Korea twice in one year - November 2022 - Page 6

One last photo of my beloved stream!

With my train not leaving until 1:30pm I had heaps of time for a long walk around Gwangju in the morning. Here is a view from a convenient overpass.

Here is the outside of the GwangjuSongJeong station. They like to do it as one word. It is the main bullet train station in Gwangju.

A unique opportunity to photograph the track geometric inspection car. I kind of thought these were obsolete, bullet trains are effectively all doing this all the time, measuring the distance between the tracks, temperature, height, wear etc by analyzing data from the train wheels. I read a whole thing about it in relation to the Chinese network.

Here comes my train. They are all the same train.

I had to change in Osong and then a short ride back to Daejeon. I think there is a different Daejeon station on the line I was on, but that station is not connected to the subway, so a change of bullet trains is more convenient.

And finally, my very well equipped hotel room. It has a kitchen, a pull out kitchen bench, 3 different desk areas, and a washer dryer. As I mentioned, it is designed for business people that might be working here longer term. Now to find out where I am exactly, I am staying in a different part of Daejeon to the last time I was here.

Here is a shiny new mall. I do not think it was here when I was last here. If it was I did not take a photo of it and I feel as though I would have. I certainly included some photos of surrounding streets last time.

The streets around my hotel are bright and colourful. But quiet as it is still early on a Friday. Korea is a very late country, street stalls often do not start up until 9pm.

This is just your average Samsung store in Korea.

Another example of a modern looking street. The pedestrian crossings are a bit of a nightmare though.

And for my dinner, I did not go straight to the Galleria basement, although I did walk through there and I am sure I will end up there at some point. Instead I went for some Korean / Hawaiian fusion with the bulgogi poke. Such healthy.

Final pic for this evening, I wandered away from the city centre and enjoyed the tree lighting with lasers that lined most streets.

I chose a starting point, one of 50, from near a subway station. It had signs, it was on the map, it also had signs saying private property keep out (I translated using my phone). I went through this mini farm anyway and walked through cabbages and farmer rubbish to get to here.

This sign says the way that I came up is no longer a hiking trail. Too bad the signs pointing up to here were still in place.

Bomunsan was the first hike of the two. It is very popular, and there are some roads going to different bits that you can avoid if you want. I painstakingly looked at my map to avoid the roads. Good views of the city for most of this hike even if it was through the trees.

The actual trail was not too colourful today, mostly just brown and pine. Here is a rare glimpse of colour.

Hmm, I thought all these graves in the forest were ancient historically significant sites. These 2 look like they were buried yesterday. And in a kind of weird spot with no view. So my pro tip, if you need to dispose of a body in Korea, just head up the nearest hill and cover them in a bit of dirt and shove some plastic flowers on the mound.

I crossed the road at this point. I do not know what the monument is, so I will go with, martyr.

Bomunsan had many long stair cases, depending on the trail you selected.

First view, much better to come.

My next target is that little pagoda over there.

Here you can see mountain number 2 on the right in the distance, Sikjangsan, with the antennas on top. More antenna photos soon.

This guy was screaming for some reason.

Nice view further up the valley, all mountains. This is nowhere near the national park which is on completely the opposite side of Daejeon.

I had selected paths down to get me from Bomunsan to a point fairly close to Sikjangsan, only to find the paths were closed for re vegetation purposes. So instead I slid down some leafy steep cliffs into this farm area.

It was now a couple of kilometres to a start point for mountain number 2 of the day.

However, I did get to cross over a nice stream, always a highlight.

My path up Sikjangsan started at this shrine. It will not be the last shrine.

My chosen path was steep and unrelenting, and I had it all to myself. It was hard going!

Getting near the top, that is Bomunsan that I had just come up and down across the way there. I am talking like an old person.

A Korean flag flanked by the national monuments of Korea, giant antennas on top of a mountain.

I believe this is also called sunrise peak, or sunrise observatory.

All off limits. Military related.

First view from sort of the top. I suspect the antennas are the real top.

'One of the views of Daejeon' is how this view was advertised on the Daejeon travel website.

A serious helicopter landing area.

I am kind of disappointed there was no helicopter.

There is a road nearby, I suspect people come up here for the night view.

View in another direction, that lake looks interesting... Somewhere in those hills is the pilgrimage clay road I walked a lap of last time. I did it with shoes on, once a year they flood it somehow and do it in bare feet.

A view from lower down. I did not go the way I planned, I ended up using some forestry tracks because the trail I wanted seemed to no longer exist.

A remote forest fire detection robot. It speaks to you as you go past. I can neither confirm nor deny that I urinated on it.

My path down went through some baby forests.

Water wheel world signalled that I was getting close to another shrine / temple.

Lower shrine.

And for my last photo of a long day, a view back up to the antenna filled summit of Sikjangsan.

Lets get illuminated.

First, some lanterns.

I do not know what Seogu is or why it needs healing with lights strung in a park. I think I prefer not to know so I can make up a ridiculous reason in my head. I dare not type it here in case Seogu means something horrible. OK I checked, Seogu is just the name of the district the lights are in. Why does it need to be healed? So many mysteries.

I enjoyed the light pentagon.

The Lotte store is a couple of km away from the main bit of the city, but it is all still shops and city in between. I think the shopping and eating area of central Daejeon is long and narrow.

Time for some Japanese junk food in the Lotte basement, hamburg on top of omurice. Pretty good!

I found the former premier of South Australia and he now owns a coffee shop in Daejeon. I stopped in to say hi. Except I cannot picture what he looks like so I have no idea if it was him. Was Dean Brown a middle aged Korean guy?

And finally, in the spirit of fairness, last night was the Samsung store, tonight their competitor, the LG store.
Tomorrow is not a hiking day, allegedly.

First photo is pre hanbat arboretum, and is actually the government office forest park.

Here is the art museum. There is a smaller building with a tin roof next to it called the general population art museum.

First photo of the arboretum area. Those colours are wrong. Quite a few photos today look weird.

I remember this sliding on rails aircraft hanger thing from last time. It is under refurbishment, those are rails on the ground. Last time there were teams of rollerbladers that were presumably practising for the winter Olympics ice skating here. This time, a few kids on bikes.

Bamboo forest was nice. Not dead yet.

From above it looks nice enough, but it is all kind of brown and dead as winter approaches.

This is new to me. They cover up the entire garden areas with bamboo mats.

It's fountain time.

Probably photo of the day. I took the same photo from the same spot last time.

Time to head over the big bridge to the world expo site.

I need to check, but that is a department store, Shinsegae, and I do not think it was there last time. As you shall see it looks brand new inside. Very strange location. Land would have been cheap in the former expo park.

Convention centre. A lot of the expo buildings have optimistically been turned into various science research centres, things like future energy centre or advanced robotics centre, but I think they are actually empty.

This tower was the centre piece of the whole expo experience in 1993. They flood the bricks in front of it so you can reflect on how great a time that was for Daejeon.

Inside Shinsegae now, and it is a department store, with 2 levels of a Westfield style mall on top.

The roof garden is really great. Over there is the science museum. I do not think I went there last time. It appears to have actual rockets! Probably the site of my next rest day activity.

The roof garden has nice trees. They probably had red leaves a few weeks ago.

There is also TYRANOPARK. You can go inside the orange dinosaur. It was excellent.

Daejeon main down town area across the river in the distance.

Last roof garden photo, hedge maze. Without a hedge.

I headed down to the basement food area, to discover it has an aquarium. That's a first.

The food area is vast, and strangely very busy at 11:30am on a Sunday. That is enough photos for now, I plan to do a longer walk this evening.

First pic, the stream crossing. It marks about the half way point from Jungang to Dunsan.

There was not a lot to look at for a while.

Eventually, meat.

Here is the above mentioned elevated roof at the centre of Jungang-ro. If you google Daejeon you will probably see this. The shopping / eating area here is vibrant but compact. It was quite busy even on a Sunday. More so than the Gwangju equivalent.

These people are lined up to buy a panetone. You know, the things near the checkouts in Australian supermarkets for 6 months either side of xmas, a cake in a cardboard box.

Example street. Spot the foreigner!

Girl posing with fake moon and rubbish.

If you ever need some pirate statues, come here.

This is generally how kimchi gets made, in the street by an old lady. This is why it is so good for healthy.

Jungang-ro also has a very large double lane underground mall under it. With a few offshoots in various directions. It has a fountain. Most of the shops with piles of shoes had piles of shoes.

And for my dinner, poor people food! I went to a Gimbap (Korean standard Korean menu Korean food place) and got the fried bits of dough with vegetables. You cannot really see it here but the vegetables under the seaweed are swimming in Gochujang. Sometimes this is actually more like dumplings rather than just dough, but obviously I selected a discount gimbap outlet.
Tomorrow, hiking in the national park day.