Korea twice in one year - November 2022 - Page 8

There is Dobongsan, in all it's rocky massif glory. It is part of Bukhansan national park to the north of Seoul. Dobongsan is in the northern part of the national park, but Seoul still extends a lot further north as you shall see.

The roads up to the start of the trail are a hive of activity.

As expected, the shrine. There was none at the end of the hike today, but there are many hermitages all through the park. No matter how remote they are, they seem to have enough loud speakers and electricity to generate deafening feedback with the low throat rumbling screams echoing across the mountains.

The first bit is a footpath alongside a stream. I do what I can to hide the fact it is a bitumen footpath.

Part of the rock face sticking up. There are a lot of big rocks today.

Here is a part of a rock I climbed up.

Getting closer. I am actually going up there.

Look closely and you can see how lucky I am to still be alive. A small black panther was stalking me.

Nearly at the main bit.

At this stage, probably already using the hand rails and trying to take a photo without getting them in the photo, and without falling.

A series of hand rails to the top. Honestly, not that dangerous, it would be hard to slip as you always have 3 points of contact. Some of the gravel and leaf covered downward sloping rocky steps are far more dangerous.
I passed a girl on my way down one of the sections having a panic attack, sitting down, holding on with her eyes closed crying. She had 2 other people with her, not sure what you can do at that point other than get over it...

Some great rocky views, although Seoul was mostly covered in pollution haze. The hand rail sections extend for a few hundred metres, and often you are going down rock faces with metal pegs hammered into them, so photos are impossible. On the weekends, with hundreds of people coming in each direction, this would be... uncomfortable.

View number 1.

View number 2.

View number 3. I culled a lot.

Seoul extends further north, of the left side of this pic, but it gets narrow between these two mountain ranges in the area of city shown in this pic.

I believe I climbed over all of those using the hand rails. But I appear to have culled most of the pics that feature the rails. Today's word of the day, rail.

Time for one of these. Stance shot was not going to happen today, not enough flat area to put the camera down and stand far enough away.

Looking back in the direction I came, most of the people are gone by this point. I realise now the most interesting bits I could not photograph as it was too dangerous to let go.

Next peak over has a little forest fire monitoring hut. If you notice a fire you basically have time to phone it in before you get burnt.

More view.

Northern Seoul beyond the divide.

Last peak of the day. Not very high, but it was fun getting here.

This smaller peak is at the very northern end of the national park, I believe it is called Sapaesan. I suspect most of these people have come up a direct path from a temple that I circled around to extend my hike. A grandma saw me go past and called me a handsome boy.

A bit more view from Sapaesan.

The way down had many giant rocks to go past, and the usual leaf covered paths. Not a lot of colour to gawk at today.

Nearly at the bottom.

Instead of coming out at a shrine, I came out in a little street with bars and cafes, and a dog wearing aircraft wings with jets on them.

I expected to come out into some ramshackle mud huts. No, giant brand new, not even 'grand opening' yet apartment buildings.

This area of Seoul has a monorail running a loop around it. Before now I thought it was a tram, I have never been here before.

And final pic, I did not expect to stumble into a giant Shinsagae department store on top of the subway station at Uijeongbu. There was also a very large labyrinthine underground shopping mall that I got lost in looking for the train.
Usual warnings about tonight, I am unlikely to go far so the pics will be bland and in short supply.

A nearby hotel does a lot of lights in trees. Really hard to photograph it in any sort of a meaningful way.

This was taken from the sky bridge between the Lotte store and the Lotte young annex store.

There is a roof garden, with no view, despite that they have put some statues up suggesting it is a good location for a wedding proposal. I proposed to me myself and I, all 3 turned me down.

As often happens after a hiking day, I was feeling a bit shaky, so time for some proper food, curry it was, if you read the above nonsense you already knew that was coming. The things on the right are garlic flakes.

Myeongdong is now all lit up for xmas, and pretty busy. A big contrast to when I was here earlier in the year and it was completely dead.

Last pic, the Shinsagae has taken xmas lights to the next level with a full wrap around video screen coordinated with all the lights in trees and on the road and in the sky nearby. Sadly, the store location is not particularly conducive to people being able to see it. Either side of here there are police buses parked on the road, which leaves just this little window between subway entrance for people to cram against the rail and give each other covid.

Getting to the park was along the elevated line 2. Well, elevated where you get off anyway. Quite near the Konkuk university where I went early on during this trip.

This sign confirmed I was in the right place, I was confused because it looked like a sewage treatment plant.

Unusually, parts of the park are sunken into the foundations of various ruined buildings.

Nice weather today, to enjoy some largely leafless trees and dead leaves.

There is an area with deer to throw stuff at from an overhead bridge. You cannot walk among the deer like in Nara or Miyajima in Japan. Birds ride around on the back of deer. I had no zoom, this is the best I could do.

Possibly a sewage treatment pond.

This bridge out of the park faces an area of Seoul I am not familiar with. Smaller places on the side of a hill.

The special wheat area of the park. Every park has such an area. There was also a bamboo area of course.

Impressively vertical thin trees.

I am standing under the pine planted by Hu Jintao to take this pic of a solitary pine in a field of dead grass.

Skateboarding is very popular in Korea.

Next up, I wanted to go visit a special shopping area constructed out of shipping containers, which is called common ground. This is an impostor! It is also made of shipping containers but is not common ground.

These tree stumps take the coming threat of winter very seriously.

Here is common ground. I read this is the largest shopping complex made out of shipping containers... in the world! But this is pretty much the whole thing?

The upper levels are all little restaurants and bars. Nice enough spot, but I feel as though given a week I could construct a larger one myself.

WHAT??? A challenger to Abiko curry has appeared. I thought about having it for lunch, but alas, did not. A true coco vs abiko comparison battle is unlikely to eventuate.

One thing you often see in Korea is porridge stores. I had it once years ago, it was quite bland... like porridge! The risotto fusion thing I had the other night is inspired by this, but adds flavour.

Now to start the underground journey from Dongdaemun station to City Hall station (where my hotel is). Someone else who did this measured it as 5.04km... To aide my mother who cares about such things, this is the distance from your house, to the casino, walking along Payneham road. The first area by Dongdaemun which used to be a sporting stadium, is predictably, a mile of sporting good shops.

Sometimes there are areas of no mans land, or art installations.

Sometimes they put some tools on display with safety vests in case you are working underground and need them.

Areas are quite busy, with many side tunnels that join on to other subway lines full of grids of shops, if that is your thing. The good part is you never cross a road, so it is very fast. Of course not as fast as riding the subway just below your feet who's path you are following.

Near the end, the unwise installation of piano key stairs that play the note you step on. Me like I suspect everyone else, tried to play a tune by leaping 5 or 6 steps at a time. It was hard work but I managed to crank out twinkle twinkle. OK that's enough pics for now.

A level crossing near the centre of Seoul? That is unexpected. I know Tokyo has quite a few that are very annoying, but this is the first I have seen in Seoul. It is not for the actual metro, it might be for a slow passenger train to somewhere, or it might be for freight. Not pictured here, but it does require a guard box with 3 guys carrying glowing red waving wands to wave when the gate comes down.

My journey was going in this direction, at sunset. Actually if I was a bit earlier, those buildings glowed bright orange for a while.

I have seen parasite. The first 9/10's of the movie were good.

I have seen a few book shops like this. Similar concept to shoe shops. Just pile more of everything everywhere. If it rains, cover it all in a tarp. No one steals anything, but it makes browsing impossible. Somewhere inside there's a guy under the pile that died a few years ago.

First I saw a level crossing, now graffiti, in Seoul! Unheard of. This is a very nice part of town too!

Street scene at one of the women's university areas.

Street scene at another of the women's university shopping and dining streets.

Looks like I missed the main part of Hongdae with the live performance areas, here is a tight alleyway instead.

My dinner. This is not a pork cutlet. It is a combo beef and pork and minced vegetable crumbed rissole. It was really good. The sauce was very spicy, and then there is also wasabi. Real wasabi with the dryer texture.

This dork decided to drive his Ferrari down the pedestrian street in Hongdae. I brushed against it on purpose.

Final pic this evening, one last shot of Hongdae.

Soyosan is also the name of the station, the last station on line 1. It is a very boring station.

You know you are in a popular hiking area when there is a street fall of unofficial shops selling shoes, tomatoes and vacuum cleaners.

What!!! I have to pay a $2 fine to get in to the hike. Outrageous. I would later find out I did not need to pay.

The first part of the hike is a road, lots of other people.

I selected the longest possible loop, which thinned out the people, but still there were many people.

Nice scenery, what is that? It is coming towards me...

The goat!

With the goat behind me, time to examine where I would be going, around to the right then back over that, then around the left.

Top of summit number one. Too many people. Later I would pass a group of at least 100 coming the other way.

Best view of the day. That is the direction of Seoul, but it is beyond the horizon.

I will go over all of those. It was steep and rocky for much of the way.

The station is down in the valley there.

You can do a very long hike from here as a starting or end point. It is the end point of a 50km trail running race.

Then, this happened. And I had to follow them slowly for over an hour until they stopped for one of a few 3 course meals Koreans like to have on every hike.

Nice rocks and trees, but hard to climb over all the time.

More rocks and trees.

OK, here is the reason for the $2 fee. And there is a path to avoid it. Apparently, it is a significant cultural heritage site.

It has a waterfall.

As far as shrines go, pretty basic, and parts of it were under construction.

The public toilet however, very impressive.

The shrine is not quite the end of the hike and does not get you back at the road, but it is a very developed path back down from here, with a mobile phone tower for the monks to watch star wars etc.

Last pic, a waterfall and a cave. I think there is another waterfall cave combo elsewhere with the waterfall inside a cave. I saw some glass doors leading into the rock face with candles inside and the map said waterfall. Which is probably what a lot of people come here to see.
Now to navigate the protest and find my dinner.

At first my goal was to avoid the protest, so I went underground and came up by the department stores. The other night I showed the Shinsagae xmas lights, tonight Lotte. Shinsagae is the easy winner.

In third place, this backpacker hostel.

The catholic cathedral gets into the act by not only having lights, but also a choir.

Here are the plastic chair outdoor yabby eating places. I think thats what they eat anyway, some kind of shellfish. Whatever they eat, it seems to be a late night only activity.

I found myself at the famous stream, and decided to head along at stream level towards the protest area, where I confirmed it was all over.

This is a church. The building serves no purpose other than to show all the other churches that this church has more money than they do.

And for my after 8pm dinner that was not fried chicken or Korean bbq, Yukgaejang. Basically a spicy beef based soup, but I got the extra variety of mushrooms version. Apparently, a cuisine from the royal court. So now I am royal.
No hiking tomorrow, no plan, yeah.