Korea again - Incheon - Daegu - Busan - Gwangju - Seoul - 2015 - Page 3

Heres 3 Korean soldiers off to report for duty, carrying their beauty products.

Subway stations have mini health check stations in every one. Clearly, I need to press 2 buttons at once.
Interestingly, only stress and ADHD were in English, clearly because these are western inventions.

I like to check my blood pressure every time I go into or out of a subway station.
Old guys like to hang out by the blood pressure machine. They have some plastic chairs set up and take it in turns to see how well they are doing.
I have to fight my way to the front of the line to use the machine. If you get in my way old man, I will smack you.

This is todays mountain.
Apparently theres a cable car somewhere. I didnt see it.
The internet says to catch a bus from where I am standing for this photo, to the foot of the trail, because its far.
Bullshit, its 10 minutes walk.

This time I didnt forget the supplies! Although in hindsight, today I didnt need them!
I bought sunscreen which was $5! I felt badly ripped off.
This will blow my $20 a day budget for today, unless I eat like a peasant.....

The tunnel under the highway to the start of the trail has decided to go with the ever popular star walk theme.
As seen in Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, Osaka.... every city in the world where its not possible to see stars due to smog.

This path is much much steeper than it looks. People coming down zig zag to slow themselves or go backwards.
I found it to be an amazing calf workout. Cause I needed one.

Is mountain, has temple.
Is temple, has loudspeaker system.
Has loudspeaker system, has mega distortion issues.

About half way up, impressive view of the city below. Daegu is called 'the colorful city' however at the end of winter before trees grow back, its mostly grey.

And at the top theres an arch, which at night is bright white. You can actually walk up here at night which would give a great view of the city lights.
Chances are if you google image search Daegu you will see a shot of the city lights from here.
Also note the padlocks, you can declare your undying love before plummeting to your death, and surprisingly, total lack of people.
I removed all my clothing for an awesome selfie.

Vertigo time. The very strong winds started just as I was here.

Todays panorama. I found the view to be particularly impressive.

I couldnt find anywhere to set my camera down for the regular pose, so an arm length selfie is the best I could do.
Thats enough mountain photos for today.

This is number one restaurant street in all Daegu! Signs told me.
Its currently orange plastic tent world. Alfresco dining.
They have optimistically placed flags from all over the world along the street, only I didnt see one place that wasnt korean bbq, bibimbap or blood sausage.

Wrong side of the tracks exploration time, first up is the local 7 level supermarket.
One of these big brands really should come to Australia and take on the big 2.
They are an order of magnitude better than Woolworths or Coles.
I am setting up a meeting with the management tomorrow, if you want to get on board my joint venture, let me know.

This is the Daegu opera house. It looks more like a shopping centre. I remember seeing on previous nights in subway station big signs explaining what is opera?
The opera house is brand new, they are still peeling the plastic off bits of it (entire buildings come shrink wrapped here).
Koreans need instructions on how to appreciate opera. Actually so do Australians. Go read about the controversy surrounding the use, banning of, use of, re banning of subtitle screens.

A new neighbourhood of identical Samsung buildings. Samsung is a construction company too.
They are also a car company, although Samsung cars is majority owned by Renault now, so all Samsung cars are based on Nissan designs, who are also owned by Renault.
Back to the buildings, I had a wander around because I was genuinely interested. The bottom floors are shops, restuarants, cafes, childcare, kindergarten.
They also have sports courts, playgrounds, gardens. The for lease / sale ads showed the inside of the rooms, and they looked decent to me.

And because I had filled up on cookies I didnt need, and blown my budget on sunscreen, todays lunch was ramen, direct from the packet, with an added egg and spring onions.... $2! And not worth a penny more.
The photo showed a bright red spicy soup with noodles in it. I think she left the flavour thing out.

I used too many ..... today, I need to stop that...

Korean white wizard guy is succesfully performing the most feminine dance I have ever witnessed.

Cat suit guy is giving me the peace sign. I did not respond. Instead I took his photo.

Still on the peasent meals to compensate for my sunscreen purchase. I ordered omurice, if you dont know what that is, sorry I cant help.
So it looked like omurice in the plastic sculpture, but the woman making it was not skilled in the art of folding rice inside an omlette. So I got some rice with an egg on top, and a hamburger pattie. It was actually very nice though! and CHEAP!

Random gate, nice rims on that sik daewoo.

I wandered out of the main area, but was constantly made aware that I was on top of a subterranean world of shops selling socks and stockings.

If I was here in a couple of weeks time, the monorail would be running. Metro line 3 for Daegu. It is so close to being operational that the monorails are doing test laps to see if they smash into each other on corners etc.
Australians might be confused, as its a monorail but theres 2 tracks. Thats because theres one track for each direction.
There is only one monorail left in Australia to my knowledge, at Seaworld, but much like the Sydney one thats now fallen down, its just one track which goes around in a pointless circle.

Huge bones. Seriously 6 foot high. I dont know what they came out of. Fresh!

Last photo for this evening, the line at the waffle shop.
I hung out in the line for a while despite not wanting a waffle. I just like to experience the hell out of the line.

Keen to include some photos of non mountain and temple things, heres my snack for the bus ride.
The bus driver was suitably skilled at being a maniac driver.

Theres my mountain, with the comms equipment on top.
All day I was buzzed by F15 jets from an airforce base, I only glimpsed them occasionally, but I believe they were doing low level stuff in the valleys.
It must make prayers in the temples an interesting experience.

Huge map was informative. Also there was a small store to buy water etc. Except it was full of smoke. Not incense, but actual smoke like they were burning a tyre or something.
The owner was apologetic, but his whole family was sitting at a small table in the smoke.

Before I started my climb I did some rock climbing practice. 2 finger overhang swings freestyle, or something.

Future lunch. Or bird flu. Or both.

A short way up the path and there was a shitty temple. The main attraction here is the pile of slate inside the plastic igloo.
Beyond this point, the path became somewhat vague.

View from half way up. The pine trees all seemed to be bonsai.

First glance of my destination. I was unable to work out what that mystery cable was, looked like optic fibre, but to where? It was low enough for me to pull on.

View from the top. Doesnt really look impressive, it was very steep at the end but looks flat.

And the view down the other side. Note the rusty barbed wire, which didnt do a very good job of keeping me out of the electromagnetic nightmare towers.

Whilst it was windy and damn cold here. It was not as windy as at one point later, when a sudden gust nearly blew me over when I was walking back to the bus. And then that was it. No other such gusts.
Do I look cold here? It was at this point that I took my phone out, and it looked cracked. A sheet of sweat had frozen over the screen! I brushed it off. Phone still works, fingers not so much.

It was much better when I descended a little and got out of the wind. I enjoyed my calorie balance and pocari sweat.

Whilst there was some snow and ice today, it was nothing like the other day.
And thankfully, there was no mud to sink into, which is far worse than the ice.

Superfluous photos of where I had descended from, on non existent path.

I was relieved to get to this point, as here was a lookout construction with some guys cooking stuff on a gas stove.
The hut below is the top station of the cable car. My next goal!

Todays panorama. This is at least half way down, and yet looks much higher than the photos from the top.

The guys cooking their pigs blood soup insisted on taking my photo.
I then set off in the direction of the cable car station, looking for a path, and I could hear them laughing hard. Not sure why, but I am glad to have provided them such amusement!

The coffee in the cable car station was easily the best I have had in Korea. And the guy that made it spoke fluent English. Which leads me to believe he has been to Australia to learn how to make coffee.
I seriously wanted a 2nd one, but alas, I had cable cars to ignore, and mountains to slide down.

At first I just thought I would try and find a trail under the cable cars, that didnt happen. I was also amazed they were operating at all because it was very windy.

Relief that I was on the right path. Unless the local chipmunk population did this?

And then I slid on my ass on pine needles and ended up here. I shall call it bonus temple, as it was not the main attraction. However from this point on, there was a real path to follow!

And then finally, I was at the real temple. You can stay here if you want, I know because everywhere there were signs saying TEMPLE STAY! COLORFUL DAEGU!

This is not the buddha I was looking for, but it was huge. And brand spanking new. Who needs to see an ancient rock carving when theres a new concrete statue on offer?

The entire complex was very large, 20 or more temples, gardens, bridges, streams, roads lined with lanterns, a Chinese tourists dream. A heap of them arrived on an electric open top bus thing that wound its way up the path.
Thats my 7+ hour adventure for today, there will be no mountain tomorrow, as I am travelling to Busan.

Karaoke supplies street. More like Karaoke supplies suburb, its many streets by many streets of cheap DJ and Karaoke gear. Every home needs a 4000 watt P.A. and LED lighting system.

I briefly considered Dos Tacos. Its a real brand that exists in the USA isnt it? Not some Korean knock off? I know they have taco bell in Seoul, I had it last time I was here, and it was terrible.

This, according to the internet, is the only decent hotel in town. The Novotel, and its enormous. You can read reviews by people that never bothered to stay anywhere else that its the only place to stay in all Daegu.
You can also read about how its the only 'safe' place to stay, whatever that means. I think a lot of this is written by Novotel staff.
Its working, becuase when I was booking accommodation, it was booked out. And its also more expensive than Sydney, in a city where most rooms are $50 or under.
I bet it doesnt have all the cool facilities my room has either!

I then considered eating in the train restaurant. However it was all overpriced burgers and chips. But I did want to eat in a train carriage, even though I go on trains every day. It was a tough choice, but I moved on.

Sexist. But not as sexist/racist as China, which has signs saying WHITE GIRLS DRINK FREE.

So I ended up being lured by a place advertising their bibimbap as different and special. Jeonju style.
Jeonju is where bibimbap comes from, and has something to do with it being the preferred dish of the something dynasty that lasted from 1300 until 1900 or there abouts.
The key differences are, the beef is raw, although I elected for the hot stone bowl which at least partially cooked it, and the rice is cooked in rich beef broth, which made a noticeable difference to flavour.
This was however, $10, but the restaurant was fancy, guys with bow ties, bowing a lot for no reason, and filling my tea. I dared to eat all my kimchi, so a huge amount was then provided to replace it, of which I ate none.

I couldnt resist the mixed lollies stand.
I nearly died when it cost almost $3.
I come to these places to buy cheap food, I make an exception for coffee only, and even that pains me! The moths in my wallet are appalled.

This is a cool store for all things girly and arty, called artbox. I liked their pens.

OK, I REALLY!!! like these shoes. Why cant we get the shoes Korea has in Australia. Theres so many brands I have never heard of.
Such flamboyance, so colorful, awesome.

Before I left Daegu, I went for one last walk around the joint at 7am, and it was mostly abandoned. This coffee shop, called Two Hands, did a decent coffee.
No burnt ant taste, proper mugs, milk that was thicker than water.
They did talk up the variety, origin, and whatever else of their coffee beans, all of this is irrelevant. To make a decent coffee you just need to use enough of it so its strong enough, not burn it, and then add air to milk, not just separate froth and burning white liquid.

I rented a book from the train station library vending machine. They have these in Taiwan. The book of choice was called 'The selfish Gene'.
I now can read Korean.

Capsosiphon Fluvoscens. Delicious.

Since I was very early, I decided to have traditional Korean breakfast / lunch / dinner.
The joke about Korean food is they eat the same meal 3 times a day. But to me the rice porridge looks more like breakfast.
So I ordered the deluxe vegetable option. Which had no taste at all, apart from the fish flakes they added to the top.
They also gave a side dish of fermented tuna.
I will not be ordering this again.

The inside of the train.

Annnnnd the front of the train. Suitably bullet train esque. Todays train did hit 300 on its short journey of nearly all tunnels. I had the carriage to myself most of the way, so no amusing stories to tell.

Urban mountain. I cant see any reason I wouldnt be up there at some point, adding to my collection of boring photos.

The impressive station is very large, too large to fit in my photo. Near here is where I gave an english lesson to a beggar who didnt understand the word no, courtesy of my lowered shoulder.

And, room photo number 1.

And from the other side.
Now to find some lunch or snacks or something.

I got lost finding my hotel due to the number of exits from both the subway, the subway mall, and the non subway mall thats connected to the subway mall.
I use this mermaid as a landmark, I can see her from the bottom of the 48 stairs to the top of each exit so I dont have to keep climbing up to make sure its the right exit.
There is no way to cross the road, you have to go back down and up again somewhere else, after you navigate your way to the other side through a heap of stores selling socks.

Currently number 1 on my list of worlds greatest department stores. More photos below of the useless fountain inside.

A volcanic eruption in 2006 here destroyed most of the city and much like Pompeii, many locals were immortalized in bronze where they stood.
Actually that never happened, but theres brass statues of children everywhere, with real children inside.

And now we start a journey into Neon.

Acai bowls, these are a thing in Australia now too. Theres a store off Jetty Road at Glenelg full of people with leather banana holders and moustache permahold gel.

That alley seems to go forever, I am yet to go down it though, because I got lost and couldnt find it again. I got lost a lot this evening.

The smaller alleyways were winding and interesting, I identified many places to eat waffles, crepes, fermented pig blood sausage, pork knuckle, froyo, cuttlefish balls, beef nerve sandwich, fried chicken with ice cream, pancake with maple syrup and hamburger pattie.

Each of these tables had enough food for 5 people.

Plastic yellow work men are doing good work all over Korea. Here they are particularly effective at guarding toilet paper.

She didnt want her photo taken. Too bad.

In each of these red tents is a different pop up restaurant, selling things on sticks mainly.

Red strawberries in red buckets under brilliant white light broke my cameras super intelligent auto night setting. Note I never ever ever ever use flash.

And now I got lost properly. I thought I was going back the same way, but had made an additional 90 degree turn at some point and headed off in the opposite direction to that which I thought.
Theres 2 large hills at each end, with lights, and I assumed I was walking towards the wrong one. I really was quite confused by this for a good 30 minutes.

But being lost led me to covered markets. Neither modern nor traditional, they are the former modern areas now not so modern. Interesting lighting.

Maybe later I will go into one of the many cat cafes, maintain my angry glare, and frighten away all their happy staff, before being mauled by cats.

Dinner, and there is beef. Good beef in fact. A healthy dinner as I didnt eat the rice. I am suffering from rice overload I think. Rice is the worst food in the world and responsible for making everyone fat and giving them diabetes.
Stop eating rice.

And now I am back in the Lotte department store basement level 3 or something, to watch the dancing waterfall show set to the music of the Beatles.
The ghost like creature above is fine water falling in patterns. This held my attention for a good 8 seconds.