#153 Songaksan, Jeju, aka Horse Mountain!

Transcript

I seem to be passing by Aldro Airfield. That's not a very Korean looking word, A-L-D-D-R-E-U. Almost French, Aldro. Except for the double D. The Olle Trail did point that way, but I'm staying by the coastline. But I see somebody like Paris sailing, like gliding, like Paris shooting, but a little more directed, you know, I don't know, I don't know the name of everything, specifically. But that's kind of interesting, because there's only one mountain, pretty far in the distance, and it's not that big, so I don't know where the heck that guy originated from. But maybe there's some kind of, uh, Paris sailing stuff going on at that airfield somehow.

Anyway, it's three days later. I took a couple days off, because I was quite sunburned last time, even though it was really cloudy and, uh, overcast the whole day. Today is the same thing. Cloudy, overcast, pretty windy, not as windy. But not too hot. I mean, I'm still endlessly sweating. It's super humid, but I think it's below 30 degrees, so hey, that's good for this fucking time of year for July. Jeju Island, I'll take it.

But thankfully, my burns didn't seem too terrible, because they're definitely fading, and I don't think I don't think I got any peeling coming in my future. I guess we'll see. The worst was definitely my neck.

And this is interesting. I've kind of fallen away from the coastline, but I'm coming up to Geonam Dan Coastal Road, CH-O-E-N-A-M-D-A-N. And the road goes to a dead end, but then there's a little hiking symbol, so I guess we're going to go down there and see what happens.

Because yeah, first I was having some trouble today, because there was a lot of, uh, fishery type stuff that was a bit confusing to work my way around, although there was another point with like, uh, dolphin statues last episode I found a dolphin viewpoint on the coast. So this seemed to be more of that, although I didn't see any dolphins, but that's kind of cool. All along here, there's potential dolphins. And I saw some horse statues, like, you know, kind of like horse scarecrows. That was unusual, because again, like there's three of them, and from a distance I was like, man, those really look like real horses, but they're not moving at all. So I was like, quite sure that they were statues, but you never know, but they were.

But yeah, overall, this has been nice coastal walk, just more coastal stuff. And man, thank goodness, there was a, uh, one of those big periods where, uh, there's just no convenience stores.

It is weird, because there's quite a few convenience stores in South Korea, but just not as many as Japan. And yeah, you just hit these parts where it's like, I feel like even if I was in rural Japan, I would have hit a convenience store by now.

I felt like I was going a very long way, and there's just nothing. And, uh, I was flagging a bit, because just to, uh, make the journey here easier, I didn't buy any coffee or anything beforehand, or all eight was like, I don't know, weird little ritz crackers I had in my hotel room.

I finally found a 7-Eleven, and then near that, also, I'm happy to see you, but those are still the only two I've seen today, and I haven't seen any since, and it's like, thank God, because man, that makes a big difference.

You know, just because of the humidity and stuff, I had a headache building up that is probably because of my caffeine dependence.

So I did the buy two coffee, get one free, and a Snickers bar, and then today's random ice cream bars, and it's so, it is so confusing, trying to figure out what the deals are on the ice cream bars. It's like out of control. It's so complicated at all the stores, and they're not quite the same between all the stores, and even whatever's listed on the thing may or may not be there. So I just gave up. I'm like, okay, let me just find one of the buy two get one freeze that is actually here, and I don't care what it is, I'll just get it. Turns out it was a red bean paste popsicle. And that was kind of interesting, because it was similar to the plum popsicles that have shredded plum in them. These bean popsicles had bean in them, had little beans in them.

I'm heading past Jeju water supply and sewage treatment headquarters. There's a sewage treatment plant in my hometown that smells terrible. This one smells fine. We'll see though. Again, I don't know if this is actually the treatment plant or just the headquarters, but we'll see. 5:00 Oh, there's the coast. Made it back to the coast. Nice.

But yeah, I wouldn't say I love the bean paste popsicles, but they certainly weren't bad. And again, it is just kind of neat, because that is another thing that we just don't have here. Melon, plum, red bean paste. Pretty rare things in North America.

The first time I ever heard of red bean paste, it was way back in. It must have been the late 90s or maybe the early 2000s, but I was reading Jackie Chan's autobiography. And he had quite a crazy life. He kind of grew up in an orphanage, but he knew his parents. His parents basically just took him to this orphanage, because they just couldn't afford to have him at home, basically. But they still came to visit him and stuff. So he was an orphan, but not an orphan. And while he was there, he said there's a reason why his generation is the last generation of... of like Kung Fu type practitioners that can do what he can do. I don't even know if Kung Fu is what he does. In martial arts, let's call it that. But the reason him and his generation were so amazing is because he said how he was raised was functionally child abuse. You know, it would just be crazy stuff, like stand on this table and do a back flip onto a concrete floor. With no training, they just say do it. And if you do it and you smash your head on the ground, well, that'll teach you not to do that next time. That's kind of how he was taught. That's how he learned, like, just like learn it or else. Crazy. But he mentioned, like as a kid, you know, he didn't have a... he didn't have very fancy tastes or big expectations or anything. Anything he could get that was, you know, not orphanage martial arts life he was happy for. But his favorite thing were red bean paste buns. And I had no idea what that was as a white guy from Eastern Canada. I had no sense of whatsoever about what red bean paste was or how it tasted. But he claimed it was good. So when I finally got to try some, probably not until I moved to Vancouver in the mid-2000s, I finally got to try red bean paste and I was like, oh, it's good. It's very tasty. But then when I went to look it up, like, wow, this is amazing. How do they do this? How do they make beans sweet like this? What's the magical trick? And it turns out the magical trick has just put a bunch of sugar in it. There is no magical trick. And I was like, okay, fair enough. It probably could be pretty much anything. This could be a root of baga. This could be anything, man. It's just you put this much sugar in something. It's going to be tasty. But yeah, as a popsicle form, I don't know. It's definitely, it's probably my least favorite way to have had red bean paste. Every other way that I've had it in a little soup or as a little drink in a can, or in a bun, they all just seem to fit better. Red bean paste popsicle, a little odd, but definitely not bad. And when it's hot out, fuck it, dude. It was fine. I'll take it.

Hmm, am I coming up to this hiking trail?

Yeah, I mean, it just seems like the road just ends, but I guess we'll see.

But anyway, yeah, this is nice because the heat warning is still in effect. And in fact, acue weather. I usually find the acue weather website is a pretty good weather website. It's pretty accurate. But it was way off today. Today, it's said for Jeju Island that it was 32 degrees, but it feels like 37. And I was like, are you fucking crazy? What are you talking about? But I would look out the window at my hotel room and I had the window open, and it's like, I don't think so.

Hello. Hello. There's some lads on bicycles just went by.

Oh, good. There was a path. I saw that I'm like, oh, is that the path I'm supposed to take? But the bicycle guys went the other way. There's another path I didn't see. I guess I'll follow them.

But yeah, I was like, what are you talking about with this weather? This doesn't make any sense. And yeah, it seems to not be that way because then I didn't see the the temperature again till I got to the bus stop. And it's so cool how the bus stop just has information like that.

And it said 26 degrees. That feels way better, way more accurate. Again, given the circumstances of the time of year, I'll take it, dude. And it's like nothing. All right, what do we got here? Got a little rest stop area where there's just like tables and chairs under a big kind of a tarped-off thing. So that's kind of cool. You could hang out there.

But it looks like that path I saw before goes up across a little mountain ridge. 10:00 The one I took is down to the shoreline.

Hmm, I think I can keep going along the shoreline. Looks like if I do have to abandon and scramble my way up this thing, it's not like a cliff side. It's steepish, but I could go up that if I had to.

This is similar looking to that cool area I was at. That was like the bird reservation. There's a big area coming up that looks very much like that. Which on the map appears to be Songgaks and Viewpoint. And the Songgaks and Dulaygill Trail is connected.

Song Anson Mountain temporarily closed. Hmm, how interesting. Anyway, importantly, after that Saggy Beach, I'm really quite far away from the road for this stretch. And I was like, hmm, what's going to happen? Am I going to be trapped just far away from the road? But it seems like at the pace I'm going. It's about a quarter after four. I should be able to make it to more or less connect back up to the bus route. By the end of today, hopefully. But yeah, man, I sure am fucking glad I found a convenience store. Holy shit, that saved my ass.

Fueling up with a Snickers bar, some coffee, and some red bean paste fucking popsicles makes a big fucking difference.

Alright, this Songgaks and Trail, it looks like it's like a one-way trail. I got to walk down the trail to the Songgaks and Viewpoint, S-O-N-G-A-K-S-A-N, and then walk right back. Though there's another photo area further on, but I have no idea what that is or how to get there. And the middle part is temporarily closed. But yeah, that looks like a plan. Oh shit, speak of the devil. Here's the fucking Ole Trail sign. I didn't even realize that I was following the Ole Trail right now. Maybe this will be a loop, because yet sending me down this little path through a field. And this is before the beginning of the trail on Google Maps. That would be sweet. Maybe I can make a loop out of this. But the other thing is more semi-wild animals, wild-ish animals, how I was just talking about horse statues earlier. I just kind of looked up, and there was a horse right across the street for me. With maybe there's like a tiny little ditch. I don't even think so, though. I think that's just the road. I think this horse could do whatever it wants. But it was just standing there so completely silently that I was like, I mean, that's definitely a real horse. It's right across the street for me. There's no F in a way that's not a real horse. But it just didn't move. It just didn't move at all. And then finally, it's ear twitched. And I was like, okay. I mean, I knew it was a real horse. But it was so, so still. But yeah, still, that's just so cool. I love just bumping into random animals on Jeju Island. And in a good way, not in a, uh, you're gonna get gored by a boar kind of way. And here we go, and I can see this kind of coastal, this reminds me of, I don't know what it's called. The other does appear to be a loop. So I'm gonna follow the Ola trail markers and take the loop. So I'm going into the middle of the mountain for now. And I guess I'll take the coast when I come back around. But yeah, this going around the coast, and there's these rocks out in the water.

It reminds me of in Vancouver, if you go in West Vancouver to, uh, man, I don't remember the names of any of these things now, but where you catch the ferry. Horse shoe bay, it's called. Because it is this really cool horse shoe bay, you know? It's like mountains all around on all the sides. And sometimes I used to go there. I've taken a ferry from there, but I used to go there just because you can just take, uh, the subway to the sea bus, and take the sea bus to North Vancouver, and then take the bus to West Van, and just hang out there. There's a fresh slice pizza, and, uh, I think it's a blends, blends coffee. And I would just go there to hang out, because it's so pretty. 15:00 And then I'd just come back after doing some writing or whatever. But there is a part there, where you can go around the coastline and out, around, and it's actually, it's a little tricky, because you kind of got to walk on a highway for part of it. But that's what this is reminding me of. Pretty fucking nice. Pretty fucking pretty.

Songaksen Mountain, and the 99 Bongs, parentheses peaks. Huh. I'm very slowly piecing together Korean terms, because Bong is another one you see all the time, B-O-N-G. If Bong means peak, that would explain why you see the term Bong, all the time, because this is the most mountainous country I've ever seen in my entire life. So that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, apparently this mountain, this former volcano, has 99 peaks in total, two major ones.

The view from the mountain during the early morning mist and evening glow of the sunset are beautiful beyond expression, attracting poets and painters.

Well, sounds good to me, man. Let's fucking check it out.

Oh, and there's a tiny map yet, and there's really only this path I'm on, either goes around the coast, or there's a secondary path up to the peak, which, according to Google Maps is closed, but that's okay. That's okay, I'm here for the coast today. I'm sure the peak is very nice, but, uh, when I got a choice, I'll always take the coast.

All right, well, this is pretty interesting. So the way to the peak is definitely blocked off. I don't exactly know why. And I thought the trail around was blocked off at first, but it's just blocked off to cars. You have to kind of sneak your way around this little gate on foot, but there's somebody else who just walked by me. Yeah, someone else coming down. It's definitely okay.

Black tunnel fortifications of Imperial Japan near the foot of Songaksan Mountain, Jeju. This military facility was made to defend Altioro Airfield, which is spelled different than how it is on Google Maps, which was of strategic importance to the Japanese military. I should cut out the part about it being spelled different, because who cares? Japanese is spelled right, everything is spelled wrong. Let's just start over.

This military facility was made to defend Altioro Airfield, which was of strategic importance to the Japanese military. A total of 13 tunnel fortifications are distributed near the foot of Songaksan Mountain, with the tunnels and entrances in the form of a centipede. Of the tunnel fortifications found in Jeju, this is the second largest in size, with 1,133 meters in total length, and is the largest of the number of entrances with 41. As a Japanese military facility from the colonial period, 1910 to 1945, this fortification stands as evidence of Japan's attempts to turn Jeju into a resistance base in the face of defeat at the end of the Pacific War. So that's pretty interesting. If this is the second biggest, I wonder if those caves I found east of Jeju City, if those are the number one. Who knows how many sets of Japanese war caves there are around this island?

Yeah, I did not expect that, but that's really interesting. And then there's so far I've seen too, so far, these must be cave entrances. You only walk down to this thing where it's fenced off, and it looks like just a hole in the ground.

But this one I can get closer to. Yeah, geez, this is crazy, dude. There's another plaque here that says the same thing as the other one.

And yeah, it looks like just a hole in the ground, but then yeah, like it goes down into a tunnel, which it would be crazy to go in there, but I wonder how deep it goes.

And there's a guy walking backwards up this trail. I tried that before because walking backwards, it really is an interesting exercise. It really works some different muscles, but it's really hard to walk backwards in an area where you can walk backwards without tripping over stuff.

But I guess this guy's done it before because he's very confident. But yeah, this is a very interesting. Definitely this western side of Jeju has gotten a lot more interesting, the farther along I go.

It was definitely a little bit not a lot going on on the northwestern corner, the northwestern quarter. And since then, all kinds of stuff.

Oh, no way, does that count? There's another fence and a sign that says, risk of collapse, cave trenches of Mount Sanghaqsa. And this is like a really small one, like you'd have to shimmy inside this one.

But if that connects up, I mean, I guess you have 41 entrances, that's a lot of entrances. Oh, there's another one across from here.

Man, that's so eerie, the idea of going in there. I'm just having all of your supplies and stuff. There are many other military facilities in the vicinity.

This other sign says more than 60 cave trenches were built from 1943 to 1945. They were built at the end of the Pacific War when the Imperial Japanese military was losing the war and driven to a corner. The cave trenches in Mount Sanghaqsa, along with other military facilities still remaining on Jeju, are the proof that the Imperial Japanese military was fortifying Jeju as their last defense line to fight against the enemies. There are many other military facilities in the vicinity, such as the cave trenches for anti-aircraft guns and the coastal cave trenches in Seattle, Aurem, Aldro, Airfield, Hangar, Surfighter, aircrafts, underground bunkers, and military facilities in Iggyodong and Mosul-Bong Peak.

Yeah, and then over here across just another entrance, but yeah, these entrances, even the quote-unquote big ones, they're still pretty eerie, like the idea of going down in there. But that really little one, man. I'm such a video game moron that I just think of like Metal Gear Solid or the last of us part two where instead of just crouching, you could get all the way down to a full crawl. Just crawl your way in there.

Well, unexpected, an eerie window into the past, but also very freaking interesting.

Man, this walk around this mountain is fucking beautiful. It's like a whole wooden walkway with nice fencing, big wooden fence sides the whole time. Which is good because as you go farther and farther, these cliffs get more and more severe until like this part of Matt right now. There's like a big, like part jutting up that then goes way down, way steep down to just like sheer rock cliff sides and the water down there. It's just like really, I mean, it's really windy today, but like really heavy waves, you know? Like really just white, just like the ocean because it's all overcast today is all very dark, dark gray, a little bit bluish gray, and then just this one part where the waves are all just white crashing. It's just like scary, like goddamn, I don't know how I would fall down there, but if I did, death for sure.

And this is about halfway. There's like an observatory and it's blocked off, but I believe this is one of those cases where by the time you're hearing this, this should all be fine, because it seems like it's blocked off because they're literally rebuilding the walkway. I don't know if you can hear them, but there's a couple of guys behind me that were also here at this dead end.

Yeah, so they're literally building new steps and new walkways. So it makes sense that it's blocked off because there's no other option. This would be very impossible to walk along without this walkway. So I guess I just got to turn around and go back. I can see the peak from here though, which I wasn't allowed to go up to, but I bet it's nice from up there too. But yeah, this is so dang beautiful that it's walking back is no problem. Now I get to see it from the opposite direction. And in fact, maybe I'll try to loop around, go around to the other side and see if I can get to that same dead end on the other side. I think it's worth it. Because this is mega pretty. If this is really all I do today, that's just fine. This is definitely one of those no pun intended, one of those peak moments, you know, one of those like best parts of the walk around the coast. 25:00 Yeah, now I can see these steps I'm on now, like I just passed some that were all nice and painted and new. And now these ones I'm on now, you can tell these have not been replaced in a long time. The paint is almost entirely washed off from the weather. Yeah, it must be tricky doing maintenance on these steps because yeah, it does interrupt the whole flow.

When you're working on a part, everything's blocked off. There's no alternate path. But yeah, man, fucking beautiful. Really fucking beautiful.

Man, what in the holy fuck? What is going on? So on the way back, like halfway back, there's another trail. There's like, yeah, I did see this on the way. And I didn't take it, but now I took it as an alternate route. It seems to cut through the middle of this mountain. I think, yeah, I think I'm not heading toward the peak. I think I'm looking at the peaks right now. Yeah, I guess they said there was two major peaks, right? And I'm looking at, yeah, like a double peak, one of them's taller than the other. And now that I look closely, there is a fence and a sign up there. So yeah, at some point you can go to those peaks, but it looks like I'm heading through the middle, but that's nice because this will get me to the other side without having to loop all the way around. But I just stopped at a break in the trees and I was looking over at these peaks and I saw these white things on a very steep mountain, very fucking steep. And again, they're barely moving and I'm like, my first thought was those look like horses, but then they weren't moving that much. And I'm like, oh, they must not be. Those must be like tarps. I wish I had fucking binoculars because like I got my glasses and my glasses checked right before I left Canada. So I'm as good as I'm going to get, but they're just a bit too far away. But then yeah, I slowly saw, you know, tails mainly moving and I was like, yeah, those are fucking horses. And then I noticed down in the valley under me, there's a bunch of brown horses and more of a traditional farm set up going on down there.

But yeah, on this mountain, now I can see there's a brown horse up there too, but like I can't overemphasize how fucking steep this thing is. Like it's all greenery, it's not like a sheer cliff, but it's very fucking steep. I just don't understand how those horses are there. They're like three quarters of the way up. And I always thought horses like aren't they kind of famous for having like kind of a weird evolutionary design where they have these super heavy upper bodies and very thin legs.

So you know, like if a horse breaks its leg, that's when you got a, you got to put old Bessie down. Well, I guess Bessie's a cow, right? I was going to say old Yeller, but that's a dog. What's a horse name?

It's going to say Tonto, but no Tonto is a human being. What's a famous horse? Mr. fucking Ed? I don't know.

The point is these enormous creatures with these little spindly legs, I don't know how the fuck they got where they are. Yeah, now one of them's walking around moving and like they're just chilling. They're like mountain goats, but they're fucking horses. This is like blowing my mind. I just don't know how they got there. How do they do that? There must be like a trail that's more gradual that got them where they're going because between this farmland I'm seeing and where they are, there's no god damn way. I would have a hard time scrambling my way up and down that. If a horse does that, I'll be a mother fucking monkey's uncle. What the hell? But I mean, that's like the wild horses of Jeju taken to a new level. Again, I guess I've been saying this the whole time that I've been in Korea ever since, you know, just like the stray dogs and cats and soul. And I mean, it just that it feels like a VR simulation that glitched out like things just aren't quite right. It's like the matrix, but it's a copy of a copy of a copy so that just things aren't quite right anymore. Horses aren't supposed to be on the side of a mountain, you know, like that feels like a video game that's going wrong. But that's how things really are in South Korea. That's how it is. I mean, I've been here for months and I keep bumping into situations like this. It's fucking crazy, man. What a memorable goddamn country. I don't know what else to say. I don't know how else to describe it. It's just stuff that like you can't ever predict it. You never expect it. 30:00 Because like, why would I think that? Why would I think like, hey, I bet those wild horses sometimes they just, they're probably just on the side of a sheer fucking mountainside sometimes. Of course, I wouldn't think that. Why would they ever, how would that happen? Why would that happen?

But there it is. It's fucking happening. Man. I don't know. I mean, I guess there's two ways to look at it. Either it's that South Korea really is quite an unusual place where wackiness abounds, or I just really don't know shit about anything. I just truly don't know the parameters of the world. I just don't know how anything is supposed to be or how anything works. Hence I'm constantly fucking gobsmacked by what's going on around here.

Yeah, now as I move along, I'm a little closer now. I can see them more clearly. Yeah, there's some motherfucking mountain horses.

What the fuck?

All right, I met Songak Mountain Panorama, which I believe is the the second highest peak. And then there's a very permanent sign and very thick rope saying the closed area heading to the main peak. But it's only, the main peak is only like a little bit higher than this. But this doesn't look like a temporary closure.

The main peak is definitely a protected like don't go there area. But this is cool. I didn't expect to even be able to get to the secondary peak. And now I'm on the other side of those horses. And yeah, it's just like, hey guys, I can't see the white horses from here. Where were they? Yeah, it's just too steep from here. I can't see down to where they are. But there's two brown horses like right here.

You know, there's a fence between me and them. I couldn't quite reach out and touch these horses, but almost. And yet they're just chilling. I mean, I guess from up here it doesn't seem as bad. Like this particular part of the mountain is definitely less steep. I think if you did just go slowly, yeah, I guess I can see how you could do this. But it still gets way steeper over to the side where those white horses were.

Still find this pretty fucking wild. But I guess if this is what you do all day, you're just a horse who lives on this mountain. You know, I guess you just keep exploring. Why not? Yeah, one of these is like a pretty full grown horse. And the other one is like not a baby, but like a teenager horse.

Man, yeah, pretty cool, dude. It's like I keep a... I don't know, it's like the animals are evolving. You know, the first animals that came across a lot were the cats on the mountains within, so within the city proper. On the smaller mountains, there was enough cats to cause me to look it up. Like what's going on here? And then on the bigger mountains, I started seeing dogs, which silly me, I thought like it's just a one-off event until I kept seeing them. And then when I got to Buchansen and the serious mountains, that's where it was like the lifers, the snow dogs. Well, I mean on the smaller mountains, they were lifers too. They clearly just lived on those mountains. But yeah, now we've jumped all the way to horses. This mountain is definitely horse mountain.

Yeah, I don't know if I've ever been this close to a horse before. I'm sure I must have been at some point. But it's funny when you just kind of don't realize stuff like that. Like I saw giraffe set a zoo in Ontario once. And that's when it first occurred to me like, oh yeah, you know, I don't know if I've ever seen a giraffe in real life and definitely not close up. And they're so big, they're really, really big.

Which I guess I mean when Ellie sees the fucking giraffe in the last of us, she's on the second floor, you know, and she pets its head. I guess I knew they were that big, but seeing them in real life, it's like, whoa, not quite that case with horses. Like the other thing with, like, Canada life, like a moose, when you see a moose in real life, it's like, holy fuck that's big, the thing is giant. These horses, they're not giant. They're just normal size. Actually, maybe a little smaller than what I think of as a horse size. But it's still really pretty cool. It's just to be this close and they don't give us shit. And I'm trying not to talk too loud to be too obnoxious, but yeah, they're not paying any attention. They don't care at all about me.

Yeah, pretty fucking nice. And then from up here, I can see out to the city and up the coast, which disappears pretty quickly into the haze of this overcast day. I technically haven't walked around to the observation point that I got blocked off at before. Oh, but there it is. I wonder if I will. I mean, it is right there. It's not that far. I guess I'll go. Why not finish this off proper. Yeah, six o'clock this day is stretching on a little. This is definitely it for today.

But man, yeah, definitely, definitely.

The southwestern quarter of Jeju. It's like we're back. The power's back.

What the heck? I hear a voice very distinctly, but I don't see anybody. Where did that come from?

I guess because I'm up on a mountain. There's nothing to block sounds. I can just hear anyone who's around, but I don't see anybody. That's weird.

But yeah, southeast. Awesome. Northeast. Awesome. Northwest. You just kind of got to get through it. And then southwest. Awesome. I mean, between cliff sides and dolphins and horse mountain. It's been real good. Real dang good. Oh, shit.

This path I'm on. Okay, no, I guess this is how it's supposed to be. It looks like it's like suddenly been torn up. But it's just that the wooden steps just become rock. It just kind of becomes part of the rocky mountain. But yeah, I guess this isn't. It's not too hard to walk on. It just looks, it looks surprising.

But all right, time to complete this loop now.

So I'm on the other side of those terrifying cliffs I was talking about with all the really white seafoam.

The like you fall off this, you fucking dead. I haven't quite completed the whole loop to the other blocked off area. But I can see it from here. So I will go do that just for the sake of it. But yeah, I've seen a bunch more horses. Oh, there's another horse. There's a horse right there. And it passed a few more in the way here. Just horses all over the place. But from where I'm at now, this nice viewpoint at the corner of the mountain, you can see a bunch of different little islands in the sea. I don't know which islands which or whatever, but there's a bunch of plaques here that are all interesting in different ways. So let me just read them. So first, San Bang San, which is the mountain that I'm on, San Bang San Mountain is included in Yongju's 10 Scenaries, representing the top 10 most beautiful landscapes on Jeju. I do wonder. I wonder what the other ones are. I'll never remember. So let me take a picture of that. So then when I'm looking through my pictures at the end of the day, I'll remember to go look that up, because I wonder if I've seen any of the other sceneries by accident. Because you know, there was the Moonten Trail. I'm pretty sure it was called in Busan. That was one of the top 10 best scenes in all of Korea, North and South. But yeah, the 10 most beautiful of Jeju, I would be curious. I have to have seen at least a couple of them, besides this.

But this mountain is a trick-tick-tuffed lava dome, rising 395 meters above sea level. Unlike other volcanic rock walls, rare plants such as centipedes foot orchid and the glamorous Korean boxwood grow on the San Bang San rock face. These endemic features have warranted the mountain being designated and protected as a natural monument. Man, yeah, there are so many, so many plants and animals and fruits and vegetables and just so many things in the world that I've never heard of before. It's fucking crazy. It really feels like a video game, like a super rare thing. Like, I remember with a Zelda game Breath of the Wild. I never actually technically finished it because I started it. I didn't play it until the DLC was out that had the master mode or whatever where everything was super tough, which is how I prefer games to be. I kind of like super hard video games. But there were two of the four bosses where I made it to the bosses and I was just like, I'm tired of this and I'm tired of fighting them. 40:00 All I had left to do was fight those two bosses and fight Ganon and I just watched it on YouTube, I'm like, fuck it. But I did try to like just finish my armor upgrades and stuff and you know, that's when it's easy to upgrade if you've just accidentally picked up the right flora and fauna along the way. But if you're missing stuff, then it's like, oh shit, now I got to figure out what area of the map this stuff's in and the right conditions for it to appear. I did that for a while, but after a while you're like, what am I doing with myself? But that's what this sounds like it would be. You'd have to climb with your little stamina meter. Climb on the side of this rock cliff face and not run out of stamina and not be doing it on a rainy day and try to collect these rare plants. Centipede's foot orchid. What the fuck is that?

But there's also Marado Island, first inhabited in 1883. It's the southernmost point of Korea. And it's the first Korean island one encounters traveling north and the final site of land sailing south. So again, I don't quite know which one that is because the little map here is all in Korean. But technically I'm seeing one of these islands, I don't know which one, but it's the very tippity tip of the Korean territory. That's pretty fucking cool, man. I'm not on it, but I'm seeing it. I can see it from here.

The entire island was once forested, but it's rumored that a farmer fearing the invasion of snakes burned the entire forest under the cover of darkness while blowing a tungso, a Korean musical instrument. Now the island is covered in grass. It only takes 90 minutes to tour the whole island and at its highest point the island features a lighthouse, which is listed on a world ocean map. All right, then I should be able to, okay, so is that island because that's the one that has a lighthouse.

Cool.

Yes, not that far from here.

It's a little hazy, a little hard to see on this particular day, but I'm seeing it. There it is.

Cool, man. That's fucking cool.

And Gapado Island, located 5.4 kilometers south from the Mosulpo port, is between Mosulpo and Marado.

So that's that island. People first started to live on Gapado in the mid 19th century. Gapado was first introduced to the Western world as quell parts in a book, Hamils Journal, by Henrik Hamel, a Dutch sailor who drifted to Gapado in 1653 and wrote a book after returning to his country. That kind of shit is just so wild to me. I mean, I feel pretty pleased with my explorations that I've done in life, but I'm very fucking aware that I'm a huge whoosh. Just the fact that the world is easy now. It's easy to travel. I just walked past a washermer earlier that had a Wi-Fi outside of it.

That's the kind of adventure I'm down for. The idea in 1653 to be on that island that I'm looking at right now, which currently has, it looks like windmills. Yeah, definitely a couple windmills. Back then, didn't have shit. Didn't have fucking shit. And some Dutch guy was over there. What do you think the chances are that the Dutch guy could speak the Korean language? I don't know. I've never heard of the guy before. But that's another example. Somebody I should look up. What the fuck?

That's a level of adventure. I cannot even, I can't even comprehend. It would never happen. I would just be sitting back in those days. I would stay tucked away. I'd have my roll-top desk. I'd assemble, I guess. I'd be the guy who put together the book. I'd stay home and I would publish that guy's journals and memoirs. I would never, never be the guy who did that myself. I mean, even right now, I don't know how you get out of that island, but even that's a step too far. I can just look at it from here.

A nice bus ride and a short afternoon of walking gets me close enough to see it. Sailing here from the goddamn Netherlands. Crazy, man. Also, I can hear how I still once in a while become aware of how often I swear. I just don't even notice it when I'm talking. It's just the natural way it feels normal for me to talk. Then I listen back and I'm like, why does this man swear so much?

But whatever, dude, it's just how it is. It's just how it's going to be.

Obviously, anyone who had a problem with that is gone by now. Episode 6 fucking zillion of this podcast.

But it is a weird effectation. I wonder if it is just as simple as the fact that when I was a kid, I got my mouth washed out with soap. Don't you swear. You know, my mom came from like a freaking Dickensian era with 12 brothers and sisters, super poor family. She came from a different world. She thought it was very normal to wash people's mouth out with soap where you literally, I know it sounds insane, probably, to newer generations. You literally take a bar of soap, cram it in a kid's mouth. It was trying to stop this from happening, but I probably just just caused my teeth to grind more of the soap off. Then you got soap in your mouth and you just, you know, go rinse it out. No permanent damage done. But certainly not pleasant.

And yeah, I can't even, if I had to guess how many times I had my mouth washed out with soap, I don't know, 50 times? Easy. Fucking stupid bullshit. Here's the end of the path.

Blocked off. I made it. Did the whole loop. But yeah, nowadays, I should do relish the swearing, but I mean, I can see why when I was in my 20s or whatever. It's like, yeah, okay, rebel against your upbringing. That's fine. Now I'm in my 40s. What the fuck's wrong with me? Why can't I stop swearing? I think it's just too late. It's just too late. It's just how it is now.

It's just how I talk. Don't wash your... I don't think I need to tell anybody this. I don't think anybody's washing their kids mouth out with soap anymore. That feels like it's from a different goddamn century. Well, technically it is from a different century. It's from the 20th century. But don't bother. It doesn't work. It's not going to make your kid stop swearing. It's going to do just the fucking opposite. All right, well, mega success. This is fucking awesome. This mountain is awesome.

Hey, Horsey. How you doing, Horsey? But now I just got to go get back to the bus. Bus on back home.