#185 A sudden waterfall in Taipei (Tsuifeng Falls)

Transcript

Some vending machine ASMR. Not a lot of that happened in Korea. Man, for 60 Taiwanese dollars, which is a lot. You can get organic black tea, soup, which is 35, still a little bit. For comparison, most stuff is 20. A can of coke is 20. So 35 is a little bit much. 60 is way more than everything else, but maybe that's delicious. Maybe I will get one after.

35. Colonc. So yeah, this peanut soup thing. I noticed this a while ago. I think I noticed it at the Memorial Museum. It's really cold.

And as I go, I'll try that eventually. And then I've passed it a couple of times in this one machine. It's not a very common item, but it's at this one machine near my place. With some beautiful views of the mountains in the distance, I'm not too far from the 1300 steps that go up to the monkey trail. But just this thing looks so fucking gross on the can. Because the picture is just called peanut soup. And it's halal, incidentally.

It's just a bowl with wet peanuts in water is what it looks like. And I got to assume that's not what this is, right? Like I assume when I open this, there's not going to be a literal peanuts in water. But maybe there is. It just looks so unappetizing. And I love peanuts. I love peanuts. I think it's, it might even be one of those weird things where when you have a very, very slight allergy to something, it can make you desire it. Have you ever experienced that? Or sometimes I get this weird like itch in my inner ear. It's like an itch that I can't scratch when I eat peanuts and peanut stuff. But I love peanut butter. I love peanut chiffon pie. I love Reese peanut buttercups. I love everything peanut. I can't think of a single peanut product up to and including peanuts that I don't like. And as for peanut drinks, I was thinking of like there's a jerk chicken place. I can't remember what that chain is called, but there's like a Caribbean chicken place in Toronto that you can buy in just little juice cartons. Like these little cartons of, man, what is that one called? It's like a pasty peanut drink. It's kind of thick. And it's really sweet. It is almost like drinking just liquefied peanut butter. But it is really good.

So yeah, this is a weird case where it's a peanut product and I deliberately didn't buy it the other day. I'm like, it just looks gross. And I went home and I googled it and I just looked it up a little. I don't know. I just I guess because it's such a strange presentation to peanut soup. I guess I just wanted to make sure like this isn't just some like ingredient. Is it? I don't have to take this home and add water and boil it up like actual soup. I don't think so. I think it's just a drink. But anyway, that's the big exciting start to this episode. So it is I'm going to open this and try it. But yeah, basically it's been a couple of days. In the last episode, I distinctly said to like my chances of going back hiking where I was hiking last episode were 0.0% because it was so unbearably hot. And today's really no different. It's at least not a sunday day. The thunderstorm days on the weather report are at least a little intermittent now. They're at least a little scattered. It's not every single day. But I did wake up the next day and my mind immediately went back to like, oh, you know, if I just took the brown line on the MRT on the train, I could get right back there. Or I could start experimenting with the buses and get closer to the national park. But it's just so hot. I just can't do it. It's just too fucking hot. But obviously my brain is still like that is what you want to do though. You do want to go do that stuff. So you're going to have to pull the trigger eventually and just deal with the heat.

But not today. Oh, is there a little hmm. There's a disposable spoon included the top of this thing. Yeah, I also personally to last episode. I also did go by a nice little sling to put around my shoulder just to hold a spare bottle of water. So now I can have two bottles of water easily. Because yeah, that shit was not on. That was too dangerous and weird. All right. So I take the little plastic lid off and now there's a spoon disconnect the spoon. Fold the spoon out. 5:00 Like if this is a drink, I'm supposed to drink what's with the spoon. Maybe this literally is peanuts in a creepy peanut water. All right. I've extended this spoon. So I have a little spoon. Now I got to crack the top of this thing.

Yeah. So it is exactly like the picture on the front. It's just the palest, widest peanuts you've ever seen in a weird creepy soup.

But where the picture on the front just looks like water. It's even worse in real life because there's just particles and weird stuff floating in it.

This smells kind of peanutty. Just what a weird product. What the fuck is this? So yeah, I guess I use this spoon to just spoon out some peanuts in peanutty water.

It's just like peanuts in water. But because they've been floating in water all this time, they're not at all firm or crunchy. They're just soft. And it doesn't really taste like peanuts anymore. And the water itself is just kind of vaguely sugary. No fucking thank you. All right. Well, this is a historic day. The first time I've ever had a peanut based product that I don't like. My initial fear was totally right. I just assumed I would buy this thing. I didn't know why I kept putting it off. Usually I'm excited to find something new in a machine. And it's like, cool. Let's try it. Let's see what this is. But something about this one. I was like, this just looks so awful.

This cannot be something that I want. And it's fucking not. Luckily, I'm in a park near a public washroom because I'm going to have to go flush this stuff. So I can at least just like dispose of the can because what am I supposed to do? I'm not eating this shit. This sucks. Okay, one more. One more mouthful.

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't taste bad. It tastes like almost nothing. The peanuts have no taste. And the water is just vaguely sugary.

Man. But yeah, the texture is all soft and soft peanuts. What the fuck is this? Why do they make this? What is this product?

The fuck? Because I did like a little bit of research. Just I basically just found a website that was selling it. And I don't know. That was enough for me, I guess, just to say, okay, I mean, it's a thing. I don't know. Somehow that gave me a little faith that it's something somebody might want. But this is actually exactly what it looks like. Exactly what I feared it would be. Just peanuts in water. But I thought at least the peanuts would be like peanutty. Not all soft. Yuck. But anyway. So that was a weird start to the episode. But I was like, I gotta go do it, man. Get your big brave balls on. It's a weird thing in a vending machine. And if you don't do it, you're gonna regret it. You're gonna think back and be like, what about that thing in Taiwan that I never tried? Why didn't I try it? Well, I tried it. It was fucking sick. Actually, I'll just go back and buy one of those teas. Those teas looked really cool. The premium tea. So yeah, I'll get that instead. That'll be the success for today is that it made me notice the cool fancy tea in the machine. But man, peanut soup. I don't know. I was gonna say maybe you'll know if you want this, if this is the thing that you would want, but you don't want this. I don't know what this is. It doesn't taste bad, but it doesn't taste good. I don't like it.

The first ever bad peanut product. Wow. Anyway, that was my only plans for today. So let's just fade out and we'll fade back in when something else happens to me.

Like this happened to me. Peanut soup happened to me. Like it flew out of the sky and hit me in the face.

Oh, shit. It was assaulted by peanut soup. I think that's also. I mean, I'm trying to think of one of the worst things I've gotten out of machines. There's that Amazake stuff that was like a weird sort of milky alcohol-free sake type thing. That was definitely gross. I didn't like that stuff. But was it worse than this? I don't know. Maybe it wasn't good, but they're both about the same. They're comparably bad. And now with a random song on the wind, let's fade out.

Wellie, wellie, wellie, wellie, wellie. So I took the last couple of days off from hiking in the extreme heat and getting rained on seemed like a good policy. Oh, by the way, that soup that I had the peanut soup. I looked it up on YouTube. The full name, I guess, is peanut milk soup. So milk content is extremely low. It's not really milk. It is just watery sugary water. And it's funny. I found three people try it. And the first two reacted exactly like me. They tried it. They were like, oh, no, thank you. And they threw it away. They did not finish it. The third person was like, oh yeah, I heard this is like the number one most popular dessert soup in Taiwan. And they tried it and they were like, hmm, it seems okay. So they purported to like it, but then the video ended and they didn't actually eat anymore. So, you know, take that as you will. Some people did say it's better hot. You take it home, you heat it up. Anyway, I not recommended peanut milk soup. Get the fuck out of here.

But yeah, the last couple of days it's actually been not extremely hot and it hasn't rained very much. I've definitely noticed like there is a distinct difference between hot and insane. You know, things were hot on Jeju, but not insane. Because even these last couple of days, like it's been hot. I have been sweaty. But it wasn't like last episode when I deliberately went hiking in an extreme heat day where I was literally soaked, you know, like my whole shirt and my pants were wet like I had walked into a lake. It can get pretty hot. It can be 34, 35 degrees. And you don't sweat like that. I don't know, it's just some combination of this humidity and stuff. That just something goes fucking haywire and everything just gets crazy.

So yeah, it's been hot, but not, you know, it's all relative. It hasn't really rained that much. So today I was like, yeah, well again, let's just try it. I don't know, unpredictable. Trying to predict the weather rent here ain't gonna happen.

So I bought a couple bottles of water. I got a backup bottle of water in my water sling now. Just bought a little shoulder bag from Daiso just to put a bottle of water in.

And I heard thunder rumbling again. The telltale I've been having my sleep schedules all fucked up as usual. And it was like two in the afternoon. It's like, yeah, this is a bit late to get started. But I was like, I don't know. I'll just go to those historic steps up to the monkey trail or something. I don't need to do something new today. I'll just go on one of the old hikes, but you know, just an excuse to get out and go hiking. I don't need to go to a new place. I'll just go to one of the old hikes. You know, just an excuse to go outside. Get some exercise. Oh man, this poor lady. She went in this family mart bought an umbrella for this weather because she's got two kids on a stroller. So she bought an umbrella and she's trying to cover the kids. The kids are pretty covered, but she's unfortunately not. She's only getting her head and shoulders. She's gonna be so soon. Oh, the trials and tribulations that be in a ma. But yeah, I was just gonna stop in. I like to stop at multiple. There's so many family marts and 7-Elevens and high life. And I found a very rare fourth store called the okay store or something, but there's so many I like to stop in in multiple waves. So in the first one, I bought my water and I got an onigiri, got a coffee, and I was gonna stop in the second one. Get another coffee. Get some dried fruit just to tuck away for hiking. And I got a lemon guava sorbet. I spar from the family collection. The family mart fucking ice cream bar collection. Very delicious. But yeah, on the way here, I heard. I heard the rumble of thunder very loud behind me, but I couldn't see, you know, the telltale clouds. I was like looking around and I'm like, man, those are very loud, very evident thunder. But the sky's clear today. What's going on? All the other days, at least, I saw the clouds coming. And yeah, just in the time it took for me to go into this convenience store by three things and step out. It was this. It's what you're hearing now. It's totally insane. Yeah, I guess maybe this is why I didn't see. The other days that it stormed, it's like very dark gray skies. Where today it's raining really hard, but the sky is just a nice, a nice light pastel blue, you know? It's just not gray. It's not dark skies. 15:00 It's overcast. It's clouds, but somehow it's still like light blue. So this was just a weird one. Just more in the rain report of what happens in Taipei in the summer. It's near the end of August now. It's just insane. You just can't predict at all what's going to happen. And like, it was like raining a teeny bit when I went into this family mart. Within, you know, three fucking minutes. It turned into rain world. It's just like holy fuck. So again, I guess I'm just lucky. I'm getting near the steps. I guess I'm just lucky that this happened before I got there. So I'm just standing under an awning now. And it's like, oh, well, just standing under here, sipping my coffee. Because I guess this is what's nice. This is what I've learned that I haven't been able to take advantage of yet. Last time I got caught in the rain was laundry day. And I ended up hiking home in the fucking rain and just getting destroyed. Because I didn't know when it was going to stop. I thought it was just going to rain forever. But that's when I learned that this happens like every potentially every day around to a clock. And between two and five, it's going to rain. So today it started raining somewhere before 230. And it's coming up on three o'clock now. So I mean, ooh, I guess that's the thing. Now I know I don't need to walk through this. I could just stand here and wait for it to stop.

Probably that's what I need to do. I mean, there's just no other reasonable thing. No other reasonable option here.

But it might be a while. I don't know, I figure, I guess I'll give it an hour. Give it an hour and see, because it might just stop. It might just be over. It already seems like it's calming down. I don't know, I guess I'll just stand here and fucking read some comics on my phone or something. It's not so bad. It's kind of neat. It's kind of nice. It's kind of ASMR-like to just be under and awning while it's raining. I'm not in the rain. I'm nice and safe from the rain.

And I guess just now that I know it's going to stop. It's like, that's no biggie. You can just chill. You can just hold on.

This guy's walking by like a plastic bag over his book bag. I saw a lady walking earlier, so he's the example of someone who's prepared. I saw a lady earlier walking with her dog. She got caught completely unaware. She was just soaked. And that wouldn't even be, I don't know. It wouldn't be the worst if we didn't live in a smartphone age. I mean, getting your wallet wet, that's a definite problem. And I guess that has always been a problem since time immemorial, which to me is the 80s to present. But yeah, having smartphones now, it really fucks things up. I guess the joke version is like, back in the day, you could prank people by pushing them in a pool. Or now, if you prank someone by pushing them in a pool, you've just cost $1,000 because you're ruined their phone. I mean, it was never a funny thing to do in the first place. It's kind of nice, I guess, that we've moved beyond pushing people in pools. But yeah, you just can't do that anymore. People have computers in their pants pocket. But yeah, it really means getting caught in the rain is a whole new world of getting fucked. So anyway, yeah, it is, I mean, it is, it's calming a bit, but it's still raining pretty hard. So I guess I'll just stand here. Guess I'll just stand here and see what happens.

Well, that wasn't too bad. I only had to wait about 20 minutes before the rain calmed down enough that I could justify walking out into it. And by the time I got to the trail, it was pretty much done. Man, though, yeah, this particular weather hasn't changed. It's still just this light blue everywhere. So it is really humid. It's like, it's that steam of a, like getting out of a steamy shower feel.

I was sweating like a maniac coming up those stairs. And it's weird as you get higher up seeing the view out over the city. It's like, how much of this is the weather? How much of this is pollution? I think the pollution is a little bad today. It's in the 60s, the AQI. So I think it's a strange mix of both.

And then at the top, there's a squat porta potty, which at this point is not even worse mentioning. It's just a part of my life. That seemed like such a crazy thing. It's like taking the squat toilet up to a new level. And I was just like, hey, whatever. But I'm just mentioning it because I did notice that there was, it's nice that they have this. But along the back wall was just two AA batteries connected to one little LED, one light emitting diode. And obviously, you can use that thing at night. But I mean, it's pretty creepy in there to begin with, even just in the afternoon. 20:00 Being in there at night with just the one little light, I bet that's legitimately scary. This mountain road, this fucking weird squat porta potty, I would not want to be the person who gets trapped in there at night. It's nice that they have the light, but geez, scary.

So I'm back on the monkey trail. And I still see no monkeys. Thought maybe right after a rain or something, maybe it'd be different monkey weather. But I suppose actually this is probably more likely to make the monkeys have gone away, right? They probably scattered away while it rained. Why come back out once you're scattered?

And again, it's fine. This is a neat trail. It's really neat to just walk along the side of this cliff. Because obviously it's not that cliff like, because I'm so scared of heights, if it was scary. I would tell you about it. This is very comfortable and just a neat, wide walking path along the side of a cliff. I guess like I said last time, it's more of the concern of like, what if a rock did fall from here? It would cave your skull in.

But I don't know, maybe we'll see some monkeys. We'll see.

I guess my question now is, when I get to the end of this path, do I go farther up? Or I think there's an alternate path down. And I feel like maybe that's the better idea.

You know, just a nice little walk up to the monkey path. It's so neat that I'm, you know, my next Airbnb will be across the river from shemen, which I've realized some people call that neighborhood shemending. So that's kind of cool, because that neighborhood is neat. And that's where I was when I first got to Taipei. I'll be within walking distance of that. I can just walk across the bridge and be right there. But to get to everywhere else, I'm going to have to take transit. So this is a nice little wild. This is within walking distance. This is literally up the street from this current Airbnb. It's just neat. Come here, walk up the 1300 steps, walk along the monkey trail, scenery a monkey, but it's just nice. Just a nice little stroll.

So yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I really do want to go farther up, because then what? I did figure out a bit of the buses. There's basically only, there's like a major route. One big major road that heads up this mountain. That's what I walked down last time I was up here. So there's buses that go up there. But then this little bus stop that I'm walking toward now that I found last time, it looks like I got to go over to Beto station and take a bus from there, and it'll take me across to here.

So I could take a bus to get here too, but it's not even that hard to get here. It's really not that far of a walk. It's so hard for me to wake up early. It's like impossible. That's my real problem.

And sleeping in really is not so bad, because it's kind of better to let Jesus Christ guys.

Yeah, no monkeys today, just cicada town. What the fuck?

I mean, yeah, it's not the worst thing to sleep in and let the heat of midday pass by. It's just that it gets dark so early. They're getting dark by seven o'clock thing.

Makes things tricky.

Yeah, I'm also a little hesitant on the buses, because I've just been keeping my eye on them, and every time I see a bus go by, I don't know. Either it's completely empty or it's completely packed. I don't really want to plan on a bus, because if it's completely packed, I don't want to get on that shit. Ah, yeah, this is a nice view. You can't see a ton of view from up here, but once in a while, it's a break in the trees. And that's nice.

Yeah, I suspect when I get to the new place, I'll just get into the routine of just taking the train. No big deal. I can still do all this stuff I've been doing.

Taipei is still a very small city. Pretty easy to get where you're going. I'll just have to make hopping on the train at the start. Part of the routine.

Oh, yeah, here we go. Yeah, this part. Wow, this cliffside is scary as fuck. It's just like a literal cliffside. It's just giant fucking rocks. Man, I guess you live up there somewhere, monkeys.

But as a person with a nice soft head, that is a little scary.

And yeah, this is nice. I know I said it last time, but definitely recommended.

The historic Tianmu Trail up to the monkey path. 25:00 Very easy to get to and very fucking cool.

Alright, this is pretty cool. So I was kind of stuck at a crossroads a little bit of, do I go higher up? Do I just bail out now from the monkey trail? Because going up, it's only a little farther from the monkey trail to where I found a bus stop before. And there is a path near there I was curious about. And it's like, well, it wouldn't be that far to go to the beginning of that path. And then I could go up there. But I guess the problem is none of these things are that hard to get to and won't take that long. But each bit that I add on is more that I've got to deal with to get home. You know, the higher up the mountain, I get the harder it is to get back afterward. And even though it's like not even quite four o'clock.

The seven o'clock darkness hour really sneaks up on you. I noticed yesterday actually it was like pitch black even before seven.

And from up there, like I said, there's bus stops and it probably wouldn't be that hard to get looped back around to like the McDonald's this up there in the major route. But I mean, that was a long walk down that route to get home, you know, still not close.

But then I saw, because the other idea is there's this walkway that goes down from there at the west end of the monkey trail. And I saw a local lady just coming up from there. So I was like, that's the sign. That's the sign from the heavens. That lady's coming up from this path. I'm going to take that as an indicator that I should go down that path. But then still to make it a bit more adventurous, midway down that path, that path split. There was the major route that had the big stone walkway and some benches and stuff. And then there was just a little path. So I'm on the little path. There's a little tricky. There's some fallen logs on parts of the path. But like even though this is a way rougher path, everything is still so well maintained in Taipei. It's ludicrous, even rough paths. Because if it does get really steep, the couple of points where it does, they've got rope set up that you can hold on to to help guide yourself down. So I'm literally just going down the side of the cliff, down the side of the jungle cliff. But it's like not that bad. Not in a scary way, just in a cool, nice, adventurous way.

It's a little slippery because it rained so much before. There's an occasional mosquito or two. That was happening to me too when I was trapped under the awning at the family mart. There was only one mosquito in there, but that's another reason why I only hung out for 20 minutes, is I was just getting tired of that little one mosquito. I haven't had very many problems with mosquitoes on this whole adventure. But man, surprising how one or two mosquitoes can just fuck shit up.

And here's a little wooden plaque hanging from a tree. But whatever's written on it is written in Chinese and is very weathered, but it's two arrows, one ahead and one to the left. I don't know what you're referring to. I don't see anything to the left. I just see it quite steep.

Oh, I guess you can go up from here. Interesting. Jeez, I don't know where the fuck that brings you to somewhere midway through the monkey trail, I guess, but I didn't even see the entrance to that. Anyway, just head down here. And the slippery rocks, but again, there's a nice guide rope. And I feel like I can hear water, but it's really hard to tell because I mainly can only hear cicadas.

And my one water bottle is almost gone. And yeah, it's just such a nice feeling because especially if I had gone farther up, like yeah, this is just one water bottle. It's just not enough water. It's not even close to enough water. Even this, which I would call a quite small adventure, quite a limited little wee afternoon adventure. I'm still almost ready to break out the second water bottle. So yeah, that was an extremely good move. Just going to the Daiso and buying a little fucking, there's a whole variety of little slings. You can sling over your shoulder that are just big enough for a bottle of water. 30:00 If I really try hard, I can squeeze my umbrella in there too, but that's tricky.

It's pretty much literally just a water bag. And it was an extremely good move. I can't believe I took... Well, I guess I was going to say I can't believe I took this long. But again, I guess it's just because I had my jacket with me in Korea. And it had pockets. So that's all. It actually hasn't been that long, just while I've been in Taiwan. But yeah, this weather, I can't even imagine. Because you know, there was those weird times on Jeju, like the time I missed the bus. And I was stuck outside till 3 in the morning. Where suddenly, even though it's been hot as hell all day, I was like, whoa, I got this jacket. I can't even imagine that. I cannot even muster up enough fear of exposure to carry a jacket around. I can't even... There's no way. It seems so insane to have any extra layers. It's even a little insane just to be wearing a shirt realistically. I should be a topless man if I was just living my life as a normal human is supposed to live in this fucking environment.

But anyways, that led to me not having extra pockets.

So the bottle sling is the shit. There we go. I did hear water.

So it's just a little teeny, like very teeny little waterfall I can see from here, like two feet tall.

It's a little, little stream sized river, one of those little mini rivers, with orange silt, orange banks.

This is pretty steep and slippery. Let's very carefully get down to there.

This is kinda pretty. It's kinda neat because this whole jungle area is just really green with bits of brown, just from the dirt and the rocks and stuff. And this river is like bright orange, orangey, a little brownish, brownish orange, gold colored kind of. Or like copper, I guess, copper is the right color. Like a bright copper colored river.

Just making its way through here. Oh man, though, this is the trickiest part of this walk for sure. Thank you, guide ropes. It will take you. What the, where did that come from? There's another way down here that is way more gradual and has little stone steps. Shit, oh well. Oh, there we go. There's a bigger waterfall. Still only like...

10 feet tall, maybe. So that's not bad. Oh, no shit, it's bigger than I thought it was. What the fuck is this? Oh my god, this is beautiful. So like the main thrust of the waterfall is quite small. But there's a little narrower, rivulet of water from way, way up. Oh, this is really fucking pretty. Even me, a noted waterfall hater. This is fucking gorgeous.

Just in this nice little enclosed area. But then the cliffs go way up, way up to Monkey Town.

All right, I'm on the baneling trail by complete accident. I connected up to this. And this is Sweet Fang Falls, T-S-U-I-F-E-N-G Falls. And again, the magic of having a phone on the map. It says I can continue along, but I don't know, oh, maybe there's a little bit of a path. I guess we'll see. And then that connects to some kind of road.

Okay, and then I guess yeah, just got a loop slowly around. This will eventually get me back to town.

In a gradual way, but yeah, this is great. I kind of thought this was like, oh, I'm just kind of bailing out because I didn't get that much sleep today and whatever. Just want a little adventure. This is awesome. I love when that happens. This is so unexpected. Instead of going up the mountain, going down the mountain was the right call. This is, oh, this is really good. This is super worth it. Especially, again, if you're already at the monkey trail, this is so insane, dude. I literally, I walked out of my apartment. And then I just have to go half a block to the right to get to a major street. And there's this sign, this big poster of Bill Gates. And it's about stopping polio. 35:00 And it's weird that I use Bill Gates as my indicator of how to get home. But he's the landmark. That's where I know that's that's where my Airbnb is. But then on that major street, I just hang a left and literally just walk straight down it. And at the end of that street is the beginning of this the historic trail. And then you walk up the steps, which again, 1300 steps sounds like a lot. It's no big deal. It's very easy. And then the monkey path is right there. And then you go down from the monkey path. And I guess you do have to take the somewhat rougher way down.

But I'm at a beautiful waterfall. This is like, it's a really good waterfall. My god, this is good. It just, I don't know, it's so cool because the waterfall itself, like there's the little rivulet that starts from way high up. The bigger part, like it's again, maybe, I don't know, it's not that high up. 12 feet, 15 feet, I'm not good at heights.

Not like impressive. It's just the environment, not the water. It's the environment that is the parts that's cool. It's like this little enclosed grove.

And just seeing the trees stretch off around. I do kind of suspect, though, I guess because like the Congo falls and stuff that I saw in West Tokyo. I was there in wintertime or like late fall. I bet they would have been a little more lush and beautiful in the summer. Like I'm here at the perfect time. There's little red flowers around and all the trees are full power. But also just this oxidized rock or whatever the fuck is going on here that makes this all orange. This is awesome. This is immediately jumping up to one of my favorite waterfalls. Wow. It's so cool. It's so nice. It just feels good.

And there's not a goddamn soul here. That's me too. You know, I liked those $2 waterfalls on Jeju. They were kind of cool. But it's way cooler to just like, is that water right here? They just have no ideas and not even know. I guess that's the thing too. I guess this is the first time I think I've ever just bumped into a really pretty waterfall by accident. You know, it's usually it's like a goal. It's like, okay, I'm trying to get to this waterfall and then you get there and you're like, yeah, right? Maybe I've stolen that from you now that you know it's here. But it's a really good feeling. It feels really cool.

Man, this is nice. This is fucking nice.

Man, I think this is the best quote-unquote bailout of a plan of all time. I'm sure going further up the mountain would be cool and hopefully I'll still pull that off eventually, but there's no way it would be as good as this. No fucking way. This is fucking beautiful. So you can just keep walking down along the side of the river. At first, it was reminding me a lot of the Congo Falls in West Tokyo. But those really were just woods and just like a forestry access road. Very pretty in its own way, but just literal raw woods out in West Tokyo. Where this is way more lush, you could partially be the time of year too.

But yeah, just greenery everywhere and the only flowers really, it's like these red flowers that don't pop up a lot, but there's just enough of them sprinkled around that it's like, oh man, that's fucking pretty.

And yeah, it's just this little trail alongside the river. I guess these red things are not even flowers really. It is just, or maybe they were flowers. I don't know, they just look like, it's weird, they almost look like pine needles, but they're red. I guess they're just very narrow flowers at this point in their life cycle, little long narrow red flowers.

But yeah, it's just beautiful, man. I thought this was like, oh yeah, I'm just wasn't out today, wasn't out of the adventure early.

I had no fucking idea this was here. I had no fucking idea. This is so cool. It is mildly creepy though that I just passed a locked gated door. And I guess there's a bit of a path I can sort of see. Maybe it was a path at one point and now it's just too dangerous or maybe it sort of looks like a path, but it's not. 40:00 People were making a mistake in going that way. So they set up a whole literal door on the edge of the cliff side and they're like, you cannot, don't fucking go this way.

Go down these little steps over here. But also it's weird. You know, at some point you're right by the water, at some point you're higher up. I looked down and I saw a person. So I was like, alright, presumably I'll pass them soon, but then they just disappeared. Where did they fucking go? They went somewhere else. Oh, I'm okay. There's like steps down here. So I guess they came from further down the river, but it looks like at this point I'm going to cross over the river. Oh yeah. Talk about breaking the illusion. What the fuck? That was just like, whoa, so deep in the woods and a guy just disappeared in the scary door and like all this stuff, but it's so cool in the adventure. Peering through the trees, I just, uh, a car go by across this little bridge. There goes a little bridge crossing the river and it connects to a full on road. Oh geez, that's one thing though. I walked through four. That was my fourth spider web. I guess because it's getting a little later in the day and it's pretty dim in here because I'm under the jungle canopy. I keep walking into spider web. I walked under the first one. I was really careful to walk under it. I walked straight into like four more. So I guess people don't go here very often. Sorry, spiders. I don't mean to fuck with your shit. I just literally, I'm not seeing you. I'll have walked right into you. So yeah, that guy I saw hiking, I still don't know where he came from.

Here's like a road going up into the mountains. Oh yeah, there were signs, by the way, more of those little signs just hung on trees that, uh, that I could not read, but I just took the path that stayed near the river.

And I met like a little intersection of streets, but all right, banling trail further on, 150 meters, five minutes.

Maybe that's where I want to go, but there's a road that goes down, but this road that goes up, 250 meters, seven minutes, not that far to banling suspension bridge. But I hate suspension bridges. They scare this shit out of me.

Yeah, I was kind of hoping. I remember seeing just one of the times I was looking at a map. I saw something about a suspension bridge being closed.

I was like, maybe it's this one. Maybe that's a nice excuse that I don't need to go there, but yeah, if it's that short of a walk, my pre-downloaded Google Maps says nothing about it being closed.

And there's no Wi-Fi here. So I guess I have to go, but I might not go across it. I might just look at it.

Yeah, suspension bridges, man. I've never been on a suspension bridge that I like. They scare the fuck out of me. Some little stone monuments.

All right then. Fuck me. All of a sudden this adventure got a lot less fun, but when a suspension bridge is that close, if it was like, you know, many kilometers away, I'd say fuck it, but 250 meters is very fucking close. So let's go. Let's go get scared.

All right, this doesn't look that bad. It's a really narrow little bridge. Like only wide enough for one person, but it's got like netting on each side. So I feel like even if I passed out halfway across this thing, I still wouldn't fall to my desk. Like the netting would catch me. Oh, okay. Now I'm walking out. And it's not like too high up. If this was way high up, like, oh man, what's that suspension bridge? I mean, any one of various suspension bridges in British Columbia can all go fuck themselves. I hate that shit. And I guess it wasn't a suspension bridge, but the bridge of the three pay waterfalls in Jeju, the final one I went to, that bridge scared the shit out of me. Like if this was that high up, I would not do this. Yeah, this isn't that bad. This is like, if I fell down here, I would sprain my ankle. It would probably break my ankle, but I wouldn't die. Again, I'm so bad at judging heights, but yeah, I'm looking right down at it. This is fine. I feel all right. I'm not scared of this. I mean, I say that. I feel it. I feel like butterflies are in my knees, which is a weird feeling. 45:00 But yeah, this is all right. This is fine. Nice. All right. I just crossed, well, not quite. Almost bounce, bounce, bounce. There we go. I just crossed the suspension bridge. I did it. Sweet. Except actually, I think I might have to go back across and go back, because I think the other way was what would take me home.

I don't know where this is. Maybe, man, I'm on the other side of the river now. This path goes up, but to where? Maybe I could go up to the top of the waterfall, but I mean, that's traditionally not a great experience either.

Yeah, I'm afraid I don't know. It just goes up. It goes up further toward just more of the baneling trail, I guess, or something.

So anyway, yeah, I guess I'm going back. Let's go back across the suspension bridge. Again, this is something maybe later, maybe some other time. And if I want to, again, foreshorten the journey, there are bus stops that I'm heading toward. The road I'm heading toward does have some bus stops.

Shameo Road, S-H-A-M-A-O Road. And today, my plan is just to walk down Shameo Road. It'll take me roughly back to where I started, back to the beginning. Hey, I almost exactly, actually, almost exactly back to the beginning of the Tianmue Historic Trail. So yeah, maybe some other day. I'll come back here and figure out what the fuck this is all about.

But yeah, this has been a fantastic mega success. I cannot believe how cool this has been. This alternate route is fucking awesome. I guess also compared to, I mean, how I got off the mountain the first time when I continued on. Since I continued on up the mountain a little bit, but not that far. So basically I just got to a bus stop and then I followed a road and I got to a McDonald's and then I just walked down a major route back down the mountain. So compared to that, I mean, it functionally got me home. This is nice. I'm right in the middle of this suspension bridge and I'm not even scared. I love this large amount of netting on the sides. I mean, it's still like large squares, you know, that I can stick my arm through, but it's more than enough to feel secure. I'm not even scared. This is a nice fucking, this is my favorite all-time suspension bridge because it's almost unnecessary.