#178 Traveling to the oceanside in Taipei

Transcript

Alright, well, this went pretty well, so it's the next day, and I got off at on the red line in Taipei, Zhuwei Station, Z-H-U-W-E-I. And there's a couple of kilometers. It's like a cycling slash jogging trail, or in my case, just walking. The only one just walking by whatever. And it's right alongside the water, and it's real fucking pretty. Oh man, in the distance, I think it's just a crane, but for a second, this crane looked like a giant statue. It looked like those statues in New Vegas, the two people shaking hands, but no, I think it's just a crane. That'd be cool though, if they could combine that, if they could make cranes look cool, look like big dinosaurs and stuff.

And I think it is umbrella time, but it's right on the border. I almost didn't eat the umbrella, because he has this where it turned out pretty good, where I was in my little Airbnb, and my little room has, the actual apartment is just a nice normal apartment, you know, with windows and stuff, but my room specifically has none, just a little box. So I'm never quite sure what's going on outside, but I heard thunder, so loud, that it easily rumbled through all the walls, not that the walls are particularly thick, but you know, I've had phones in, got my air conditioner going, I'm inside, and just felt this rumbled. Several times, and I was like, oh, that doesn't sound good.

Maybe this should be a day I just stay in, but I hate staying in all day, fucking sucks, would have to be severe weather for me to do that.

So I figured, let's just go, let's just go and see what happens.

The weather is extremely variable, so there's a decent chance that by the time I get where I'm going, it'll be different, and that is the case, it was raining a bit, still when I left the apartment, but it was already getting a little better. And then yeah, I rode the train, turns out I had to do a little transfer to get here at Beto.

And then yeah, by the time I got here, it's basically a sun shower. I almost don't need this umbrella.

Very nice, it's all working out. And yeah, across the river from here, man, those are some pretty ass mountains.

I wonder, I mean, I learned yesterday in the previous half of this podcast that just heading for the mountains is ill-advised, not a good idea. But that was, you know, the National Park, the entire northern tip of Taiwan. These mountains, like again, they're so close, like there's buildings, and then the mountains just start immediately, and they're still like quite large mountains, like the top has some cloud cover, but they're literally right there, like they're so fucking close.

That's interesting.

That is something I want to look into, because there is a bridge, a red bridge.

But I don't know how I would get over there, I don't think the train goes over there.

But there's a little hiking symbol, Ying Hanlin Trail. So that's funny, because Ying Han, yeah, okay, no, the National Park is Yang Ming. Yeah, same as always, where since I don't know the base meaning of these words, it's very hard for me to remember them, since they are just sounds to me. I was like, isn't that the name of the National Park, but it is not. Yeah, this is a way smaller little mountain range that is directly surrounded by a road all the way around. So it wouldn't be one of these just endless mountains, like what I'm looking at is it. That's it, but it is a pretty huge mountain. It's pretty severe.

That looks very enticing.

And as for getting there, I mean, yeah, there's this red bridge. I don't know, you can probably walk across the bridge. I guess it's pretty rare for a bridge that you can't walk across. Yeah, there's a little green line, nice, a little green pedestrian line right on the bridge. That's cool. I wonder if they do that often. I've never noticed that before, but like just to let you know, don't worry about it, you can walk across that bridge. Because then the other option is the yellow line to lose how LUZHOU, but I would still have to walk.

Aways from there. That seems fucking cool. I think I may have figured out my next plan. Nice. For today, though, just going to see if I can walk all the way down this river, 5:00 see if I can make it to the ocean. And that'll do for today.

Because I'll be more or less at TEMSWE station at the end of this line, close enough that I can get back to it pretty easy. Shaylun Beach. Can I make it all the way there today? We'll see. We will see.

Oh, yes. Sun is coming out even more. The problem is, I guess, because it was so overcast and rainy, I didn't even think about putting on suntan lotion that completely slipped my mind. And I learned in Jeju that that's a very bad idea, even when it is overcast all day. There's a lot more evil diffusing through those clouds than it seems.

But now the sun is for real out, and I have no suntan lotion at all. Maybe I should just keep this umbrella out, I guess. This is a good excuse to have the umbrella out. And a guy just went by on his bike, an older guy, classic bald head guy. And he has a wet towel on his head, a little hand towel. I guess people do that in hot springs and stuff. They put a towel on their head, but just to keep it out of the water, to keep it dry. Just a little towel that you can dry off with when you get out of the water. But yeah, this guy had a little damp towel on his head. I guess just to cool his head from the humidity and to protect his poor bald head from the sun, not a bad idea. But yeah, this is fucking pretty. And yeah, now that the sun is out and it's shining on those mountains, like man, it's so weird, it's such a contained spot and it looks so easy to get to. But I mean, that is a severe mountain. I wonder how high that is. Wish I had internet so I could look it up.

That looks like some intense shit. And now the walker just walked by me. Nice, I'm not the only one walking. It always feels a little weird because it's like a tiny bit like I'm in the way, even though I'm just walking over to the side.

But all the cyclists have to go past me.

But I ain't the only one walking.

But yeah, I'll find the official, the official hiking path for that mountain for sure. I mean, approaching mountains just from a random direction. I mean, it never works ever. I think the only reason I ever even consider that is because it's just so different in eastern Canada. We just don't really have a lot of mountains. And when we do, it's like really gradual. It's not like here's just a mountain. Boom, right in the landscape covered in trees. It's just a gradual mountain with very sparse trees. Not sparse. I mean, there's a lot of trees, but there's a lot of space between the trees. You really can just approach from anywhere. The only thing that's going to stop you is civilization. You know, if there's a fence or someone's property, but the physical geography, it's like I don't worry about it. Approach from anywhere, go anywhere, who cares? But you wouldn't anyway because, you know, the mountains are all outside of the city.

And they're just, you know, literal wilderness for hours and hours and hours. You're just going to get lost and then get eaten by a bear.

See, around here, you really need to know how to approach, but because it's a whole different situation. It's just a nice, densely populated area.

Somebody, somebody will always have your back. Someone in the past has arranged something. Someone has already figured this out. You just got to follow their lead.

So just two little things in mind. So a guy, a guy just jogged by and his clothes are 100% wet. And obviously that's partially from the rain, but also just from the humidity and the sweatiness. So that's one thing that is not a big deal, but kind of a weirdly big deal in a way, is I made a change to one of my fundamental habits. You know, it's always good to just have a consistent habit if it's something important. And in this case, it's my passport. It's the one thing I can't get a double of. You know, that two is one, one is none. I've got two pairs of glasses. I've got two bank cards.

Anything that's really important, I got two of, except my passport because you can't get a second one.

So I always had it and my spare bank card in this little sling style pouch that my mom had that she gave me that I just put, put it on every morning under my shirt. 10:00 And I just wear it like a little sling and it's got my stuff in it. Just put it on and forget about it and there you go. And I've just done that every day for all these months that I've been traveling. And it was a little bit of a problem, even in Japan just because it was so warm while I was there. Even in the winter where it would get awful sweaty and stuff. So inside this little pouch I still have my passport and bank card wrapped in a plastic bag. In fact, it's the plastic bag from way back when I went out to Akigawa.

And I found this fancy machine where for like ten bucks you could buy these fancy chocolate squares that came in a fancy little box.

And they came with a fancy little bag and it was just cool. I even kept the little box for a while, but after a while I was like, I really can't afford to keep dragging this around the world with me because I just don't need it. But I did keep the little bag and that's what I wrapped my passport in.

So you know, if it gets a little wet or a little sweaty or a little damp, it's all right. The passport's still safe in there. But yeah, it's just been ridiculous. This now that pure summer is hit. And yesterday it was like, this is enough. This is ridiculous. Again, some of it was the rain, but it really was just the sweatiness. I was just at 100% wetness. Like if I walked up to my neck into a lake and walked back out, my shirt wouldn't have been more wet. You know what I mean? It was 100% wet. It was fucking so gross. And this pouch under my shirt was also 100% wet, just soaked, like I had just dunked it under water. And I was like, I can't. This is no way to keep my passport safe. You know? It's neat to have it on this little sling under my shirt, so I won't lose it. But I can't just be having my fucking stuff get that wet every day. It's fucking gross and it's not safe to the passport.

So I finally moved it. Instead the little day bag that I bought on Ouyama Road that I always carry around. It's this nice little leather bag that I bought. And I always have it on all day every day. It has this recorder in it. It's got my phones in it.

If I ever like develop a hole in the pocket of my jeans, I'm sure I'll just end up putting my wallet in it instead of in my pants. Instead of in my jeans pocket. It's a perfectly safe place to have my backup bank card and my passport because I always have it on me. I always have it with me. I never, it's never out of my sight.

I've never misplaced it. I can't even imagine how I would.

I mean, I guess it's functionally the same as having the sling under my shirt. It's just this is a bigger sling over my shoulder over my shirt. But it's way more waterproof. So I had a little just a little disposable 711 rain jacket thing tucked away in a little side pouch on this thing that I've just never used. It's one of those things, again, my mom had kicking around. She's like, could you use this when you're traveling? And I was like, yeah, actually, it could be handy. I'll take that, tucked it away. And I just never used it. And if I haven't used it yet through all the rainy season and stuff in Korea, like it's not, I'm just never going to use it. So I took that out. I replaced it with the passport. And it's fine, but it just feels weird. Because it's just a change in the routine. Like I always just kind of compulsively just sort of reach over and touch my little thing under my shirt just to make sure it's there. Yeah, I'm just used to that. And now it's just not there anymore. I just feel like this is, I don't know how this would fuck me up or how this would cause me to lose my passport. But because when I lost my passport in 2019, this is exactly how I lost it is just that I wasn't paying attention. I just wasn't aware of where it was and I just misplaced it.

So I, you know, I just trained my brain to have this routine. So I will never lose my passport. So just that I'm changing the routine. I feel a little weirdly anxious about it or uncomfortable about it. But I think that's good. Like I think it's good for my brain to be anxious for a bit to bring some heightened awareness to this situation. Like this is when anxiety's good. Because I need my brain to repath this habit. I need my subconscious to forge a new little core memory or just core awareness of where the passport is.

Should be no problem, but I don't know. Just thought I'd bring it up because it's, it is just like there's so, so few moving pieces to my travel plan. There's so few elements to it. I have so few things. And that this is in some ways like the most important one. If I lose the passport, I mean it's, that's what I learned in 2019 is I didn't expect it to ground me as much as it did. Silly me, I thought I could at least just return to Canada. 15:00 You know, that whatever other idea I had would be good enough to get me back home. And then I could sort it out from there. But that was not the case. This time I do have my birth certificate also tucked away in one of my bags. Which I did not have before. That certainly helps. I mean it definitely helps in getting a new passport. I don't know if it would help me get back home. It just seems so weird. Like the idea that I couldn't return to Canada without a passport. Very fucking weird to me. But that is how it seemed to be. So yeah, just the fact that something's changing in my passport. Cap it. You know, it's even good just to record it for myself. Just to say this, to help forge those pathways in my brain. It's different now. Things are new. But ultimately I imagine it won't be a big problem. Alright, obviously I've drifted away from the night shore to construction on one side. Hours on the other. So let me turn this fucking bitch off. Alright, let's do a quick fade out.

All right, change a plan. So, since I was, you know, that nice nature path next to the water suddenly became a city path. And from there, it definitely wasn't clear if I'd be able to keep walking and get to the shore. Didn't really seem like it. Or even if I did, it would just be walking through city stuff. And conveniently, I needed to use the washroom. So, I was like, hey, you know what? Not only is there a subway station right here, but there's like an extra additional line even beyond this subway, a little wee one that starts exactly where I was, Heng Shulan Station, H-O-N-G-S-H-U-L-I-N. So, I hopped in there, and that's actually the other thing that I had on my mind that I wanted to talk about. Speaking of washrooms is just a squat toilet. So, squat toilets are, I'd say, pretty uncommon in Japan. You know, you will come across them here and there, but it's pretty, pretty rare. You know, there were more common in Fukuoka than in Tokyo. But it was very few and far between that I ever really got stuck with a squat toilet situation. And then I think it was even less so in South Korea. They are there. They do exist. But they seemed really uncommon there. Where now that I've been in Taipei for a while, I can comfortably give Taipei the gold medal, the number one award for having the most squat toilets. There are squat toilets everywhere here. Way, way, way more than South Korea or Japan. You could take the squat toilets in South Korea and Japan and combine them together, and there would still be 10 times more squat toilets here in Taiwan. Maybe more than that. Basically, almost every public washroom is squat toilets. You can pretty much always assume there's going to be a squat toilet. Luckily, most of the time, there's also a western style toilet. But a lot of times it is the, you know, the accessibility toilet, the toilet for people that, you know, it's like, I'm not supposed to use it. And I only did it once, but it was actually at that hot springs.

The sulfur steam place. They had a squat toilet and they had like the family washroom, the the accessibility washroom that I normally never used, but just in that case, I was just like, oh jeez, I don't know, this day is already a bit of a trial. There were a bunch of people there with their feet in the sulfur foot pond. And it's like, oh man, all these people are going to see me go in there. But my thinking was like, you know what, I'm just going to treat myself today. I'm going to use this washroom. It honestly doesn't matter. I'm going to be in there fucking two minutes. Nobody else is using it. It's fine. But I just figured I could kind of play the dope before in a card. Like, whoops, oops, I didn't know, but I did know. I did know. I'm supposed to go use the squat toilet. But yeah, I guess that's what started solidifying it in my brain. And just like, yeah, today at every, every train station I've been at, every subway station has at least half squat toilets, if not the majority squat toilets. And then luckily, they do tend to have some western toilet stalls as well that are like that you can just use. They're not the accessibility 20:00 washrooms. And then yet, once in a while, it's just just the squat toilets. So yeah, I don't know, just thought I'd mention that. That if you really hate squat toilets, you better learn to love them. If you want to come to Taiwan, you better be ready for that because that's just how it is right here.

So from there, I took the little light rail train to a canting station, K-A-N-D-I-N-G. So in this case, it was a second turn style head to go through a little additional charge. But yeah, I don't know, it's not looking like, no, I'm going to turn right around and go back. Because the way I'm going now, this is not working. I don't know if I can get to the shore at all, but definitely not from where I am now. But it's kind of cool because this little light rail, it's like a little teeny tiny train that goes up through the air. But then midway through, I've never seen this happen before, it went down to the ground and became a ground level streetcar. Man, can you imagine being on one of those buses that beeps all the time? Like it beeps the whole time you're on it. God, that'll be fucking maddening. I just, I don't know who thought that was necessary. Bus safety, I mean, there just has to be bus safety that doesn't involve continuous beeping. I need to stop bringing it up, but it really blows my mind. I can't think of a worst fucking method. I mean, no beeping at all, arguably, would be better. Because yeah, maybe people would be somewhat less aware that there's a bus coming. But it wouldn't be beeping all day. That's a distinct bonus. I don't know, I guess if I ever leap out of the way of a bus while I'm here that I was only aware of because it won't stop beeping, then I'll eat my words. But yeah, this is kind of cool because like there's things like the, well, I guess in Toronto and Vancouver both, the train goes above and below ground. Like it's mostly above ground in Vancouver and mostly below ground in Toronto, but it kind of flip flops once in a while. Sometimes the Vancouver one goes underground, sometimes the Toronto one goes above ground, but I've never seen an above ground train get to exact street level. Like I looked out the window and it's like, oh shit, all of a sudden I feel like I'm in Amsterdam. Like I'm just on a streetcar that's just going along the road. This is fucking neat. And now at Camden, I'm just very distinctly less populated area. Like there was no train station, no turnstiles. It was just the little honor system, you know, you just have to put your card against the little check-in check-out pole. And then when I first got off the train, it really felt like in Fukuoka when I went one stop when I took the train up north. And I went one stop beyond the main stop with all the water parks and stuff. And I was just suddenly in nowhere's land with no one around. It really felt like that for a second. Now that I'm walking a bit there are, there's a lot more people than that, but there's a lot less people than everywhere else I've been in Taiwan. And yeah, already I'm just kind of awkwardly walking along the edge of a road without enough room for a pedestrian, although there is another and older guy ahead of me. I don't know, even if I can brute force my way to the waterfront. Well, there's at least a little symbol here, one of those little like, hey, take a cool picture here. Maybe I can at least get to there. But neat is an experiment just to see what's out here, although it's already a bit after five o'clock. So yeah, I only own, say I only have a couple hours of light left. So that's the point of experimenting. That's the point of exploring. Just got a see what's there. And what's there might be nothing. Yeah, there was like no sidewalks anywhere here. It's just these like rural style roads. It's little bits of space on the side. And I mean, there are other pedestrians. I'm not the only one. But far from comfortable. Yeah, I'm at least on the road now toward, toward whatever this view, the little camera icon. I'm heading down that way, so I can at least see what that is. And then just loop around and maybe just go home. But another thing that's cool about this is, I've circled around the National Park. You know, I'm like behind it now. Or no, not behind it. Still to the left of it. But you know, if I just continued along this way, I would just keep going around the big mountain of Yangminshan National Park. So it's kind of cool just to watch it go by on the train and just watch yourself turn. Like I guess I've 25:00 gone about a quarter of the way around. So just seeing the mountain from different angles and just being able to triangulate in your mind, you know, the whole, the sort of size of it by having a better awareness of what's around it and how long it takes to travel around it, which is not very long. It really seems like it's probably not that big of a deal to go hike up through there. Because I guess even yesterday, I mean, I did get to the entrance to one of the entrances of the park. And it was, you know, the only thing that was hard about it was that the roads were so narrow. The actual time it took me to get there was like no big deal. It was a couple hours. If even, maybe it was like 90 minutes of just wandering through town, you know, and like not a big deal. So I think having the just nowhere to start from, finding an appropriate entrance, finding an appropriate start point. I feel like that's going to be a pretty accessible place.

So that's cool. And I also grabbed some Wi-Fi while I was in the subway station. And the mountain I saw before, Ying Hanling. I couldn't find the actual height of that mountain because it's not one of the top 100 tallest mountains. It's not even like in the top 250. So it's not on the list that I could find. But I did find little reviews of the hike. And yeah, they basically said, make sure you start from the appropriate spot, you know, make sure you start from the actual trail, which is around the back of the mountain. But then it's like 30 minutes to get up because yeah, it's never that big of a deal to get up a mountain. It's always a surprisingly short walk. It just looks huge. It looks so big, but I think that could be the prominence thing too, because we're literally right next to the ocean. I could just see the ocean level. And then there's the mountain. So it's, I am seeing the full thing. It reminds me of like these dumb debates of like guys with small dicks, you know, they're like, you know, if you shave your pubes, it'll make your dick look bigger. You know, it's like, that's what this is like. It's like, if there's foothills around a mountain, that's making the mountain look smaller. Where this thing is just ocean mountain. Whatever height that mountain is, it's, that's it. Boom, it looks fucking, it looks enormous, like just looking at it. I'm like, it just seems so huge, but a mere 30 minutes to get up there, no biggie. They say the hike's not that hard. And a couple of different reviews claimed it was one of the best views of Taipei and New Taipei City alike. One of the very best. So that sounds like a definite plan. I think the hardest part is going to be getting to that trail head, you know, that I've got across the bridge and then walk around the mountain to the back. That's going to be the tricky part. And then just finding a day where it's clear, although that's again, there's upsides and downsides. If it's an overcast day, it's probably a better hike. But then the view might not be as cool. But yeah, that's coming up for sure. That's in my future for sure. Oh, and here we go. I've twisted and turned around a couple of country roads. There's even less traffic now. I'm seeing a number of just stray dogs and cats I've passed. This feels very countrysideish. This feels like my relatives who live on Campabello Island or who live in Pennyac, New Brunswick. This feels big time like that. Just mountain roads.

Really simple buildings, everything's kind of old. But I can see the water down ahead of me.

It's coming up. I'm almost there. Yeah, this will be fine for today. This is a plenty fine adventure. Or again, I think this whole thing has been kind of just learning what I can't do. Can't just look at the mountains and walk toward them. Can't just point myself at the ocean and walk to it. Definitely need a plan. Need a plan of attack for anything you want to do around here. Oh, there's a rooster. Just one of the locals is also looking at it. Like, are you supposed to just be walking around? Why are you just out of, why are you just walking around?

So that sounds like where the roosters are supposed to be. I can't see those birds, but I can hear them.

Ah, here we go. There we go. Another curve in the road.

Ocean side. Boom. Ah, this is nice. Oh, kind of creepy, though, in a weird way. Like, yeah, that's the ocean, all right? Because there's nothing out there. Shades of Jeju. I mean, nice to actually even more. Jeju had quite a few little mini mountains. You know, it wasn't that common for there to just be nothing in the water. 30:00 But here, there is nothing. There are no mini mountains. There's no little stop partway in. It is just fucking ocean as far as the eye can see. That's a nice little beach here, though. There's some people. Yeah, there's one guy who was ahead of me. I just walked past just some some student taking a picture of the sun as it's heading down. And then on this beach ahead of me, there's one dog who's probably affiliated with somebody, but who knows? One couple walking along. And then one guy further down. And that's it. See, a pretty empty beach, but it could just be that it's just not easy to get here. Not super accessible. And it's a rock beach, little, uh, but not like the big crazy volcanic rocks like in Jeju. These are just nice smooth pebbles, smooth stones. I'll look all along the beach. Not bad, man. Not bad. Pretty nice.

Yeah, it is kind of weird with stuff like this. I'm like, yeah, I bet if I live near here, this would be cool. Like you come down here. But as a distinct journey, this is it, man, this is the one. But I guess that's what's neat about just experimenting. It's just wilds what I be here. How else would I get here?

Yes, this kind of need actually. I haven't really seen one of these beaches that's just smooth, smooth, smooth rocks. I can't think of one certainly none on Jeju or in Busan. I don't know in Japan. I don't think so. I think all the beaches I found in Japan were generally sand, you know, either south of Yokohama or north of Fukuoka. This kind of feels Atlantic. This feels kind of Atlantic Canadian. This is cool. Whatever that smell was it passed to. So that's nice. Because that was certainly hurt the vibe if the smell was pervasive, but it didn't last.

Hello. And this older guy walking just waved to me friendly like, that's nice. Oh, and here's some bottles and general garbage. But I guess though, I mean, yeah, Taipei is still, it's such a remarkably clean place. Yeah, you got to take the train all the way to the end, get on the light rail, take that all the way to the end, then walk all the way down the country roads all the way to the beach. And then I'm not even at the main part, the photo point. I had to leave there and then walk down the beach. And then finally, there's a bit of garbage. That's not too bad, man. And it's not like a ton. It's just a bit.

I do feel like that's something I'm going to do if I ever just get stuck in one area, especially when I'm older. You know, I've heard this philosophy. I heard it from a Japanese YouTuber, but the idea of just a way to center yourself at the start of the day to kind of humble yourself is to clean a public washroom. Apparently, there are, like, high-powered CEOs in Japan who clean public washrooms on their way to work, you know, to start their day, to start their day in a humbled, centered way.

I could definitely see doing that as, like, garbage pickup guy. If it was kind of the area near where I live, and somewhere that I went every day, just make a habit of picking up garbage every day on my walk. But since I'm always going through different neighborhoods all the time, I don't know. I don't feel a particular affiliation. And you do have to be ready for it. Like, you have to carry a garbage bag around with you if you're going to be that guy. That being said, back in my hometown in Fredericton, New Brunswick, there's Odell Park, because this nice park in the middle of town that I went to, like, pretty much literally every day. Because there weren't that many options. And there was this cool side path that went down along a creek and had a little bench. And it just was one that not a lot of people used. And somebody, you know, these little teeny tiny cans of Pepsi or Coke. But in this case, it was Pepsi. You can get those little teeny, like, 12 ounce cans. There was somebody who used to just leave a can there all the time. Like, they'd obviously go sit there and drink their little can. And then leave it, not take it to the garbage.

In the summer, in the winter, didn't matter when. And especially in the winter, it just bothered me because everything was so pristine and so beautiful. And just this amazing, gorgeous, snowy landscape, like, out of a fucking, fucking poem, you know. And then there'd be the blue Pepsi cans sitting there.

And I did pick up the can because I just hated seeing it, you know, just ruined my day seeing the can there. But then I'd come back in a couple of days and there'd be another can. And I had vivid fantasies. I mean, this was during COVID too. I was losing my mind a bit. But since this guy was so consistent, I had vivid fantasies about, like, waiting in the woods right by that bench with a giant stick. And just beating the fucking shit out of that guy. I thought about it often, often. And then, you know, my fucking mania would hit the point of, like, I'd go all the way through it of, like, what if I got arrested? What if I literally got put in jail for, like, years? Like, I don't know how much could they give you for an assault like that? I guess it would depend on how bad I beat the guy. And my mind, like, two or three years. Ten years would be too much. I'd feel bad about it. But like, three years, I would be unrepentant. I would be like, it was worth it. Fuck that guy. He deserved the beating I gave him. What an asshole. I would do it again. Yeah, I was not, you know, I think everybody had a tough time during COVID. So, you know, I say that, like, maybe I'll be the, you know, like, when you adopt a highway or something, the guy who just tries to pick up the garbage. But if there is, like, a very consistent pattern of one specific person very clearly and consistently leaving garbage as just a deliberate flaunting of everyone else's fucking, because, you know, it's, it's communal property.

It's a fucking park. It's just such a fuck you to everyone else who walks through the park. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the limits of my kindly old man who picks up garbage. Like, I feel like that tank will probably run dry pretty fast. Maybe I would just become the fucking punisher of just like, teasing people and leaving them in the snow, telling them they know what they did. Anyway, I'm on like a walkway now that is off of the rocks. It's like a concrete walkway and there's some people ahead of me. This goes a lot further than I thought it did. So, yeah, this is kind of cool. I guess I'll just keep walking down the shore. I'm kind of looping back around, see heredically.

Oh, yeah, maybe. Heading toward Shiguan Park, S-H-U-I-G-U-A-N.

Yeah, if I can make it all the way here, oh, and there's that Shalun Beach I mentioned before. And there is a branch, the light rail actually splits. So, I took the split that went to Candish, but the other split is down here.

So, this could be perfect. If I can keep walking along the shore, then I can hop on the other branch of the light rail and take that home. That would be fucking perfect. And I am reasonably confident that's what's going to happen.

Oh, yeah, here's a bunch more people now. Cool, all right. That looks like a Shiguan walk along the shore a little more than I thought, the same bed.

And there's some kind of creepy-ass. I mean, these things pop up a lot, especially in South Korea, but like these old military battlements or whatever. Apparently, there's a lot of them in Okinawa, too, in Japan, like the island stuff. Yeah, just walked by one that was just like a little opening. I don't know how to get into the other part of it, but it's obviously like... I mean, it looks like somewhere where you could like stick a cannon out and fire it, but it's probably more just like a lookout or something, I don't know.

Yeah, I found quite a few of those around Seoul, especially. And then obviously there's all those military caves on Jeju.

But yeah, I just walked by one here. Just kind of weird those little pieces of battle history, because we have very few of those in Canada. Just not a lot of wars that happened on Canadian soils. It's always kind of weird to see those signs of a violent past.

There we go, back on the stones. Anyway, yeah, I'm just going to keep on walking and see if I can complete this loop.

Well, this is kind of neat. There's like a walkway, again, sort of a... I think actually for this one, they said to walk your bicycles. No bicycles, just joggers and walkers. But there is a big sea wall, so you can't see the ocean as you walk, but there is occasional rickety wooden ladders that you can climb up, and it's a high enough wall. I don't know, let's see.

I mean, it's more than two of me, so I don't know, I'm going to say 18 feet, 20 feet.

So climbing up onto the top of it is a little freaky, and then there's some of those... what are they called? The Tetra... Tetra things. Tetra hydrons, on the other side, to stop weather.

But yes, you can't really see the ocean as you walk, but you can climb up once in a while and take a gander, but it is just infinite water. No other islands at all.

Which I suppose must make like when those typhoons and stuff hit must make it even worse. Nothing to slow them down, they just whack right into poor old Taiwan.

But instead I'm looking the other way, back at the National Park, and at the new mountain I discovered that is going to be my next port of call, and it's interesting because they both look the same. Like yeah, I think it's not just my imagination, that Ying Henlin looks really big, because I know that National Park. The tallest peak is a little over a thousand meters, but most of them, if I remember what I read properly, are like seven or eight hundred meters. So I don't know if I can see the tallest peak from here. I might just be looking at the seven or eight hundred meter ones, but I can see them real clearly. And yeah, it's just like I'm approximately the same distance from both mountains, and they just look the same. They look like mirror images of each other almost, or even like the same shape, the same kind of bumps on the top.

So that'll be kind of neat. Once I get up there, so far there have been nice height indicators on the few little peaks I've been to so far. So hopefully there's one up there too. You know, I'm sure if I just do more research, I can dig up the number somewhere if I don't find it on the mountain. But that could be kind of cool to go up there, and hopefully I can find a little peak plaque that'll tell me, and we'll see if I'm at all right. But that's what I'm guessing. I'm going to guess between seven and eight hundred.

And then we'll see if my amateur orientering is even remotely right.

Actually, maybe it is a bit smaller. I think the national park side is a bit bigger. So let's go with the lower end of that. Let's aim for seven hundred then. Yeah, I'm going to put down seven hundred as my official guess, and then stay tuned into future episodes, and we'll see.

But I mean, who knows. It could be way less than that because that's certainly one thing that I learned on Jeju. Is that when you're right next to the ocean, a four hundred meter mountain is huge. It's so fucking big.

So I could be way over shooting. But who knows.

I think that might be the first rainbow I've seen on this whole trip.

And it's not really a bow. It's just a little band in the sky. That's pretty fucking cool.

And that really is. I mean, I don't really know. I know the sort of very vague generalities of refracting light and different frequencies that make the different colors. I don't really know if I had to write the encyclopedia entry about rainbows. It would be very wrong. But obviously I know way more than, you know, like an ancient person would know.

But that must have been weird as fuck for them because it's so distinctly all the colors. Yeah, I can see blue, green, yellow, orange, red, a little bit of purpleish on the very edge. Yeah, that must have been weird as fuck for them. All of this shit. You know what I mean? That's the obvious, like, thunder and lightning. And it's like the gods are angry or that the stars are like pinholes in a sheet hanging over the earth. 45:00 Or who knows, whatever. But rainbows aren't especially weird one because it's so distinctly all the colors of the rainbow. I wonder what they thought about that, what kind of theories they came up with.