Hiking the Ansan Jarak-gil wheelchair accessible trail
It is election day in Australia, I voted before I came here, otherwise I would be jailed on return. However it is also election day in Korea. They just had a presidential election a month ago, so I do not know what today's election is about, but as you will see below, they take a very Korean approach to convincing people to vote. I assume that unlike Australia it is not mandatory to vote punishable by deportation.
My trip today was to the worlds longest wheelchair accessible East Asian mountain trail located in the northern part of South Korea, congratulations on being number 1. I joke, but it is a great thing, the only problem, I saw 1.73 million people walking the trail, and not a single wheelchair. If you walk the whole course I believe it is about 8km long, and I can confirm there are no stairs. It is mainly boardwalk, with a lot of switch backs to gain height, but there are also some smooth hard packed gravel bits and some regular footpath / sidewalk bits. I type this in case anyone in a wheelchair ever reads this.
This area is very close to the centre of the city, 10 minutes by subway, you could easily walk to it from Myeongdong past the main palace.
As is often the case in East Asia, there is nowhere to get a coffee at 7am, almost nowhere except Starbucks until 10am, and it is worse on weekends. This is frustrating. This sentence is also out of place in this rant, because I just remembered it now, anyway, back to discussing the wheelchair free wheelchair trail.
The entire time I was on the trail it was snowing jasmine. I was covered in sticky pollen all day, as you will see below they have pollen removal compressed air systems set up to rid yourself of this nuisance.
Finally, whoever keeps asking what the weather is, low 20's, no wind, some cloud but mainly pollution, low humidity.
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.
Eating Bibimbap in Hongdae
Election day update, looks like Anthony Albanese (Anal) has defeated Scott Morrison (Scomo). Korean election update, its neck and neck between 1 and 2. Although they are still campaigning now, so maybe the election lasts more than a day.
It is Saturday here, as it is in most places, so I thought I better go to the most popular place in town, Hongdae. Last time I went here I ordered grilled chicken and salad and got served fried chicken with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.
This area is sandwiched between a heap of different universities, I was clearly the oldest person here (there, tense, what is that, past present and future?).
Anyway, you could suggest this is Korean Harajuku, it is much larger than I remember, and much busier. Too busy. Due to fears of covid and ice cream chicken, I settled on a dependable favourite for my dinner.
I wrote this to be confusing, but and if you are Australian you might know what I am talking about, I sound less confused than Anthony Green, he needs to pass the baton.
Which reminds me, Korea still gets the Australian ABC propaganda station, which is doing the live election coverage and earlier had AFL football on, I thought that service got shut down by Scomo? Ok thats enough dribble, except I probably should have taken more pics, but it was very busy and hard to do so.
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!