Korea for the 4th time - May and June 2022 - Page 5

Palgongsan and especially the Gatbawi area are very popular, there is a bus every 10 minutes that goes from the Dongdaegu bullet train station, bus number 1. Here is where you catch it from. It also goes past the airport. Popular it may be, but early on a Monday morning it was quiet.

Yes, I have been here before, last time I did the first part of this hike and came back down again. Today I am going a lot further. I was only convinced it was the same place when I saw this climbing wall.

There is a small city at the start of the climb, lots of restaurants, camping grounds, even a movie cinema I think. I had no time for any of that, so here is a convenience store.

The start of the hike up through the camping grounds (wooden decks) is a nice staircase.

First wrong turn. I went down this path for about ten minutes. It would not have mattered as everything leads back to the same place eventually, but I opted to turn back when I realised. The tiny pine cones were like marbles.

Nice trees, with a view behind them of some of the peaks I would go along later.

View from part way up. Not a lot to see, Daegu in the distance if you squint. The view of Daegu was obscured all day.

Instead, I would appreciate some rock formations.

When the structures such as this started to appear, it was clear I was getting close to something...

There is a cable car that comes up to here. It is not really near the top at all, but there is a path from here that goes to a famous hermitage. Hermitage being a place where hermits live, mythical creatures that can only be accessed by cable car.

Before visiting the hermits you might like an ice cream, or pig leg. I had no time for such delicacies, and actually I was wasting too much time...

Those antennas were my first goal, but actually I should have skipped them, they add on about an hour.

Rock garden started. Not too bad though. Later there were areas of very fine white gravel that were supremely slippery.

That little house is the cable car station. Its a shame it was cloudy from a view perspective, but great from a temperature perspective. Am I using the word perspective correctly?

Gray beard, sweaty blood red t-shirt. Living the good life.

Above these stairs, I should have turned right, but I wanted to get to the highest point, because I am like a cat.

Instead of following the recommended path, I followed this optic fibre cable.

And then I got to this monstrosity.

Lots of barbed wire, over there is an air force radar station (I think). There were lots of fighter jets all day, Daegu airport is an air force base that also has passenger flights, a bit like Darwin airport in Australia.

This is the summit... great view, and about an hour wasted. Well I did get to see some antennas up close.

Also some power wires. There was nobody at all around.

Another view of all the summit infrastructure. The path I took down from here to rejoin the main path was perilous and very time consuming. Poorly sign posted. I back tracked a couple of times to find a better version of the path.

Here is a view down in a different direction.

I think I rejoined the main path here or near here anyway. There is an actual normal candle burning in that box, so someone has been here recently, not that I saw them.

Korean flag and rolling peaks. There were lots of summit areas like this to cross over during my 6.75 hours. Lots of up and down and up and down again.

That is the path. It is an example of where I thought I had made a wrong turn and wasted time back tracking to see if there was another way. On this occasion, that is the way.

A golf course ahead. It is owned by the monks! If you search the internet you will find a story about monks caught renting entire floors of Las Vegas hotels, playing $10,000 a hand poker, and having 100 hookers hired for the night. Those monks were from Korea.

Probably a redundant photo, but gives an idea of all the ridges to still walk along.

This was the section where for at least 3 hours I saw no one. Despite structures like this existing periodically. The hike was a strange mix of occasional stair cases, then rocks with ropes, then even worse, steep downward slopes with very fine gravel and nothing to hang on to except for hope.

To give an idea of how far I had come, in the middle of this pic are those antennas from earlier.

Getting closer to the golf course.

And actually I am getting close to Gatbawi here, hence staircases again for people wandering away from the Buddha area. It may look like you can go down to the golf course, you cannot. It is steep cliffs all the way around.

Those little temple things, are where the Buddha statue is roughly located. I thought I was closer than I am, still have to climb up again to get over there.

And then, here he is, Buddha, with pimp hat. Apparently the most famous Buddha statue in Korea, and its all about the hat. There are certainly a lot larger statues in other places.

Since I came so far, it is probably worth 2 pics.

View from Buddha.

There were a few people about. And loud pre recorded prayer things blasting. To get up to here from over this side of the mountain is the longest staircase I think I have ever encountered. I had to go down it now. It is 600 metres down. The average height of a step is 20cm or there abouts, so 5 to a metre, so that is 3000 steps then. That's a big staircase. There are little rest bits off to the side at regular intervals, but no toilets.

Before starting my descent, you can buy a coffee or an ice cream. Somebody carries them up to sell them every day. That's a tough commute.

Back at the bottom, and here is the predictable temple.

And some mummified babies.

Finally, back to civilisation, long day was long.

I see a lot of 'bikes' like this in Korea. This one is spiderman themed, earlier today I saw someone riding a dragon. I presume they are battery powered and illegal to use on the road but used on the road anyway.

There are lots of churches, there are stadium churches, small traditional churches, and brand new churches like this one still built in the traditional style. I have no idea how Daegu supports so many churches, perhaps its why the city is poor.

View from the church has.. another church. Does the small old church feel inferior looking at the enormous new church? Do the parishioners fight each other in the streets? I like to think they do. Also that is probably the first time in my life I typed the word parishioner.

Safe street. A street full of nothing but safe shops.

My dinner was disappointing. It looks nothing like the picture on the menu. I was promised Sichuan style noodles, which in the photo had minced beef, not 2 strips of thinly cut beef. Also the photo was bright red, and if it is Sichuan style it should have numbing and spicy, there was no numbing, how can you have la without the ma.

Next I descended underground, to a space themed art installation with hand grenades.

Then I found that beyond the underground mall I already found, is another underground mall joined onto it. Lower rent, full of shops selling questionable manga.

I came up from the secret underground mall to this, another nice street full of lots of street art.

Not the best stance, but it is me, with a teddy bear. No other comment necessary.

This is a YMCA building, built in 1905. It was also where a secret resistance movement met to plan overthrowing the Japanese in about 1919. Whenever you see a historic marker in Korea, it is about fighting the Japanese.

Wat?

Here is a local gate. Not that many of them around Daegu that I have seen.

More monorail. I think this is where the under construction bit I saw last time I was here was.

Here is a small part of the Seomun market. Mainly a clothing and cloth / material / wool / sewing market that goes for many blocks, but like all markets, you can also buy anything that has ever been in the ocean.

These all appear to be identical mini food stalls. It is early so they are not serving anything yet, and it looks like they all prepare the same thing. I do not know what that thing is, but I presume it has kim chi in it. Must be traditional food for seamstresses.

I see Daegu has a tower, better go investigate.

Turns out the tower is inside an amusement park with paid admission that opens at lunch time, e-world it is called. Actually it was previously free and built by the city, but they had to sell it off to pay down debts.

Local vigilante crew.

I spotted a small mountain, could not help myself, up I go on my no mountain day. Duryu park in case anyone is wondering where this is.

Only spot for a view from the top. Clear at this point, but pollution has since rolled in.

I descended to a nice pond. I thought this photo would come out really well, it did not.

More of the pond, with bridge. It was near here that a huge line had formed, possibly for free pasta.

Over the road is the Daegu arts centre, a large building, I could not fit it all in the frame.

Last one of the pond, with a colourful structure on the island, more of the arts centre including what I think is an IMAX screen, because art is best appreciated in the form of whatever Marvel thing has somebody shooting lasers out of their eyes this week.

Apartment wall. I wanted to cut that tree down to make this a better shot.

Here is part of the arboretum. Remaining shots will all be of the arboretum. It is very large, too large as lots of it was closed down. There are lots of nice water ways with bridges and rock pools, but no water, just dust. Lots of greenhouses that no longer have plants, and the traditional Korean garden was dirt and a turtle statue. So we will focus on the parts that still have plants of some kind, first, bonsai world.

Then cactus world, definitely the best world.

Tropical world, a bit underwhelming, should probably add monkeys.

Bamboo world, bamboo mostly dead, no pandas.

A highlight was this wooden deck back to the car park. The arboretum is near the end of the subway line and then a bit of a trek up from the subway. It does connect to proper hiking trails at the top of the park, so I would probably only bother going there if you wanted to then continue hiking somewhere else. Thats all for my morning update.

This coffee chain specialises in serving you a litre of coffee (I refuse to write liter unless in brackets). That seems dangerous.

The local park was very pleasant in the late afternoon sun.

I stood here to take my photo, then spotted this sign. I got it exactly right! It is nice to be congratulated.

Here is the old station and the attached department store, looks good from the outside.

Next to it, and still operating at 6pm, a food market. It smelled great!

The inside of the old Daegu station. That is about all of it!

I shot this photo through flyscreen, came out pretty good though.

For my dinner, I did not get what I asked for. I wanted the omurice vegetable curry. I thought we had agreed on that, I even pointed at a picture. The guy even recognised my credit card and said he had lived in Australia previously, but then I got hamburger covered in cheese and chips. Oh well, I of course ate it anyway, I really do not get to eat french fries very often, they were.. pretty sad.

Then I found an entirely different unconnected underground shopping thing. About a kilometre long.

Here is possibly the actual candidate making his last ditch attempt for team 1. This evening I saw not just 1 and 2, but 3, 4 and 5 as well! All had their trucks circling the centre of town, at times set up on opposite corners blasting their songs at each other.

Hint: Its the same picture.

And here is just one of a plethora of brave christian warriors wandering around chanting threats at everyone while waving crucifixes. He did not like that I took his photo, which I find particularly amusing, does he want attention or not? That's all for tonight, tomorrow is hot, might impact my plans, might not.

I got to ride the monorail, twice! All the way to the end of the line. Here is where it goes past the end of the line and comes back again as the track switches over. You may have seen a photo / video of this taken in Okinawa Japan. I have taken that photo too! Admittedly the view from where it happens in Okinawa is somewhat better than this.

Is that where I am going? I was not sure at the time. With the benefit of hindsight, it was not where I was going, so here are some new apartments, under construction apartments and hills behind them.

Bonus monorail shot as it came back as I was going down the stairs. I over monorailed today, if that is even possible.

Street piano. I tinkled some ivory as I went past.

A chimney and I think that is a helicopter. More on those chimneys later.

Like I said, I ascended through some small farms, complete with enough communications equipment on poles to live stream every single fruit or vegetable as it grows to the rest of the world.

After those farms above, the road continued for a while, and got rockier and then rocky and dusty. A guy saw me and was following at a safe distance in his mini truck thing. I am convinced he was following me because when I turned off onto this trail, he turned around and went back.

Periodically, graves appeared. Someone looks after them even though they are in fairly inaccessible areas. You would need to carry the whippa snippa up.

The trail today was less rocky, more tree roots. Reminiscent of Japanese trails.

Then as I rejoined the main trail, a view appeared, there is a smoggy Daegu.

The main trail had a few other people, hessian rugs and stairs.

Farms were also visible on the far side of the mountain.

View from the top. Quite a good view actually. So many white buildings.

An interview was being conducted here, there is a camera on the tripod.

I decided to go over to there, I failed to get there.

Down in the valley, a temple of course.

Another set of burial boobs. In Korean culture, once the man of the house dies, the woman is considered a burden and is expected to commit ritual suicide to be buried alongside her husband at the same time, because it is hard work lugging the bodies up the mountain.

After doubling back, I walked down the valley which was full of camping grounds and holiday houses such as this one. Roof terraces are very popular on such homes in Korea.

The camping areas seem to be here so that people can appreciate this small pond. Hmm, not sure I see the attraction.

And for the final pic, back at the monorail. There is another chimney. Every new apartment development has one. Note it is painted in the colours of the apartments. This is the apartments waste incinerator. Waste is piped from apartments directly into this incinerator which generates power from burning the rubbish. So there are hundreds of waste incinerators, and since it is your waste from your apartment going into it, there is no NIMBY-ism, not that you get a back yard anyway. Personally, I am not convinced burning rubbish is a better outcome, scrubbing tech means there is no smoke or odour, and you get CO2 instead of methane which is good, but then you get ash that has to be carted away that is very toxic. OK, enough science, time to scrape off sunscreen, wash my hair, and check my itinerary for going to Busan tomorrow.

The monorail station exits into a store with a cool clock. OK I lied, you can see the monorail bridge in the reflection.

The store is called Daebaek, it was very quiet in the basement at this time. Much the same stuff as other department stores, just slightly less fancy looking.

Time to start my walk along the river. It was hot, but a nice breeze and mostly shade. Lots of people were enjoying the river.

There were 3 or 4 of these weirs along the journey, and a spot to cross via stepping stones.

Old folks enjoying the big steering wheel and other assorted equipment.

I had time to stop and smell the roses. Also fishing is banned in the river, and every now and then I saw a big fish jump out of the river and make a large splash. Quite unexpected, quite.

The what now? They went into debt to build this.

Daegu has a terrible drinking / litter problem.

Not a great pic, but that thing with the blue light is a robot. It brings you your food to your table. I presume it is a roomba, and also vacuums as it delivers food.

Well hello there. An Australian themed pizza restaurant for some reason.

Now for the roof. A great spot for views in all directions. Almost no pollution!

Even once on the roof you can climb higher on decks fully exposed to the wind.

Last roof shot. And yes I should have gone up here after dark.

Dinner tonight was a hearty kim chi fried rice. Very delicious. I will probably make this at home when I return. Tomorrow I go to Busan, it is only 45 minutes by train, but I am sure I will make a day of it. Also, holiday is half over already.