Oh, the battle has no limits

To create even more original pieces is my desire

Nights I can’t sleep, ruminating

Thoughts about providing art meant dreams of uncharted mysteries

As an avant-gardist, I would battle my way to the farthest limits of the universe

Until I fall

Kusama Yayoi, “Creation is a Solitary Pursuit”

I thought Japan was a land of contrasts, but Korea…

Sometimes it’s a cutting-edge first world country, and sometimes it can look and feel like a third world country. The insane number of markets everywhere, with cheap merchandise of mostly low quality, the street vibe, people out and about in crocs and pajamas, yelling, spitting, crossing the street wherever they fancy, not being considerate of others, women setting up makeshift vegetable shops in the middle of the street, men opening up their vans to sell clothes in the middle of an intersection, just sitting on the pavement all day, waiting for costumers…

I’ve never been to a third world country (a day of sightseeing in Seychelles might not count), so I might have no idea what I’m talking about, but it’s interesting to contrast all this with the advanced metro and such.

19 May 2023

• Metro to Dongmyo station, metro to Taereung station
• Seoul Rose Festival (1h)
• 13:35-14:00 Taereung station to Beotigogae station metro, 14:40-14:50 Beotigogae to Samgakji station, 14:55-15:00 to Seoul station
• N Seoul Tower (~2h)
• Metro back to Dongmyo station

Seoul Rose Festival

After my couchsurfing mishap last night, I woke at 8:30, again with no back pain despite sleeping literally on the floor. Carrying my suitcase down an endless flight of stairs leading to the metro station changed that.

It was my first time of wearing western clothes in 12 days.

45-minute metro ride later, I made it to my hostel near Dongmyo station. It was so tiny, that there were barely two chairs inside the lobby for guests to sit on; a non-existent kitchen to use; and a cramped dormitory with the tiniest toilet room, which doubled as a shower.

I met a Canadian guy who was about to hike Bukhansan. Gave him some tips and my maps. Then, since no one else around wanted to exchange even a word, I headed out, when a hitherto unseen French guy (staying on the floor above me) left at the same time as me.

“What are your plans for today?”

“I have none,” he answered in a thick accent.

He was thin, tan, with windswept bangs messily parted in the middle. After a few minutes of conversation, I told him about the rose festival I was going to. He tagged along.

We took the short, direct train to Taereung station, crossed the bridge outside exit 8, and, at around 11:45, came face to face with an abundance of roses. They were round and enormous – not like the small, slender ones abroad.

“Oh god,” I exclaimed upon smelling a white-pink one with a divine, citrusy smell. “I need to start growing roses.”

He didn’t seem as into it as me, mentioning how he “didn’t do things like this”. With a suppressed smile and minimal speech, he struck me as a bit shy.

The festival itself was a letdown. There was a pretty rose garden under the bridge. Other than that, there was a rose-filled avenue, a small stage with nothing going on, and blue roses that seemed plastic, but also not really (we were dubious about those ones).

We ate a convenience store lunch on a bench. I learned that this was his second long trip to Korea. He’d come here for five weeks to practice Taekwondo with his Korean master from back home, as well as improve his Korean.

Mistaking the festival for something on a much larger scale, I hadn’t made any other plans for today. Thus, by 13:00, I decided to hike up to N Seoul Tower and watch the sunset from there.

N Seoul Tower

My companion suggested renting a bike: two hours of cycling there, followed by a 30-minute hike. Perfect. He enjoyed both activities, having already hiked Hallasan in Jeju island and Seoraksan in the east coast. He’d also rented a bike almost on a daily basis while in Seoul.

I downloaded the renting app, yet for some reason, it didn’t accept my credit card. Annoying. I wanted to cycle with him. Moreover, his bike rental had already begun.

So we split up. I took the metro bound south. Beotigogae turned out to be the wrong station to get off in – large, completely deserted, with zero passengers and walkability to N Seoul Tower (1.5h away). So I took the train to Seoul station instead, curious to check out the main station in the city, and waited for him there for an hour, until 16:00.

The central transportation hub of Seoul was disappointingly simple. Not a labyrinth. Not crazy, like in Tokyo or Osaka. More like Kyoto, Hiroshima, Sapporo. There was the KTX, Korea’s very own bullet train, but that was it.

I looked for a convenience store for a quick snack. Figured there would be plenty right in front of the station, like in Japan. It took me half an hour to find one.

Okay, so, maybe the station area was a bit labyrinthine.

Since he was running late with the bike, I walked for around 20m to Namsan Library, where the trail would begin. At 16:40, he arrived, and we climbed the flight of wooden stairs to the mountain. It wasn’t a hike, nor even a 30-minute climb. It took us 10 minutes.

At the top, there were countless locks of love (one of which was by a girl to the members of BTS), as well as a beautiful view of Bukhansan and the Blue House. A student approached us with handmade bokjumeoni (Korean lucky charms) she was selling to make some money. We each bought one out of mutual awkwardness.

He’d already went up the tower during his trips, twice. There was hardly any need for a third time.

I stood in front of the ticket office and wondered and wondered. Was the expensive ticket worth it? Did I really need to go up a tower for a magnificent view?

I’d already gotten that in Bukhansan. Hiking (and rock-climbing) all the way to the peak had felt infinitely more rewarding than taking an elevator to a tower. I passed on the opportunity, and went down the mountain with the French guy long before sunset.

Dongmyo

We took the metro back to Dongmyo. After no less than 30 minutes of walking around the main streets, we found a place that served a meatless option for me. Tofu stew at a restaurant designed like a hanok house.

Food in Korea was even hotter than in Japan. Both in temperature and, to no one’s surprise, spiciness. Steam all over my face each time I was served a dish.

After serving us, the waitress gave my companion an apron. He almost died of embarrassment.

“Why did she give you an apron?” I asked, chuckling.

“Because I’m a baby,” he said, again with that shy smile. “No. It’s because my shirt is white.”

My stew was good. His meaty dish was so spicy, that tears welled in his eyes.

He taught me some words in Korean, which he wrote in my notepad. I asked about Korea. He asked about Japan. Curious to visit it in the future, perhaps after a third visit to Seoul, he grew so interested, that he suggested us finding a Japanese restaurant in Seoul sometime in the next few days.

We returned to the hostel, left our heavy bags, and walked to nearby park for the cityscape at night. After climbing a tall, residential hill that felt more challenging than the way up to N Seoul Tower, we arrived at a quiet park, empty apart from the occasional local out on a stroll.

It was so much better than seeing the city from the tower. No one came here. No tourists. A hidden gem he had stumbled upon sometime in the last few days.

We drank strawberry milk (so delicious, that I gulped it too fast) and wandered at leisure. We tried various machines at the outdoor gym, including a “fat checker” wooden frame with vertical bars, spaced out to check which ones you could pass through, depending on your thickness. We both managed to wriggle through the thinnest one.

Spending almost a full day with this guy, I had the peculiar sensation that I hadn’t managed to grow close enough to him, or at least as close as I’d managed to grow to travelers I’d spent only a few hours with. We explored the city, ran jokes, and surmounted impossibly narrow bars together, yet I sensed some kind of a wall.

I’d grown used to people opening up as quickly as I had.

At 22:00, we returned to the hostel. I thought tonight would be the night I went to bed early. But then I met another French guy, a software engineer who worked 3 times a week remotely for 2.5 years now, traveling the world. The three of us chatted outside on the street, before bidding each other good night at 23:00.

Then I called my best friend from home.

Best Friend Break-Up

After not speaking for several weeks, our conversation quickly turned from “how have you been” to accusing each other of growing apart. We both said harsh things. Sitting on the doorstep to the hostel, it went on like this for an hour and a half.

The wall I’d felt near the French guy wasn’t comparable to my phone call at present. I explained my emotions without trying to embellish the situation. Even though I stood behind my words, I apologized again and again for the way they made her feel. She did not return the sentiment.

After dozens of apologies and expressions of regret for how things between us had become, I asked her if she was sorry as well.

She snorted with laughter.

The idea that she might have been in the wrong was that absurd to her.

“Your reaction is telling me everything I need to know,” I said in the end, and hung up.

I went to bed at 1:00, knowing full well I’d just gone through another friendship breakup, this one after nine years. I was more angry than sad.

Today’s highlights: the citrusy scent of the roses; chugging strawberry milk in front of the cityscape at night.

Stray observations:

• 70% of Koreans are Christians. Who would’ve thought.
• There are outdoor gyms everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Old people here take advantage of them on a daily basis. They are so fit.
• I keep saying “hai” (yes in Japanese) instead of “ne” (yes in Korean).
• Koreans eat super spicy food. They sleep literally on the floor. They hike barefoot. They’re made of steel.

20 May 2023

• Metro to Hongik University- back to my Hongdae hostel
• Yonsei University festival (~3h? no idea)
• 19:00-21:30 Lotus Lantern parade at Jongno street
• 21:30-23:00 Daedonghanmadang (post-parade celebration)

Yonsei University Festival

Today I woke at 10:00 and took my time in the morning. My only plan was to attend the Lotus Lantern Parade.

Since I was free until the afternoon, I could’ve used this rare opportunity to finally catch up on writing. My second to last blog post about Japan was still a work in progress. Yet the lack of a common area in my hostel meant writing in bed.

No thanks. I wanted to socialize instead.

Spoken like an extrovert, I thought, and returned to my previous hostel, from my post called the Table of Babel.

It wasn’t just my need to retrieve my charger that led me back there. I missed the vibe and the people.

The American student in Japan was there. He took me to Yonsei, a medicine and sports university, where a festival for something was being held. Neither of us knew exactly what. His Japanese friend, who was attending this university (fluent in Korean), had invited him.

Conversing in Japanese, the three of us grew nostalgic for Japan. We found a random ramen place, where I ate the spiciest cheese ramen on Earth. Then we entered the campus.

It was pretty lame, like yesterday’s rose festival, but the important thing wasn’t the event being held. It was spending time with people whose company I enjoyed.

Nevertheless, at times I felt like a third wheel. They were such good friends and better at Japanese than me.

They bought t-shirts of the university while I indulged in a blueberry pocky, a taste I hadn’t seen in Japan. We got free almond and soy milk drinks and attended a Japan vs Korea basketball match on campus.

The girls had just won 112 to 58. Japanese ladies gave us flags of Japan, which I used to cheer, despite wearing a hanbok.

“頑張って!” we told the men’s team as they went to the court. We also chatted with Japanese people in the audience. At some point, an Uzbekistan student friend of the Japanese guy joined us.

By the halfway point of the men’s match, everyone was screaming and cheering so passionately, that I recalled the sumo tournament in Osaka. Their excitement was infectious.

Japan won again, by 79 to 67. The time was 17:40. I’d missed Eoulimmadang (16:30-18:00 at Dongguk university stadium), a Buddhist cheer rally, which involved dancing and a dharma ceremony with a Gwanbul ritual (sprinkling water on a baby Buddha). So I said goodbye to my companions, who stayed on campous, and went to the lantern parade.

Yeon Deung Hoe was a Buddhist festival where prayer lanterns were lit for a bright and happy world. Hanji (traditional Korean paper) lanterns had been lit in Gwanghwamun square for most of the month; I’d seen them while walking around. Tonight, however, was the main event, with a huge parade.

Yeondeunghoe Festival

I arrived at 18:30 to Jongno road, the venue. The street was already full of people waiting on chairs. I found an empty spot and ate some snacks while waiting.

Since coming to Seoul, I’d been asking everyone I’d met if they wanted to attend the Yeon Deung Hoe. I’d been trying to recreate that rare day in Takayama festival. In the end, I was alone.

It didn’t bother me. The parade was even more joyful than Takayama. This was a celebration of life. Totally unlike western religion. It was happy.

I waved, did heart signs, and high-fived participators in the parade, all wearing traditional costumes, playing instruments, carrying enormous lantern sculptures lit up brighter and brighter against the darkening sky. The Japanese woman from Osaka who was standing next to me had moved to Korea, despite disliking this country, for work. It was the first time I’d heard a Japanese person call Japan “Nippon” (the formal alternative to “Nihon”).

The curious way in which she moved her mouth made me wonder if she was deaf, and used a hearing aid.

Ten days in Korea had shown me more people with disabilities than three months in Japan had. Blind, deaf, or wheelchair users; men without legs, dragging their bodies around markets. Now, at the parade, one of the groups included disabled participators at the forefront.

I wondered if this was the influence of the military. Why were Japanese people more abled-bodies?

My astonishment at the parade pushed those thoughts away. It was a true celebration. I repeated “annyeonghaseyo”, much to the delight of some of the participators. Some of the sculptures were hilarious, such as cars, or cartoon characters like Snoopy. Others were plain impressive, such as a fire-breathing dragon.

The groups that walked the parade included other Buddhist countries – Sri Lankan, India, China, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Vietnam – as well as students of the top university in the country, whose name I forgot.

At 21:00, once the parade was over, I walked parallel with it to Jangguk intersection for the next event: musical performances. I discovered that this was the first Yeon Deung Hoe in four years.

The performances included a rock band, a singer called Kim Taeyon, and Koyote group. When the latter finished performing, the crowd screamed for more.

Then cannons fired pink hanji, meant to resemble flower petals, into the air. It showered on the audience like cherry blossoms post-peak.

I joined the human train making circles under this pink rain. Everyone was high-fiving each other and jumping and cheering. Multi-racial, multi-cultural, this felt more than a Buddhist event. It was a celebration, plain and simple, a chance for everyone to get together and enjoy life.

It didn’t matter where you came from or how you looked. No one was left out. This festival immediately went down as one of the most joyful nights I’d experienced. And I couldn’t have been happier that I’d come to South Korea in May.

The concert ended at 23:00 sharp. I walked a straight line to Dongmyo for forty minutes, full of adrenaline.

Last night, I was full of it for all the wrong reasons. Tonight, like in Tokyo, I was high on life.

I crossed the city alone at dark. The streets were alight with colorful lanterns. The temperature was cool. Buses, trucks, drilling. Couples on a night out. I walked and thought and felt and sensed. It was one of those instantly memorable nights when I grew contemplative about my existence, my solitude, and the human race.

Today’s highlights: the atmosphere at the basketball match; the lantern parade; the pink rain and human train.

Stray observations:

• Ever since coming to Korea, I’d been surviving on eggs, rice onigiris, and protein bars.
• Not only disabled people – there are more overweight people in Seoul, compared to Japan.
• Korean guys were taller than the Japanese. I heard Japanese girls tended to prefer them over guys from back home.
• Koreans cut food with scissors! I was appalled, but it was a lot easier than a knife.
• I see way more churches in Seoul than temples.
• Japan would never have people sit on the steeet selling products and music playing loudly. Too laid back.
• Many Koreans have tattoos, unlike the Japanese. Here it’s not a sign of crime.
• Buses in Korea: you board in front of the driver, touch your T-Money card, and touch it again when getting off. In Japan, payment everywhere is contactless. Here, never.
• Something Koreans do have in common with Japan, however, is a tendency not to include their name and face in SNS accounts.
• Emergency equipment can be found in every station – for resuscitation, fire, flood… and instructions and ads inside the trains.

21 May 2023

• Seoul City Wall (~1h)
• Ihwa mural village (~15m? Idk it was very brief)
• Insadong shopping street (~1h)
• Yeon Deung Hoe, day 2 (~3h)
• A Japanese dinner at Gatten Sushi in Jongno
• Arcade in Jongno
• Back to city wall at night (1h)

Seoul City Wall

Today, I didn’t have any plans, again, apart from attending day 2 of the festival.

Thus, the morning began with the French guy taking me to Seoul City Wall. After climbing all the way to the top, we had a convenience store breakfast at an observation point. I tried black octopus ink mochi with matcha filling, which wasn’t good, because convenience store mochi never was. Also, my second host had told me matcha in Korea was fake.

The view of the city was nice. Then, per my request, we went down through Ihwa mural village.

There was nothing there.

Maybe one or two murals. It didn’t matter. Why did the internet recommend this place, I wondered, as we continued to Insa-dong street instead.

Insa-dong

Now this was better. A colourful, traditional street bustling with souvenir shops and eateries. The second day of the festival was already in full force, with traditional cultural events in front of Jogye-sa temple. Madangori (traditional performances), lantern making, Buddhist drawings… and tons of booths.

We waited in line at a booth where we picked a saying in Korean, and a calligrapher painted it on a hanji for us to take. (For free!)

I picked “everyday with no regrets”. Because no other mantra had instructed me as much in life. Every decision I’d made was based on intuition, in the end, even after careful, rational consideration. As I’d written in my final post in Japan, there was not one big decision I regretted, apart from one.  

The hanji I received in an envelope, I would hang someday on the wall of my apartment, should I ever have one.  

Afterwards, the French guy and I ate lunch on a bench, followed by a heotteok poop bread. Delicious and hilarious.

Jogyesa temple, at the heart of Insa-dong, was a letdown. Temples in Korea were like that. Not very big, not much to see, unless 108 prostrations interested you. I noticed Teaching of the Buddha, the same orange-coloured book that was in my room at the temple in Koya-san. Then I heard Ava Max’s Kings and Queens playing inside one of the prayer halls.

What.

We drank matcha for free at a Japanese Zen Buddhism booth (his first taste of this drink). Then we watched some of the musical performances. They ended with a group of people circling a tent-like float while holding ropes. I encouraged him to go with the audience members who joined them the first time. He was too shy.

The second time, I grabbed his hand, and forced him to follow me.

It was fun, and, as I’d felt since our first day together, a moment that showed how comfortable we’d grown around each other. I learned more and more about him today. He was a patisserie baker and an ice cream maker, who had studied and worked in this field throughout high school. Now, at 23, he’d become fed up with the repetitiveness of this vocation, and decided to quit.

After the performances were over, we killed an hour until the parade by wandering around Insa-dong, and watching the view from a temporary structure erected in front of it.

When the time came for tonight’s parade, I approached a guy who seemed Israeli to me.

“Hey, can I ask you a weird question? Where are you from?”

“France,” he said.

Of course.

He had a tattoo in Korean, having also possessed some knowledge of it. My companion spoke to him in French, but I did found out that this new guy would stay in Jeju island in the same area, at the same time, as me. So we made plans to meet there.

The parade lasted ten minutes. Tiny, compared to yesterday’s.

Tokyo in Seoul

My French friend again brought up the idea of a Japanese dinner. Quick googling yielded a conveyor belt sushi place in Jongno, five minutes’ walk away. Perfect!

The restaurant seemed as if it had been teleported from Japan. A conveyor belt, a sushi clock, toilets with bidets. Green tea, miso soup, soy sauce, wet napkins, hot and cold water. Even a waiting list at the entrance. All quintessentially Japanese.

The only difference was the tanks in the center with live fish.

I taught him how to eat and behave in a Japanese restaurant. We indulged in various sushi: tamago, squid, nattou, gunkan, onion shrimp, and cucumber rolls. Fried tofu with the spiciest sauce on Earth. (Why did the rare tofu dishes in Korea always feature that? Even the pickled ginger tasted spicier in this land.)

Whenever he ate something spicy, his eyes immediately teared up.

“I don’t like eggs,” he said when I urged him to try tamago.

“You’re a patisserie maker,” I said, “and you don’t like eggs?”

“Everyone always tells me that.”

After a wonderful dinner that introduced him to Japan and made me nostalgic for it, we stumbled upon something that transported me again to the land of the rising sun. An arcade.

It was just like in Tokyo. The games, the machines, the craziness. We raced against each other on Mario Kart and played Taiko no tataujin, a drum game. Basically, the same games I’d played in Shinjuku with the British student.

A Korean guy was playing (or rather, slaying) a rhythm game on the highest difficulty. He achieved a perfect score.

Seoul City Wall… Again

We walked the same path as yesterday back toward the Dongmyo hostel. The city wall at night invited us to return to the same spot as this morning, which was even more impressive in the dark. I couldn’t think of a spot in Tokyo that offered such a view over the city after a 15-minute climb.

The weather was cool and breezy, the city almost quiet, apart from cars and a few others visitors. There was light pollution here just as in Tokyo, but I didn’t mind it as much.

He taught me swear words in French and moves in Taekwondo.

“Do the shouting,” I said, referring to the yells Taekwondo players often emitted.

“No,” he said. “I am too shy.”

Yet by this point, after two whole days together, we were running jokes left and right, doing Taekwondo moves on each other, and revealing more aspects to ourselves. A gradual connection, after a weeks-long string of instant ones: it was no less gratifying, because in the end we teased each other and acted like friends.

On the way down from the city wall, he described to me in detail the process of making ice cream, and then tested my memory. Finally, back at the hostel, we said good night, and went to bed.

Today’s highlights: browsing in Insa-dong; conveyor belt sushi; playing at an arcade; the city wall at night.

Stray observations:

• Public Wi-Fi in Seoul, for such an advanced country, could not have been worse. Apart from the entrance to metro stations, my phone almost always fails to connect to it. The French guy put his hands together and placed his phone between his thumb and index fingers, praying for a connection.
• After almost two weeks in Seoul, I haven’t been able to form a personal ranking of the big three convenience stores. CU, eMart24, GS25: they were all the same to me, in the sense that the food always contained meat.

22 May 2023

• Dongmyo station to Jamsil (Songpa-gu office) station metro
• Seokchon Lake Park
• Seoul Olympic Park
• Jamsil station to City Hall metro, City hall to Seoul station metro, Seoul station to Gimpo Airport AREX (Airport Express train) (1h)
• Flight to Jeju Island
• 21:00-21:07 Jeju airport bus number 101 to Jeju bus terminal (plenty of lines stop there)

Jamsil

My last day in Seoul until July. It had been two intense weeks.

The morning started with a quick stop at a post office, to send my suitcase to Busan. I didn’t want to carry it with me to Jeju Island. I could survive with a small bag for five days.

The French guy joined me. Neither of us had formed plans for the first half of the day. It went without saying that we would take advantage of this final opportunity to hang out again.

“I don’t need it until Saturday,” I translated to the post office staff. “Can I do it slow?”

“No,” they said. “Only one day.”

Korea was so efficient sometimes, that the option of slow shipment did not even exist.

The price daunted me slightly. Yet it cost only 12,000 won for 1-day shipment from Seoul to Busan. In Japan, it would cost 25,000.

Afterwards, the French guy suggested visiting Jamsil, known for Seokchon lake park and Lotte World. I felt déjà vu to a few days ago with the Spanish guy. I agreed to his suggestion, because it didn’t matter to me where we went; I only wanted to spend time together.

“Your bag is suffering,” he remarked as we descended to the metro.

“My stitching got ruined,” I said. I’d stitched the torn pads a little over a week ago.

“I think, when you go back home, you will bury your backpack.”

We took the metro to Jamsil (Songpa-gu office) station and ascended to the street.

“Don’t look up,” he said.

“What?”

It took me a minute to understand why.

“Holy shit,” I exclaimed.

We were standing right next to Lotte Tower. The tallest structure in Korea, only 100 meters shorter than Tokyo Skytree.

Then we strolled around the lake. There was a piano for people to play freely under the bridge. Screams of people riding the roller coaster in Lotte Park. My stomach rumbling from a lack of breakfast.

We looked for a restaurant. Found one with meatless dishes in the form of a Japanese restaurant with tatami floors. A sight unfamiliar to him.

I ordered the sashimi bowl, while he got tonkatsu (Japanese pork). By now, I’d been having so much fun with him, that his avid interest in visiting Japan someday pushed me to extend an invitation.

“Someday, I hope to live in Japan,” I said. “Even if you go there years from now, you can come over to my place.”

He gave me that bashful smile.

“You will remember me?” he asked.

“I will remember.”

As I’d already learned after eating several times with him, his “ritual”, in his own words, was to buy something sweet after every meal. We went to 7/11 for dessert and then checked out the mall next to the tower. At the cinema, he used an advanced self-service machine to purchase a ticket for a movie in the afternoon.

Going up the tower cost money, so like in N Seoul Tower, our answer was no. instead, we walked under the scorching sun to the Olympic Park, where I read a caption in French on a monument.

“Did you learn how to read French?” he asked me.

“No,” I said, “I’m just omitting half the letters.”

“You have a Quebec accent, like an English version of French.”

The park was alright, with nice trees, walking trails, and a small lake. The outdoor contemporary sculptures, I found uninteresting.

As we made our way back to Jamsil, we noticed a Korean couple walking uphill backwards. I was again amazed by Koreans’ commitment to fitness.

Then, near Lotte Tower, came the time to say goodbye.

“Enjoy Jeju, and see you again in the future,” he said.

Our parting was as intimate as he probably would’ve allowed it to become. I turned his high five into a hug.

“Until next time,” I said. “Au revoire!”

“Salut.”

I recharged my T-Money card at the station (50,000 won had yielded me two weeks, until now – again, Korea was cheaper than Japan). As I took the train to the airport, it occurred to me that the only activities I’d done in Seoul in two weeks that cost me money were the secret garden (pretty and cheap, but not a must), as well as an arcade (cheap and fun). Apart from that, I’d managed to explore the city and tick off all the outdoors-y attractions on my list for free, before the weather would turn unbearable in summer.

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Flight to Jeju Island

One hour and two train changes later, I arrived at Gimpo airport, a smaller, closer to the city, alternative to Incheon. Gimpo-Jeju, as I learned by reading the flight schedule, was the busiest flight route in the world. Planes took off every five minutes.

There were only six other non-Korean passengers in my flight. The two I managed to exchange a word with were French.

I watched the sun set in front of my window. It extended a pink line through the sky, separating light blue and gray. The ball of fire sank into the hazy horizon.

The world outside the window soon turned dark. I thought about time and repetition, change and cycles. About people and my relationship with friends and strangers.

In the past – even on this trip – I’d been told that I’d developed an irrational tendency to expect certain things from people, things I’d taken for granted, yet never gotten in return. I pondered on my attempts at assuming what the other person thought or felt toward me, and how, more often than not, I was wrong.

When things didn’t work out, miscommunication or apathy were usually to blame. But when they did work out – when I formed a connection with a stranger, when we spent days together, enjoyed each other’s company, and grew close in no time – what was then to accredit? What did those people see in me?

This was a mystery I doubted I would be able to unravel. To consider myself from another perspective – to understand another mind and perceive, rather than assume, its inner workings – if I could do that, life would be simple.

Social connections tended to disappoint me, in the end. Even with friends. One day I experienced a growing bond with a new friend, and the next, someone who had promised to stay in my life disappeared altogether.

The latter had been happening even with people I’d grown close to on this trip. Something always went wrong, when it came to my interactions with others, and I couldn’t figure out what.

I didn’t know how people saw the world. I didn’t know what people saw in me. To be enough for others – to not disappoint or vex them – was a challenge I had to face every day. But to be enough for myself, and feel content with my present, was a hardship I might never prevail.

I landed in Jeju City at 20:30. No check in bag, no passport check: I walked straight out of the tiny airport to the bus. My hostel was one stop away, a mere seven-minute ride.

My hostel for the next five nights, a one-minute walk from the central bus terminal, was huge. Perfect for sightseeing the island without a car and for meeting travelers. I asked three Brazilian exchange students from Daegu if they were going to hike Hallasan tomorrow. They were. They’d picked an easy trail, while I the hardest (and most rewarding). Still, we exchanged details, in the hope of meeting on the peak.

One of them slept in my dormitory. He was so friendly and nice. Tomorrow would be his last day in Jeju, and, after hearing about my coming here with minimal research, he formed itineraries for my stay here, gave me valuable tips, and his map.

I used to think I didn’t need to know people. That I was perfectly fine on my own. I was still convinced in my ability to be self-sufficient and live alone. But it baffled me, how people came and went. Someday, I would like for them to just stay.

Today’s highlights: second Japanese restaurant in a row with the French guy; watching the sunset from up in the sky.