Hiking over Ingwangsan from Muakjae station and along the wall
More mountains! Actually more of a large hill, but an important hill. Todays mountain is called Inwangsan, and it is right in the city itself, overlooking not only the blue house where the president lives, but also the main palace. That will become an important bit of info shortly.
Because of its location, this hill was closed to the public until a few years ago, and there is still a large military presence on all the hills all around here, just in case. This particular hill is now open to everyone and the entire wall is lit up at night, there is another hill a bit closer to the blue house that you can apply to climb up, but its a lot of red tape and forms and passports and no photos are allowed. Anyway, once I climbed up this hill, there was an old man, who wanted to practice his English, then things got weird.
Our conversation started off as they all do, first he tells me he speaks English, then he asks me where I am from, then I am delivered a lecture on how as a westerner I would not possibly be able to climb up the hill without dying, only a real Korean senior citizen would possess the physical stamina to attempt such an amazing feat. I told him I would give it a shot anyway, you know, since its about 15 minutes to the top.
Then he told me that until recently, the mountains were closed due to the failed assassination attempt of the South Korean president by American CIA operatives pretending to be North Koreans. He also added that he wish they had been successful. I pretended to be in agreeance with his theories.
Then after another long pause, he decided a different strategy was required, and asked me if I knew about the tigers that still roamed this hill. Oh really? I asked him if he meant 200 years ago perhaps. No. He assured me that I must be very careful or I will be eaten by a tiger. I again pretended to be interested, and said I would keep a close eye out for tigers. He told me to not be so confident, his brother was eaten by a tiger in this very spot, last year!
Obviously because I have typed this, I made it back without being eaten!
I have a made a conscious effort to not just take mountain photos. So here is a public toilet to start the day. It is a nice public toilet, heated, spotlessly clean, and playing music.
Now its time to get climbing. Although this hill is easy to climb up if you use the main path along the wall (which you shall see soon), I had selected a route up over the back to make it a bit more challenging. I tend to do that, then complain that I get lost.
Korea loves to make their buildings out of bright white concrete. Today was a very high contrast day, tricky for photos.
Up there is my destination, it is really not far.
Of course, because I am in Seoul, theres another mountain in every single direction, leaving me to question if I had chosen the best one, or was the next one over better? Mountain FOMO, its a real thing. I am raising money for it. Actually later in the day I got attacked by some guys from South America collecting money to save Mongolia.
The path up was actually really challenging. Generally I dont find going up to be too dangerous, but I was glad I would not be coming down this path. A couple of times one of the rocks came loose and caused a small landslide, destroying the nice public toilet below.
Semi redundant photo, although here is the first view of the great wall of Seoul.
Lots of trees around here have consumed the plastic bottles left by other hikers. Actually I dont really understand this at all, I assume its to water the tree, but how did they get in there, and wouldnt drilling into the tree do more harm than good?
And here it is, the new ancient wall, complete with LED lighting, and a lot of power lines and military observation posts. Its white color makes for a blinding experience, both for my eyeballs and my cameras digital eyeball.
Despite being a more polluted day than yesterday, the view was great, and easily accessible to all if you are lazy. Since they have installed lighting I believe you can come up here at night....maybe I will? You cannot go all the way to those far off mountains because of military check points.
Great view of the city, and more wall, and the Seoul tower where I was last night. There is actually an ancient city wall under this new wall, and it forms a loop around the city, including up to the top of the Seoul tower in the distance. Maps suggest you can walk the whole loop, but the internet tells me parts are off limits.
Here is a bit more wall, and Bukhansan National Park in the distance. A lot of the time today I couldnt decide if my photos were too dark or too bright, which means too much contrast. I read about light and color a lot lately, it is a really boring subject.
Time to head back down the main route, along the wall, keeping an eye out for the tigers. Maybe this is photo of the day?
I decided now was an opportunity to stick my big ugly head in the frame, hair blowing across my face, nostrils flaring. My nostrils are pre flared at all times for maximum breathing efficiency.
Somehow this part of the wall was less brilliantly white. There were a lot of signs around warning me not to photograph any military stuff, and a lot of cameras on poles. I made it out without being stopped and questioned, probably for the best since I do not carry my passport with me.
The lower parts are a lot more colorful! I still dont know if blossoms are coming or nearly gone.
Strangely right next to the main palace is an old suburb for homeless folks. Some of these buildings look like they would actually fall down if I brushed against them as I went past. Also the road is ridiculously steep, a scooter coming up the hill delivering packages nearly flipped over backwards, the front wheel came off the ground!
Back at the main street, an area from where I have taken photos on previous trips. You can see the palace in the distance, and the seated statue of some sort of deity who brought Jesus to Korea. Also a crane.
This statue celebrates the samurai, and the positive impact Japan has had on Korea.
Here is the North Korean cheerleaders as seen at the winter Olympics. I do not know what they are doing in town.
Along the main road there are a large number of crazy people looking for ways to not work. I think there are both pro and anti American military movements setting up tents and riding ridiculous bikes such as this one.
The key to getting support for your message is to have as many flags as possible, and the lowest quality yet loudest volume loud speaker. Last time I was here the street had been barricaded off by students for a few weeks, who were copying the Hong Kong students. They all decided to end their protests when school holidays were over.
Now for a quick walk along the main sewer. Many Asian mega cities have decided to make their outdoor sewers a tourist attraction.
I remember it being greener and having more trees on previous trips? The lunch time crowd was enjoying their lunch while hanging out at the sewer stream.
Final pic of the day is my lunch. Because Seoul is so close to the mountains I can get back to town in time for lunch, on foot! Theres no need for a 2 hour plus train ride to get to a mountain. Anyway, todays lunch was cold noodles soaked in a sour red sauce, topped with random weeds and mystery meat. Those yellow pickled things served as a side dish are probably the highlight, I dont know what those are either but I like them.
Walking to and around the Dongdaemun culture park
I am almost certain last time I came to Seoul I went to Dongdaemun and called it Dong Demon. Because I am childish. But also does it really mean Eastern Demon? Dong means east. All I know is that it is the suburb with all the huge clothing markets and fashion malls that stay open until 5am, every night. It is also where the amazing architectural wonder of the culture park is, and even before I google that, I am certain it will have been designed by Zaha Hadid, who continues to design new buildings despite dying a few years ago. Surely her greatest ever achievement? I guess Jimi Hendrix manages to put out a new album every year so why not.
After visiting the alien invasion craft I found another bit of the ancient great wall of Seoul, they should just go ahead and reconstruct and light up the entire thing, the bits that do exist are all quite new looking, they arent fooling anyone, just make it a great tourist walk with ice cream shops and cafes all the way around. I loved the one in Xian, China.
After a predictable dinner, I found myself in a very nice part of town, called midtown I think, very clean modern and Japanese looking. I suspect it is a newly constructed youth orientated area to make the adjoining University more attractive. I further suspect that until recently it was a kind of red light district, but the christian parents of University students successfully petitioned the government to knock it all down and build over 900 coffee and cake shops instead. Now that I finished that story I realise I didnt take any photos of the actual area. Oh well.
I am back early tonight, so I can go to bed early, and get up early tomorrow, and go up a mountain a bit further away, that means I have time to channel surf the 100 or so tv channels in my hotel room. There are a few English language movie channels, but they are all extreme violence. This leaves baseball, golf, or k-dramas. So far when scanning the k-drama channels I am 10 from 10 of close ups of people crying in slow motion with sad piano music playing. Great stuff.
Its a street full of motorbikes and blazing sunshine. Actually its a street full of factories making paper and paper related products. Forklifts constantly reverse out into traffic without looking, trying to kill pedestrians. I am not a fan of forklifts driving on the road, how can the driver see over his payload?
I passed through a large market, very clean and modern looking.
It may have been clean and modern, but there were literally millions of dead fish staring at me. It had absolutely zero smell though, not sure how they have managed this trick, perhaps all the dead fish are plastic? Perhaps I have lost my sense of smell?
There it is, the Dongdaemun culture and art fashion park. Which really was designed by Zaha Hadid. Theres a guy taking a photo of that huge statues ass.
I took plenty of photos of the place last time I was here, so no need to repeat that. Admittedly that was years ago with a far inferior camera, but back then it was Seoul fashion week and there were models parading about.
This time I learned that the whole place is built on an ancient palace and part of the ancient city wall. They left a few piles of rocks, grew some nice trees, and then decorated it with a huge red suitcase.
These are all plastic flowers with an LED light in them. It is a temporary exhibit, and ends soon. I probably should have checked it out after dark to see if all the lights were working, I think it made for a nice enough photo at dusk.
I had a predictable dinner in the basement of a fashion mall open until 5am. The place has been modernized since I was last here, it is a very nice food court now. Anyway, my predictable dinner was bibimbap, some kind of wild mushroom variety, it was delicious and so was the miso. I eat bibimbap at least once a week in Melbourne also. In other news, once again my camera seems to have taken a flash photo without a flash?
DOOTA is the name of the place with the good food court in the basement, if you are ever here at 4am wanting dinner, this is your place.
I passed over this sewer in the afternoon, but I am back again at dusk with these weird clothing wholesaler buildings each side, so I decided it was worth another photo.
Unfortunately I missed photographing this hill by a few minutes. A few minutes prior the sun was shining on it making it red with all the reflections off the windows. It reminds me of a Japanese regional city for some reason.
And just in case you did not get enough great Seoul wall earlier, here is a bit more! You can never have too much wall in a day.
The last photo of the evening comes courtesy of an overpass, which allows for a long exposure to get some STARBEAMS. Good times. Tomorrow... more mountains!