Korea twice in one year - November 2022 - Page 1

It is me, with my thousand yard stare, and my friend the Chengdu panda for the flights that used to go to Chengdu from Melbourne but have not done so for years. Note I hacked off big chunks of hair and dunked my head in a bucket of water just before leaving for the airport to make myself look as homeless as possible.

My plane today will be a Boeing 777.

I thought it best to head into the Singapore Kris Flyer lounge for a light snack before my flight, and so I had oily beef rendang and cheesy moussaka, a winning combo. Now to activate this part of the website, hopefully...

My flight arrived at the F gates, only recently reopened, and far from anywhere, and as I found out, impossible to walk through back to the regular A, B, C and D gate areas due to construction. Still I always like to walk as far as possible and ponder at how much carpet there is in the airport. I then had to go on the robot train instead of walking, boooo...

Singapore airport is a bit busier than back in May, more things open especially food related things. But also a lot of construction.

I took a tour of the butterfly house and stood in the pitch black to take this photo which does not appear nearly as black as reality. But there are still no butterflies.

And finally... boring lounge shot. This is the newer lesser lounge. I liked it when this one was closed and they just sent everyone to the first class lounge. The wifi in here is horrifically slow, and they do not let you take bottles of water to walk around with in the terminal.

Here is the first photo I took in Korea on this trip. Standing outside the airport realising that 2 degrees is indeed, quite cold.

Here is where I took my test last time. It has now closed down. Good.

The fast train to the city is running again. It costs $10 and does not save much time over the normal train, but you get assigned seating and almost no one is on it, so I took it. The station was a desolate wasteland with no people, just the way I like my mega infrastructure.

Finding my hotel was a challenge. It is in amongst a sea of tiny hardware stores in alleyways, although it is just over the road from the sewer creek park and the main tourist bit of town as you shall see shortly. If you do not know what you want, I am sure this guy will have it anyway.

Here is the famous open drain park that I visit each time I come here, although I normally visit at night. Since it's 50m from my hotel I am sure there will be night shots of it during this visit as well. Look at the clear skies!

I browsed for an orthodolite and a thump pump for a while.

My travels took me to the huge international food market that is between Myeongdong and Dongdaemun. Everywhere is a market along this street but I think this is Gwangjang or Bangsan market.

Every food stall in the market sells exactly the same selection of food, which seems to be mandated by law somehow. Toilet paper is always provided.

The Dongdaemun gate, I am sure I have taken a photo of it before. It is part of the Seoul city wall, bits of it remain in a few spots, but nothing like the wall around nearby Suwon that I went to on my last trip.

Nearby is a shoe market. Nothing but shoes. Miles and miles of shoes. Who buys these no brand shoes? Everyone seems to line up for $500 Nikes, even 100 year old women who cart folded bits of cardboard for a living on their hunchback.

OK, here's more sewer park, but note the buildings on the left, there are a lot more behind me too. These are above things like the shoe market, umbrella market, wedding dress market etc. I presume a lot of stuff was actually made on site many years ago, I doubt much is made on site these days. They all look like places where a lot of people would die in a fire.

Soon after I arrived at the Dongdaemun design plaza, a place I have also been to before, but it makes for great photos. I thought there might be some Autumn leaves.

I pulled off the stance early on this time! I could have gone lower. It looks like my wondrous hair is windswept but in reality its just filled with 2 days of whatever people exhale while seated in a metal tube in the sky.

More Dongdaemun. I do not need to look it up to know its Zaha Hadid. I checked, it is. Basically a design by Zaha Hadid is like the monorail on The Simpsons at this point, Asian cities think they need one to prove something.

You can walk up onto the roof which is cool, especially when you get to walk on already dead grass.

Last shot for scale appreciation.

On my meander back in the direction of my hotel, I started to notice that perhaps the leaves are not at their peak yet. These Japanese style ones are mainly green still. Although there were also bigger trees with very big yellow leaves making a mess everywhere.

And finally, my adequately equipped, competitively priced, well located hotel room, It is called Hotel Nafore.

This is the guitar wholesale market. Earlier I posted the shoe market etc. I went to this place years ago. I wonder if it is still as popular as it once was, Korea was the place to make guitars when Japan became too expensive, now Korea is too expensive and most guitars are made in China or Indonesia.

My wanderings took me to the royal residence. It appears to be a recreation. It is also free, and therefore, I was happy to go in and complain that it was a bit boring and not worth my money.

The aforementioned sea of flowers. I think its a pop up sea as it appears to be a recently demolished deconstruction site (does that make sense?). The flowers were past their best, but I still thought it was impressive, and quite a few people were wandering around posing for photos with dead flowers. The photo does a good job at hiding the all the flopped over dead brown flowers.

Nearby is Insadong, which is where every tourist goes to buy trinkets. There are some new shops in this area. Also cartoon characters in some kind of temple welcoming everyone to offer a prayer for great success in making purchases.

These maker markets as I call them seem to be very popular all over Korea.

I found a good pork bibimbap for dinner in one of many GRAND OPEN! places in a new looking shopping centre. It was delicious, and not too huge. The Melbourne ones I like are very large serves, and I never realise until it is too late.
I started mixing it together before I remembered to take the photo.

This is the actual place most westerners buy gifts from, including me in the past.

The mall in Insadong seemed a lot longer and mysterious at night. I have only ever been in the day before.

And finally, as I got in the lift in my hotel I saw it said roof garden, and who can resist a roof garden? Here is the view from said roof garden. That's all for now, hiking tomorrow probably, most likely a shorter 'warm up' hike.

The path from Hwarangdae station to the start of the hike follows what is called a railway park, which seems to be some old train lines along the footpath next to the road.

I thought it would be hard to find the start of this hike, but no, it has a gate, and is very popular.

There are lots of rest points along the way, and quite a few people brought their pocket dogs with them, can you see the dog?

My peaks for today are just beyond that ridge. This is the lowest amount of pollution I have ever seen in Seoul.

Much of the path was fenced in, sometimes on both sides, with the usual military signs, land mine warnings. I could hear some guns firing, bursts of 3 shots, which suggests it was the military, possibly North Korean invaders shooting hikers.

Lots of people all the way up today, which made public urination more public than is generally acceptable.

The whole path had these military pill box things every 100 metres or so. These are abandoned, there were more behind the fence with power and air conditioning.

Across the valley is Bukhansan National Park, which is where my first hike on my May trip took place. I might be back there in coming days.

Hanging out with a couple of ladies enjoying the view.

The fences stopped eventually and it became a really nice hike, lots of view points, a bit of colour.

This is the view away from Seoul, and yes it does look polluted. Seoul is massive.

Nearly at the top, the final bit of the ascent is too steep unless you have abseiling gear, so they have provided a staircase.

Nice clear view across the valley, the main part of Seoul is further left.

SO HANDSOME!

There was a lot of rock scrambling, especially on the way down, these ones are very grippy though, I hate it when they are fine loose gravel.

The proper summit had too many people. I opted against the covid encrusted rope to pull myself to the top with the crowd of people saluting the flag.

Time to start heading down, the tricky way. That mountain across there is Suraksan, which I have climbed on a previous trip. I thought this would be photo of the day but the light is kind of weird.

Looking back at the summit, all the people, and the staircases.

My goal is the train station down there, it is much steeper to get down than anticipated, the stair cases stopped!

I like the photos with rocks in them, so here is another.

Almost back at the bottom and you can see the peak sticking up, if you zoom in to the full res version you should be able to see some people abseiling in a pink jacket.

Last photo for today, taken from the moving train on my way back with the mountains I traversed in the background.

I arrived on the scene right on dusk. The subway line is above ground here. This reminded me a lot of a particular area of Taipei, where if there is no war, I will be in late April 2023.

These are all tarot reading booths set up on the road. And this is not all of them, there are hundreds of them stretching for at least a kilometre. Weird. The woman looked at her cards, looked into my eyes, and simply said 'I got nothing', which was strange because when I walked in she said 'No speak English!'

I initially walked past all the neon, to go to the very last Tarot card reader, and am now making my way back.

This place looked very inviting so I went downstairs and asked them what sort of activities go on in here, they said nothing at all, so I just said, OK bye, and left.

Neon against the almost black sky.

This is a shooting range, with dirty chicken plush toys hanging up for no known reason.

Aliens are coming.

Chinese street has lots of restaurants, but also a few legitimate looking grocers.

My bladder bested me, so I went into the nearby Lotte department store basement to use the facilities, the food options here for dinner all looked great, but not tonight!

Time to cancel myself. These are actually 9 different people.

Ahhh yes. Lanzhou style beef noodle soup. Tasted authentic. I spoke Chinese with the girl when I paid, she started it, the menu was in Korean so when I ordered from her I pointed and said Lanzhou La Mian cause I obviously have no idea how to say that in Korean. She then assumed I was a native Chinese speaker. I had to tell her to speak slowly but we understood enough of each other, she seemed amused that a strange looking Australian was speaking Chinese to her in Korea. That's my Chinese flex over for this trip, I will leave it to my mother to type 'your dinner looks good' using google translate in the comments :troll:.

I stopped traffic to take this photo. I was again reminded of an area of Taiwan, except there are not enough scooters here.

A bit more neon.

And after all of the above, this sign is super apt.Tomorrow is probably not a hiking day, probably. I do not know what I will do instead yet.