Korea - HK - China - KORKONG! - Page 3

I had to change from the subway to a train at a very cold, very windy location famous for its hot spring foot spa. It was concerning that it was so cold and windy, I had elected to hike without my coat today because on all previous hikes I carried it the whole way, and today was forecast to be warmer.

My bus, a 7-eleven, and a bit of fog.... nothing too bad.... Bloody cold though, better get moving.

If you are reading this wanting to do the same loop course that I did, or you just want to avoid the $4 entrance fee, TURN RIGHT HERE.

It started to look like rain at this point, I was getting concerned, wet and freezing might be bad! I went to see the local evil high priest for advice.

I decided to sit and ponder the weather with these 2 cats in the local Ediya coffee shop. In addition to cats they had a sewing and knitting corner and a library. Ediya is not some small boutique store, its a national chain like Starbucks.

The scenery was not great, but I decided to set off into what looked like rain.

The path at first was rewardingly rocky. My poor shoes are wearing out fast clamouring over all this granite. Every Korean hiking trail is sharp granite.

Fog ahead! Fog ahead! I am sure it will pass in a few minutes.

DENSE FOG.

Here are some pagodas, they have real historical significance. Trust me.

Here in the fog somewhere is a snack bar and outdoor seating to enjoy the view.

Thinking back to the tiger eating some guys brother story from a couple of days ago, I was thrilled to see that on this mountain you can ride your tiger around and get him to attack monks.

After a lot of ascending in the fog, the ascent got too steep and needed vertigo inducing stairs. It never rained despite constantly looking like it was.

Behold the view! This is the first of many views. They call all the peaks the roosters comb. Lots of mountains claim to have a roosters comb. There was no view, just white.

I enjoyed carefully going along the ridge between the peaks. It probably looked much more dangerous than it was due to the fog.

I made this peak look much more precarious than it was. But OK, I had to scale up here like a pro rock climber, hoisting myself up hand over hand, during a thunderstorm in a gale force wind.

My brave rock climbing exploits got me to the main peak, what a view!

A really nice spot to sit and enjoy the view, I imagine.

After appreciating the wonderful view, it was time to descend in the fog, carefully.

Is it actually getting worse?

And then, I heard oohs and ahhs from above, birds started chirping, and the fog disappeared, suddenly! Just minutes after I had left the summit area.

The path down was very nice looking without the fog.

It might still look foggy to you, but to me it looked crystal clear. I now realised the cliffs were steep.

Here you can even see a bit of blue sky and sunshine, if you squint hard.

And then I was back down, and entering the Buddhist temple through the back entrance, enjoying the fluro lanterns in brilliant bright sunshine.

Nice shot of the temple and the mountains in the distance, thats now smog not fog. Also earlier I saw a dog.

The main entrance to the Buddhist amusement park has lots of junk to buy.

I think that is the first peak I hiked over much earlier in the day, in the fog.

The road back to the bus stop was lined on both sides with shops selling questionable goods and services. Scissors that can cut through a shoe, tarot card readings. Why would you want to purchase kitchen scissors on your way to go hiking? I guess you never know when you might need to cut through a shoe.

Look at the blue sky!

And for my last photo, its basically the same as one of the first photos, taken in the same spot to show the difference. Actually it doesnt look all that different, the camera hides the truth. At this point it was blindingly bright, at the start of the day it was almost dark.

My first pic of the late afternoon come courtesy of a convenient highway overpass. As usual I have selected a course that sees me walking directly into the blinding sun. Those are however the mountains that were covered in fog as I was climbing today that you can see here in the distance.

Here are some numbered apartment blocks. I believe they are actually quite nice. Certainly the bottom 3 or 4 levels of every single one are shops and restaurants.

So many blossoms. 2 shades of white and a bit of yellow. Yes I know the horizon is not level in this shot.

My walk took me across at least 4 rivers such as this, all had nice walking / bike riding trails. I wanted to go running along them.

Eventually I could not resist and went down to go along the path. Great light here.

This is just an example of a nice street in Daejeon, in an area I was not expecting to see too much at all.

And here is another nice street, this one has hiking gear shops all the way along it.

I think I have taken a photo of this sign on a previous trip. They play some interesting sports here. In Japan you can get cream filled kolon.

And here is an example of the foot spa area. One of the brown signs above the road referred to it as 'foot spa world theme park'.

You might recall last night I did not photograph my dinner due to it being street food requiring both hands and to eat standing up. I did try to make up for it with a photo of the pancakes that I ate, but to really make up for it, tonight there are 2 photos of my dinner! Part one, cheap bibimbap. It had a lot more vegetables than you normally get. I suspect thats because its cheap, but actually I wanted the extra vegetables.

Part 2 was some mystery meet dumplings. I clearly over ordered but gave it my best shot. This place was one of countless almost identical little restaurants underneath the giant apartment blocks, plastic tables and terrible lighting. They have no English menu and no English speaking skills. No problem, I waved at Auntie, and we went out the front and I pointed at the pictures on the window. I got what I wanted.

Last photo for tonight is one I promised last night. This is what all the streets near my hotel look like. They are generally all hotels of questionable moral standing, bars, massage places, karaoke lounges and of course restaurants. Nearly all the restaurants are bbq and you cant really do that on your own. Now I will go to sleep, early.

The first park of the day, still quite early. I had already walked through the very very closed until 11AM centre of the city at this point.

Well at least you get a story.

This was the start of the main park, split in two, I think they call it the arboretum. There was definitely an 'oak zone'.

Splitting the arboretum was this massive pedestrian concrete marching area / speed skating course. The really strange thing about it is that roof is on wheels, and theres a few pieces of it that can slide along to different positions. Why though? Why not just erect a permanent roof?

The speed skaters on rollerblades were really going very fast, which made the fact that pedestrians and kids on scooters can also just wander across the track a particularly dangerous situation. I saw a number of near misses just while I was standing here waiting for the photo, one little girl chased a ball into oncoming speed skaters. I helped out by sliding the giant roof along the tracks a bit.

The park has an impressive mound to climb up and appreciate the view from. Behold, many blossoms, and a clear sky. It was very warm at one point, I would guess about 20 degrees, but then after lunch it got cloudy and quite cold. Discussing the weather really is very boring.

It was now time to head to the great expo park, I was super excited, who knows what wonders of the modern world await?

While crossing the expo bridge I identified where I will be going tomorrow. Assuming I can work out which bus to take.

Yes, its a sign, but its a sign that says 'Daejeon traffic culture institute'. These are the sorts of things that now occupy the former expo site.

And here is golf world. That is a 5 storey (story) high metal golfer statue. You really can go into that place to get corrective surgery to improve your golf swing. I researched who uses storey and who uses story and considered just typing level, then I saw that storie is also acceptable. Yay English.

On my return journey I passed yet another park, this one is a prehistoric park, complete with straw huts with cctv.

The main part of the city was now open, the big mall thing had 3 basement levels, the third of which was a very nice food court, very metallic and minimalist.

I decided to have vegetarian spicy gimbap, actually quite spicy this time. Very good. Nice soup also, no idea what it is, chicken, miso, dirty dish water, who knows.

Between the city centre and my hotel were a number of universities and street areas that look like this. I will walk past again tonight at night and be blinded by all the flashing billboards.

And just like Japan, Korea has no bins at all, only bags. Piles and piles of bags of garbage on the street at all times. This is how you get a good recycling outcome, make all garbage visible at all times!

THUMBS DOWN. Here is one of the squillions of cafes. Each time I mention how many there are I multiply it by a thousand.

The main shiny street, full of larger department stores. However dont be fooled, most of the shops in Korea are under the street. Like all Korean cities there are kilometre long malls under the street. Although this area does not have a subway, there is still an under street arcade, however it is nothing compared to the one near the main station that connects 3 subway stations.

This is a very colorful, very nice area. The eating places are a bit more international, more than just bibimbap, gimbap, bbq.

To celebrate a street with non Korean food, I had Japanese Ramen, and it was actually very good. I got the spicy version, sat at a bar just like in Japan, stared through the window to the kitchen to see if I could tell if the chefs were Japanese or not. I couldnt tell. But they made good Ramen.

My journey home was colorful, as ever. I even saw an Indian guy! Standing on a corner taking photos like me. Daejeon does not seem to be popular with white people / subcontinentals. At least while I have been paying attention. I do think there are a few Chinese people, I saw a lost looking large tour group earlier carrying lots and lots of boxes of shopping. This post sounds racist, but I dont view the world through blinkers, a black person is black, an Indian person is Indian or maybe Pakistani, a white guy is balding and middle aged. In a crowd full of Koreans that is what makes different stand out. I stand out for not only being white balding and middle aged but also for being angry looking, and dressed like a homeless person. Perhaps hundreds of Koreans went home tonight and said 'I saw an old white balding angry homeless person!', thats my dream.

And as a special treat, here is a can of chupa chups. It is actually a drink, not a can full of lollipops.

Getting to the base of the mountain to climb over to get to the start of the clay trail required the subway, and then a bus. I had chosen my bus wisely, route number 2, red 2, it comes every 5 minutes. I followed my progress on my phone and got off in the middle of nowhere and was greeted by a grey day. It would soon be bright sunshine. Annoyingly this is the only location in all of Korea where there is no convenience store within 3 metres of where I am standing. I had to walk about 5 minutes down the road to buy water and double back to my starting point.

There is the rather small mountain to climb over, that was not the goal today. Actually the road up to the mountain was the steepest part.

Along the way I made a friend.

The hiking trail proper had a very impressive golden something to let me know I was in the right place.

Note that the important grave has Chinese characters, because China > Korea.

This was the last bit of the path up to the top of Gyejoksan, well formed well signposted path today.

The view from the top was ok, trees in the way, too much smog, but many white identical apartment blocks below.

Here is a bit more view in an even smoggier direction.

I had gone very hard up to the top, you can see I am sweating. It is not cold at all today. Korean people like Japanese people are very concerned if anyone starts sweating. All it would take would be for me to step in front of a fan and I would die instantly. I am having a great hair day though!

The path down to the path with the clay was purple.

They love to pile things up in Korea, bags of rubbish, rocks.

And this is where I joined the looping clay track. There were lots of little stalls set up around the front side of the course, but none on the back side. Also, old people exercise machines.

So there you go, walking barefoot prevents diabetes, eliminates unwanted ghosts and apparitions.

Another pile of rocks, also a pile of red clay. The clay is not naturally here, the government has trucked in about a quadrillion Korean tonnes of HWANGTOGIL, and then they have to wet it hourly during barefoot walking festival season.

This will give you an idea of the clay path, seen here on the left.

It is genuinely impressive that they managed to do this for 13km, and I can confirm there were no gaps and it does go all the way around even on the remote back side of the course.

Bees! Millions of angry bees! I had to charge through here screaming.

Around on the back side of the course there were basically no other people, but there was a view of a dead looking forest, and some more smog.

Down there is a bit of a very large lake which I believe has a running / cycling track all the way around it. Its a shame I am not here another day to also run a lap of the lake (I go back to Seoul tomorrow). I have run laps of big lakes in Taiwan and Japan in recent years.

Nearly time to head back down, heres some more apartment buildings. UBIQUITOUS!

Behold, the same spot where I started, albeit shot from a different angle. Loop completed!

And as a last shot for the day, a swamp with people fishing in it. I remember passing it on my way up and thinking, thats a strange spot for a sewage farm. But no, its a fish farm. Actually it might be both.

On the far side of the station, there was a nice drain, with flowers, blossoms, and a whole heap of parked cars? I worked out this is for insurance purposes. If you want a new car, park it here, and hope for a flash flood.

As mentioned above, the sunset was great, but it was on the far side of where I was, here are some buildings, in the glass you can see a reflection of the beautiful smogset.

My dinner, its pork I think. At some point a non Korean has obviously come to this place and gone insane because they were served pork. Either that or the local propaganda jesus station is popularisng the idea that Americans (clearly I am one to all Koreans) will die if they eat pork, due to inferior digestion powers.

This was a surprise, I came out of the station and thought, wow, everyone must be lining up for last minute tickets home or something. But no, its the breadline! For people not familiar with depression era history, its a line of poor people waiting for free food. You cant quite see it here, but theres a guy on the ground who got in a fight and lost. Melbourne has similar to this I guess, a lot more trucks and a less orderly line, but probably more people in total, I suspect in Daejeon this is THE (one and only) free food for poor people line.

After getting my free food, I headed down into the underground shopping malls. There was no great spot to take a km long shot of a corridor, but they are genuinely a km or so long, in multiple directions. So there you go.

If you have seen a bunch of Asian kids lined up out the front of foot locker in Australia, they are Korean. In Korea, they are also Korean, and shoe shops are everywhere. The only hobby more popular than hiking in Korea is shoe collecting. A funny contrast to the breadline shot above.

I headed back under full motion video roof, currently playing advertisements.

The rubbish thing is quite strange. Every pillar under the video roof, which is by all accounts the star attraction of Daejeon, has an area for placing big bags or rubbish. And then every spot has a poor person who won the fight to stake out their spot going through the rubbish. So there you go, the way to get a great recycling outcome (Korea leads the world by some measures) is to leave the rubbish proudly on display in popular areas and then have enough poor people to sift through it constantly. Problem. Solved.

Here is just another street of shops, enjoy.

This dude was advertising for a live fish eating restaurant. you get a small fish tank on your table and a pair of tongs to catch your own fish, which you then eat while its still alive. They are quite small, so its a real skill if you can swallow one live without chewing to get a nice full feeling in your stomach.

Last shot tonight, a real actual game of tetris occurring on the roof. I saw the person playing it at the information booth thing advertising the great wonder of the Daejeon animated roof. Tomorrow - back to Seoul.