Korea yet again for the 7th time - March and April 2026 - Page 4

Brace for blossoms. There are hundreds of street food and trinket stalls nearby, all closed.

The blossoms however, do not close on Monday, they are now starting to rain down slightly. There are still signs warning you to not walk on the tracks which is rather confusing.

Because you are also encouraged to stand in the middle of the tracks and take photos.

The blossom tunnel is about 800m long. It is indeed quite impressive as far as blossom hysteria goes.

Almost no one around.

I love a train themed toilet.

Not a toilet.

Inside the train is a museum of sorts, detailing how a once in use train line became Korea's premier blossom destination.

There is also a library where you can read about blossoms, and how Korea invented them and Japan stole them (probably).

I got down low, as most others taking photos seemed to do it this way.

I may have over blossomed, I blame the addition of the train.

I was not joking about crowd control.

Next was the famed fish market at Masan, proudly displaying the Chinese character for fish. They know their market.

This market has not been fully gentrified yet.

Petrol powered scooters still ride around coating the food in 2-stroke residue.

Some areas are wetter than others.

That is probably enough fish market pics.

Time to head down to the docks. Note there are fake light houses on either side of this photo to climb up (I did).

View from fake lighthouse, fishing boats and giant bridge in the distance.

Changwon proper is on the other side of those hills, I will climb those hills tomorrow.

Final stop of the day, the art themed shopping streets of Masan. So arty.

I saw 2 shop cats, one was behind glass, this one came out to greet me, photo slightly out of focus. We had a small fight but eventually agreed upon a truce. Despite appearances in this poor photo, he does actually have 2 eyes.

Probably the main pedestrian outdoor street in the art area.

There is a rope hanging off this bell, wisely not long enough for me to ring it.

Sang Sang Gil - which is the street most often shown on reviews of this area.

To get back to the fish market area from where I would get a bus, I travelled through a long covered clothes market. Lots of military themed clothes as always.

Typical Korean street scene from out the front of any traditional market, ideally I would have got closer to the steam from the dumpling shop (mandoo / mandu), but then I would have missed the vegetables laying in the street.

Last photo for the day, scenes from a moving bus. They really like planting a lot of flowers at intersections here.

Store number one is the Lotte Mart Maxx, basically Korean Wal-Mart.

Store number two is e-mart, which I do believe was actually owned by Wal-Mart... I will check. OK the wikipedia article is highly confusing, I read it twice and still don't understand - "In May 2006, Walmart acquired Walmart Korea, converting 16 Walmart stores into Emart stores. Walmart Korea was accepted and changed to Shinsegae Mart, and in 2008, Walmart Korea was merged entirely with Emart".

Nearby is another retail area, a few streets like this with different coloured roads which signifies you may be about to get run over while crossing the street between shops.

Quite a big network of shopping streets, but very quiet.

I headed back to Lotte Mart Maxx and found that it connects under the road to the Lotte department store. Well obviously I had to go explore the underground.

The Lotte department store basement had a nice selection of casual restaurants, which meant it was time for Bibimbap #2 of this trip. Much better than the first. I think it was vegetarian too? I did not even notice. The soup was actually really good, lots of chilli.

These 2 buildings make up the Lotte department store, they are joined, the one on the left is a Lotte Young Plaza, which exists in a few cities. This generally means it has a Uniqlo and a Muji. That is where I buy my clothes EXCLUSIVELY, which must mean I am young?

I then realised about a km away there was a phantom other department store. So obviously I had to go there to complete the photos of large box like buildings. The map tells me it is called Daedong, I did not go inside, but I did see while walking past that it has a cheap looking food court, so maybe I will go there tomorrow!

My journey back to my hotel went past yet another retail area, but a more standard Korean style, with the commercial looking buildings that are now restaurants, karaoke bars, love hotels and vape studios. Actually zooming in I can see study centres and internet cafes too. So everything.
Tomorrow is a hiking day, but probably a fairly easy hike. It is the most well known hike in this area.

This is where I changed buses. I do not really know where it was other than it was right on the edge of a very large industrial area. I only had to wait 5 minutes for the next bus, with the digital sign on the bus top telling me all I needed to know.

The view was excellent right from when I got off the bus.

My starting point on the map is labelled either Jinhae civic centre or just 'rest stop', however there are a lot of statues and things around, including this one of a robot handing a baby to an alien astronaut and a nude woman.

The first bit of the hike was up to a temple, and is a very steep road of sorts, but a road no normal car could go up without ruining the clutch.

It gets steeper.

So much steeper, but now I am at the temple area. Technically it is not on the Jinhae dream road trail, but I decided to make a detour.

Nice view, a very large amount of more view coming.

The line down the middle of the view is all cherry blossom trees.

Here is the temple. Very strangely coloured.

I was then faced with a sea of statues. I think every single one is different.

There is no way out the back of statue land, so this is wasted effort to get up here to take this photo.

OK, one more of the statues. I was surprised to have the place to myself.

Time to leave the temple area and get hiking.

First third of the hike is the heavily promoted Jinhae dream road, which looks like a road as you can see. You will not get lost, there are numerous opportunities to head up a rocky cliff on other trails, I resisted... for now.

There are many spots to stop and take in the view.

There is view in every direction too.

Down there is an air base and a navy base, you will see more of it soon.

The path along here is not really a hike at all.

Just in case I thought I was on the wrong road.

I was really enjoying the relatively smog free skies.

After climbing up quite high at the start, I actually then spent a couple of hours going down hill.

And then I rejoined the actual road for a few hundred metres. There were a lot of people walking along the boardwalk here. I enjoyed the landslide cover over the road.

There are blossom trees planted everywhere.

So many blossoms.

This is the point where I will about face and head up a real hiking path. As there were a few stairs to get up to here, no one else walking along the blossom filled boardwalk bothered to come up here.

I went back down again to find my hiking trail.

This is looking back in the direction of the main part of Changwon, where my hotel is. That looks like a rubbish dump. That would be an interesting choice.

It may be a hiking trail, however there will be a lot of blossom filled trees.

The trail started to get great. That is the direction from where I had come.

Parts of the trail where very rocky.

Here you can see the ridge full of cherry blossom trees, like a skunk stripe.

Almost the same pic, in the far distance you can see the communication towers on the top of the higher mountain from 2 days ago.

This is a summit of sorts, although the mountains do not seem to have names on the map.

Changwon is still there, but a large industrial area is between me and my hotel. I could walk down that way but there are still much more exciting bits of the hike to come.

The runway at the airbase is surrounded by golf course on both sides. It may actually only be for helicopters these days, does not look long enough for aircraft. The military seems to like a runway for helicopter operations.

The ridge was rocky and purple.

I will continue in this direction, you can see wooden staircases if you squint.

There was a steady trickle of other people today.

Nice rocks.

I could have gone down to the left at this point, but I was having so much fun I decided to continue to the next 2 peaks in the distance.

Probably another way down there, I will ignore it and keep going.

That will be my final peak of the day.

A peak marker, I guess it does have a name, I just don't know what it is.

That city area in the distance is the fish market where I was yesterday.

My path down went straight down here. It was hard to follow and very steep.

Right before embarking on the steep trail down, I briefly studied the map to see if I should just walk back to Changwon. I decided against it because walking through the industrial area would be boring, and result in too much sun.
So that is what a hike with a clear view looks like in Korea.

Time to follow the drain and see where it goes.

Hmm, it became a bit too much of an actual drain, although the reflection is good.

I headed back to Sangnam. Wet streets and darkness would make for some great shots. I am rarely out that late so dusk will have to do.

More.

Last one.

For dinner I headed to a pasta chain store, Rolling Pasta, I have been a few times before. Tonight I had the fire chicken, it was indeed quite spicy, I was happy with my choice.
I will leave extra time to get a bus to the train station tomorrow just in case a bus or two decides I am not fit for boarding.

The view from Changwon Jungang station is interesting, a new city area on the left, a new University on the right, plastic covered farm land in the middle.

It is quite a small station, but does have a convenience store.

I was the only person on the platform. I walked up and down the entire length.

Here is my fancy first class train seat. I am on my own, the other side of the aisle has 2 seats. Due to the sick guy nearby I spent about 8 minutes enjoying the first class experience, before standing near the toilets between carriages.

Arriving at Daejeon station and there is a political rally and or cult meeting going on. The station looks newer than I remember, perhaps they have replaced it since I was last here. I will do detective work comparing to my previous pics.

I was excited to go down to the metro through the crashed huge train. Actually it is an very long underground shopping centre too, I used it as a thoroughfare to the coin laundry.

The bridge is still the same, behind it appears to be an entirely new suburb, I will come back and do a full investigation later.

The coin laundry was small, but modern. I sat at that desk at the end of this photo and attended a work meeting on my laptop.

Now for 3 hotel room photos, behold the bed.

The desk is the same, the lamp is different to last time.

And the bathroom, exactly the same, but mirrored.

Final terrible pic of the day, my window view, of a garden in the government office building area. Tinted window, I did what I could to un-tint it.

Here in the new downtown area, all the buildings are new.

This is probably the main street, department store area on the right.

As you can see, there are a few buildings joined by elevated walkways. They have decided to go with the overused name of 'galleria'.

The nearby streets are a mix of nightclubs, bars, restaurants, and claw machines... so many claw machines, so much money laundering.

I remembered this area from my last trip.

Dinner tonight was a beef and mushroom hotpot. Many kinds of mushrooms. Is this my beef wellington moment?

And then I discovered mystery dong. At first I thought it was a red light district (it is right next to the government buildings after all), but upon somewhat close inspection, it is mainly restaurants.
Now ordinarily, tomorrow would be a hiking day, but the forecast says all day rain. In good news, I am here for 4 days and 5 nights, so I can move my hiking days around without missing one, and without having to pull off a double. So tomorrow is a non hiking day, with no plan. I guess I will see a lot more dongs.