More of the same of Korea - March and April 2024 - Page 3

I did a morning lap of the local area of Seoul. So many blossoms. As is often the case, I found a lot of places I wish I had walked along while I still had time.

Here is the view outside of the Seoul station, I do not know what the big L is for, loser probably. I stood by the L. Apt.

The inside of the very familiar Seoul station. I thought I would get there close to train time, but I still had an hour to spare. So I bought a drink.

I enjoyed the view up the hill of the old little houses while enjoying my clear colourless fruit drink. By houses I mean smaller non identical apartment blocks.

There are many kinds of trains that depart from here, the names increase in complexity depending on how slow they go. The fastest ones, just called KTX.

I could not get a clear shot of the front of the train, refer to previous trips! Inside it is much like any other bullet train. Later on this trip I have booked some first class carriages, but for this one economy. I boarded first when it was still emtpy, but it was actually completely full when we departed, with people standing at each end.

There is the outside of my hotel, on top of that shopping mall. Another Toyoko Inn.

Here is the very familiar to me ferris wheel on top of a multi level amusement arcade.

When I was last here, this was all destroyed wooden decking. Now it is all shiny and new. At least they finished something. Those pillars on the band stand thing are of course, LED screens.

Daegu has come a long way in the world, check out the Japanese style Starbucks.

And now the only photos of my hotel room. The floor has carpet. Amazing. Must be because it is a Japanese chain. I was absolutely thrilled to have a real desk to sit at again. It is hard to believe some hotel rooms do not think you need somewhere to sit and work. Even if you are not on business, people holidaying just for leisure these days need to look stuff up, post duck face photos etc.

And it even has a Japanese style bathroom! Which is to say, poorly lit and plastic. But at least the water does not drain across the floor.
Now to figure out where to go to tonight. I will only be here 3 nights.

I did not post this earlier as I was waiting for better light. This is the view out of my hotel window. If I remember on another night I will take it again in the dark.

The walk towards DongDaegu was very nice. The whole way was very nice. I think Daegu is a highly underrated city.

I passed many similar theme cafes such as this one with the creepy hands.

The Renault Twizy enclosed motorbike thing is still popular here. I saw a few of them around.

Last time I was here I walked along this river. Behind me there were many cherry blossom trees along the river banks, but I was trapped on the wrong side of the road. Nice reflections though.

This is the area of Daegu I did not really know existed. I believe that is a brand new Hyundai department store. Once again, I was on the wrong side of the road. Very wide roads!

DongDaegu Venture Valley. I guess a kind of silicon valley. They capitalise DongDaegu the same way I have been. I thought I invented that.

Here is my destination for this evening. The simply enormous Shinsegae department store. Photos cannot really explain how large and unusually shaped it is.

Obviously it needs a Bentley dealership.

Also obviously, I headed straight to the basement to find my dinner, and I was not disappointed.

Tonight's dinner is similar to a recent one. Korean style pasta. Although this time it has galbi (short ribs on the huge bone) and is in a curry sauce. Very nice.

Next I headed out the back of the station into the night life area. A lot of neon.

As mentioned, the department store is also the high speed train station, and a subway station. So here is a photo of all of them at once. Also under it is my bus stop tomorrow morning, so I went to make sure I could find that, even though I have caught that bus before, getting to the stop through the buildings is a bit tricky.

And for my final pic of the day, the terrifying 'Youtuber academy'. Just what everyone needs, a school to teach people how to yell at me on youtube.
Tomorrow is a long hiking day. Strangely the bus does not seem to run as early as I would like, so I will be back late tomorrow!

I took bus #1 from DongDaegu station. The usually excellent Naver app lied to me, the bus does run early but the app does not show it. I suspect the app showed the first bus to arrive at the national park at 9am, which would coincide with the cable car commencing operation. This was a bit annoying as I hung around waiting for it to be late enough for the bus, even though I could have gone an hour or more earlier.

After about an hour I arrived at the last bus stop, Donghwasa temple. There is a small town here and 2 convenience stores to stock up on supplies.

Near the start of the trail, a small fair has sprung up. I was a bit early for it. I thought there would be a lot more people around, both on the bus and on the trail.

The rock climbing wall signals the start of the trail proper.

You start by going past some camp sites. Korean camp sites are a flat wooden deck, you pitch your tent on the deck. There were tents here last year but surprisingly, none this year. Note even one.

The lower bits of the trail are very well developed.

Many high quality stair cases. There is a cable car as you shall see, but obviously, I did not and will not take it!

This guy should have taken the cable car.

Before too long, rocks. Lots of rocks.

The first view of the day. The sky got less interesting as the day went on. Strangely as soon as I got on the bus back down, it was blue sky again, so perhaps it was only cloudy in the mountains.

Today will feature a lot of piles of huge rocks. I culled a large number of photos.

Quite near the cable car top station here, so there are a few little picnic spots around.

Behold, the view from the top cable car station.

There is even a food court. They are not open yet. I think I ate something here the first time I came many years ago. I will have to go back and check. OK I checked.
First visit was 10 March 2015. It was earlier in the year so there was still a bit of snow. I had a coffee in the food court. I did not continue on to Gatbawi, I went down a different way entirely.
2nd visit was 30 May 2022, when I did basically the same course as today.

Here is the cable car. I threw stones at it.

I did not really stop at all today, but also did not trip over, despite the many rocks and tree roots.

Looking down on the top cable car station. As you can see I have already gone quite a bit beyond the reach of the cable car. The slopes up to the peak at Dongbong behind me are the steepest of the day.

The journey ahead would lead to all those antennas, where the highest point of the day has almost no view.

The scenes of destruction that looked like a nuclear winter commenced.

Big steps up to the top.

A lot of big steps.

Here is the only view from the peak. There are fences on all 3 other sides as it is a military area.

More military area. There is a road to here up the back of the mountain.

It is a really uninspiring summit area.

I continued on over to the next peak, not bothering to even stop for a drink break at the main peak.

Here you can see a lot of the infrastructure from the previous photos, you will see it again from an ever increasing distance throughout the day. That is something to get excited about.

This is probably the nicest spot on the trail, and for nearly everyone, it is where they turn and head back down. But I will continue on!

Beyond this point I passed another hiker probably once every 30 minutes on average, which for a Saturday, is not very often.

Over the back of the mountain, a lot more dead foliage.

THE STANCE. A pretty good example too.

I had already clamoured over all of these getting away from antenna land.

My selfie is pretty good today too, I really captured the lingering loathe.

The path ahead, more rocks.

Every now and then in seemingly random locations, a deck or similar appeared. I had it to myself. A good urination platform (off the edge not on the actual deck, I am not an animal!).

Still more seas of dead trees.

But then... a very brown golf course appears.

The next bit of infrastructure to stop and have a muesli bar. There is someone in it so I sat under it. Prime directive when hiking, avoid interaction with others at all costs.

All these dead looking trees are actually Rhododendrons. And are the purple flowers I keep going on about. Up here in the mountains the flowers have not blossomed yet.

In this middle section the park became less well maintained, but often there were flatter bits for fast progress.

Looking back on some antennas again.

I think this was the 3rd helicopter landing area of the journey, but this one looks well maintained, the H is recently painted.

I enjoyed the orange hand rail.

A bit more golf course, and the antennas on the right.

And nearly all the golf course. I guess they cover the greens in winter? Otherwise they would be brown and dead as well. OK enough golf course.

Getting closer to Gatbawi now, so there is a lot more infrastructure to improve progress.

There is my final destination. Well actually the bit on the top of the hill with the Buddha as you shall see shortly.

A view in a different direction.

I have arrived! Vending machines can mean only one thing, Buddha!

First, a pointless view shot from the Buddha area.

And now, here are people praying to the Buddha, while I take their photo. This is all on the top of a mountain on the edge of a cliff.

Random flowers.

And there he is. Carved from one rock, between 800 and 900 AD, so 1200 years ago. Named Gatbawi, I learned that Gat = hat in Korean, and he is wearing a traditional Korean style hat.

The way down is a huuuuge staircase. This is looking back up some of the stairs. Just a small part of the stairs.

There are many rest areas on this staircase. A lot of people just come up this staircase to go see the Buddha, then back down again. They do not add on a 6 hour pilgrimage like me, which means I am much more spiritual or something.

Here is the inevitable temple at the bottom.

The path down from the temple is also very nice, I imagine it is excellent in Autumn.

The bottom area is a small town with dessert bars and cafes, but instead I took a photo of a stream.

And then there it is! My bus. The good old 401. They come very regularly, I just missed one and the next one left 10 minutes later.
That was a long day. I will not be going too far tonight.

A random street scene out the front of my hotel.

The main shopping area is a bit away from Daegu station. It does extend all the way to the station, but the closer you get to the station the quieter it gets. The last stretch seen here is giant cheap jewellery stores.

But then at the actual station, Lotte department store. Also, good dinner option.

I decided to have curry, again, but SUPER HOT, vegetable curry. The photo on the menu had a lot more broccoli and carrot and a lot less potato. It was still pretty nice though.

Costume jewellery street, which runs off the main jewellery street, was already shut. I do not really think Koreans wear a lot of jewellery, I also do not think I have typed the word jewellery so often in my life.

A political rally, for the pink 7! Generally it is a battle between blue 1 and red 2, so seeing the actual pink 7 in the flesh, truly an honour.

At the actual focal point of the shopping area, the city has paid for a girl DJ to drop some phat beats so the political dorks cannot move into the spot. Also, whenever anything related to the government pays for a DJ, they get a girl DJ. It helps with the quota.

Remember when Kodak sold cameras and film? Now they are a clothing brand. I am about 62.7% sure I took a photo of this last time I was here and made the same observation.

Another random street scene, but what is that just out of frame on the left....?

OK, a few nights ago in Gangnam I was taking photos of the places you go to get your photo taken... and I joked about one of them being a place to get your photo taken that looks like the entrance hallway to a rich persons house. It turns out that those are a chain, and they re create the same bizarre experience all over Korea.

Tonight's zero calorie drinks of choice, chupa chups strawberry and melon flavoured milk soda. Yes really. Actually I could say I got the strawberry one to commemorate the pink 7 sighting earlier. OK lets go with that.

And as threatened, for my final picture of the day, the shot out my hotel room window, at night. This is a long exposure.
Tomorrow is NOT a hiking day, well I might wander up the hill looking over the city, but that does not count as a hiking day.

For the first few photos today, I accidentally had my camera set to -1.7ev. Which means they were badly underexposed. I adjusted them in lightroom but they kind of look a bit weird and contrasty as a result. This is the street outside my hotel at dawn. No one really gets up early on Sunday in Korea.

The only cafe open early was the fancy starbucks pictured yesterday. So that is where I went, I had most of the place to myself.

There are multiple buildings and gardens that are all part of the starbucks.

The road up to Apsan goes past the street full of 'eat every part of a pig' restaurants. Interestingly, when COVID burst onto the scene in Korea in a huge way, it happened first in Daegu, and it was linked to this specific street.

Time to start the climb up to the top of Apsan. The lower parts have a stream running along side the path.

It is very steep. This is where you might get run over by a monk driving erratically, reading one of his brand new iphones while wearing very expensive sunglasses.

Here is the temple. There is probably a really good view off to the right, but they do not allow you to go over there. Maybe the wall is falling down.

I climbed up behind the temple to get a clear shot of the nazi symbol.

Here is a shot of the staircase to the top of Apsan. It is a bit greener here than the other hikes I have been on, a lot more pine trees.

A rare flat bit of the trail to the top.

There is a cable car. OBVIOUSLY I DID NOT TAKE IT. It is hard to get a clear shot of it though, this is the best I could do.

Now for the viewing area. This was off limits last time. Now it has a rabbit. There is an auto camera station thing that encourages people to time their leap into the air. This seems like a bad idea for the longevity of the wooden decking. Also the blue poles are where a rock sticks up through the decking. I suspect the safety poles were not part of the original design and they wish they built the decking 1 foot higher.

Now for 3 shots of the view from here, of the terrible pollution. First up, the left view.

The centre view. My hotel is in there somewhere.

And the right view.

Time to head back down. Here is a neatly framed shot of the golf course that I believe is the US Marine Corp camp. They do not have bases, they have camps.

Once I got to the bottom I walked around the bottom of the hill for a while to find the cable car station. I think this is it, if you squint you can see the observation deck at the top.

PEAK blossoms.

The whole area near my hotel is underground shopping streets. This one is 2 levels, periodically there is an atrium like this with robot art.

Back on the surface now, and the streets are lined with tulips.

Today was a rest day, so I was back in town in time for lunch. On hiking days I just have muesli bars, but not today, today I got to have a beef poke bowl. That's all for now.

There are a couple of large department stores a bit away from the main shopping area, The Hyundai as pictured here, but also the equally as large, and not pictured here Donga. You can find pictures of Donga if you go revisit my last visit to here.

The back of the giant church is a medical history museum. It was closed though.

First view of the journey, the view from the church car park. Not bad.

Might as well throw in a photo of the church. Like I said above, I cannot tell if it is old or new. There are really old photos of something in this spot that looks similar, but maybe not as large. The distortion on that car is quite severe in this shot!

Back in the main area and I became aware of all the multi level games arcades. These do not exist outside of Asia, that is when I remembered the ferris wheel on the roof. The best view of all.

Behold, there it is. With the sunset!

That is Apsan, from earlier today. So clear.

So clear it was worthy of another photo.

My hunt for dinner had me considering the bird cage restaurant, but they did not offer prices on their menu, so that is a no from me.

Instead I had the cheapest meal of the trip so far. About $5 for a huge bowl of huge mandoo dumplings. Those white slices of rubber looking things, I do not know if they are vegetable or not! Quite chewy. The dumplings kind of look like tripe here, but that is just the pattern on the bottom of them from the cloth in the steamer. They were actually just regular pork / mystery meat dumplings.

And for my final picture, a B street. One block over from the shiny neon streets you get slightly less garish streets. Still lots to see along here though.