#158 Cheonjeyeon Waterfalls, Jeju, Korea

Transcript

Holy shit. I guess I'm lucky I didn't get into gear a little sooner today. I would be fucked.

So I took a day off of the circumnavigation and it was a pretty rainy, rainy-ish. Then today it was overcast but not too bad and I thought I might just go sweep up some of the touristy stuff. I happened to be right at the final pay waterfall and the other thing I found last episode that I couldn't figure out what it even was. Apparently you pay a couple bucks and it is just a really intense cliff but they have a little walkway that goes down along the cliff. If anything it actually sends a bit scary with my fear of heights, the sheer drop, but I'll probably do it anyway just why not.

So it started raining a little bit and I was like, yeah I'll probably just go anyway, fuck it, could keep the crowds away, could be kind of neat to see this stuff when it's a bit rainy. And then the sky just fucking opened up like crazy.

It's raining super hard but also I think the weather said it was like 28 degrees. I'm starting to find the weather reports very strange around here. They're hard to determine if they're correct because that doesn't seem right. I did take a shower this morning but I actually woke up feeling like I wasn't just all sweaty and gross. I'm like, oh it doesn't seem that crazy hot up. However, when the rain hit I did feel like a wave I'm just standing in front of my hotel window.

I felt a like a push, a pressure of heat as well and it is legitimately like a shower. It's so warm out yet raining like crazy. It's fucking weird as hell.

But yeah, even though the, I notice the other day that the hotel here actually has umbrellas down by the door and they're huge umbrellas. Very nice. So I used one yesterday when I was just out and about. I'm definitely going to use one of those bad boys but even with that, oh my god, there's just so much rain.

So I mean, I don't know if this would just calm down a bit. I would still be willing to go in the rain but I can't go outside in this. This shit's insane.

So again, a good thing, I guess, a good thing that I've got the whole week to finish up this journey and I don't have much farther to go because yeah, you just never know what's going to happen. There's a lot of thunder warnings too and lightning. I don't know, I'm just feeling it like I just really do want to go like even if I don't go make any real progress today. I just kind of want to go do those, do those little touristy things but I just like this is, I don't know, man. That's kind of cool though. Right across the street from here is a place called Bubble Tank. It's a scuba diving place so they've got a bunch of canisters set up but the guys work in there. They're all in wetsuits so yet first they were standing under an awning but one of them, I guess he had some work to do so he's just like, well whatever, I'm already wearing a wetsuit so he's just walking around doing his stuff.

Yeah, I think it is, it's calm down a little bit to at least sort of normal rain. It's not like when it first, when the sky first opened up and it was all nuts.

Do I dare, do I dare go out in this? Like it's a bit of a walk just to get to the the bus. I don't think I can even make it to the bus without getting soaked but I don't know, it is a really big umbrella. I don't know. I think I'll try. I'm gonna try. I'm just gonna see.

Alright, lucky me, the fucking rain actually stopped and I just saw a sign. There's I guess maybe three waterfalls here. There's a sign that says first waterfall only flows after heavy rainfall. Well, lucky me and I certainly do hear what sounds like a waterfall. Man, I realized I mean this is very obvious in hindsight but 5:00 man, I'm pronouncing stuff wrong. I mean it's too late now, right? We're coming to the end of the Korea adventure. But you know, I guess like with with Jetchon, you know, I was calling it Jetchon and I eventually learned that Jetchon is closer to how you say it and then I say it in some in-between way. Yeah, I could see through the trees. There's so waterfall. The first waterfall only flows after a heavy rainfall. Wow, this timed out so well. I mean it's not even that it rained yesterday. It rained like 90 minutes ago. That's perfect. Oh and there's yeah, there's a bridge. She's actually, is that just the road? Just the normal bridge? I don't think so. I think the road with the bus is behind that. But there's somebody up there walking across that bridge. I don't know how that all works. Yeah, this is kind of nice. I don't know how high this is exactly but a little mini waterfall like half the size of the ones by the hotel. But again, it's just the little one, the bonus.

Yeah, I noticed on the bus, just as the bus was rolling up, this bus stop is named after the waterfall and I just caught it out of the corner of my ear as I was getting off the bus. But you know, the name of this one, it's like Cheon Jeyon, you know, something along those lines. But the bus voice said something more along the lines of like Ching is how they pronounce the Cheon. And then the Jeyon is like similar to Jetchan. So that makes sense. That would be a Chan. Ching John? Yeah, no, I don't know. I don't know. But at least I know I'm totally saying stuff wrong. That's the best I can do. I was thinking that today too of just the uniformity of the names. How I'm having such a hard time remembering the names of this stuff around here. But presumably all of these words that I keep seeing over and over again, I mean they would probably just be one symbol, right? In the Korean language. So it just wouldn't seem nearly as weird, I'm sure. It's just a single symbol. But seeing it spelled out as a whole word, you know, there's like a handful. There's like ten different terms that I just feel like I see over and over all over the place. But it would seem a lot less weird if they were just symbols. It is the thing here too, where I guess all of them are like this, all of these places where you buy a ticket. You buy the ticket and then at the next booth, they check your ticket. But I kind of forgot. And here in particular, you buy the ticket and then there's a little booth where they check the ticket, like almost next door. It's so close. So I didn't even think about it. It's like, okay, I just bought the ticket and the lady had to call to me. Hey, hey buddy, hey stupid. I come over here. I was like, oh shit, sorry. Well, I guess I guess at the other places, there's more of like a gate sort of situation. Here, you really could just wander right in. It's like it's very weird. It's a weird duplication of effort. Oh man, I wonder, is this this must be waterfall number two? But I'm just walking past it, presumably this walk way will take me to a view afterward. But yeah, this is actually pretty nice. The walkways all set up and you just walk along this river looking way down, way down. Yeah, that's a way bigger waterfall. Yeah, this one was $2.50. An additional 50 cents. But yeah, this is a lot more elaborate than the two waterfalls by my hotel just because it's a longer, a longer stretch that you walk along. There are a fair amount of people around. It's a little weird doing my little podcast thing. But waterfall number two, it says, do not enter when the river is flooding. So yeah, I guess you got to hit that perfect happy middle, which I guess I hit because yeah, it was raining hard, but only for a bit. It wasn't like a whole day of downpour. So I got the water to fuel the waterfalls, but not the water to make this a dangerous flooding situation because yeah, this walkway I'm heading down to is very close to the river. And then it says welcome in the Jeju. Look a lot in the Jeju. Take a rest in the Jeju. However, don't take a rest here because it says do not go into the pond because it is deep. Do not swim, camp or cook. Take a rest in the Jeju, but not literally here. Dickey. All good advice. 10:00 Oh yeah, that waterfall is good. Oh, that's a good one. Man. Obviously it's extremely hard to time out this type of thing, but man, it is worth it to try to come here right after a rain. So yeah, I think the waterfall that empties directly into the ocean, that one is still tippity top. It is so hard to top that just because it's right by the ocean and it's this big cliff falling right down. But I'd say this at least during this kind of situation where it's just rained. I think this is the second best one because the one nearest my hotel, the one that I'm always seeing from above, I still think it's the best from above to see it from the park. It was the one that when I actually spent the money to go stand in front of. It was kind of the least impressive where this one. It's not as tall as that, but it's wider and it's just a more beautiful area just down in this, like this looks like a movie. This looks like Jumanji or some shit. This is like, man, this is good. I was just thinking too. I was saying how that Cheon part is like Jet Cheon, but I realized it's actually different because that's Jetcheon, but this falls Cheon Jae-on, but they pronounced it like Qing-jian, Qing-jian. So the Cheon word with pronounced two different ways, Qing and Jian, or whatever. I mean obviously all of it, everything I'm saying is wrong, but maybe that's just because of the placement. Maybe you say it differently if it's at the end of a word as opposed to at the beginning, because Lord knows French has a million rules like that. Holy crap, he syllables that you don't pronounce unless you literally have to look ahead to the next word in French to figure out if you pronounce something or not. It's a mess. So maybe it's something like that here too. Oh cool, and they have a recreation here of a painting from the late 1600s or early 1700s, 1702 I guess. A painting somebody made of these waterfalls from back then, where I see you can see both the waterfalls in the painting, but in real life you can't see the second one. The one above here, you can just see this one, but that's pretty rad. It's like a painting of people doing archery practice, soldiers. It's just neat to think of somebody in 1700 who also was here. It was like pretty fucking good waterfalls son. I'm going to make a painting of that. And now here I am in the 2020s to some dumb dickhead. Pretty rad man, definitely worth 250. No question.

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Deemy, like I was taking a picture in a shower.

But man, I'm always saying how I like to just kind of move along, soak something in a little bit, and then move along that I don't really just sit around and soak it in.

Looks like I got steep steps coming up. It becomes very slippery when it rains or snows. It's a very young and very old, made of difficulty.

So I should probably stop yammering to myself so at least have my hands free, just in case.

But yeah, I guess I just assumed other people are just columnar soles than me and just soak things in more. But I wasn't down at that waterfall. I didn't think especially long. But three different groups came and went, you know? They trundled down, they all took a picture, they trundled out. Next one in, next one out. Then the third one came in. I'm like, all right, I'm getting out of here. So I don't know, maybe I'm not quite as frazzled and scatterbrained as I thought. Maybe I'm right in line with everybody else.

It's all right, I'm heading way up to something called the three tiered waterfall. So maybe this will be more like what that painting represented. Maybe this is where you just see the waterfalls from above.

Oh man, on the way to waterfall number three is a huge terrifying bridge that I think it's not on the way to three, it's a separate thing. So I think I'll be going across this later all the way across to see what is on the other side. But I'm just gonna go up a bit. So yeah, it's a great big arched bridge. I did see this the other day when I was taking the non-paid route, following the Ola trail down below here, which was still nice in its own way. Oh yeah, oh fuck this. Oh god, that's so scary. I only went a third of the way up and yeah, I'll come back later. But I think I'm just gonna have to basically go across just getting anywhere near the edge. It's just a plummet, hundreds of feet down into the rocky waters below. That's so fucking scary. Oh, I hate that. I hate that. It's a beautiful bridge. It's all like covered in these ornate sort of, I don't know quite what they are.

Are they guys on horseback?

Yeah, it's pretty, but like I was saying, you understand, Aureum? That kind of height doesn't bother me too much, even though I was way high up and I could see like 40% of J-Jew all around me. It was like this crazy view, but it wasn't steep, you know? It was just like a gradual walk up the Aureum. That is a sheer plummet, that bridge. That is exactly what makes my fear of heights. Go fucking haywire, that is terrifying. I hate that. But, I have no choice.

I've got to see what's on the other side. I'll probably have to go across it and then back across it again. I mean, if I just walk in the center and I just be line it across, it won't be so bad. But yeah, all these people taking pictures and just hanging out by the edge and take a selfie, it's like, dude. It is one of those things, like obviously I guess, I guess. I'm the one with the, I'm the one with the, I'm the one with the thing that is not functioning properly with the fear of heights.

But I still feel like fear of heights is a reasonable fear, man. It's not fear of pickles. It's fear of falling to your fucking death. It seems like a reasonable fear to have. I feel, man, yeah, I just saw a presumably North American couple because the dude had a California shirt because the dude had a California shirt. I saw them at waterfall number two. They're already making their way back up from waterfall number three. I guess it is too. I mean, maybe it's just if you're here for a limited time. You don't have all the time in the world. You don't have two months to amble around an island or whatever. Just see the thing, get moving. See the next thing. I mean, that is kind of my memory of going on family trips is more that way. But that seems very fast. Like, I don't know. It's a fucking natural, beautiful wonder. You spent $2.50, soak it in. I feel very weird that I'm the one saying this because I always feel like I just zip past things too fast. But I am going at like a third this beat of everybody else. What the heck? Why are people such a hurry? I didn't realize. I don't know. I don't know.

Oh, that's one thing. So with the action figure museum I found the other day. I also found like a movie wax museum exhibit thing. Okay, there's the arrow heading down to waterfall three. But this walkway keeps going. I'm going to walk along it a bit and see where it goes.

Oh, it just says no way. Presumably it's just a dead end. But I don't know. I'll follow it a little bit farther just to see.

But yeah, I looked up this wax museum just at a curiosity. And it was the same thing as the action figure museum basically. People said, I cost a little bit too much. It's really quite small. See it all real quickly. But a couple of people mentioned something called the Jeju Pass. This reference was from a couple of years ago. And I couldn't figure out what it was or find any information about it. So I don't know if it's currently a thing. Maybe tourism was real bad. You know, in the midst of COVID so they made up this pass.

Or maybe it is a pass you can get. I couldn't find any information. But I don't know. That could be something worth looking into. Because that does seem kind of cool. Like if you have a pass that just lets you into a bunch of places. That could be kind of neat. Because then yeah, go to the action figure museum. Go to the wax museum. And so what if you're only there for a for half an hour.

This is interesting. So there's a gate here that just connects to a normal road and a walkway. But there's Ola trail markers here. There is a sign on the other side saying don't come in here.

Did I walk past here the other day? I don't think I did. I don't think I walked this particular part of the Ola trail. But that's interesting. Maybe there's a camera around there somewhere I'm not seeing. But it seems like it'd be very easy to sneak your way in here. But I'm not recommending you do that. It's 250 for God's sake. But yeah, whatever this past thing was, that seems kind of cool. Because then if you have a pass, then it would be a bonus to have just a little weird museum. So yeah, this is slippery. It's a walkway. Very slippery. Yeah, little wax, actor, whatever the fuck they call those museum. Little action figure museum. All men are of different little museums. Like they'd be fun if they were all just part of a pass. To see a bunch of things that are all kind of small and digestible. But it does seem that paying individually for these things is they're all just kind of expensive and kind of small. So the Jeju pass, who the fuck knows, fuck this is slippery. Jesus. I'm just on this wooden walkway, but I've never slipped with these boots. These are my big, cool boots I bought in Seoul. Better put this fucking recorder away because yeah, this is some slippery shit.

Alright, so that one was actually a walk down as opposed to up, although obviously it's up on the way back. So yeah, that 400 meters on the sign obviously meant 400 meters distance from here. It's going to start getting slippery and not fucking 400 meters up. I have had that, I made that mistake a couple of times where it is a little weird that height and distance. Using meters for both, it's not always exactly clear what you're talking about in a mountainous area. But of course that would make no fucking sense. I think the humidity is just already boiling my brain. I just saw 400 meters and just thought, hey 400 meters. But I mean 400 meters is higher than the Goonsan orium. What the fuck with that? And how would I be going up anywhere around here? There's nothing that goes up at all. I let alone 400 meters. It doesn't even make one hundredth of a percent of sense.

Yeah, that was okay. Definitely waterfall two is the waterfall. This is just going down further to see the final little third one. Not some epic view of all the waterfalls. I think they call it the triple waterfall just because it's the third one, not because you can see three waterfalls. But yeah, not bad to see. But that is funny that for the smallest little one, the most out of the way one, it's quite a long walkway. It's quite involved. That's where spending the 250 feels very justified. That's a lot to maintain just to get somebody down there. And it's not nearly as slippery as all that. There's like strips on the steps you don't slip. And I think just because of it being walked on more, it's less slippery. I think it's just because I was wandering to nowhere's land. So you know, it wasn't tread upon that much. So little slippery moss or something that might have grown on the walkway is just there.

That was on me.

But okay, I'm at the devil bridge. I got across.

So let's do this.

Let's just walk without looking to the side. Just look forward. Just look at the ground in front of you and just pretend that it's fine. Just pretend you're on a normal walkway that you're not high in the sky way above everything. One thing I do sometimes to be less scared of heights is I imagine I'm a giant. Because obviously my peripheral vision, I can't help but see this terrifying plummet to either side a little bit. Pretend I'm a giant and my legs are half a mile long. So I'm just walking on the ground right now. Ah, of course my head's above the tree line. Why wouldn't it be? I am a giant. If I fall down so what? I'll just scrape my knee a little bit. I am a giant. Okay, I'm halfway.

There's from Gem in the holograms. The evil band of the miss bits. That's one of their songs. I am a giant. I am 20 stories tall. I am a giant. Tabling above it all. Oh, I look to the side. Oh God. Oh God, I'm looking down. Holy shit. Oh, that's beautiful. Oh, you can see the shore. 25:00 The coastline from here. I'm really high up though. What the fuck? Okay, I'm coming back down the other side. Yeah, it's okay. Well, that was the best possible version. I got across that without my legs feeling too shaky. And I even looked a little bit. I even got to catch a little view. And I mean, that's plenty. You don't need to soak that bad boy in. That kind of view in blazons itself on your goddamn retinas with just a glance. Yikes.

Oh.

And here's a big cool fountain. With like a bear, a turtle, a lion, and some kind of bird heads. All spurting water. Is there a fifth one? Yes, there is on the other side. It's a fish.

Oh, jeez. Falls observation platform. Okay. I didn't even know why I was over here. I didn't know what was over here. So let's go. Man, that fountain. Again, it feels like dark souls.

Good old Jeju, man. This place, if you just want to feel like you're in dark souls, you could do a lot worse.

Oh, yeah. Here we are. Cool. Similar to the waterfall by my hotel. There's just a little observation deck here. You can just see just through the trees just enough to see the waterfall in the distance. That's pretty good. That's a nice bonus, definitely worthwhile. On somebody left a coconut here with a straw in it. So yeah, they did that by the waterfall that empties into the ocean as well. So apparently they sell coconuts around here to drink. And there's a temple. See, that's where it is a shame like I just cannot. I just can't get these names straight. It would be a lot easier this whole time if I could have just said this is the three names of the three waterfalls. But I just can't, impossible for me to remember. So dang similar.

Oh, it's not like a full temple. I guess it's just one of those pagodas. Still very nice, though. It is similar here as it is in Japan in the sense that, you know, kind of all the temples and trines basically look the same. Same thing here. They all basically look the same. They all have this one particular design. But there are a lot more rare in South Korea, so it still feels kind of neat when you find one. Whereas, you know, as I chronicled in Japan, it's such a fucked-up thing to just have these beautiful things all over the place. But when you see them literally every day, after a while, it's like, oh, cool, another shrine. Right on, man. It's so fucked up, but I just couldn't help it.

See, I don't know what else is over here on this side of the bridge, but I'm just going to wander around. See what I can see. A car went by. Is this an exit? Hmm, if it is, maybe I should exit.

Rather than walk all the way back to the beginning. Because I mean, yeah, I'm done here. I saw all the falls. Where the heck am I now?

Hmm, yeah, technically, as the crow flies, this takes me farther away from the cliff side.

Ju-sang-ji-oli-day. I can't even imagine how wrong I'm saying that. But I'm not sure what the route is from that side. This side I do know. In fact, yeah, I just just exited. There is a little ticket booth here. And yeah, this is a little surfshot place with a public washroom that I actually stopped at the other day. So I've been here. See, and now I'm just going to follow the Ola trail backwards to get to those cool cliffs. I'm going to go see those. Tie that up. And then as far as tourist things that you pay a couple bucks to see, I believe that'll be that. I think that's all of them that are prominently on my route.

So then all that'll be left is to finish up just to make my way to Goonsan. I don't think I'll be doing that today. But I'll be all set, man. I'll be all set. This will prepare me for the finale. Yeah, I can't help but notice on this side, this entrance. It does have a ticket office, but then it doesn't have a secondary ticket office right next to it where I'm supposed to give them the ticket. They just have one. Because you only need one. It's weird. It's weird on the other side. I don't know. Maybe I'm just a little embarrassed that a lady had to call out to me. But it's like, why are you even here, lady? You don't need to check my ticket. 30:00 Anyway, whatever. I'm glad she has a nice booth job where she can sit in a nice booth on these hot sunny days. Hopefully she has AC or a fan or something. I don't know. That was I realized at San Bang San, the great big mountain that you're not allowed to go to the top of, but you can pay a dollar to go see the Buddhist grotto, the Buddhist shrine that's carved into the side of the mountain. And there was a lady just sitting there with a bunch of fans. She had like three fans on her. But I realized, oh, she must be there just so people don't vandalize. So I mean, this kind of a rough job. You just got to sit there at a little desk all day and just try not to melt. Yikes. I respect it, lady. I respect what you do.

But all right, final waterfall down. There's definitely other waterfalls. Whenever I dick around on the map, there's all kinds of internal waterfalls further inland, or at least there seem to be. But I get the sense that these ones, especially since they're the ones you got to pay a couple bucks for, these are probably the coolest ones. And yeah, they've turned me around a little bit on waterfalls. In Japan, the waterfalls were getting to be difficult to find. Well, that depends too. I mean, there's definitely good waterfalls in Japan. On YouTube and stuff, if you see people go to these various waterfalls, they're amazing. They're incredible. I guess just what I had access to, because I never learned how to really use buses in Japan. I only did on foot and subway stuff. That's not very conducive to waterfalls, I guess. But the waterfalls I saw, you know, I was like, yeah, whatever waterfalls. Jeju, it's got some good-ass waterfalls, man. Easily worth the combined, what was it? One, two, three, four, five, six, fifty that I spent on these waterfalls. I still find it so weird that it was five bucks to go up that one mountain.

That was way too expensive. One for only a little bit more. You can see three waterfalls. Come on. Well, technically five waterfalls, three separate waterfalls places. But again, I don't know why that one keeps sticking in my mind. I mean, I spent $11 on a tiny stick of deodorant, who gives this shit about five bucks. Anyway, why am I rambling? I gotta fucking make my way to the other tourist destination.

Well, I'm just walking along the side of the valley gorge, the river gorge, below the waterfalls. And I can see the devil bridge. There's little people on it. Again, I'm sure if you don't have fear of heights, you might see this and be like, what's the big deal, man? Just a bridge. It's not that big. It's not that high. Yeah, fucking is. You fuck, fuck you. Fuck you. It's not that long, but it is very high.

I'm glad there was that secret side exit. I didn't have to walk back across that bitch. It's also nice. You know, this might be kind of nice in a way. It's been really fun to do the circumnavigation, but it might actually be kind of fun going back to ambling. Because yet today, I kind of distinctly don't want to get any closer because I'm too close, too close to the end. I need to make that its own thing. And I took a little detour because I saw a 7-11, went up around, did the classic, got a coffee cup, bought some popsicles, put the popsicles in the empty cup. They don't drip on you the best. And as I was walking there, there was Gunsan right there. That's my final end point, right in front of me. So I mean, there's no more question anymore. When I saw from a distance, I didn't think that was Gunsan. I was like, that must be some other mountain. But it's right there and check the map and it's right there. It's like, yeah, that's it, man. That's it. It's just so crazy looking because when you see it from a distance, it really looks big. And there's these two distinct peaks at the top. And it's like, yeah, I was just standing on one of those. That's how I saw. I mean, it all makes sense technically. You know, of course, I was super high up. I could see something like 40% I think I read somewhere. Of Jeju. It's obviously going to be a huge high up view. And I was obviously on one of those peaks because I could see everything. My head was above everything. There was nothing obstructing my view. I guess just because I didn't grow up around mountains. I just can't reconcile that in my mind. Because I guess when I went up, Gunsan, I didn't know that's where I was going. I was just following the Ola trail. I was noticing like, man, I've been walking uphill for a long time. This is starting to wear me out. 35:00 But it just didn't really occur to me both because I was walking through a forest and walking through the fog. And then when I got to the top, everything was so foggy, I couldn't even tell how high up I was. And then all of a sudden it cleared and I was like, whoa, I'm up there. So I guess there's just like a disconnect. I just cannot look at that mountain and look at that peak. And not only can I not like really just reconcile in my brain that that's where I was standing, it just doesn't seem like that should be possible. That's something that has been like constantly surprising me about being in Asia because I didn't grow up around mountainous territory. Oh, here's a walkway either to traffic or mysteriously down into the gorge. So I think we're going to go down into the mysterious gorge. And then hopefully I can just cross down there. Hopefully there's a little bridge.

But yeah, I've always been surprised ever since the first time I went to Japan. Just how attainable it is to walk up a mountain. Because I mean obviously there were mountains on the west coast when I moved there to Vancouver, but they're still very extreme. The grouse grind and stuff. You're not just casually walking up a mountain that's in your neighborhood. You still got to make a whole trek there and it's a whole day and it's very difficult. It felt like walking up a mountain. Where these mountains yet surprising that it takes like half an hour or something and you're at the top.

My brain's just not used to that. You know, it was relatively easy to get to the top of Gunsanorium. But when I'm looking at it, it looks like it looks like Mount Doom. It looks like you can never go there. That is not where a human can go. That's just not true at all. It's just that my brain just doesn't understand.

But anyway, yeah, it's so mega close. So mega close that I just sat outside the 7-11. Prepping my stuff. And just staring at the end point, man. Next episode, I will complete this circumnavigation. I would bet large sums of money. Here we go. Okay, here we go. I'm connected up to the Ola trail. This is the walkway. I walked by the other day with the... I was going to say the wild cats and then the feral cats. But none of that is true. They were super nice. The homeless cats. So, yeah, here we go. I've been down here. Before, oh, oh, it's slippery. Walk very slow. Wet leaves. Wet leaves on the ground. Oh, there's some people getting their stamps. Ola trail stamps. I've never seen anybody get the actual stamps before.

This is the trail 8 midpoint stamp. Yeah, I saw that there's a... I don't remember anymore. How many sections there are? Is it 20-some? 30-some? I don't remember anymore. But it's not one stamp per section. It's, I think, three stamps per section. So, it's a lot of stamps overall.

But yeah, just being able to amble over to the old 7-11. Get some stuff. Just sit at the... Sit outside, stare at the mountain, contemplate the world. And now I'm literally going backwards. Now I'm following the orange arrow again. So I can backtrack and go see the cliff side. It is kind of nice to not always be pushing forward. I mean, both things are nice, you know. Pushing forward is nice because it gives you a clear goal. Something to do each time. Gotta push forward. But then, on the other hand, just wander around. Also, pretty goddamn nice.

Alright, here we are at Jungman Daepo Columnor Joints. J-U-S-A-N-G-J-E-O-L-L-I-D-A-E. Ju Sang Jo Le Day. Tourist D spot. The classic $2. I'm just heading in now. Bought my ticket. This time I was wary that, okay, there's the ticket office. And then there's the check, the ticket. Two different things. So, of course, this is the classic... The classic, just fundamental problem with this podcast. Is that it's a podcast. You can't see this. But, based on my spelling a moment ago, feel free to tipety type that stuff in and people on YouTube. I've got you covered. I actually want to see what this looks like. God, this podcast is stupid. But, yeah, most stuff. Most stuff somebody else has got a visual.

So, yeah, just walking down the little steps to a little observation deck.

Crashy waves. And this has been kind of nice considering that insane rainfall earlier today. I did grab the big fancy umbrella, one of the big fancy umbrellas from the hotel lobby. And I haven't even opened it. Haven't needed it at all. Just carrying it around like Oswald's couple pots. All right, I'm going to head over to this deck on the side first. Because I feel like if there is a steep scary part, I think it's over to the left. So, I'm just going to head to the right first. Maybe there is no steep scary part. I don't know. This whole thing seems a little peculiar to begin with just because it's, you know, it's not a waterfall. A waterfall is a lot easier to determine why it's special. Where, as far as cliff sides go, there's a lot of cliff sides all over this island.

And so many people taking pictures. It's like a Metal Gear Solid. You know, I've got to avoid detection. I've got to avoid being in pictures. Yeah, this is pretty nice. See, it is just really steep cliff sides, but I guess this is the column near, column near joints. It shouldn't be that hard of a word, but I just don't know that word. So they're all very, columny, you know, like the cliff side isn't, isn't smooth. It's like, yeah, columns. Like a bunch of rock sticks sticking up out of the ocean that then combine together to make cliff sides. And it's some parts it's less severe. It's almost like steps. And then some parts it's more steep. Pretty cool, not bad.

Oh, and there's Gunsan in the distance with cloud cover at the peak. I suppose that's one thing.

I wonder. I wonder if I should because it's supposed to be rainy, the whole rest of the time that I'm in South Korea.

I guess I don't want to finish the circumnavigation on a day where I can't see anything from the top, but it's very hard to tell. I mean, it was clearer earlier today, and now it's clouding over again. Hmm, I'm not sure how I should handle that.

And this is pretty cool looking. The water is very, uh, it looks like mouthwash. It's like green blue, but also, uh, with a bunch of, you know, white. What does that call? I keep talking about the whiteness of the water. The surf? I feel like there's a word for that when water gets all crashy. It is really, really freaking pretty.

Alright, I'm going to go to the other side. See how that looks. Although maybe this was the major one. I don't know. Who can know? Who can say? It's all just vaguely generally nice. Two bucks, why not?

God damn, he's picture people though. Real pain in the dick. Like why is this dead standing at one end of the walkway, taking pictures of his family at the other end of the walkway? That makes the entire walkway un-fucking goddamn. You couldn't possibly be more in everybody's way. But yeah, I do in general. I like the way Juju is generally set up that, uh, just these little charges for these things, because yeah, this is a whole, you know, I mean, you could argue, it's just, uh, just some platforms by a cliff. But what if the platforms weren't here? You know, they just wouldn't even let you come anywhere near here. It's way too dangerous. Uh, yeah, okay. And then to the left, it's just a little area. This one's just tiny.

But it's like a bay. Oh, this is nice.

With the classic no drone sign. I wonder if anyone's drone it up somehow though, because this would be a perfect drone place. Man, it would look pretty. Yeah, I guess that's it. All right, cool. That's not bad. I like it. That's worth two bucks. The people. But it's also Sunday. Sunday afternoon. That's my bad coming here on the weekend. I was hoping it'd be rainy. I was hoping that would drive everybody away.

All right. Well, I'm going to soak this in a little more. Thank you for joining me on this audio presentation.

Well, just after I left, I was just walking along the shore outside of the paid area. And there's a couple of parts. There's one part in particular that's, it's not as good, but it's like half as good. And it's like, oh, yeah, I see. This one is still sweet, but it's not sweet enough to charge a couple bucks for. Must be strange when you're setting up one of these things. I wonder about that. Like who owns these? So they all owned by the same conglomerate. Or does an individual person run each one? How do you get control of these kinds of natural beautiful places? Maybe it's government based, actually. That's probably true. Now that I think about it.

But yeah, trying to decide like, oh, is this one good enough to fence off? I guess not. But anyway, it started raining not like this morning, but still pretty hard. I'm glad I got this umbrella. It is awesome having a great, big cool umbrella because I've got a little collapsible one hidden away in my jacket inside pocket. But it's not very good, you know, it keeps my head dry, but the rest of my body doesn't do much for. This thing is great. It's so big. So I wonder, I wonder if I did things that timed out a little different. Would this rain have chased everybody away, and I could have just been by the column nerd joints by myself? Or probably more likely. It would probably be like even worse because everybody not only would it be crowded with people, but everyone would also have an umbrella. It might be worse. But yeah, just like everything changed so fast that I can't see Goonsan anymore. Very vaguely, I think that's what I'm looking at, but I can't even really tell. Everything got very foggy and overcast. Very quick.