Korea twice in one year - November 2022 - Page 5

Great weather today, about 15c, not a lot of pollution, the only rain is yellow leaves.

Early on I explored some streets with many brown signs for student resistance and communist leaders. It seems there was something communist related in the resistance? Wikipedia says that is the case.

Historic chimney.

This is the main place I wanted to go in, but it seems the public cannot go in there anymore. I stood on a little ladder that someone had conveniently left nearby and took this photo. Maybe I was just peering over the fence of someones private house. Looks good though. No sign of any communists.

After being goose stepped down the stairs, I am back on top of the observatory.

Greater Gwangju.

There is Mudeungsan from yesterday, with the summit still shrouded in fog.

When I came here and was chased by cats the other night, it looked like the trees were colourful, and they are.

The stop wars car. I think the owner was nearby and thrilled that I was taking a photo. He gave me a thumbs up.

Here is the 'cave'. It is not even 50 metres long. I presume it was a small mine at some point. It is a dead end.

There is no fee to go in the cave, and no guard. So you can just hang out in the cave. They provide helmets in case you forget to head careful.

Nearby the cave, the penguin village. Why they chose a penguin as the mascot for this group of small cafes and art galleries and outdoor junk, I have no idea.

It is a nice spot of little shops and alleys, with lots of penguins painted on everything. Hard to capture in photos.

Here are a few penguins.

And when they run out of penguins they just nail junk to the walls.

Oh look the observatory again. This whole area is very nice, every street is art galleries, studios and cafes, often all 3 at once. Oh and English language teaching places. Lots of those. They also have a cafe.

Back closer to the city centre is one of the main markets. It is like most other markets. Lots of fish.

Just what everyone wants in their life.

Since I already revisited the observatory, I also revisited the Asian Culture Center and hole in the ground. Here is a view from an elevated bit from which you cannot see the hole.

This is the democracy bell. It is built on the site of an infamous police station where many students were tortured and killed. But in true Korean fashion, even this is controversial. The bell was funded by donations, but apparently whoever made it cheated the public and delivered a bell that weighs nowhere near as much as it is supposed to, and soon after it was delivered in 2005 it started cracking. There were mass protests about it.

Here is a view from the elevated corner of the other far corner of the Asian Culture Center. There is a bamboo grove on the roof of a building on the right, hard to see here, I could not work out how to get into the bamboo grove.

And this being a non hiking day, I had time for a late lunch from a chain bakery. I think inflation has hit these places, seems a bit more expensive than I remember. Currently I have no plan for this evening either so anything could happen.

I love building demolition in Asian cities, they just drive a steam shovel into the building and start smashing stuff, and continually drive on top of the pile. They must tip over quite often. The remaining walls must collapse on people often. My advice is to keep your distance.

Some of the trees, seemingly at random, have been fitted with a nappy.

My walk went over the main sewer creek. It is actually quite nice. I would like to run along it. These dusk photos have been brightened up a bit, it was almost dark.

Huge new ghost town parts of the city are under construction. Korea is losing population fast.

I passed a giant toy shop, but sadly it was on the other side of the road so I could not go in and frighten the parents who were there with small children.

Overpass number one of the evening. This one was a steel beam construction, so too shaky for a long exposure. Stay tuned.

Repeat dinner, almost. Abiko curry (same chain) but this time I got a 50/50 vegetable and pork curry. Pork is the main meat, beef was not on offer. However even though I ordered the same level of spiciness as when I had it in Seoul, it was nowhere near as spicy. Spice control is out of control.

And here is Sangmu. All the streets are wide. Subway line 2 is being constructed via the cut and shut rather than tunnel bore method. It actually looks like they are closing up the hole or just starting. The overpass here was concrete, so a long exposure worked fine.

Lotte Mart Maxx, it is basically Walmart. The actual Walmart owned place is called Emart, there is one nearby here. They are very large. What looks like a floating sign on the left is actually the building, with parking underneath, on the other side of the road from where I am standing. It kind of looks like the sign is hanging from the pole. It has 6 levels, look at the travelators in the middle.
Looking at it again, that really is quite the illusion, it is a black building.

And for my last photo tonight, the hotel I should have stayed in. There are at least 50 similarly lit up hotels in the general vicinity of Sangmu station.

The walk up from the city was very picturesque. Raining yellow leaves, streets lined with cafes, cool early morning. I went up via an area called Jisan, which is near the barley rice street. Which is it? Pick one.

Some people would be very excited to just take photos of the abandoned amusement park and call it a day. Here is a chair and an overgrown tunnel covered in vines. To the left there were pagodas standing in what used to be a fake lake that was now dry.

The amusement park is abandoned, but the LED clad shrine still lives on.

My first attempt at a starting trail was here. But the path was so overgrown I could not find it. The building on the left claims to be a cafe. Maybe last century. Behind me is the temple from the above pic, with dogs chained up going absolutely crazy. I retreated.

The next trail was better, and soon got a view of an abandoned golf driving range.

There was also the chair lift, at this point I had no idea where it was going, but I figured it out late in the day, stay tuned.

I did not think there would be many views at all today as I was planning to stay down low in the valleys, so here is an early view of Gwangju. It is crap compared to the views at the end, so feel free to scroll past this one.

I often say 'off limits' which I thought was a term only I used. It seems it is the official term. I suspect these areas are off limits for military reasons.

After going over some small peaks I ended up in a valley in a little village with shrine number 2. Great weather, about 14c, no wind, a bit cloudy at times but also plenty of periods of blue sky.

The trails were mostly leaf covered, and at times hard to follow, but also generally flat... sometimes rocky.. sometimes piney. OK there was every kind of trail.

Shrine / Temple number 3 was closed for renovation, but you could walk around the back to look at some graves, so I did.

Time to head in the direction of Wonhyo, things got rocky.

Great views up Mudeungsan, if you squint you can see antenna world from two days ago.

The main glacial field of rocks. Probably best not to hang around here in case another one comes tumbling down.

A similar view to 2 photos prior, but the light was great.

Glacial field of rocks number 2, looks just like number 1.

This should look familiar, it is Wonhyo where I started my hike at this very bus stop 2 days ago. Today it was the mid point. I could have caught a bus back from here, they depart every 20 minutes, but I decided to keep going.

I did not go the same way as 2 days ago, I went to the right instead of the left and headed to the nearby shrine, a cat was here to greet me.

The cat was guarding the place. I could not go in, had to move on.

Over the top of a ridge behind the shrine and it got very piney, great trail for quick progress.

A bit more view back into the heart of the national park.

What is that? It is a monorail. Abandoned. And now I realised it joins on somewhere to the abandoned chair lift from the start of the day.

The monorail takes you across a valley and up to a peak where this pavilion still stands. It says it has a cafe. It does not.

There is however a view of Gwangju, this one was taken before going to the pavilion roof so stay tuned.

First I needed to do this.

Behold, all of Gwangju. I suspect this is the single best place to get this view, hence the pavilion, monorail, chairlift combo.

It is also a good place to look back up to the top of Mudeungsan.

You can see a bit more of the monorail tracks here.

The monorail may be dead, but this horse lives on. After riding on the horse it was time to go back down to the city.

Nearly down, steps and ropes appeared. If you look through the trees you can see apartment buildings.

And here is where I came out. A new development built into the side of the hill.

The housing development surrounds the Gwangju Institute of Creative Convergence Education. Which totally sounds like something I would make up. Lots of pics today, there probably will not be many tonight.

As the title suggests, I briefly descended into the underground. It is about a kilometre long, which is short by Korean standards. Old, but most of the shops had something in them, even if it was just piles of shoes.

Next I found an area with more art cafes than even the other areas full of art cafes seemed to have.

OK so that explains why the street is full of art cafes.

And if you are doing art, you will need an art supplies street. Gwangju delivers.

My dinner was suitably Korean. It is a bit more varied than the photo suggests, under the stuff on top is many kinds of mushrooms.
Also I drank the soup and mixed the side dishes into the main bowl, and so the guy immediately filled both up again.
No matter what, in Korea, every meal will waste some food. Every person gets up from the table leaving side dishes un-eaten. This place is not so bad as they only give you 2 types of fermented vegetables, but there are plenty of places that give you 8 or more side dishes, and no one eats them all.
Short update was short.

The early morning light was fantastic in the nearly abandoned shopping streets of Gwangju.

I went on the subway to the last station and just kept walking, not knowing what lay ahead. Predictably, more giant apartment buildings lay ahead, but the light was nice still.

Looking back towards Gwangju and I was following a path along a creek again. A good way to get under the freeway overpasses. I think I can see a smoke trail from a North Korean missile in the sky.

My direction of travel also looked nice along the creek.

Across the other side, a sheer rock face. There are trails along the top.

I never noticed a power pole like this before, it is where the above ground wires go underground.

All the roads on the map go into a long tunnel near this point. I found some sturdy steps going up the hill under the freeway.

The steps were the correct choice, as they joined onto this road which no longer has cars. I presume it was the old road before the freeway was built. Still in the shadows of Mudeungsan at this point.

When the sun hit, it was a very attractive road. There were quite a few other people walking, mountain biking and running along this car free road.

At the top, another boom gate to the national park. I was not dressed for it and had no supplies, if I was here another day...

The view from the top of the road was great. That is the freeway down there that came out of a tunnel.

The road down to Hwasun was equally as nice.

So many trails I did not walk on.

Lower parts of the road predictably colourful.

Hwasun is a fairly small place, a bus goes to Gwangju about every 8 seconds. Even though it is a small place with a central traditional market and some tourist stuff up the hill I will show shortly, most people still live in new looking high rise apartments.

The road up to this mountain was cafe filled.

And at the top of the town, another nice looking mountain. Very rocky near the peak. I looked at my map, there are trails. If I was here another day....
In the meantime, my washing (laundry) has successfully been completed, with a lot of assistance from my phone to translate.

Can you see the big bird in the middle? The creek is full of them. Also this morning there were a lot of woodpeckers making machine gun noises. There are a lot of birds all over Korea.

Here is the under water car park. There are parking spaces down each side, I am standing on a walkway that seems to sit on the water in the creek. It would only need to be a brief passing shower, and all the cars would float away. There are numerous extra parking levels over the creek above this spot too. Perhaps in the future, my entire beloved creek will become a linear car park.

For some reason I think this is a great photo.

Here is a long exposure. The dust spots on the right were really bad at 4 seconds of f/16 so I cloned them out. You can see the area I walked to last night, Sangmu, far in the distance.

And here is the mystery department store, Shinsegae, and the bus station mall complex to it's right.

Another bright city area.

The bus station food court was a bit of a ghost town. The surrounding restaurants were however doing pretty good trade. I cannot really work out why you would take a bus though. Admittedly when I came here years ago I took a bus from Busan to Gwangju. I am always the hypocrite.

Shinsegae basement food area was large, varied and busy.

And so I got a special zucchini stew with special zucchini. The sign made a big deal about the zucchini. I do not know what was special about it.

Tomorrow I go to Daejeon, I have to change bullet trains but it is still only a 2 hour journey. I will make it take all day, the train does not leave until early afternoon.