#191 On the mend in Taipei

Transcript

Alright, it's a several days later. So, it's the last episode I had a cold and I went and did laundry in the middle of the night. So the day after that, whoa, whoa, woke up feeling so shitty. The worst day for sure. This has definitely been the most sick I've been on this trip because before this. Well, I mean, I was food poisoning pretty bad, but that's different. I feel like that doesn't count. But I barely remember really. I remember I was sick enough to kind of want to stay away from people, but definitely this was worse. However, it's still, it's like a week later now, a week since I first got sick and I feel fine pretty much now. So I still can't complain. You know, I was really only sick. It was like each day was a different stage, a different form of being sick and then I started getting better pretty fast.

I feel like a week you can't complain about. If you're sick for two weeks, I feel like that's almost standard. Anything below that, you got away. Alright.

But yeah, the next day I was frustrated, but then the day after that, I did start to feel better, but things had just slipped so far from not being able to sleep.

Staying up all night coughing because my sleep schedule's not good anyway. So it got so insane that that was the first day that I didn't see the sun. I woke up like an hour and a half before the sun went down and I couldn't be bothered getting outside for it. I was like, oh, whatever. And then by the time I finally did go outside, just for a little constitutional. You know, try to find some streets without people on them and stuff. Keep myself quarantined. It was already dark and I was like, oh man, what the fuck. So anyway, at this point, I'm basically better. I finally felt like it wasn't irresponsible for me to take the subway somewhere. I feel like I'm alright now. But trying to pull myself back from the brink of the backward sleep is definitely tough. Because even just last night, it's like, I'm going to bed at 4 a.m. That's not so bad, but by 5 a.m. I wasn't even close to falling asleep. So I was like, I don't know, maybe I should just get up. What's the point of this? And then yeah, it's like 7 a.m. by the time I finally go to bed. Not good. Alright, this is the trail I was looking for. Pretty sure this is it. Bayloo Seation Trail, B-A-I-L-U-S-I-S-H-A-N. Alright, well, let's go. I think this is it. I hope this is it, because I'm going up here.

Oh yeah, cool. One of these signs with the distances. Well, this one's not in English, though. Usually I've been getting soft, I expect English. But I think this is 0.9 kilometers 30 minutes. Oh, that's nothing. That is easy.

Yeah, the reason I met a small easy trail is I finally woke up at like quarter after two. And like, that's how fuck things have been. Is that I'm like, that's good. That's fine. I can work with that waking up at two in the afternoon is like, yeah, it could be a lot worse.

By the time I got my shit together, it was quarter to three.

I decided to come out to, basically, to have a repeat where, where I was before. I can't do anything too huge because it's so late in the day. So I came to Dahu Park, D-A-H-U Park, on the brown line. Because this is, there was a lake that I previously went to on the brown line. This is the next lake over. But I missed my first transfer took a while to get here. It's like 4.30 by the time I got here. So here we go. Now I'm on this little path by Dahu Park. Have a nice little hike. Just try to get shit rolling again. Try to get up, get out of bed, go do something. And then hopefully this will all compound together, making sure I get up and out and go do some kind of hike. We'll hopefully wear me out so that it's easier to fall asleep. And hopefully it won't take too many days to get things back to some kind of a reasonable point.

Because my plan now is, you know, when I was a cross from Yangminshan National Park, looking at those mountains, because they're the biggest mountains around here, the thousand meter mountains. And they looked kind of scary for boating. And I was like, do I even want to do that? That shit's crazy. But spending a whole week down, just staying in my neighborhood, not wanting to take transics. I didn't want to make anyone sick. Just walking in parks or a long river side stuff.

Now I feel really motivated to get back at that, you know, to go try to do the for real big hike up into the for real big mountain in the for real big national park. 5:00 And it's not too bad, you know, just got to take a subway to Beto.

Take a bus for like an hour, that'll get me back to the bottom where I've been before.

To the park entrance. And then a thousand meters is pretty big. I don't think I've ever been on a thousand meter mountain. Besides maybe the grouse grind in British Columbia. I don't know how tall that is. That's pretty tall though.

But out here I have not. So we'll see. Maybe it's daunting, but on the other hand, maybe it's not that bad, you know. I'm always surprised how quickly you can get up a mountain. It's just like going up is just not really comparable to going sideways. You can go along the ground. You can walk forever. You can walk for days and days and months and months. Getting up to the top of a mountain is relatively quick compared to that.

So it might not be too big of a deal, but because it is this long-ish journey. It'll take a couple hours to get there. And then you know, at least a couple hours to get up there. And then I got to get back down. You know, I can't be starting it fucking 4 p.m. That's for sure. I'm just going to have to get up earlier.

So in the meantime, I just searched, you know, hiking trails near me on Google Maps. And there's so many, so many little or trails in Taipei, just a ton of them. Tons of options. So I came to this one because I've already been almost here before. So this adds on to my previous little exploration.

And this is pretty nice. It's like a stone path heading up through some mountains and nice, jungly mountains. It's a lot of people on this trail that I'm passing. Pretty simple, but very nice.

But I had one day in particular when I was walking across the bridge from New Taipei City into Shimen.

So I could just go hike around the park on the edge of Shimen. You know, a nice way to stay away from people because there's never anybody on that fucking bridge.

Or I found if there is, there's also a walking trail on the other side of the bridge.

If there's going to be anybody there on that side because there's like a little island in the middle.

And you can actually walk down. There's steps from the bridge. You can go down there, but it really feels like... It feels like Fire Cry 3 when you look down there. It looks like encampments. It's like I don't think I should be down there.

But if you're not on that side of the bridge, there's nobody. See, I just walk along the bridge, be in sick, just be into myself. And it was a super clear day and I could see the National Park Mountains way in the distance. And now I was teetering between those two feelings of the one feeling was like, oh, I shouldn't even be out here. I have no energy, it's fucking sucks.

But then I could feel the heeled version of myself waiting in the wings, chilling in the background. And that side was like, yeah, fuck yeah, dude, we're going there. We're going to go to that shit. See that fucking mountain in the distance? You're going to be on top of that motherfucker. But not today and not tomorrow and maybe not this week and maybe not next week. Who the fuck knows? But it's coming, man. It's fucking coming. I'm going to do that shit.

Man, it's such a downer too. I'm not going to dwell on this because it's such a downer. But being sick and having headaches and having no energy.

It reminded me of being in the hospital with my dad where that's basically how he described stuff. He would just kind of wake up for a little bit and fall back asleep a lot. And he just said he was like always exhausted. He never woke up feeling rested. And food didn't taste like anything. It tasted like metal. He's like eating ice cream. And he's like, it doesn't taste like ice cream, no more. Just sick without ever being able to get better. Because being sick sucks, but at least you know the heeling is coming.

So, man, I also blows my mind the idea of societies that don't have medically assisted suicide. How cruel and weird. But anyway, luckily in Atlanta, Canada, that wasn't a problem. He was able to just end it when he was ready to end it. And he died one day before his birthday. And so, you know, we did bring that up of like, 10:00 you know, it would be a perfect loop.

One more time around the track, you know, a perfect symmetry if you died on your birthday. And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought of that too.

But it's a double whammy of like, people wishing you a happy birthday on the day you're going to die. That's fucking unpleasant. And he's like, and I just don't care, man. I don't want to be alive for one more day. Fuck it. This is over. Super sad and super depressing, but he wasn't wrong.

And he had the idea of like, forcing a person like that to just hang on. How strange. What a bizarre thing to do.

But yeah, just a sobering thing to remember of like, yeah, one of these days, man, this is coming for all of us. Unless a piano falls on your head. Someday you're going to be in that position where it's like you have a horrible flu and it's never going to get better. It's going to die. But anyway, that's not dwell because I ain't there yet. But I did think, think about my paw and it felt bad.

But yeah, I'm on the other side of the coin. I feel like I'm doing pretty good. I've been going uphill this whole time. This is actually pretty steep.

Geez, yeah, and it's just more and more stairs ahead of me. But the fact that I'm able to even just talk and do a stupid podcast while I'm continuously walking uphill. Pretty good, man. Pretty good. Coming back to life for now.

But Jack can't even see the top of this dang thing.

It's going to be a nice view from up there, Aireken.

Bayless turned this mother fucking recorder off.

And a lot of people on this trail, it's a Sunday as well. Probably makes it more busy, but yeah, there's a lot. A lot of people, this is a popular spot.

It reminds me the feeling is like that mountain in Busan. Which, what does that mean? I don't remember the name.

But there was a mountain in Busan next to a shrine where I tried to go through the back of the shrine up into the mountain and there was a barbed wire.

This feels similar to that.

Yeah, that was the day that I realized flight prices back home were horrifyingly expensive because the weather had gotten better. And that's when I decided, well, fuck it. I guess I'm just staying in Asia.

Which was a good choice because here I fucking am.

You You You You You You You You Man, I was saying how this place reminded me of Busan, but actually it's much more similar to just another mountain from here in Taiwan, the one near the National Park, where they had the little seating areas set up for Emperor Hirohito, even though he wasn't able to come there with the cherry trees and stuff. That mountain I was on that had all of the very interesting plaques, informational signs about Flora. That place was cool. This is like a smaller version of that. It's like half the size, but still nice and like what I was saying about how just how going up is not necessarily that big a deal. This is a perfect example of that too, just suddenly I'm looking down through the trees and seeing the lake and it's like yeah, I was just walking next to that lake, you know, fucking 15 minutes ago and now it's way down there, way down there. Look at that. It's like magic just because I didn't grow up in this mountainous terrain. It's just I think this is going to be fascinating to me for the rest of my life. This is all I need for like I consider this a fun day. This is an exciting day to just go find a fucking mountain and go walk up it. I mean this is like a glorified hill. Good enough, I'll take it. And then there was a pretty cool view from up here. See, I just did a nice little quick up and down. I'm on the way down now. I think this is my plan. This is my plan to try to get things calibrated again, is yeah, there's like a surprising number of these. Just random little hiking trail markers if you just search Google maps for show hiking trails near me. And a lot of people awkward to talk to myself, but yeah, this is the plan I think just to try to sweep up some of these mini adventures, anything I can get to on a subway line, even if it's just like this, a quick little 30-minute hike. That is fine. Just whatever. And then when the day comes, when things line up that I actually wake up early enough to go do the main hike, the nice thing is it's still you know so much less than 15:00 then Halasand Mountain on Jeju for example, where Halasand you needed to register ahead of time. You had to go at a specific time. You had to start at a specific time. I mean it might be that way here too. Well, I guess I'll see when I get to the visitor center like they might not let you enter the mountain after a certain time here either. I don't know, but you don't have to do all the specific registering and going on a certain day and then you're stuck in that system for the next eight or nine hours. And if it's rainy or if it's crazy hot or if it's super polluted that day, just like yeah, that was a whole big pain. This one, I just got to wait till things line up right that I get to bed early. I wake up relatively early and I can just hop on, transit and just go. Just go do it. Just the right level of it still feels pretty epic. It's still like the end boss.

Of Taipei. But there's a world of difference between just a thousand meter mountain that you can just hop on a bus and then, you know, go hike up as opposed to one you get a register for and I wasn't even on the right side of the island. I was on the the opposite side of the island to make the proper approach. That one never worked out and probably never will. This one, I'm going to fucking do it, man. I'm going to do it. But not yet. For now, just building up, building up the stamina, building up the actual ability to go to sleep. But yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff on the brown subway line. There's a lot of neat access to various hiking. It is a good place.

For, I mean, this is about as minor as a hike can get, but then the ones on the other side to the north. Those ones, you know, you could do that for the whole afternoon. Nice and intermediate.

And then there's a subway to whisk you away. I'm not sure too. I didn't check the temperature, but I don't know. I wonder if we're still in heat warning. Maybe not. It's still hot. I'm still sweating my dick off, but I feel like that ever present heat warning that has just been on the news every single fucking day for weeks and weeks and months. I don't know if it's said that today. Maybe it didn't. This feels like normal summertime, you know. Being in direct sunlight is still pretty unpleasant, but this doesn't feel crazy anymore. So maybe, maybe while I was down and out, I mean, we are in mid-September now. This shit's got to stop sometime. Maybe we're finally there.

All right, so still in my continuing attempts to try to get back into normal society. I'm also trying to remember how to get to the subway. I don't have it taken the subway from this neighborhood a ton of times because it's so easy to, well, either I've been staying in this neighborhood or just walking across the bridge to Shiman. I even realized that little last segment when I was coming home, I was like, oh, you know, instead of doing, because it's like an awkward double transfer to get back here to go from the brown line to the green line for only one stop to the, I don't know if I'm on the orange line or the yellow line, but anyway, I realized I could just take the green line near Taipei main station and go walk through Shiman and then take the bridge home, have a nice little stroll home. And yeah, now as I walk, my mental map is coming to me.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I know where to go. But anyway, the other day, I went to bed at 7 a.m., woke up at like two, two in the afternoon, and it was like, I can work with this. Then the day after, I don't know, man, it's crazy. I didn't fall asleep till 8 a.m., it sucks seeing the sun fully up out the window and you're like, you're dying to go to bed. And then I woke up a little past 1 p.m., so it was like even more of a crunch. Up later, woke up earlier, I was like, I don't know what's happening, but I still thought like, I can work with this. But I couldn't work with that. That was not enough sleep, so I just stayed home, stayed home yesterday. I had to take a little nap midday, just to survive, that's it.

So now it's two days later, I'm just passing a little shrine. It's kind of cool how there are like hidden shrines in the city. Like just in the, this is actually by the 20:00 Laundromat, I was at the other day. It's just a row of businesses, you know, when they have like, with like, they have steel shutters that they close at night, then they open them up in the day. And it's a Laundromat or a restaurant or right here's a, a gym. And one of them will just be a Buddhist slash Taoist temple. Here's another temple, a big proper one on the corner. But yeah, it's really weird. I found a few of those where it's just like one of the neighborhood businesses seemingly. It's just like a little temple. And they're all super ornate and extremely beautiful. They have a very uniform look. Like I'd say in Japan, the temples and shrines are fairly uniform, but far more different than South Korea or here. The South Korean ones are pretty uncommon and have a distinct look, where the ones here had yet another, a different look. It's like a lot of really ornate rainbow colored dragons and stuff. And apparently the religion is like a mixture of Buddhism and Taoism. Stuff I don't really know a ton about. Yeah, they're just tucked away. Some of them are just tucked away. A little hidden, hidden shrines right in the city. I don't know, it's just kind of cool.

But anyway, it's two days later now. I'm not sure what time I went to bed last night, but I woke up at like one in the afternoon again today, but with more sleep. So I'm like, all right, I can work with this. Let's go. At least the good thing, even though my going to sleep is still fucking all over the place, I'm consistently waking up around one in the afternoon. That's a start, you know? That's a start. I know that doesn't sound great, but I mean compared to before.

Oh, there's another one. Wow, there's a lot of them. A lot of these little hidden shrines. Maybe it's like, because there are also some just some closed shutters I've been walking by that just aren't being used. Maybe if you have a neighborhood that just has enough unused spaces, maybe they're like, I don't know, man, let's put a shrine in. Let's get some use that at one of these spaces. But yeah, before when I was waking up at like 3.34 in the afternoon, when the day is truly over before it even begins, compared to that waking up at one in the afternoon, it's fine. Not good enough for going to the National Park, but good enough for a smaller journey. All right, I've gotten turned around a little. So anyway, I got to figure out where the trains are above gratitude to. So if I can see, I should be able to see them in the distance to know if I'm going the right way. But my plan today, the way last segment, I just did a little quick journey on the brown line. Today, the plan is the green light. I'm going to go to the end of the green line, do a little hike. It is 35 degrees today, but it just feels different. It's a little bit breezy. It's a little bit cool.

The weather website, it does have, it warns of the weather, but it doesn't have the official weather warning banner. So I don't know what that means. I don't know what the difference is. But coming up this week, there's like one more day that's 35. The rest are all below that, more around 30, which again, it's just so weird that that 30 degrees seems so awful when I was on Jeju. Now that's like, oh good, the hot weather has passed.

Crazy, crazy fucking shit, this weather.

Whoops, okay, walking exactly the wrong way, but yeah, I almost made it. Oh, I see, so here's the overpass that leads to the McDonald's. And then just pass the McDonald's. Is the subway station, that makes sense. It makes sense that they want to have the McDonald's and you're a subway. It's all coming together, but all right, I'm going to go hop on the train, head to the green line, go explore. Even just exploring the lines is kind of neat because the other day, I hopped on the blue line, just as an experiment. It's like, yeah, let's just go to the end of the blue line and see what's there. And I learned that it doesn't go all the way. You got to transfer halfway. So I only went halfway if saw what was there instead. But you know, good to know. Now I know, you can't just go straight to the end of the blue line. How about the green line? Let's find out.

Well, this turned out pretty fucking good. So yeah, the train, the green line, took me all the way 25:00 to the end. Shindian, I think. The station is called. And I started seeing little things on the LCD scroll about passengers who are looking for the B10. Man, it was called something like the B10 beautiful area. I can't remember what they actually called it. But something suggesting it was a beautiful touristy wonder area. What the hell was it called? Anyway, should get off at Shindian station. And I was like, all right, good. That's what I was going to do anyway. And then I got here and man, it really is kind of like life on, uh, easy mode in the sense of I was thinking how, you know, in my normal day to day or especially during lockdown, it's like just staying at home, working on stuff. And of course, most people are trying to, uh, you know, through their jobs and their families. That's how you build. You build something in your life. Well, you know, I was just trying to write a novel or whatever, but it's still like a lot of work, still very hard, still like continuous daily effort necessary in the hopes of developing something interesting. Where yeah, during all this traveling, it's like dude, literally, I don't know how interesting this is to the outside world, but to me, for me to feel like I have a fascinating interesting time on the earth, all I got to do is just get on a subway and just go to some station I never went to before. You know, just go to some country I've never been to before. Just travel around and it's automatically to me a fascinating day.

But yeah, this one there was a whole like a promenade and all these people milling around and, uh, duck boats, you know, the whole touristy, cool waterside vibe. And this beautiful pedestrian bridge, so I went across that.

It was called DB10 Suspension Bridge and then I saw a sign that said, hey, may summit, 800 meters, H-E-M-E-I. And since we are down at the south part of Taipei, this is, uh, where everything just kind of gives way to endless mountains. So I assume that's where I'm heading now is sort of toward the endless mountains, but obviously not very deep in, just a pure tourism villa. A nice walkway up through this mountain, nice stone steps, full fences, so I won't fall down into these gorges and get hurt and just beautiful greenery. And this is double awesome because, you know, again, the heat's all relative, but the direct sunlight was, was very bad. I was like, oh, I think I actually underdid it with the suntan lotion today. This is hurting my skin. But now that I'm in here, it's all shaded because of jungle-esque foliage. So yeah, this place rules. This is awesome.

Well, this is pretty cool, but I don't know what's going on around here. It's a little confusing. Basically, I went up to the top of that mountain, 150 meters, though the view from the peak wasn't the coolest ever. Although, apparently, there's like three peaks that are all approximately the same, so I only saw one of them. There were a little off trails, but I stuck to just the major one, because I don't know where I am or what's going on around here. And then on the way down, I did see a better view, which is cool, because Taipei is so small that I'm looking out across the city. And that Taipei 101 building, that really is the money melon. It is the easiest way to determine what's going on. And it's like the only tower, I think, the only thing that tall in the city. So, it was farther away now. It was smaller, but it's like, oh, there it is, though. I can really easily see it. So, normally, I was seeing it from the other side and from closer. Now, I'm down south, but I think I'm technically not even in Taipei. I think Shindian, XIN, DIN, is a different city, technically, than I'm in now. But basically, the edge of Taipei, right by the mountains, and it's like, there it is, though. There's the whole city. It's delightfully little. It's charming. You know, you really can just get all around on a subway.

And I think, despite the fact that it is a little bit of a small city, and I've pretty much, I've done an awful lot here already. I think I am just going to stay in Taipei for my 90 days in Taiwan. Maybe one of those things I could explore a little more next time. And I mean, in South Korea, I was very motivated to get out of Seoul, very motivated to leave that place. 30:00 And Busan is so famous. It's like, well, I got to at least go there. And then since I had the six months, I ended up also going to Jatchan and Jeju. But yeah, 90 days isn't really that long. Like, even the two times I visited Japan, it was still mostly Tokyo, I do kind of think of West Tokyo as different enough to feel like a different city, a different part of Japan.

But I managed to squeeze in Fukuoka each time, which I only did initially because my friend Brad lived there. And it was still only three weeks of the 90 days that I was in Fukuoka. So I guess I really don't necessarily travel a ton within countries. So it's not so weird. Like, at first I was like, is it weird to just stay in Taipei the whole 90 days and not go see somewhere else? But I could save that for next time. Next time I come to this country, that's when I can explore around tomorrow. For now, the time's going by fast. I'm over halfway done. It's weird too. I just checked to double check like when actually is my exit date. It's October 24th. And when I went to Japan at the beginning of this journey, it was October 26th. So it'll be almost exactly a year. I'll be going back to Japan if all goes well. Essentially the exact same time of year. I guess that's what happens when you get an 180 day visa in South Korea, you know. That was a long ass day. When you spend six months somewhere, you know, the year gets eaten up fast.

But yeah, then from there, there is like a trail system. And there's a bunch of signs, but they're not very much in English. And now I'm just down in some kind of little community. And I just kind of walk down to just walking around some apartments, just hit a little parking lot dead end. I'm walking back to go somewhere else. I don't know. Like, I don't know where to go around here. I don't know that there is anywhere to go. There are a bunch of mountains, you know, you can keep going up into the mountains forever. But again, that is one of those things where these are just like the end of the line. And the, you know, now you just hike across the whole interior of Taiwan where everything's amounted.

Not necessarily an easy thing, like an easy choice. Like, oh, let's just go there. So I don't know. Should I even be trying to do that? Should I be approaching that at all?

Maybe I'll just wander around this neighborhood a little. And that'll be that. But it is very nice neighborhood.

Because yeah, as far as mountaineering and pushing forth into the wild yonder, I definitely want to do that up north. Because that's the national park where everything is very well developed and well labeled. And you can only go so far, you know, before you just hit the coast. Real tall mountains, but not an especially rugged environment. Where, yeah, looking out, looking out at these mountains, it's just like...

This is the closest to this, I guess, was when I was east of the Taipei 101 at the big cemetery. And I could just see rolling mountains off into infinity, but I knew the coast is out there somewhere. You know, it still would be a long journey, but I can conceive of the end. Not this one. Down south, this is the one that just goes forever. This is the endless mountains. If there's one way not to go, I guess is what I'm trying to say. This is it.

But it's real pretty to see.

Man, I was thinking about spending six months in South Korea. It's a weird feeling because the last little segment when I did that little hike. As I came down the other side, I was just kind of trapped on a highway and had to walk down the highway a bit to get to a train. It reminded me a lot of, there was a mountain in Busan that was right across from my Airbnb and I went up and had this amazing view.

But then I went down the other side and I got caught in a similar situation where it was like city. It was all really well developed, but it was just big traffic-filled streets that I had to walk down for quite some time to get to a train. And I was thinking, now that I've been away from South Korea for a while, and I mean Jeju. Again, Jeju feels different enough that it could be its own country. It did not feel very much like South Korea in a lot of ways.

So I've been here for a month and a half and I was in Jeju for like a couple of months. So in total that was like, it's been several months since I've been to mainland South Korea. And I realized I'm starting to get a little nostalgic about it already. South Korea definitely is the oddest feeling of these countries. 35:00 Obviously Japan is very different from North America, but just because of anime and video games, I was a bit prepared. I was sort of a lot of stuff didn't take me as by surprise as it would because I knew about it passively from Japanese entertainment.

And here in Taiwan, not only does it feel a bit like Japan, but it mainly feels like Chinatown. You know, I'm not going to say China because my few experiences in China have been weird and not great. But the Chinatown areas of cities, you know, obviously that's everywhere. I've been aware of that my whole life and I just think I absorbed more than I realized I did. So a lot of walking around Taiwan is like, oh, it's just like a nice big Chinatown that never stops.

But in a good way, I don't know, that was my first impression of Seoul also. It feels like a big American Chinatown like in Philadelphia or New York, but it, you know, a kind of not great version of a Chinatown that never fucking ends. Whereas this is like a nice Chinatown that never ends. This is like the Chinatown in Yokohama, except it just stretches on and on and on forever. And it just feels very comfortable and it's just like, oh, even though I can't read the words and I can't speak the language, it feels pretty comfortable. It feels pretty much like things I've felt before, just more of it. Where South Korea definitely is its own beast. It is definitely, to me, the most idiosyncratic, I guess, of these Asian countries that I've been to. It's very much doing its own thing and it is insulated in a way of like, we really want to do our own thing. We want to use the lone words. We don't want to have other people's culture everywhere, which, you know, I'm a very surface level guy. I only recognize things on a surface level as they go around. But I certainly noticed it, you know, in South Korea, it's just like, hey, where's the anime store? Where's the video game store? They just aren't there. Or very rare on the video game front.

And then, as I learned a little more about it, it's like, yeah, they did have this embargo on Japan in the 90s and they're very much going out of their way to get rid of lone words from other countries and stuff. Even right down to the fact that they somehow, like, altered 7-11 to the point that it doesn't feel the same, you know. The 7-11s in Taiwan don't have the same products as they do in Japan. But they both feel the same in the sense that I can just go in and close my eyes and pick something up and I probably will love it. As I chronicled, it's just not that way in South Korea. Just everything is different in South Korea. Almost like...

It almost has like an obstinate feeling of like, no, we're not going to do it like everyone else does it. We're going to do it a different way.

I had definitely made it a little tough for me to get comfortable in South Korea. But after a while, I mean, I was there six months. You just get used to how things work and it's like, yeah, this is all right. This is fine. Ultimately, it's just life on earth. It's not that different. Also, the chocolate bars and chips at the convenience store feel a little different. Who the fuck gives this shit? This is just if anything, it just displays what a terminally shallow person I am.

But then on the other hand, because I'm so shallow, you know, six months is a long time, you know? Even though I was just visiting, I don't know, when does it count as like, when can you say you lived somewhere? You know, is six months long enough? I lived in New York for a year and a half. I definitely lived there, you know? No question. I could tell people with a straight face, I used to live in New York.

But maybe six months isn't really enough. And especially when it's a culture that's so different, how much did I really interface? How much did I really experience that, you know? I experienced it passively just as a guy walking around the outside edge of Jeju Island. But the reality is that most of my day to day was just going to convenience stores and walking around. I guess there's a limit to how much you can absorb that way. I never had to go to a job in South Korea. I never had to go to a school there. I only ever even talked to people for brief conversations, you know? Like, might meet somebody here and there and talk to them for 20 minutes or half an hour. And that was it.

So yeah, I don't know. I certainly wouldn't say like, oh yeah, I've been to South Korea. I get South Korea. I really don't. But what little ways that I did, I guess, in what little ways that I did absorb it, 40:00 I'm already feeling a bit nostalgic, you know? It's definitely one of those things that I will certainly go back, even Seoul, that I talk shit about all the time. I'll go back to Seoul just for bouquets, just for those mountains, if nothing else.

I don't know. I just thought I'd bring that up because it really felt that way the other day. It's just kind of interesting because mostly, like I said, Taiwan either feels like Chinatown or a small remix of Japan, specifically Shiman, that neighborhood, Shimending. But every once in a while, things line up just right that I'm like, oh, now it feels like Korea. This feels like South Korea. And I was like, oh, I like that feeling. I like that feeling of being back here in my mind.

Hmm, now what is this? I've gotten to a bus depot. And it's like, yeah, I'm not really interested in that. I'm more than happy to walk back to the subway, but the only way out of here is like a little windy street has a very small walking path. I guess there was a person walking down it, so that wouldn't be the craziest thing.

Oh, okay, good. That road I'm looking at is the wrong one. That goes up into the mountains. I don't want that. There's a road, Yangye Road. That's weird because it's like Young Street, Y-O-N-G-E, but with an extra Y. Y-O-N-G-Y-E, Yangye Road, but it looks almost like Young Street.

Which is a famous street in Toronto. Anyway, if I walk down this, yeah, it should take me right back to where I started. Cool.

And there's some more hiking on the other side of the river, but... The day's slipping away from me, so probably that's that.

But yeah, kind of a nice little neighborhood, kind of a nice little walk, but yeah, certainly a little confusing. Definitely, there's no clear path forward, which yeah, if she's just looking on the map. Wow. Just zoom out, zoom out, zoom out, zoom out, zoom out. There's everything. There's all of Taipei. There's the National Park, but then yeah, down to the south of me, there's just nothing. It's just mountains, mountains, mountains, mountains, man.

Like Taiwan, it's already a very small country. It's like half the size of my home province of New Brunswick.

But it's easily half mountains. It's probably way more than half mountains. It's probably like 70% mountains. Certainly interesting. It'd be interesting if I was a for real hiker, and I could just hike and hike and hike for days and days on end, just hike clear across the country. That'd be cool. But Lord knows that is not me. And in fact, yeah, down Yangye Road, is that a family mart sign I spy? I think it is. I think a popsicle and a coffee are in my future.

Still working towards my grand entrance to the National Park. I've been at the border several times, have not gone in. Just got to try to get my shit together. Got to get my sleep schedule. Just even fucking approximating a normal human being. Then we'll be good to go.

In the meantime, many mature adventures. Taipei is turning out to be real good for this. Just pick a spot, man. Just pick a fucking spot on the subway. There's probably something cool there.

Oh, look at that. Just came up from the underground. Sand Chong Station, back where I started.

Created by a beeping bus. Ed is darker shit out. Didn't expect that. 10-7 at night. Didn't think it would be fully dark when I came out of the subway. But yeah, I thought that might be the end of the episode, but I think I'm gonna head back to that exact same station. Because on the way back, I found another hiking trail across the river on the same side as the station. Called Lyon's head mountain or something, I'll figure it out when I'm there. But I went basically to the start. I found the start, and it's really close to the subway station. But the sun was already on its way down, so it's a guy, right? Ain't doing that today. But cool, that was a pretty easy to get to. I predict that I will not be waking up early enough to go to the National Park anytime too soon.