Haneul Park / Sky Park
Today I accidentally went to the site of what once was the tallest garbage mountain in the world, by accident. This trip is now a tax write off. Haneul Park, which means Sky park, is also the site of the main world cup football stadium in Seoul.
I knew the fields of wheat were here, and that is what I went to see, but I assumed it was along the river at ground level, not on top of a former rubbish dump.
This took the experience of walking among fields of wheat from magical instagram paradise to educational marvel of methane and phytoremediation! I even then went to visit the new waste incinerator that replaced the dump which was also exciting!
My journey was long, and hot, shorts weather even, but I was rugged up and sweating. Hmm, I need to re think this a bit for upcoming days when it will be even warmer.
After the unimaginable excitement of accidentally visiting a mountain of garbage walking in fields of wheat, my plan was to cross the mighty Hangang river by walking over a bridge.
Bridge choice number 1 was closed for construction work so I had to go a bit further to find one I could walk over, and be the only person silly enough to walk over it, which then landed me in a complex web of off ramps under construction and temporary pedestrian detours that lead around in a circle to various dead ends. It was great.
Oh and it was also the Seoul marathon today, the streets out the front of my hotel are closed, as were the streets around the world cup football stadium, and one of the bridges. Somehow wherever I went, it was closed to traffic due to the marathon.
Now for some trash photos.
I did not need to go to a bank, but when the fine people at Kookmin bank provide a crashed plane at basement level 5 of the subway with an ATM wedged in it, how can you resist?
What a great photo! This is near the start of the marathon, which left from here a few hours ago. There are piles of clothes everywhere as it was 0 degrees when the race started, so people turning up to run just threw their tracksuits on the ground. A truck is here collecting everything already.
The world cup stadium.
Another great photo! Marathon aftermath. There were approximately 641 buses in the car park here that presumably dropped people off to run and now need to wait for the roads to reopen so they can drive to the finish line across town. Although like all marathons these day, almost no one actually runs a marathon, as there are 1.6km, 5km, 10km, 20km events also... for which you still get a medal that says you ran the Seoul marathon. Do you want a medal or what?
I crossed the road to the children's forest park. Still not aware it was a rubbish dump.
Nice flowers on this bridge.
At this stage I remember thinking, that staircase looks enticing, there is no doubt I am going up it to what seems to be called sky park, but I better ask google if sky park costs money. That is when I found out it was a rubbish dump!
View from half way up the tallest mountain of garbage in the world.
It is only 300 stairs to the top, and yet a few people were putting on a show for how brave they were to tackle it.
Looking back at the world cup stadium, and Bukhansan mountains on the left. Still relatively clear today, but not as clear as yesterday. However on some days you cannot even see those mountains from the city.
Pipes full of methane everywhere. Calorific value. I am just going to drop random rubbish dump terms all over this.... Putrescible.
Some nice views from the top.
And here it is, the sea of wheat. This is a top tourist attraction of Seoul, but like I said earlier, I thought it was along the river at river level. It is in fact the top of the dump.
More wheat, and windmills. I said it earlier, the wheat serves a purpose, it leeches toxins from the soil. A process called phytoremediation. There are actually special breeds of wheat to do specific things depending on the type of toxin. Although that might be marketing nonsense by people selling special wheat.
As an Australian, it is a special treat to see a field of wheat, as we do not have any such thing in Australia.
Here's a view from the edge of the wheat field. I originally intended to walk over the bridge on the right, but ended up walking over the bridge in the centre.
I will quite happily take photos of people posing for other peoples photos.
Last view shot from wheat field rubbish dump paradise.
I walked down the far side to the local waste incinerator and took myself on a tour of the pre incinerator sorting and baling station. In the foreground of this shot you can see they have built ornate walls filled with garbage. Quaint.
This is the base of the rubbish dump, which is also a very nice park, and also has lots of pipes sucking methane out of the ground. This methane goes to a nearby place behind the above pictured waste incinerator to power a process that produces hydrogen to power the buses.
My attempt to cross bridge #1 failed, but I did get to take this great photo of traffic, so it was totally worth it.
Here is bridge #2, which allowed me to walk over it. The area along the river seemed to have no cars, but millions of cyclists.
The swimming centre however was closed. The fence around it had pictures of approximately 9 million people crammed into it, I presume it closed down because they all got pool herpes or similar.
As I mentioned above, I crossed the bridge alone.
And finally, one last pic from the bridge, still plenty more bridges to try and walk over. But why are there no boats? You would think there would be thousands. Google / Naver maps shows ferry terminals and dashed lines for where they go, but I did not see a single ferry all day.
The usual view from Namsan but down the other side
By now it is a well established tradition that every time I come to Seoul I take a trot up Namsan, look at the very phallic Seoul tower, take a few pics of the view and make fun of people who took the cable car. Usually I take a photo of me standing next to a big duck where all the padlocks are.. but I skipped that part of the tradition, who knows perhaps I will take that shot when I return to Seoul at the end of this trip.
Normally I go up and down the same way, but this time I was determined to go down the other side, even though that leads to Itaewon where the Halloween crush was, and I am avoiding that place.
I should mention, apparently there was a protest last night at City Hall demanding the President resign over the Halloween tragedy, but I do not know what it actually has to do with him, there was another protest more generally elsewhere demanding the president resign about other things too. Every former Korean president has ended up in Jail, so he can look forward to jail, soon.
I got sidetracked, but the Halloween protest last night apparently had 100,000 people crammed in protesting. I remember thinking surely that would not happen despite Koreans loving a mass protest, but evidently, it happened. It seems a bit like lighting a big fire to protest a fire, but maybe I am underthinking it.
Back to the task at hand, I found my way down the other side, avoided the part of Itaewon where the tragedy occurred, and hopped on a train back to what appeared to be a very revitalised and bustling Myeongdong before carb loading ahead of a planned long hike tomorrow.
A familiar site.
I deviated from my normal way to the start of the steps, and discovered there are quite a few nice little shops and restaurants on the side of the hill.
Colourful leaves and 2 x cable cars, oh my.
It was actually quite dark here, but I pushed the exposure a bit.
Apparently the embattled president lives somewhere in view of the tower and you are no longer allowed to take photos in a certain direction? This used to be the case where the wall up the hill is over looking the blue house behind the main palace, but for whatever reason the current president does not live in the blue house.
Good view at dusk from part way up.
It was probably darker than this in reality.
Too dark by now. All photos tonight were taken hand held, generally at 1/10 or so.
I had to find my way down this side. I did not know for sure it was possible.
Phallic. I say it every time. Plus I like the word phallic, we should all aim to use it a lot more.
All these lazy people are waiting near the top for a bus. It is a ten minute walk downhill to the train from here. This is shocking to me.
I found my well lit but lonely path down.
This lonely path came out in the hills above Itaewon, a kind of a village area, not yet too ex-paty.
But soon enough, you clearly start to get into areas for white folks. Cheese.
I mentioned above, Myeongdong seems to be popular again, with lots of street traders with their carts and lots of people. For some reason I did not take a photo though, so instead here is some neon in a relatively quiet street near my hotel.
And finally, pasta. Not as Asian as some Asian pasta, but still a bit different. The beef is thinly sliced like you would grill at a Korean BBQ for example.
As mentioned in the block of text above, tomorrow is a hiking day, aka day of boring photos.