#148 Circumnavigating Jeju - Ihoteu Beach to Gueom Stone Salt Flats

Transcript

Alright, well, here's a weird little start to a podcast. I'm in my neighborhood in Seogwipo. Head into the bus stop. Man, I kind of forgot how I usually walk by here at night when I'm coming back, but yeah, this view literally across the street from my hotel leading toward the waterfall that empties into the ocean. What a nice view, man. So good. And it's still a bit overcast. It's supposed to be overcast for the week, so. I'll take it. You know, it's still 26 degrees, but the sun's a bit hidden. I don't even have my big, floppy, travellers hat. Because that thing, it is a bit unwieldy. So if the sun's not directly beating down on me, I think I can get away without it. So yeah, this ain't so bad. But speaking of things like the sun hat, it's so rare for me to buy a thing. You know, it's like, whoa, I bought a hat. You know, all my stuff, like my space is pretty much spoken for. Very rare for me to buy a new item while I'm travelling. So let's tell the tale of the sad fate of one of the items I bought. Oh, yeah, man. I'm looking at those cliffs where, again, hidden in there somewhere, hidden between the cliffs. Can't see him from here, because I didn't spend the two dollars, but that's where the waterfall is. But even without the waterfall, Goddamn, really fucking beautiful. The beaches along the other parts of Jeju are obviously awesome, and that's where I'm heading to now to continue on, where I stopped at a beach last time.

But I do really like the Seiguo Popeye. I mean, it's mainly cliffs. You can't really walk along the exact shore very much.

But man, it's fucking beautiful.

Anyway, one of the things that I got early on in Japan was these Bluetooth headphones that I didn't know were a thing that existed. I thought you had to just get the two buds, and you know, I've had those before. They are handy. The wirelessness is neat, but I didn't like how if you lost one side. You know, if that thing falls out of your ear when you're in a rock quarry, just for a random example that definitely didn't happen and didn't cause me to spend the next two hours of my life searching through rubble, you know, it's just not that good of a design for somebody who's just always walking around like me. So I found these headphones that are wireless headphones, but they're wired to each other, and the wire just goes along the back of your neck, and it's fucking amazing.

So I got some used in Japan for like 20 bucks, and then I got a second newer, better cooler pair for like 30 bucks. So the original one, the $20 one, sadly died, because yesterday it was raining super hard. I stayed in all day. I mean, I had no real choice. It was so crazy hard. Then finally at night it stopped, so I went for a little walk, just a little walk around this neighborhood at night. And I went to a Saesium Island, which has the Saesium Island bridge. You can just walk over to it. It was the one that was closed for renovations when I first got here, and now it was open. You can go there till like 10 at night, so it was like quarter to nine or something, went over there, walked around at night, had little lights on all the trail stuff. Kind of cool, and looking out at this same basic ocean view that I'm looking at now, but at night, just eerie. It's just eerie and infinite. I'm sure I've said it before, but you just can't help thinking about the olden days when people just didn't have all of our modern tech and stuff, and like at night. I don't know, you're just batting down the hatches. You just hope that the waves don't rush you away, that a flood doesn't come, that the wolves don't come eat you.

Must have been a scary fucking world. But I realized, even just later that night, that those little headphones were missing. And I guess it's because I was kind of wanting to double dip, or it's the thing I've started doing lately, where since I had two pairs of these wireless headphones, I just play a podcast in one ear and then play music in the other ear. And just have them each connected to a different phone, doing a different thing. Sounds kind of excessive, but I don't know, it worked all right.

Obviously, it's not the best, most careful way to listen to music, but just as a way to delve through some stuff, just get a sense for some albums. And like, hmm, do I like this? What parts do I want to listen to again? What parts do I want to keep? You know, while some other podcast is just nattering away in my other ear. So I had the older Bluetooth headphones just in my little day bag, and I realized pretty quickly, I couldn't find them. And I was like, oh, maybe I was mistaken, maybe I didn't bring them. But then back at the hotel, I searched through all my stuff, and I have a very small amount of stuff. So it's pretty easy to determine, like, I know, it's gone, they're not here. 5:00 And then I pieced together, like, oh, it must have been when I stopped at that convenience store last night, just that I reached in my day bag to take out a plastic bag that I got stashed in there to put my junk in. And they must have fallen out somewhere around there. So today, I swung back by there just in case, and I couldn't believe it right outside of that convenience store. They were just sitting in the middle of, like, a three-way intersection, where there were, like, traffic cones and stuff. I was like, oh, man, maybe they've just been sitting there all night. Maybe they're okay, you know? I don't think it rained last night, but it might have. Maybe they got rained on. And it's just exciting to actually find a thing. I mean, this is the second time I've lost those. I lost them if we woke up once, and similar thing, I found them. But this is, like, a whole day later, and that I managed to piece together where I lost them, and it was, like, correct. I was, like, holy crap, detective work activated.

But then I went over, and they clearly didn't fall into the center of this turn about, with the traffic cones where they were now. They got knocked there, because these things were run over like it was malicious, like someone was trying to destroy them. Every little part has definitely been independently run over by at least one vehicle. Everything is crushed. Everything has tire marks on it, and I was like, oh, fuck. Bad luck for you, headphones. If you'd fallen a little bit out of the way, you might have been all right. Just over near the sidewalk or something, but nope. Exactly in traffic. And it says, bam, bam, bam, the little earbud parts were both crushed. All they're wiring hanging out, as they go, fuck. But it's still kind of cool, because I was just impressed that I found them. And it's a way better end to the story than, whoops, they just disappeared. I just lost them somewhere, and I don't know where. I mean, I got to see the end of these poor things. And again, they were only 20 bucks. Who knows how long these things last. You know, eventually Bluetooth headphones hit that point where they only hold a charge for like a teeny little bit of the day. And then they're just like annoying, but it's like, oh, I guess I should get rid of them, but they kind of still work. Save myself all of that. But then as the final test, I did try to turn them on, and they did turn on. It's like, oh, man, yeah, like if you had not been literally run over, clearly several times.

You would have survived the night. You would have made it. But yeah, I've still got the fancier, newer pair.

That's the whole point of a backup, don't necessarily need to. And I haven't seen those anywhere in Korea, but to be fair, I haven't been looking. And obviously I could just go buy new Bluetooth headphones anywhere. It is a popular item. But that also made me realize I don't know if I've ever seen a second-hand shop. Well, I guess I've seen second-hand shops for like knick-knacks and collectibles. But as far as like a second-hand shop that has electronics, those are pretty easy to find in Japan.

But I never remember seeing one in Korea, but it could just be that I don't know what to look for. Maybe I've walked by some and didn't know it. But I don't know, it's also possible. The vibe I get is that Korea would be way more into just buying new stuff, where Japan is very into maintaining old stuff.

I could be wrong, but that is the impression that I kind of get. Oh, actually one thing, I guess I'll bring this up because it kind of ties into the idea of second-hand stuff for keeping old things. One case where Korea super duper wants to hold on to old things is shoes. I just walked by a little cobbler store, you know, a shoe repair shop. And I realized like, man, I've seen not just a few of those. I've seen a lot of those. And I've seen them in Seoul, and I've seen them in Jetchan, and I've seen them in Busan. And I've seen them here. So that's definitely an exception. I'm not quite sure what the state of used electronics is around here. But they definitely take care of old shoes, holy crap. That is everywhere.

But anyway, that's what happened to those headphones I bought way back when.

You served me well headphones. They were actually already kind of coming apart too.

I just had like a hair tie wrapped around the casing of it because it was starting to split in half.

They probably weren't especially long for this world anyway. But yeah, that's quite the adventure you went on my little friends. 10:00 Anyway, now they're in my back pocket. So that's another bonus. I managed not to litter. Holy shit. I figured it was just like whoops. I just added a tiny piece of electronics to the earth. Sorry, earth. But no, man, I found it. I found it. I'd said my fairly well, so I tucked it away. Ready to go to the electronics waste disposal facility in the sky.

So yeah, despite the overcastedness, still fucking hot. Sure is humid. Let's go get on this fucking air-conditioned bus.

All right, walking back toward High Ho Tae Woo Beach, IH-O-T-E-W-O-O. It's where I ended off last episode and I'm just trolling on back. It's like quarter to four in the afternoon, pretty late. But you know, that'll give me a few hours to just walk down the shoreline if I make it that far. And yeah, still kind of overcast. So it's kind of nice today. So I had just classic insomnia. God, it's so freaking annoying. So I'm not going to dwell on it, but I'll just bring it up. Because yesterday was super crazy rainstorm day. And tomorrow was gotta stay home to call home. My once a week call home day. So it's now or never. You know, it's like if I don't go out today, I couldn't go yesterday, can't go tomorrow. Gotta go. And yeah, my dang body, man. It is so not pleasant to be. So I mean, I don't know. What's the point of complaining, right? I was going to say to have an adversarial relationship with your body. Where you just up until 7 a.m. for no fucking reason.

Where you just up till 7 a.m. for no fucking reason. Just laying in bed.

What then, I think of like, I don't know, there's this V-Tuber named Iron Mouse who has CVID. We're basically her immune system doesn't work. You want to talk an adversarial relationship with your body. You know, she can barely go outside.

So, you know, I couldn't sleep. So what? Not that big a deal, especially just for my purposes. All I got to do is walk. It's just so brutal when like going to bed at 3 a.m. would be fine. That'd be fine. And that's asking too much for my stupid body, which makes no sense. Hey, here's more of those animal sculptures made out of driftwood. There's some of these over in Segwipo as well. Man, they're really beautiful. I've never seen these anywhere but Jeju Island. But it's so genius. It's such a cool thing because they just take all these pieces of driftwood. Maybe fashion them a bit. But I think it's mostly just putting the right piece, you know, cutting them to size, but then putting the right piece in the right place that it looks like animals. It's fucking really neat. And I'm also learning how the bus transfer works. I had this idea I was toyin' with last episode of like, maybe I should get weird with it. Maybe I should take the 181 bus farther around its loop and then take a local bus like transfer over. But I think the best thing is it turns out the main hub in Jeju City is just the Jeju bus terminal. And it has a couple of benefits. First off, there's a washroom in there. So I mean, after taking the long ride from Segwipo, that's kind of important. Legitimately. It's like I really, really handy to be able to take a pee.

But it's also kind of cool that I couldn't quite figure out how it all worked at first. Catchin' the bus on the street didn't seem to be working out. And then I saw a little sign that said, for the following buses, go inside the building. And one of them was the 202 that I needed. So then I went in and it turns out at the backside of the bus terminals, just a nice bus depot. You just find the bus you need. It's probably just parked there chillin' and you can just hop on the bus. Very convenient. And that 202, really busy. The 201 going around the eastern side of the island was never busy, not once. This one was literally packed with like students and stuff filling up the aisleways. So that's handy too. If you start at the origin point at the bus station, then you can get a nice little seat. How nice. And then I still have to fight my way through people 15:00 to get off the bus, but I'm still very close to Jeju City. So hopefully as I get further out, that will become not a thing. So yeah, here we are at the beach. It's not as beautiful as it was last night. But yeah, this is a good day though. I'm really glad. I'm glad it's an overcast situation this week. It's so much better than the sun beaten right down. Yeah, there's the two lighthouses, the red and the white horse lighthouses.

It would be kind of cool to walk over to those, but they're just a touch far away. I can see him from a distance. That's fine. Yeah, the red horse lighthouse, it's called.

It's all right time to begin my journey. And I think step one may be to buy a coffee in a plastic cup and some popsicles that I can then hold in said plastic cup. Possibly the most genius fucking thing I've come up with on this whole journey.

First off, I want to give South Korea a huge thumbs up for the fact that there's literally always soap in the washrooms. Like, hand soap? I can't think of a single time. Like, maybe, I'm sure it's happened at some point. But I can't think of a single time that I've been in a washroom and gone to wash my hands and there hasn't been soap. I don't know, maybe that's a weird thing to bring up, but I'm obviously obsessed with washrooms. And in Japan, there's never hand soap. Like, never. It's the flip flop, you know? I can kind of remember distinctly like, oh yeah, you remember that washroom? And there's the other one that actually had soap. It's very odd. I'm not quite sure what's going on there. So in some ways, I guess this is more about Japan than anything else because it's not that weird in North America too. You pretty much expect hand soap. But yeah, they're really on top of it here just for this podcast to continue to just be about fucking nothing and soap in the washrooms. But like, one thing that shows up a lot are these, it's like a pole, a little stick that has a big, big thing of soap attached to it. And like, that's something you obviously have to maintain. Somebody's keeping track of that. Somebody's making sure that it's kind of a specific, you know, I've never really seen that before. Just this big, long, metal pole that you can kind of move from side to side toward whichever sink you're at. That just has a big thing of soap like around the stick. I don't think you can just buy that at a store. Like, that's some kind of government agency or something. It has these things made and keeps them all in the washrooms. And here at the beach, or back at the beach, I guess I'm a ways beyond it now. They had a little hand soap dispenser, which I didn't try. Maybe it was also fine. But whether it was or not, additionally, there was just a bottle of hand soap. I just use that. So maybe that was there because because the main one ran out or maybe the main one was fine as well. But whatever, on abundance of soap, there's just soap. Like, you get that feeling that that was like one of the edicts that came down or just one of the things in the social contract. Like, we're just not gonna not have hand soap. And, you know, I guess what little I know about Korean society is mainly from Korean Myanmar, from Korean comic books, but they're definitely obsessed with cleanliness.

As they are in Japan also, I mean, that comes up often in both cultures literature.

And I'm not saying North America is not obsessed with like, you know, sure, we take showers like crazy too. But I don't remember it ever like coming up in a comic book or something, where in a South Korean comic or a Japanese comic, it comes up all the time. And then if you're reading a saucy comic, it's gonna come up like 10 times more. That's super important. It's like, hey, we cannot fucking touch each other till everybody takes a shower. And if somebody doesn't take a shower, oh my god, that's the most taboo thing that could ever happen. So yeah, but for whatever reason, they decided here, like, we're definitely gonna make sure there's hand soap always. And in Japan, they're like, nah, for some reason, that's just not that important here. Anyway, if I prefer the soap life, I actually really hate not washing my hands after, after I use the washroom. It just, it's not comfortable. It feels like I got a radioactive hand. So big ups South Korea. Thumbs up to that. You hear me airplane? People leave in Jeju. I see you flying away. Apparently, this is one of, if not the most busy flight path in the world. 20:00 According to the Jeju wiki page, and I don't remember the exact details, but just a shit ton of people fly to this island. And it makes sense. It's fucking beautiful. And yeah, like the flight from Busan was like $43. I couldn't believe how cheap it was.

Things have definitely come around pretty well with South Korea, because definitely when I got here, I mean, it was such a shock getting to Seoul. You know, I tried to put a happy face on it, but just, I frankly, didn't have a good time when I first got here. The pollution and the trash levels, just like, I don't like this. But yeah, once I got my ass out of Seoul, and the weather got better. It's like six months is not quite enough. It's going to be enough for Jeju. But after this, you know, if I had time, I'd go back to Busan for six more weeks if I could. But that's okay. I'll just come back later, later in life.

I guess South Korea has become what I hoped it would be, which is, you know, a side dish, no offense again to South Korea. I just, I grew up with Japanese stuff, so I always think about Japan primarily. But I was like, hey, maybe South Korea will be a nice side dish to Japan. Like, if I'm already in this part of the world, once I get kicked out of Japan, there'd be nice steps somewhere else to go. And when I first got to South Korea, I didn't think that was the case. I was like, uh-oh, South Korea is not what I had hoped it would be. You know, I would definitely never take a crazy long, super expensive nightmare flight from Canada to go to Seoul. You know, I was like, hmm, just, this isn't, this is not lining up. But I do think I would now, you know. If Japan was just somehow off the books, I could never go back again. I would come back here just to go to Jeju and Busan and test out some other cities.

South Korea is pretty fucking rad. It's pretty cool. Man, yeah, I'm not super far away from the city. I mean, you know, the airplanes are still all very low. But I'm just on rocky shorelines. And this is a classic, uh, the Ola trail pointed me under a bridge into the city center, into the island center. And I was like, hmm, I don't know about that, Ola. The shoreline is right over there. And yeah, once again, I think I made the right choice. The shoreline walk. This is what I prefer.

This is my thing. And yeah, it's gotten so quiet. And there's just, uh, an occasional person, like I just walked by a couple of people, but mainly it's just people that are, fishing or just gathering sea life from the shore. It's so nice. It's so nice and chill.

Oh, and the sun has gone back behind some clouds. Thank God. Because yeah, I think what I learned today, if you can, you know, just learn a little thing each day. That's really all you can ask for, right? I learned two things today. I learned how the bus station works. You know, small thing, but you can't know it. Tell you know it. There are a lot of buses that you're supposed to just stand on the street out front and catch. So realizing I was supposed to go in the building and then go to the, the bus gathering point on the other side, pretty fucking handy. But the other thing I learned is that it doesn't matter if it was super overcast and rainy all day yesterday, if it was super overcast today, and if the news says it's going to be super overcast all week, it's now time to have that great big wide brimmed hat all the time. There's no more, no more leaving that at home. Because the sun came out briefly. Thank God the cloud covers back. Because as I was a little terrified, it got really clear for about half an hour, 40 minutes, and I was just like, oh, fuck, and like I could feel the burning on my ear. Like the sun was a bit to my right and my right ear was kind of burning. And I've got my jacket just slung over my shoulders, but I like put my right arm under my jacket because even though that made it super crazy hot, I just couldn't have it, the sun beaten down on it. Like I've got a suntan lotion and stuff on, but the sun now toward the end of June, it's just it's a fucking menace. It's horrifying. So yeah, I'd say that's the main thing I learned today is don't don't even question it. Don't even pay attention to the weather. I mean pay attention, but don't try to gauge like, oh, this is probably an okay day. This seems pretty cloudy. That is not safe behavior. I really do think like again, 25:00 it just makes such a huge difference. Like this feels great now that the sun is behind some clouds, but that 40 minute walk I was thinking like, man, this second half of the island is not going to be the same. Walking around the the first half on the eastern side was like discovery and exploration and like so fun to get to the new place every day. Where I was thinking like, jeez, this western side just because it's too deep into the summer, this is going to be more of a death march and this is going to be just trudge forward till you fucking make it to the end, still fun in its own way. And like there's something about when it's crazy hot, it's kind of nice like I was saying before how you know, I really didn't sleep much last night while I was sitting on the bus and just feeling my head kind of pound, but once I'm just out here walking, obviously it's an easier endeavor, it doesn't take much, but once the sun hits, I couldn't even tell I was tired anymore. I couldn't tell how I felt because I couldn't feel anything except the oppressing push of the sun, but like in a weird way that's kind of nice in a way, it's like you're fucking stoned, it's like you're drunk, you're just in survival mode, your brain is just like turns off and it's just like, I don't know, all I know is that I'm walking forward and it's really hot, I know this is a nice view, but like I'm still going to do it, it's still going to be nice, but the times when the sun is out, yeah this is a different feel, I have a feeling, my memories of the western side of this island are going to be a lot more conceptual and dreamlike, you know, I don't think it's going to sink in the same way, it's going to be tough, this truly is, I've said it before, but this truly is the wrong time to do this, the wrong time of year, oh man though, yeah, oh geez, the sun is behind these clouds now and like where did they come from, this guy was so clear just a bit ago and now the clouds have just completely covered everything, it's like awesome, awesome, I think I'm safe, oh there we go, there's a bright patch behind me, but ahead of me, yeah everything is clouds, geez I might get rained on actually, it's really, really getting dark ahead of me, but yeah I like this so much where all of my previous traveling has just been kind of general exploration, you know, go try this, then go try that, then go try that, but I like this goal of walking around Jeju so much that I'm heading to Taiwan next, I don't have a place set up but I did find a flight because there were some scary flights from Jeju that like overnight and Singapore and like flights that take an entire day, got to stay overnight all this shit, but I found one that was still pretty cheap, still like $320 Canadian and is only like five hours, it's like an hour and a half flight from here to Shanghai, an hour and a half layover and an hour and a half from Shanghai to Taiwan, like perfect, leaves at 130 in the afternoon, it's just like the perfect flight, so I just had to look around a little, but it's like awesome, that works for me, that works for me brother, but I don't know anything about Taiwan, I'm literally just going because it's another in the 7-11 nations, you know, if you connect the nations by 7-11 North America, Japan, South Korea, now Taiwan, let's see what the 7-11s are like there, but I like having a long-term goal like this so much that I was thinking like I wonder if I can do something like this in Taipei, what if I just try to walk around the outside of the city or something, I don't know, I mean I just know nothing about the place, I'll wait till I get there and then we'll see, obviously Jeju is a specific circumstance, being an island that has a pass laid out for you to walk around, I mean this is a circumstance that is pretty hard to replicate, but the idea of like picking a goal and continuing on from where you stopped last time, it's so cool, like maybe I can start applying this to travel, I don't know, it might maybe not a circle around goal, like maybe that won't make sense in Taipei, but maybe I can start at one end to walk to the other Taipei thing, I don't know, I don't know, we'll see, anyway, yeah this is fucking nice, the fucking sun went away, thank you sun, thank you for fucking off, oh yeah, okay, also I'll give you a speaking of 7-11s, I went to the happy to see you convenience store, they didn't have the plum popsicles unfortunately, but they did have bite to get one free matchup popsicles with fudge centers, a little strange, I wouldn't really think that matcha and fudge would go together and it sort of didn't, but you know just put them in a coffee cup so I could eat them as they melted, and I also bought a melon fucking ice cream bar along with that, far too much, the 30:00 bite to get one free, it's a ridiculous concept, it's always causing me to buy way more shit than I want, because the the coffees were also bite to get one free, just got armfuls of stuff, but it was pretty good, was that an important update? Absolutely not, okay, let's keep, let's keep on

walking Well, I know the boring topic of the day that I keep bringing up is just the Olle Trail. Do I follow the Olle Trail? Do I not? But I mean, that's what's going on in my life right now. So it keeps coming up. But yeah, I deliberately did not follow the trail again today. And I did hit a stretch where I don't remember this ever happening at any other point on the walk so far where it really did feel like I shouldn't have been there on foot. The major road with all the buses and stuff came in really close to the shoreline. So there was nowhere to walk except on the street and the street didn't have a proper sidewalk. It was pretty tight and anytime there was a car parked at the edge of the road, then I had to try to find a way to walk. I really couldn't walk on the outside of the car because then I would just be in traffic. So I'd just squeeze between the car and whatever building. And I was like, hmm, like I did start wondering, I wonder where the Olle Trail is taking somebody right now because it's probably a wise divergence at this point to go up through the city somewhere. But on the other hand, then I would look over that way and be like, yeah, but I bet it still took the longest possible route. And it's so hot and stuff and it would be away from the sea breeze. You know, it would be sucky, but staying away from that traffic would not have been a bad thing. But it only lasted like, I don't know, 12 minutes or so. It wasn't that long of a walk, but it was definitely a little uncomfortable.

But now I'm back down by the seaside, some barky dogs, but I'm just walking on a nice, a nice shoreline walk where there's like a walkway set up and there's all these paintings. People painted like, here's a big turtle. I passed a squid and some some frallicking kids. And here's some kids playing like a hopscotch type game and a big fish. Beautiful. And I was looking at on Google Maps, it's really hard to tell. But I don't see any parts where it looks like, like I guess because I went around the entire eastern side and this never really happened. There's a good chance that it won't happen again. This really could be just a specifically particularly weird little part of island geography. But we'll see. Again, it wasn't a big deal. But just a little bit, man, I just passed a lady who was wearing a mask like a COVID mask, but it had a mouse opening. So I guess that must be just a block the sun to protect her skin maybe. Because clearly, if you have a mouth hole in the thing, it's not going to do anything to stop germ type stuff. It's interesting. I've never seen that before.

I'll manion. Here's like another one of these walls with the paintings. So yeah, this is worth it, like even though I got stuck on a slightly uncomfortable part of the road. Now I'm in this awesome part that I would have missed otherwise. We got a whale painting, stingrays, a crab, just all kinds of paintings. There's this children's game, by the way. I saw one of these statues. When's the first time I saw it? I think it wasn't until Busan. I'm not sure. Maybe I saw one in Seoul, but for sure in Busan. And then I saw another one here in Jeju City that finally caused me to look up what the heck this is. Where it's like a statue that kind of looks like a human centipede. It's like these these people that have their heads bent over, like they're bent over with their head between the legs of the person in front of them. So, you know, their head is just like tucked down under the other person's crotch, but it looks like their head is right up the other person's butt. Like, it really looks like the human centipede. It's fucking weird. Well, actually, I guess not, human centipede. It was asked to mouth. It wasn't like their fucking head was inside someone's butt. But I was like, what the fuck is this? And it's actually a little hard to find information about. 35:00 It's basically so one kid, it's a kids game. And they don't just play it in South Korea. Apparently, they play it in, uh, I was doing Reddit research and, uh, geez, where is it? There's definitely some other countries where they said, oh yeah, we played that game too. But it's quite odd. So, one kid stands with his back to a tree. I guess just to keep him stable or against a wall or whatever. Then the person in front of him, facing him, bends down and puts his head between that guy's legs. And then like two or three more people do that behind the first kid. Then what other kids have to do is they run and they leap over this human centipede toward the first kid. And they just kind of like leap onto the back of the bent over kid. And then another person does that and another person does that so that it's like those kids that left on are riding on a horse. I think it's called like the horse game. Something about a horse. And in a strange way, it does kind of look like they've built a weird horse type creature that the other kids are riding. But of course, the weight of the kids and the awkwardness of this design just eventually causes everybody to collapse. And I don't know, that's the game, I guess. But even looking it up, I found an article where it was like, we asked Si, I remember Si, I've gang him style. Hey, so that's Korea's on everyone's lips. We asked Si, what is this weird game? So it's this article from like nine years ago. And then I found a couple of YouTube videos of people demonstrating this game and they're from like 12 years ago, 13 years ago. So it's like definitely still quite an obscure game, quite a weird thing. But remembered enough in South Korea that I've seen multiple statues of it, you know, I guess it's like hopscotch or whatever. Just these kids games that we would play.

But it is just a particularly weird one. You know, just visually, it looks so strange. Of just like cramming your fucking head between someone else's legs. And like one of the little commenters on Reddit when I was looking this up was like, geez, I bet dollars to donuts, if you played that as a kid, your head got farted on at some point. And one of the responders was like, you know, no, I don't remember that ever actually happening. Really the problem was when the next kid leaps on your back, that's the problem. It should be called the back breaking game.

But yeah, that's an odd thing. I wonder how long it's going to take me to escape from the the airport, probably a while, because you know, I'm just on foot. But yeah, definitely, you know, had pretty much zero airplanes flying over my path on the eastern side of the island. Now that I've hit Jeju City, it's airplane city. They should call it airplane city.

But I guess eventually, eventually, I'll just out walk the flight path.

Yeah, and the only other little thing means nothing to anyone but me. But since I switched rooms in my hotel, I was hoping that maybe my room just had something in particular wrong with its bug screen that was letting the occasional mosquito in. But unfortunately not, I'm in the room next door now and the same thing. Still totally mysterious. I really don't know how they're getting in. They really must just be maneuvering their way through these tiny little gaps in the window. But God, it's annoying. And again, like, that's not a problem out here, out in the world. I just am not having problems with bugs at all. But all it takes is two or three mosquitoes in a hotel room, and it will fucking ruin your nightmare. It is awful. But I don't know what to do about that, besides just put up with it. You know.

Oh shit, it dies though. You know, this is weird as hell. But so tomorrow, since I got to stay home, to be ready for my call home. But it's also laundry day. And it's so close with laundry day. I bought a couple extra shirts and pairs underwear. But I'm cutting things so close that it's basically yesterday's t-shirt. I only wore it, just only went out in the evening after it stopped raining. So I hadn't worn it very long. So I was like, you know, I'm really out of stuff. Right now I'm wearing my last t-shirt.

But I was like, I guess for laundry tomorrow. I could just, I could just wear yesterday's t-shirt. It's not that gross, but it is. Even though I only wore it for a couple hours, walking around, it's still. I just was the instant you go outside. It's just humidity sweat fill. It would have been kind of gross. I would have been wearing not a fully disgusting t-shirt while I went and did laundry, but Sammy. So I'm going to go to this dye show and literally just buy a t-shirt in a pair of underwear. Just to buy myself one more day, just so I can go do laundry tomorrow. While actually wearing clean clothes. I wonder, I guess we'll see when I pack up to leave Jeju.

I mean, all I did was buy like three shirts and three extra pairs of underwear. Quite a few socks. I've just been buying piles of socks, but they're constantly dissolving on my feet. Will I have room for these things? Can I squeeze these into my bag? Surely I can. Surely it's just some t-shirts. But I guess we'll see.

If worst comes to worst and I don't have room for some dye cell clothing, that's probably fine.

I wonder if there's anything else that I've been feeling like I need.

I always think about it later after I leave the dye cell and it's too late. I need some razors. That's for sure. Some Gillette razorheads. But those things are expensive, so they would not be a dye cell.

Anyway, whatever. Just buy a shirt and some underwear. I remember this was an idea that I had that I floated earlier in this podcast. What if I just traveled without clothing? Because clothing really does take up quite a bit of space. What if I did just buy clothes as I needed while I'm traveling? And it's not the most financially responsible thing in the world, but it's not that irresponsible either. It's pretty fucking cheap. It's not that bad. Yeah, I don't know. This seems kind of funny. Let's just buy one more set just so I can go do laundry without being the grossest man. It's nice though. The laundromat I go to. I've only ever met one other person there ever. It really don't matter if I was gross, but let's endeavor not to be gross. I feel like that's a good philosophy in general. Oh, that was the other idea. I guess I do have a couple of pairs of thermal shirts that I just really don't need this time of year. So I think in like, could I do that? Could I wear the thermal shirt and just go around the corner and do laundry? I mean, it's just around the corner, but it takes like an hour and a half to do all the laundry and drying. God, can you imagine the sweating wearing a thermal shirt with this weather? That'd be fucking insane. No fucking way. Save me, Daiso.

All right. Well, that general pattern is sort of holding up that there's stretches that are a little tricky, although actually I might have, might have been because I took a detour to go to Daiso. So I think that might have thrown me back onto the highway a little more than I needed to be. But then it was a little tricky to get back to the water. Took a little time. A little bit of walk-in down some traffic-y stuff that I would have preferred not to walk on. And definitely the Jeju Trail is off on some whole other thing. I have not seen a Jeju Trail market in a hot fucking minute.

One hot minute, by the way, underrated Red Hat Chili Peppers album. People kind of, you know, disregarded because it was the album with Dave Navarro when John Frischanti wasn't in the band. If people are like, yeah, that one doesn't count, but man, that's such a good album. There's so many good songs on that album. Anyway, that has nothing to do with anything. But there is a song, though, there's a song on that album called Walk About. That should be like my fucking theme song. If this podcast had a theme song, I think I'll go on a walk about, a find out, a what is all about.