Raw Audio Journal Setup

Edo 0:01

This episode is a little different. There's no studio, no carefully crafted recap, and only a minimal amount of editing standing between you and our questionable decision making. What you're about to hear is a collection of field recordings from a ride across South Korea on the cross-country bicycle route. There were long stretches along rivers, quiet country roads, steep climbs, unfamiliar towns, beautiful landscapes, and plenty of moments when we had no idea what the next day would bring. Each recording was made at the end of a day on the bike, usually from a hotel room, guest house, love motel, or wherever we happened to collapse for the night. So what you're hearing are our real-time reflections the highs, the lows, the surprises, the sore legs, the people we met along the way, and the occasional moments when we wondered whose idea this trip was in the first place. Mine. It was mine. Think of this episode as an audio journal from the road. No polished hindsight, very minimal editing, and lots of rambling. Just two tired cyclists trying to make sense of the day's adventure before falling asleep and doing it all again the next morning. So grab your helmet, fill up your water bottles, and join us as we paddle our way across South Korea.

Flying With Bikes And Jet Lag

Edo 1:48

You look very excited.

Anna 1:51

Yes, we are on the plane. Just feels so good to finally be on the plane with our bikes in the boxes, which I'm a little nervous about, but it's just good to be finally taking off.

Edo 2:15

It was a bit of an adventure to get here because we had the bikes boxed up a few days ago, but then today we had to readjust everything, take them out. It took a little longer than we had planned, but then we boxed everything up. We made sure that the weight was okay, but then even that was in the end turned out to be unnecessary because once we got to the airport, we decided to buy an upgrade to a business class. Because we usually we're not we're the kinds of travelers we are. We cycle, we hike, but we know that these seats recline, and I'm planning to sleep because it's nine 9.01 p.m. right now. It's gonna be uh an overnight flight. We will be arriving in Seoul at 4 p.m. tomorrow, which will be 9 a.m. Rome time approximately. I think it's gonna be like 7 maybe because they said it's only gonna take 10 hours and 40 minutes. I have to say the the airport was mostly empty, didn't take us much to go through security and everything and checking our bikes, even though we had this two bikes, and then we had them wrapped up in foil or whatever it's called. Let's call it it was like a red thing. All of this was going to be on our Instagram page anyway. And now we're finally on the plane. The plane doesn't seem too full. The the plane is looks a little old. It does look a little old and well lived, but it's very comfortable. The seats are comfortable. And the the flight attendant came and asked us what we wanted for dinner. It's a whole Korean meal, so our very first Korean meal. Yeah, anything else you wanna add? No, she's just very excited. She doesn't want to add anything. So, unless something happens, I think we'll be recording once we arrive in Seoul. And maybe once we get to the hotel, I don't know what the airport is gonna be like there, but there's gonna be a lot to do because we will have to take our bikes, find a taxi, and drive to the hotel, try to stay awake until it's time to go to bed. Because again, I think the um the jet lag will be brutal because we will be arriving at 7 a.m. in Italy. And it's gonna be 4 there, so we have to try. I think we're gonna have more trouble falling asleep than staying awake, actually, because it's gonna be 7 in the morning for us, so we can't go to bed at 4 pm, 4 a.m. And that would still be 7 p.m. So yeah, we'll see what happens. We're gonna try to get some sleep now after our meal, and uh yeah, talk to you in 12 hours. Bye. It

Incheon Arrival And Missing Bike Panic

Edo 5:00

is currently 9.20 p.m. We are in Incheon, 20 kilometers outside of Seoul. We are in the hotel, we had dinner. We arrived here, I want to say something like maybe around six hours ago, five or six hours ago. And it's been a bit of an adventure, but let's go in order. Flight was fine. We did get the upgrade to business class, first time ever for us, I think. Except like when I was a kid, but that doesn't count. And it was great because we actually slept throughout the whole flight, which originally I thought it was going to be a bit of a problem because of the time difference. We arrived here at 4 p.m., 3 or 4 p.m. which was just around eight or nine in the morning in Italy, and I thought, okay, it's gonna be four, I'm never gonna be sleepy by the time we get to bedtime here, but we are pretty devastated, so it's time to go to bed.

Anna 6:07

Why don't you tell the story of what happened from the airport there were very few people on the flight, so we go to oversized bag luggage collection, and we had to figure out who to ask because our the big boxes that the bikes were in were not on the belt with all of the other luggages. And the thing is here, no one really speaks English. But we did manage to find someone who spoke English, and so one of the boxes he brought us directly to where the oversized luggage was coming out, and one of the boxes was there, but we had to wait a good 10 minutes, 10-15 minutes for the other box. So we asked, he said, no, it's here, it's arrived. We're just waiting it for it to come through on the belt. So that was a few minutes of panic because we hadn't considered that if only one of the bikes had arrived.

Edo 7:07

Yeah, we thought okay, if both bikes are missing, then okay, we'll figure something out, but we never really planned for if only one is here. I think what he said happened was that the the bike was probably stuck on the belt somewhere. I think that's what he said. And somebody had to go unstuck it. Okay. I think. So we and then we put our big old bikes, the boxes on a cart, on a trolley, and we go outside. We follow all of the lines, everything's very clean and orderly. Everybody was standing in like an orderly cute for the bus, for the taxis, very different from where we're from. We finally managed to hop on a taxi. The taxi driver speaks no English at all. Again, it's not really something that we can complain about because we don't speak Korean. So thanks to technology, though, we managed to tell him what the address of our hotel is, and so we start the drive thinking that we would have been at the hotel soon-ish, right? So we could relax, but what happened then?

The Hotel Garage Entrance Mystery

Anna 8:27

The so we arrive at the hotel and there's no kind of looks like a driveway into a loading dock type area. There's no reception, there's no nothing that looks like an entrance, there's no street entrance. It looks like we're entering from the back of the hotel where the loading dock would be, where they drop off food, towels, delivery trucks. And so the the driver is trying to figure it for trying to figure this out. Finally, we manage to understand that he's looking for a phone number of the hotel. I have a moment of, oh my gosh, did I book here? Where and so I find I pull up the email and the booking, get the phone number of the hotel. He calls, the driver calls, is speaking to someone at reception, someone who works for the hotel who wants to speak to us. This person does not speak English at all. Finally, though, we were able to give the my last name. So this woman who worked for the hotel was able to pull up our booking and tell the taxi driver which garage was that.

Edo 9:40

Yeah, but so what the taxi driver did not know is that so we saw this big sliding door, like this big garage door for the hotel. He did not know, and this person on the phone told him that all he had to do was drive up to it and it would automatically open. And it does. And so we go inside, and all we see are all of these numbered parking garages, each one with its own sliding roll-up door, how would you call it? Like the big garage door. It's it's gonna it's almost like a curtain.

Anna 10:11

Yeah, it's made out of like plastic fabric.

Edo 10:14

Yeah. And so I thought at first I thought, because outside of each of these sliding roll-up fabric doors is a picture of the room with the numbers, and I thought, oh my god, are we sleeping in a garage? But then we remembered, no, like there was an option for like ocean view, different kinds of rooms. The rooms had windows, so we thought, okay, no. Basically, the person on the phone tells him that our room is 288. He pulls up to like lot 288.

Anna 10:47

And every parking garage. Yeah, a parking garage.

Edo 10:51

It's a parking garage. So we go to lot 288. Everything is automatic. We have not seen a single person in this hotel. The court, the hallway looks like the back rooms, it's creepy. We haven't seen a single person. Everything is automatic. So the taxi driver lets us go, he leaves.

Anna 11:14

It's very clean, very neat, this garage, and then there's this very nice granite staircase that goes up to a little landing area, and there's the door of our room. So there's the door into our room, which is a very nice hotel room, and then the other, there's another door that enters into the hotel, the corridor of the hotel, but it looks like the back rooms. So there's no one around, there is no reception, there's a fridge with water that you can take for free, and there's a microwave because I guess apparently people eat a lot of the noodles that you heat up in the microwave. And I paid for breakfast because I was trying to make notes of which places I had paid for or when they would be taking the money for my card, if we had paid for breakfast. There was an empty room downstairs on the ground floor with tables and chairs and a microwave. But it doesn't look like a place that they're gonna be putting out any breakfast buffets. We'll find out tomorrow. But it's very so it's kind of creepy, but it's very clean. The room is nice, the warehouse-esque corridors are they're clean, but there's just no one around. And so we go out, and it's actually, I guess it would be quite pretty if it was a nicer day out. It's on the water of this bay. The water doesn't really look salty, it's industrial, but anyway, there's a little there's a port. There's a port. So it's a so it's a port close by, but there is this sort of walkway bike path that goes along the water. And there are a little a collection of stores right on the water. There's a 7-Eleven, there's another convenience store, there's a couple bike shops selling nice cycle gear, clothing. There's uh a few restaurants, a few coffee shops that sell looks like all different kinds of iced coffee drinks. So there's definitely places to to eat and for the things that that we need. And it's it's a little bit it's a little bit dreary, kind of raining. It's been raining all day, and because of the the port, it's it's sort of an industrial area. But we walked through a park, we walked over to where we will get our passports in the morning, so we check that out. There, we people okay, no one speaks English at all. But well, we did find one one guy who spoke English coming out of this sort of office area where the where the registration area is for the cycle path. And he came up to us and he was like, Where are you going? Are you lost? Where's your hotel? And we were like, No, we have a booking. He asked if we had a booking. He offered us a ride. He was coming out with his co-workers, and you don't have an umbrella. Yeah, it was very but really, really sweet, like very kind, and also in the restaurants. Oh my goodness, it's such an adventure.

Edo 14:34

Yeah, you're skipping a lot. Okay.

First Meals And First Night Plans

Edo 14:36

Wait, let me let me fill you in with speaking of food. We had this nice dinner yesterday on the plane before we slept around 10 p.m. Rome time, and it was rice and beef and vegetables and the bibimbap. Yeah. And then again, the the flight attendants spoke English, but it wasn't that good, or at least we couldn't understand it that well with the noise of the plane. And so they said, and then apart from this, do you want chicken or the sausage? Do you want dumplings? And we were like, yeah, thinking they were gonna be like a second course, but no, we eat that thing, and then they're like, Can we uh clean this up, take this away? And like, yeah. And then they just turned off the lights and it was bedtime. We ended up having chicken, like rice chicken, and you had a sausage for breakfast this morning. But then again, was it breakfast and dumplings? Was it breakfast? Was it lunch? Because it was lunchtime in Korea, but it was six in the morning in Italy, so we had all of these salty savory thoughts.

Anna 15:36

I feel like I've had a lot of typical Korean experiences already on the plane. I had the bim bum bop. I had I did a face mask, that was really nice. The Korean girl sitting next to me, she put a face mask on.

Edo 15:48

So I said that weird red light that she had.

Anna 15:51

Yeah. She had beautiful skin, she was probably older than me. I think so. I think she was like 19. Or maybe she was just Korean. Yeah. But she put one of those face masks on, so I did so as well. This is the face mask offered on the airplane.

unknown 16:10

Yeah.

Edo 16:11

And so once we finally get to the hotel, we've we get to our room, we relax a little, and we decide to take a walk to find the see if we could have made it in time to buy the passport today, but we didn't make it in time. So as Anna said, we explored those little stores, the 7-Elevens, the bike stores, etc. And then on the way back, we found this restaurant where lots of locals were eating at. And again, we had I think I had beef stew with noodles, and it was a soup, and you had a chicken soup. And we had these dumplings that were huge. Huge. I I ordered the f portion with five dumplings, thinking they were gonna be like the dumplings that we get in Italy. Each one of those was like twice as big as the ones. I don't think those dumplings had meat. It did, they did? Okay. And originally I thought, oof, I'm a big guy. What am I gonna do with soup? I couldn't finish it. It was so nutritious. So yeah, we had a very nice dinner. Anna bought because the first thing we saw out of our window was a cat. Anna was super fascinated by this cat who had two kittens. So she went to the 7-Eleven to buy a single serve thing of cat food. And the guy at the 7-Eleven.

Anna 17:32

Nice cat food in a little container.

Edo 17:34

In a little container, and the guy gave her noodles, no, sorry, gave her chopsticks. Anna was gonna eat that. I don't know. And so we we ate and then we went back to the 7-Eleven. We bought a box cutter that we used to open the boxes with the bikes because we had some things that we need to take upstairs, and then we bought some mystery Korean candy because we hadn't had anything sweet. There's no sweet things. So now, as I said, it's at this point it's probably 9.30. Yeah, we've been talking for like 15 minutes. It's gonna be a long episode, and I think we're gonna probably sleep very soon. Maybe watch some Korean Netflix. I don't know. And the plan for tomorrow is to assemble the bikes in the morning, assemble all of our bags, cycle around, see if everything's fine with the bikes, go back to where we were earlier this afternoon to get the passports for the where we can put all of the stamps for our big trip. And I think that's all we're gonna do tomorrow, right? Yeah, I think that's all we're gonna do. And maybe if everything is fine with the bikes, we might explore where there is another park that's five or six kilometers away. It's got a lot lots of Starbucks. Not that we want to necessarily go to Starbucks, but maybe there's more shops and stuff there. We'll see. We're just gonna take it easy. Alright, anything else you want to add before we go to bed? No? Alright. Okay, thanks for listening so far. This has been our first day here. We won't be cycling yet tomorrow. We'll be cycling in two days. So let's see what tomorrow brings. Bye.

Breakfast Through A Wall Slot

Edo 19:23

It is September the 2nd, it's 10.30 p.m. We just came back from our dinner. Today wasn't obviously as eventful as yesterday, but we did do some interesting things. We just finished troubleshooting our microphone, which has been on a few adventures with us now. The last one we did, if you listen to that episode, it's called Warriors and Magic, when we did the Camino degli Intrepidolarte is when we actually lost it on the trail, and then some other people found it. It seems to be recording fine, but the screen stopped working, so we're going in blind. But I did some testing and it seems to be working fine. Alright, so here's Anna, and she will tell you what we did starting from this morning.

Anna 20:09

We had a good night's rest, and we are going to go out to get some coffee, and I had made a note that I had booked that I paid for breakfast, but I didn't really understand how that was going to work because there's no reception, there's no breakfast area. So we didn't really know, but there's places for coffee near the hotel, so we decided to go out to get a coffee. And when we went out into the antechamber connecting the staircase to our room, there's this little thing that you open up. It's like in jail when they give people dinner, I guess, in solitary confinement. And there's two openings on either side of the wall. And so on our side, it was open, and there were two little boxes of breakfast. So I did pay for breakfast. It was delivered to the room.

Edo 21:08

Not really, it was delivered to the antechamber of the room through this hole in the wall. It's like a big mailbox. It's really just like in jail where they slide open these things and the guards can slide in the tray and then they open it on their side. And I couldn't really get any sleep last night because of the jet lag, I think. And this morning, I'm not sure exactly when, must have been around seven or eight in the morning, I heard the doorbell ring, and then I heard some movement, and I thought, somebody coming in for housekeeping. But then since I heard this movement so far away, I thought they're probably entering the room next to ours. But then, as Anna said, when we went out to get breakfast, we found breakfast in there, and it was these two trays with two egg sandwiches that were really good. Egg salad sandwiches, a mystery fruit, was it a plum?

Anna 22:04

Yeah.

Edo 22:05

And half a banana. It was like a whole banana would have been too much, evidently. And so yeah, after consuming this breakfast, we went out. We still had a fancy coffee at the composed coffee right next door. And then we decided to go back in and reassemble our bikes.

Rebuilding Bikes And Shop Tune-Up

Edo 22:27

I thought I'd done a good job that we'd done a good job backing, and I was putting all the bikes together. Anna's bike always had some issues with her brakes, and also the little pump that I got obviously wasn't working, but we were lucky enough to have a very well-stocked bicycle store right next door. And so this morning we went there. And again, using Google Translate, because we don't understand each other, they did a very thorough tune-up of both bikes. We bought a chain, I bought a new pump, Anna bought a very nice jersey. What color is your jersey?

Anna 23:07

Like purple?

Edo 23:09

Yeah, it's but like vinacha. It's like burgundy.

Anna 23:12

Burgundy, like uh plum, plum. Yeah.

unknown 23:16

Yes.

Edo 23:17

So after having spent some time there, we were so excited with what we were doing that we even forgot to have lunch, basically. And once we got our bicycles ready, we went back to the hotel just to grab our helmets, and then we cycled to the beginning of the path where there's this

Cycling Passport And Stamp Strategy

Edo 23:36

nice arch. We'll be posting pictures about all this. There's this nice arch that says start and 633 kilometers, which is the distance to Buzon. And there we got our passports. Our Korea's cross-country cycling road tour passport. And it's this little booklet that looks like an actual passport with lots of information about all of the bike paths in Korea and all of the spaces for the stamps. And we even got the first stamp from the beginning.

Anna 24:08

And so but we've got the passports. There are a lot of stamps that we have to get, especially tomorrow, it's just one from where we leave.

Edo 24:21

So the first section, 21 kilometer section from here to the outskirts of Seoul is just one. But then for the following 56 kilometers, which is basically just inside Seoul and right outside to Hanam, which is where we will be stopping tomorrow, there's what, like 10.

Anna 24:38

There's 10. So we were just making sure that the names, these are again trans translated from Korean characters into English names of the places matched up, seeing them on the map and matching them with the list of places where you can get stamps on the cacao map. So at least we have it on the map of the route as well as on the passport. So that will be a little bit not stressful, but something that we're gonna have to think about and keep our eye keep our eyes on tomorrow, making sure we get all the stamps. Because if you don't get all the stamps, you do not get the certificate or the medal, and they're very strict about it. It's not like other walks we've done where they're just like, oh yeah, get a couple stamps a day.

Edo 25:27

You're here, it means you've done it. What was it when we did Camino di San Benedito a few years ago and it was raining and we skipped two days and they still gave us the certification? No, but they're very strict

How Korea Handles Rules And Routing

Edo 25:43

here. So we've had this little discussion, this conversation today, where we found out that everything works here, but everything works in Korean and for the locals. So it's up to you as a visitor to understand what's going on. And I much preferred this system to the one that we have in Rome where everything is catered towards tourists, right? And I like that there are rules, even though they're strict. So specifically with these certifications, tomorrow we're gonna have, as Anna said, to keep an eye out for all of these little they're kind of like red phone booths, British phone booths. To be sure we even brought our own ink pad, because we read sometimes that maybe the stamps there are out of ink. And they said, Oh, if they're out of ink, you should still write down the date and take a selfie there that you can show at the certification center once you get to the end to prove that you were there. So yeah, after we went there, we decided to cycle towards what I think was downtown, but we were still far from Incheon Center. So a part of the city that is not as industrial as where we are now.

Anna 26:56

Yeah.

Edo 26:56

But it had we stopped at Starbucks for a snack because we hadn't had lunch. We visited some stores, we walked around. We love how there is bike racks everywhere, and most people leave their bikes unattended and unlocked. We did buy a little lock just in case, but we might not need it. And so we cycled, I think, around 15 kilometers today just to test out our gear, test out my new cycling computer. I did some troubleshooting there because I've never really used it. I couldn't figure out why the GPS wasn't locking on, but then it was in indoor mode, so it wasn't supposed to be on. We have a route on the GPS on the little computer that has all of these, most of these waypoints that we double-checked on the certification, so at least we have something to follow. We even bought paper maps, so I think we're good there. And then we cycled back to where our hotel is. We're gonna do some packing now, and the bikes are fine. We had dinner at 7-Eleven. We did the very local thing. We bought noodles, instant noodles at the 7-Eleven, and they had this huge bat of boiling water that you can just use there, and we had dinner on the tables outside of the 7-Eleven. I think it was fun. What do you have to say about today?

Anna 28:13

We did get a little bit more of a feel for Incheon, which I don't think we were in the very the main downtown, but it was exciting to see a little bit more of the life in South Korea.

Edo 28:28

We visited

Cash Hunt Plus 7-Eleven Dinner

Edo 28:29

a church.

Anna 28:30

Yeah, we visited the church, which is always an experience. Catholic Church. It's like it was like the head of the diocese of Incheon. And we had we tried uh three ATMs and had some trouble taking out money, but but finally, as as recommended online, the ATM at our local 7-Eleven around the corner from the hotel finally gave us some cash, which we had to get cash because we have to leave very little money but in the in that little box.

Edo 29:06

That it's said there in the amenity. We're gonna just leave it there. Okay.

Anna 29:09

Yeah. But we have to leave a small amount of cash here at the hotel. And of course, that's what we're supposed to do. So we wanted to we want to get the cash for that. And they said, cash, maybe it's good to have for the if you go to a small local local market, but most shops, restaurants take card. So that was a bit bit of an adventure getting out cash, but we finally did. And we're really excited to to start cycling tomorrow.

Edo 29:37

Yeah. And just to add to the cash thing, is we as I was saying before, most things here are designed for the locals. So the ATMs are for local bank accounts and local cards, unless you find one that is global or international. And even then, at the 7-Eleven, you had to choose the foreign option because we hadn't and it wasn't working. So again, it's a bit of an adventure trying to figure out all these things, but we've only been two days here, so tomorrow we'll have our first taste of long distance cycling. We will be cycling around 70 or 75 kilometers tomorrow, which is 50-ish miles, a little under 50 miles. My plan would be to leave no later than 9 from the arch. From the arch. So maybe 8.30. Yeah. Maybe we're gonna go to bed now, maybe put an alarm for 7.30 or something so that we can hopefully sleep tonight and then start our long day. It's been beautiful so far. I love how I love the bike infrastructure here. Every single road has its own either protected, huge bike lane, or it's on the sidewalk and it's painted. And you have to be careful with the direction that you're going. But w we were just thinking about this. We cycled something like eight kilometers to get to this downtown area from our hotel, and we thought, imagine if this was your commute, it would be so cool. But we still don't have that in Rome. Probably never will. But anyway, today was fun. We're both looking forward to tomorrow, and hopefully this recording worked. And yeah. Talk to you tomorrow. Fingers crossed, hope everything works. Bye!

What Changes When The Riding Starts

Edo 31:38

And this brings us to the end of our first few days in Korea. This episode covered those first three days of settling in, the arrival, getting our bikes and gear sorted, finding our rhythm, and preparing for the journey ahead. And this brings us to the end of our first few days in Korea. This episode covered those first three days of settling in. The arrival, getting our bikes and gear sorted, finding our rhythm, and preparing for the journey ahead. We were still finding our feet, figuring out the route and getting ready for what was to come. But from here, the real journey begins. In the next episode, we'll be hitting the road for the first few days of actual cycling. More miles, more climbs, new places, and the first real taste of what it means to cross Korea by bike. So make sure to stay tuned and follow along for the next part. We'll see you back on the road, and as always, go far.