5 April 2019
Sunny river city
Wandering around Yuseong Spa to eat mandoo
I walked away from what I thought was the main part of the city and found a nicer part of the city. This part of the city is very far from the train station, and about a km or so from the subway line, and yet it seems very modern.
Apparently Daejeon is the silicon valley of Korea, although that could just be wishful thinking by the local mayor. They do seem to have the main campuses for both LG and Samsung somewhere far, far away on the city edge for some reason. This evening I thought maybe I was there, but the map tells me I was at completely the wrong end of the city for that to be the case.
My travels took me through a few different nice looking suburbs, all with the numbered monolithic blocks of white concrete apartments, some of which are made by Samsung and LG. Eventually I got to what is apparently the number one tourist attraction of Daejeon, the foot spa. It is a kilometre or so of outdoor little pools of water at different temperatures, with areas set up between the pools for entertainment. I saw an orchestra playing, some K-pop dancers, sad saxophone, people trading their dogs, political rallies, you name it there was a foot spa pool for it.
Apparently the foot spa pools are not without drama, you need to properly wash your feet in a drain pool before you can stick them in a hot pool. Even visiting Koreans do not know this etiquette, and it has caused a number of fights between warring factions of feet soaking elderly citizens. Possibly with one drowning.
My first pic of the late afternoon come courtesy of a convenient highway overpass. As usual I have selected a course that sees me walking directly into the blinding sun. Those are however the mountains that were covered in fog as I was climbing today that you can see here in the distance.
Here are some numbered apartment blocks. I believe they are actually quite nice. Certainly the bottom 3 or 4 levels of every single one are shops and restaurants.
So many blossoms. 2 shades of white and a bit of yellow. Yes I know the horizon is not level in this shot.
My walk took me across at least 4 rivers such as this, all had nice walking / bike riding trails. I wanted to go running along them.
Eventually I could not resist and went down to go along the path. Great light here.
This is just an example of a nice street in Daejeon, in an area I was not expecting to see too much at all.
And here is another nice street, this one has hiking gear shops all the way along it.
I think I have taken a photo of this sign on a previous trip. They play some interesting sports here. In Japan you can get cream filled kolon.
And here is an example of the foot spa area. One of the brown signs above the road referred to it as 'foot spa world theme park'.
You might recall last night I did not photograph my dinner due to it being street food requiring both hands and to eat standing up. I did try to make up for it with a photo of the pancakes that I ate, but to really make up for it, tonight there are 2 photos of my dinner! Part one, cheap bibimbap. It had a lot more vegetables than you normally get. I suspect thats because its cheap, but actually I wanted the extra vegetables.
Part 2 was some mystery meet dumplings. I clearly over ordered but gave it my best shot. This place was one of countless almost identical little restaurants underneath the giant apartment blocks, plastic tables and terrible lighting. They have no English menu and no English speaking skills. No problem, I waved at Auntie, and we went out the front and I pointed at the pictures on the window. I got what I wanted.
Last photo for tonight is one I promised last night. This is what all the streets near my hotel look like. They are generally all hotels of questionable moral standing, bars, massage places, karaoke lounges and of course restaurants. Nearly all the restaurants are bbq and you cant really do that on your own. Now I will go to sleep, early.