Korea for the 4th time - May and June 2022 - Page 2

Election day in Australia, election day in Korea, I haven't decided which Kim to vote for yet. Whatever the election is for, it seems to come down to voting either 1, or 2.

I wonder who this guy is voting for, he was here when I started my 'hike' and still here when I returned. Note he is sorting rubbish next to a sign that says no rubbish. He should therefore be arrested.

To get to the start of the trail I passed this historic jail. I did the full tour on a previous trip, it was excellent. There used to be an air strip here, and one way they would execute prisoners was to tie them to the bottom of an aircraft, and make low passes over the air strip, dragging live prisoners along the ground while a crowd watched on. Creative.

An example of the path. It may be short, relatively flat, and wheelchair accessible, but most people come with their full K2 ascending gear and award themselves ribbons. There seemed to be a number of what I suspect were military reunions going on with old guys standing to attention and saluting an even older guy before they all ate an ice cream.

This looks like it may have been on fire recently, the boardwalk showed no signs of being burnt though. I suspect the timber used for the boardwalk is modwood, a blend of sawdust and plastic. That is my materials science observation for the day.

Another day, another day of terrible pollution. Those big mountains in the distance are where I was yesterday.

As I suggested above, the election campaigning in Korea includes hiking trails. Most Koreans are out hiking somewhere, so there were probably 50 groups of people such as this advertising for either 1 or 2.

I took personal offence at this sign.

A couple of spots the path meets up with a road. Great news, I can have a coffee. And it was a very good coffee too. Much like Australia, literally everywhere in Korea now takes credit card. I no longer need to rattle with change. We have COVID to thank for this. I hear in Japan this is still not the case, and they still insist on cash everywhere and make you sign a piece of paper with a shared pen so they can stamp it and fax it to someone to print it off, sign it and stamp it again for a $2 coffee. Hopefully I will find out soon if this is actually true.

I had a blow out this morning before I set off to look good for my coffee photo. Great success.

Back half of the wheelchair trail is called the forest section, because its a forest. Creative.

Here you can see one of the many outdoor gyms that are located on the trail, this one has gymnastics equipment like parallel bars and rings. I pulled off a couple of back giant Salto 180's much to the astonishment of all.

More view of the pollution. It is worse than other times I have been here.

I featured some 2's earlier, as an official journalist covering today's proceedings, to remain completely impartial, here are some 1's.

Like I said, not a single wheelchair was spotted, and all the wheelchair chargers look like this, covered in dust like they have never been used.

And as promised above, here is the special compressed air station for blowing the jasmine pollen out of your lovely hair. I had a great time hanging out here shooting the breeze.

Conveniently, the local subway station had 4 bakeries to choose from, I chose Paris Baguette because they had seats away from everyone else, croissant sandwich was delicious.

Start of the busy Hongdae area. I am sure it looks more impressive after dark, but I have a big day planned for tomorrow, so have to rush back to my hotel to beat fat cat.

This is where you become the next Psy.

Most of the stores here are not the big brand stores, perhaps similar to Harajuku, that means they are selling cheap crap to people who photograph it once and throw it away, like Harajuku.

It goes on and on, quite a few people have gone maskless, every foreigner was maskless, one guy with a French accent decided I needed to be told personally by him, that it is now legal to remove your mask outside, thanks for that, please get out of my face.

It is concerning how dirty the feet of these teddy bears are. Do they get up and walk around? Almost reason enough to start drinking so I can see that happen.

Streams of people coming from all directions. I deliberately went early as video of this area after dark looks, uncomfortable.

I had to go about 6 blocks back to find a place to eat at, I settled on the local grandma run standard Korean food outlet. These all have basically an identical menu consisting of the same 6 or so things. Some Koreans eat nothing but these 6 things their entire lives. It is a well known fact that this is 100 percent true. Anyway, you use a ticket machine and pay with credit card, convenient, it spat out the ticket of the person who ordered before me, mass confusion. My number comes up on the cuckoo clock alerting LED screen and I present the ticket, its not my meal, grandma has no English at all, I told her "Bi bim bap", and she understood that, but had no clue how I got the wrong ticket, so she yelled at me, finally the person before me who presumably got their meal without a meal ticket explained to poor old grandma what was going on. Just as well, she was really starting to yell at me!

Here is Yangpyeong as seen from the entrance to the graveyard. One of these buildings is not like the others.

Those mountains in the mist are where I am going, I have to wade through a brown swamp to get there. Today it was cold in the morning! 12 degrees, I don't think it got much over 20 all day.

Start of the trail was hessian rug paradise.

Then rocks arrived, and for the rest of the day, I had to watch my feet closely at all times.

That would be the first, lower, peak. They do not really have names, the whole collection of peaks is called Yongmunsan, which is suspiciously similar to the mountain in Taipei city, Taiwan.

Despite rocks, I made good progress early, and thought I was ahead of the schedule I had dreamt up in my head. This is a shot of the way up to here from down there.

There are lots of flowers and lots of bugs along the trail. I engaged macro mode for this poorly focused shot.

Another look down.

There are lots of ways up, every few hundred metres another trail from somewhere seems to merge with the main trail. I highly recommend the Naver maps app if you plan on hiking here, it has every trail and topography info.

STANCE. Enough said. Actually, that entire wet area is sweat. Like I said, I had been making great progress early on.

Various cameras keep an eye on me in case I develop monkey pox during the day.

Occasionally, a staircase was added to the mix. I suffer vertigo with those steps you can see through. Also, that's not dust on my lens, its one of many flying bugs, fortunately they seem to be a non biting kind. There are also giant, slow, bumblebees.

I think, this is looking back, I had come over that peak earlier, and back down a bit again, so I can go up again.

Looking back from down again, over up from before, then down to the start. Also, another bug. Wait, is it in the same spot as the previous bug shot? Hmm, next shot has no bug.

Here is a group of people enjoying lunch, I suspect they came up from a different shorter trail, on close inspection there is a road that comes a fair way up the side of the mountain from the west. I hope you appreciate this important geographic information. The reason I suspect people came from other trails is there were a couple of sections that were crowded, then a couple of stretches where I saw not another person at all for an hour or two.

Head shot. I have a dead bug on my nose. He died from sunscreen intoxication. I firmly believe sunscreen is killing me.

I know I complain about the rocks, but this is beyond a joke. Some of these are huge, and wobble when you step on them. Perhaps today is a good day to die in a landslide.

As I approached the main peak, I got a bit confused. As you will see it has what looks like military installations on the top, which is common in Korea. According to my map, I had missed the summit, there were red flags and signs on the summit side of the trail. I therefore thought this area with lots of ribbons was the new unofficial summit and the actual summit was no longer accessible, I was wrong.

After walking past the summit, there is a big new staircase / ladder system to the top, and so, here is the view from the top. Lots of structures up here, presumably all brought in by helicopter.

Some sort of military base down there, possibly a missile defence system. I have climbed up on something to get this photo.

Official summit marker, only 1157 metres, but I had come from sea level. Actually my watch tells me total ascent today was just over 2000 metres which includes all the ups and downs.

Some more rocks and another hiker.

The descent down to the temple was long, but well marked. The markers however had often shifted in landslides. This was a bit concerning.

Nearer the bottom here, still boulders.

And now a nice stream to follow, but still boulders.

Finally, 100 metres from the end, a normal sort of a path!

I was glad to arrive back at the temple. If you look closely you can see those military structures on the mountain peak between the two peaks.

A bit more temple. This whole area seems to be a holiday area with camping grounds, sporting grounds, some sort of outdoor cinema, a sewer to play in.

Example of the well looked after grounds.

The street down to the bus stop was also very nice. And on the subject of the bus, for once it came almost immediately. Generally I hate buses, they never come when advertised.

Before getting to the bus stop, I sat and had an ice cream, and my only friend in Korea joined me.

Now for something hilarious. The Korean election continues, here is a bunch of 1's putting on a live performance for my bus as it arrives at the train station. Note there is a guy singing on the back of the truck while old folks dance in their number 1 outfits. I like to think this might be the politician singing himself, with his harem of old folks. I am changing my vote to a 1.

Here is a shot from the train station at Yongmun, a different town / city to the one I set out from this morning.

I was so hungry I could eat a whale.

Instead I ate some pasta. Now, Korea does a lot of Japanese style food, ramen, curry, but this is the first time I saw a place selling Japanese style pasta. For people wondering why pasta is Japanese, it is what they put on it. I chose beef and cream sauce with chilli, which is not too Japanese although the beef is thin slices like you would use on a Korean bbq, but there's plenty of seafood related things with seaweed available as well.

A bit of local neon.

Then it was time to descend into the sewers again, this is a handheld 1/6 of a second ISO 1600 shot. I love my little camera.

More sewer, during blue hour. It actually smelt (smelled?) like a sewer today! Concerning.

These people like to hang out here under the bridge where the sewer gas accumulates.

Last shot from a long day, a neon waterfall and a Christmas tree.

Actually, for some reason I messed up and did not this real last shot from a long day, which is balloons covering grass. I do not yet know what the deal with balloons is, but there are lots of sculptures and promotions across Seoul at the moment using balloons as a mascot. Perhaps they are trying to fill the oceans with balloons that float away on the cool summer breeze.

It is hotter today, and still the terrible pollution, no actual cloud, but hard to discern blue. An exciting new development in Seoul is these umbrellas at most pedestrian crossings so you can wait in the shade.

There is always a protest about something. They generally last for months and end in bloodshed. I have no idea what is happening here but it is out the front of the google and salesforce headquarters.

I thought I might have an ice cream, then read further down and changed my mind.

Bleak.

Here is the temple entrance. The plethora of signs is quite strange.

I believe all these lanterns have LED lights in them.

Here is a guy on the scaffolding changing the globes.

There is a nice meditation trail that loops up and around the back of the main temple region, but there is also blasting music.

Nice view through the smog. The buildings here are all part of the main exhibition centre, which was all closed off with pedestrian detours around it. I dont know if Joe Biden was there, they looked to be packing up.

Some more of the temples.

The main attraction. Now as is often the case, I was not sure if its bad etiquette to take a photo here where people are praying, but then I saw a woman set up her mat, and a mini tripod, which she put her phone on, and checked everything was framed right, adjusted her hair, and started praying. Buddha, with Korean characteristics.

There are 3 layers of Buddha, the big main one, surrounded by the medium sized ones in a semi circle, then on the outside, thousands of tiny Buddhas.

Over the road is the enormous COEX mall, which is completely underground. I have been there before, but now it has a 700m running track. Do you think when they installed this they expected a middle aged long haired foreigner possibly carrying monkey pox to run on it like an idiot? Because I did.

There are over 100 places to eat in this mall, including the Hyundai department store basement shown here which is very fancy. It seems if you work in an office in Korea, you go out to a proper sit down lunch, as everywhere was packed. I decided to wander around until places cleared out enough to find somewhere not crowded to eat. Everywhere, even nice looking restaurants, is order and pay by touch screen.

This library is often featured in western media about tourism in Korea. If you want a book from the top shelf, you might die. There is a very similar one in Taipei, I am not sure who did it first.

My lunch is a bulgogi beef fusion salad bowl. Not bad, pretty pricey, but made fresh while I waited. There is rice under the salad. No kimchi was on offer, outrageous.

Back near my hotel, and its another protest. Today started and ended with a protest. This seems to be an anti vax pro Jesus protest. Verichip is an injectable biometric chip linked to Bill Gates. Good to see Korea also enjoys sex trafficking pizza shop conspiracies.

Brace for incoming view. Here is the view from the start of the cable car. I stood nearby and told people they were lazy.

The cable car does not seem to run often due to lack of customers. Instead they wait until it is absolutely full and start up the line. Good plan to maximise covid.

A bit of the way out looking towards Gangnam or Gimpo or something, away from the old part of the city across the river.

It doesn't even take 20 minutes to walk up.

View from part the way up looking towards where I am staying in the older part of the city. I like to convince myself the pollution is adding to the spectacle.

Seoul is a very big city.

This little girl did not enjoy having her photo taken, also there is the tower.

I have taken the same photo in this spot previously. I will do a comparison soon. I will probably not enjoy that. I have purchased new masks, so now I also look like a duck, more so than usual.

So phallic.

I don't even know what direction this was. Lots of green, lots of mountains.

Last time I was here, I think there was a lot of construction going on, and this entire part of the tower complex was inaccessible. There are a lot more shops and cafes than I remember. There is almost no one here, which was great.

Now a couple of shots of the main view, I left the people in the shot to make it slightly more interesting, including a couple of tourists you can see there.

Last view shot. Total lack of crowds on a Monday night. I guess it was a bit early, most people come for the sunset.

My very unappealing looking dinner was delicious, but huge. I is a tonkatsu style pork cutlet thing covered in curry. Koreans love all parts of the pig, and there are tonkatsu places ranging in price from extreme high end with tiny serves of special royal pigs all the way down to less than $10 for where I got this huge meal that was probably road kill. Actually the photo does not convey size well, it was a much bigger plate than normal, more like one of those joke schnitzels they serve to truck drivers in Australian pubs so you get your photo on the wall and die of a heart attack soon after while behind the wheel of a road train.