was good and bad, because the solution was we can just put you in a different room, but all your stuff's in that other room, so you know it wouldn't have been the worst thing, but my laptop and phone chargers and everything were all in my room obviously, so literally all I would have been able to do in the new room is just take a shower and go to bed, again maybe it wouldn't have been the worst thing, but it would have been you know weird and kind of annoying, and like come on this is sub-optimal, but this is where I learned more about the automated hotel, because yeah they asked me to go down to the front desk, so I just went and stood in front of the front desk, but no one was there, of course, and then a voice just started speaking to me, huh fuck, airplane, Okay, game on! Game on! So a voice just started speaking to me, and that's when I realized they have CCTV cameras all over the place, everywhere in this country, but especially a lot in that hotel, 30:00 which double makes sense now that I know no one's there half at the time, so I know they were having a bit of trouble with the kitchen. All it really has is noodles, but apparently someone was stealing their noodles and their free complimentary bottled water, so they moved the noodles just so they're under a camera, and they just gave me a whack of water, just like, here's a pallet of water, I'm not leaving it out anymore. So yeah, they could obviously see me through the camera, and just like I always assumed that this one lady I usually see at the front desk, whose English was pretty good, I assumed that's who I was talking to through Airbnb, as well, but probably not, it's probably some central person.

It was auto translating from Korean, and yeah, that person had to confirm that I was me. I mean, I've been there all month, like the lady who's normally at the front, she obviously knows me. So whoever the voice was I was talking to had to make sure I was Keith from Room 302, and then they're like, all right, you know, I swear again for everything, they were super apologetic, because obviously this was kind of fucked up. But yeah, then the machine just spat me out a card for Room 301. So that's what would happen if you went through the touchscreen and ordered yourself up a room, and then presumably, like this is the part that I guess is kind of neat and kind of handy that I didn't know about, is that if anything goes wrong or something's not working with that, or you have any kind of problem, you can speak to a big brother, you can speak to the fucking wizard, I have saw around behind the scenes, can talk to you, and sort out whatever issues you might have, but they're technically not there. So, you know, I was locked out of my room, but not out of A room, really just an inconvenience, not really a huge deal, but annoying enough that it's like, dude, I don't want to just be able to do nothing but go to bed. So I kept trying my door, I tried it and I tried it, and I tried it, and I tried it, and after like 15 tries, it opened, and it's like, that's all right, it's good enough, that's all I need, I just need you to open one time, you bitch ass door, but I guess that's the downside to codes and key cards and locks that have batteries in them, is, you know, I've only got these two examples over the course of this whole journey, and one of them didn't even happen to me, not so bad, but there are downsides, there's things that can happen. Are they better or worse than the potential of losing a physical key? I don't know, I'd say even, I guess, but it doesn't matter, because that's just not the world anymore. The physical keys are out of here, and there's no sign of them coming back. This will probably just upgrade to like being my fingerprint in the future or something. I'm almost surprised it's not that right now. But yeah, that's the state of a hotel, that's what's going on. Oh, and then the next morning, this morning, I did move all my stuff into room 301. I figured since I was airplane, game on, game on. That's hockey, by the way, street hockey, you know, if you got to move the net out of the way, I'll allow Wains World. It's funny if you watch Wains World. With the mindset of knowing that Mike Myers is Canadian, that is a seriously Canadian fucking film, with his ball cap and his mullet and Stan Makita's donuts instead of Tim Hortons, and playing street hockey on the road, and it had low flying airplanes as well. But anyway, you yell game on when the traffic, with traffic interrupts your street hockey, you got to move the nets off the street and stuff, and then you yell game on, and you move them all back. And that's what that is. Canada moment. Yeah, I figured now that I was in the room, I could just have the cleaning lady change the battery on my thing this morning, and just stay where I am. But then I've got to figure out when are they actually coming and organized with them, and sort it all out. And I've been in my room a whole month. Why not get a new one? Just, you know, I've been cleaning my, every time I do laundry, I clean the pillow cases, but I can't be bothered with all the bed sheets and stuff, so they were probably getting a little suspect. So yeah, why not? Why not get a new room? So even though I was just moving my stuff next door, and I don't have a lot of stuff, I still was sweating to death, just propped open the door, moved all my stuff over, and just because of the humidity. I'm like, this is going to be a rough day if I'm already sweating my balls off from that. Fuck. It is amazing though, like all my stuff obviously wasn't packed away, so it took me like six trips. But it's quite remarkable to think that when it's time to go, somehow, all that shit can just, brrr, combine into one fucking horrifying book bag. It's pretty amazing. But it's also weird being in a new 35:00 room because it's the reverse. It's like the mirror image. Like when you play Mario Kart and you mirror the map, it's the exact same room with all the exact same stuff, but it's flip-flopped, left to right. And it feels smaller. I don't know why, it's exactly the same. It's just instead of the bed being by the right wall, it's by the left wall. Everything is reverse, the mirror image, and it feels little. But also, I had the toilet with the bidet that just never worked, it never turned on, but I was fine with that because it seemed a little weird anyway. Having a toilet that's plugged in in the same room where everything's like a big shower and stuff. Airplane. If you're gonna spew, spew into this.

But yeah, I noticed in this new room, the toilet actually does light up when I put my little card in the slot in the wall that turns on the power, but it's just one of the buttons, one of the many, many buttons on the controls just starts blinking. So it doesn't actually work currently, but I didn't bother fucking with it. But we'll see, maybe, maybe I'll have the bidet toilet. But again, if I can't figure it out, I don't know who cares. I've gotten in the habit now of rather than the bidet thing with this kind of humidity. I mean, I just take millions of showers a day. Just any excuse. Oh, I'm a little sweaty, oh, I just went to the washroom, oh, I just did anything, oh, I blinked my eyes, let's go take a shower. So a bidet in this particular case, as much as I love them, not really necessary, not really that important, because I'm just gonna take a whole shower, fuck it. But yeah, despite this problem and, you know, the solution was potentially whack, but just luckily, luckily I got that one last time that my door opened, so it really was all right. And now I'm in a new room, and they were super duper apologetic. So yeah, I'd still say, I like the Pine Hill hotel. I still think they're very awesome. I will not hold this against them at all. Even if I had been trapped under my room, I still wouldn't. It's just, it's just an unfortunate reality of locks with fucking batteries in them. And since I've been in that room for like an entire month, I'm sure just they, the batteries would have been replaced normally, and they just weren't.

Something to be aware of, I guess. I mean, that's the problem. I suppose though, as you don't really know, it's a problem till it's a problem. But I'll keep this in mind for the future. If I start airplane, if I ever notice little weirdness is happening with my door, I should be extra aware. Don't, if I get any warning, don't let it get to the point that the door just went open. But I'm not sure how much warning there is. I think it's possible that it just works and then it doesn't. Hey, a faux restaurant. That is one thing that was kind of, I was a little aware of in the back of my mind is obviously that's Vietnamese beef noodle soup. But I was surprised to not really see much of it in Korea. But I could just be looking in the wrong places. Maybe it's just signs that I typically can't read. But there's one. So it does exist here. Anyway, I seem to be circling down beneath the airport. So that's good. It looks like you can walk along the shore behind the airport. Sweet. So I'm going to do that. And at my earliest convenience, I'm going to buy some more fucking popsicles because I am dying.

Wow, walking along the coastline as the sun is setting, it's the fucking Instagram slalom. I did duck and dive around definitely over a thousand. Over a dozen, not a thousand. Couples taking pictures. Okay, the Ola trail markers taking me away from the traffic. That's good. I'll go with you, Ola. Yeah, mainly groups of two women taking pictures of each other, an occasional man-woman couple. I didn't see any groups of two dudes taking a taken sunset photos for each other. But I'm getting a near-ish the point where the color changes on Google Maps, which again I'm 40:00 just assuming means the edge of the city. I don't know for sure. That looks like I'm entering a little mini park, Do Du Bang, D-O-D-U-B-O-N-G. So I'll go through here, but yeah, I'm just trying to get outside the city limits and then from there I'll find a bus and bail out or keep walking. I don't know, we'll see. But I am getting a little little pain in the shins, quite a bit of walking. Or was it? I don't know. The heat just scrambles my brain. Technically, I suppose it didn't really walk that far today. I don't know whatever. More than 45 minutes, that's for sure. That estimation was way off. Now I'm heading up some stairs and I'm wondering why did I take out this recorder? Just to say that, just to say that I was going to go till the color changes on the map. Why don't I wait till I get there? I'm not there yet. Why am I talking into this thing? Put it away. My fried brain doesn't know what it's doing anymore.

Alright, time to bail out. That's 730. It is kind of a shame in some ways because it definitely cools down noticeably when the sun's going down. It's almost down now. It's getting pretty dim out. But with the transit switch, best not to risk it. And yeah, I'm pretty wiped today. I am out of it. So I made it to EEO table beach. Sort of kind of. I don't quite know how to get there. But hey, whatever. If I miss one beach in my life, that's fine. Next time though, I guess I'll be picking up from here. So maybe I'll just brute force my way down to the shore and see what that is. I'm just outside of the city just past just west of the airport. And one thing I was noticing is that the 1-8-2 bus, 1-8-2-slash-1-8-1. From where I take it, it's more or less a straight north south route. But it actually does loop all the way around the island. And the loop on the west side is a bit wider. So I was noticing from here since I'm kind of in this awkward mid spot where I'm only a little bit outside of the city. Where I'm kind of in this awkward mid spot where fucking.

You know what, never fucking mind. God damn it. A big whack of traffic came by and a plane started landing. Now there's a bus backing up. Me whatever. I'm just wrapping up the episode about which fucking buses I took to go home. Let's wait till home and Segwapo to finish this up. Noisy God damn city. I will be glad to break the orbit of the city limits and get back to just rural pastoral nothingness. That's going to be sweet.

All right, I spoke too soon. Just mere minutes later, I saw the official entrance to the beach. So not only can I just swing down by and check out this beach now, so that, because I was thinking even if I start from here next time, it's gonna be mid afternoon blazing hot. Let's go check out the beach while it's a little cooler now. But what really sold me is that they had a little sign for. There are washrooms here and I am about to embark on a double bus journey home.

Sure wouldn't hurt. To hit up a washroom first and the bus stop is very close to here, right outside of the beach entrance. But yeah, what I was noticing is that the 1-8-1-1-8-2, technically since I met this awkward spot where I won't be taking the 202 very far to get back to Jeju City to transfer on to the 1-8-1. If I walked all the way to one of the 1-8-1 bus stops, I could just hop straight on that, but it is pretty far inland. I do have to actually walk quite a ways. So it's just a little tricky right at this point where neither option is great.

But now I'm thinking, I don't know for sure if I'll do this, but it is something I'll look into.

As an option is that I just assumed I would be getting off the bus in Jeju City and transferring 45:00 and doing that method. But alternatively, I guess I could stay on the 1-8-2 that goes around and just get off whatever stop of the 1-8-2 is nearest where I'm supposed to be at. And I'll be inland, I won't be near the coast, but there's so many little local buses. There's a million of them. That with a little bit of research, I can probably figure out which local bus to take just to get me down to the shore. Though I guess this will still be two buses, either way. So it's probably better just to transfer in Jeju City onto the 202 because I just know it follows the coastline. Oh, this is nice. Oh, dude, I'm glad I came down here. This is worth it. This beach is beautiful. Oh, and there's a washroom. That's beautiful too. And in the distance, there's some big, weird, they look like piñatas, like big llamas. There's two of them in the distance. Out on some pier that I missed that I didn't walk down to.