A Travel Challenge Sets The Scene

SPEAKER_00 0:02

There is a particular kind of adventure that begins when you find yourself somewhere you don't quite know how to navigate. Where the restaurants close before you've had dinner, the signs are impossible to read, and even the simplest things require a translation app. But these are often the moments that make traveling memorable. In this episode, we'll spend an extra day exploring a small mountain town in central South Korea before getting back on the bikes for our biggest day yet. Along the way, there are unexpected encounters, steep climbs, beautiful riverside paths, and a milestone worth celebrating, our first 100-kilometer day. We'll also discover just how much a little kindness from strangers can make a difference as a fellow cyclist comes to our rescue and helps us reorganize the next few days of our journey. With Busan getting closer and our confidence growing, the adventure is beginning to feel very real. So settle in, because we've got hundreds of kilometers to cover, and the road south isn't unsurprising us quite yet.

Van Ride Up The Big Climb

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Today is Sunday, September the sixth. It is eleven twenty eight PM, and we are currently in Mung Yong. I hope I'm pronouncing it right. Tomorrow we will be having our rest day here, even though even today was kind of restful. Because as we mentioned yesterday, we managed to find a van to take us up the big climb this morning. We saw the climb from the van, and it was tough. It looked tough. So I'm glad that we managed to get this van at 10 in the morning. We woke up, we had a nice breakfast at a coffee place in the city where we were yesterday in Swambo. It was nice. We have some a latte and a muffin. And you had a muffin. Oh, I had a waffle. I had that amazing waffle. So the drive up took 10-15 minutes, I think. It would have realistically probably taken us an hour and a half cycling. So we get to the top, we stamp our certification passports, take a couple pictures. We managed to have a very short chat with an Australian couple that we had seen the past few days. And they were with an organized group, and they told us that last year they did a self-supported bike tour in Europe, but they thought it was too hard. And so this year they just went with this company who took care of everything. And some of them are riding e-bikes. They were impressed by our fully loaded bikes. I'm pretty sure they thought we rode all the way up with our fully loaded bikes. We didn't tell them that we didn't. And I had pine cone tea in a can. That was funny. I had a bit of an orange juice, and then we started to ride down the mountain. In total, we cycled 20 kilometers today. So far, I have to say that today was probably my least favorite section of the path. Because most of it was on shared roads with cars. Granted, there weren't many cars, but obviously the scenery wasn't really nice because we were just riding on roads. And we crossed.

Anna 4:04

There were some nice like the gardens, the rice pad rice paddies, rice fields.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

The rice fields, yeah. Some some parts were nice, but right right after the descent from the mountain, we were in that little city. So there's lots of there were lots of like crossings and traffic lights and uh stuff. We arrived in Mung Yong at quarter to one. We're staying in this very nice guest house today and tomorrow. And we we went to lunch in this place, and that is when again, my I'm having so many mood swings these days. And at lunch, we had a catfish soup, and I ordered a pork cutlet because I realized I'm just eating wet food all the time. It's noodles and soups and vegetables, like steamed vegetables, and it's not really my favorite thing. And my mood started souring a little. Maybe I'm just a little homesick. We've been gone for a week. So it's not really a very long time that we've been gone, but everything is so different here that all of these little things, and again, always having to use Google Translate and not knowing what the signs say, and all of these tiny cultural differences, like the napkins are small, and they don't really give you a lot of napkins in restaurants, and I make a mess of myself every time we're having food here because I don't know how to eat it, and uh and okay, the food was good, it was very spicy. I don't do spicy. I'm really terrible with that.

Fortress Hike And Art Tunnel

SPEAKER_00 5:58

So, anyway, in the afternoon, we explored this little town, and there were some attractions. One was very nice, it was a fortress from the sixth century, so we hiked up this hill, and then we went into this tunnel that Anna will be telling you about.

Anna 6:19

It was a former railway tunnel, which they actually kept the ties, the railroad ties on the bridge, but it was a really nice walk over this old railroad bridge over the river, and then into this tunnel that they filled with art installations, paintings on the the walls, different installations with lights, a lot of things focused on this kind of very great fruits that they have here that they make wine and juice and tea out of. So that was interesting, and it was a touristy thing. It cost the equivalent of two euro to walk through, and they had these. Again, you would have to do it with Google Translate because nothing was in English, but oh, take a photo here with this optical illusion painting, and it looks like you're feeding a giraffe, these kind of things, the cute things that you could take pictures with, and lights, sounds, installation type artwork. And it was just interesting how people, different people perceive things differently because Edo found it kind of creepy. It was very damp inside, but I just found it really nice just thinking about it's so different from my daily life in Rome these past few months, where it's just every day, it's so hot and sunny and so much concrete, and you're just sweating. And there's in my my job in my daily life, I'm just constantly surrounded by crowds of people literally sweating on top of me, touching me. There's just people everywhere. So to be in a place where we saw maybe two other people, this older couple who kindly took our picture.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Because it was also kind of late.

Anna 8:16

It was kind of late, so that it was getting ready to close. So maybe that's why there weren't so many people around. And evidently, people go to bed early in these mountain towns. There's everything kind of shuts down at seven o'clock. And so after that, we we came back to the guest

Dinner Plans Crash Into Closures

Anna 8:32

house and we were gonna take showers and get ready to go to dinner. And so we noticed we don't, I don't know if it's because this is uh sort of a mountain town, not very big, people come in to maybe hike and go for lunch and have a typical big old-fashioned style traditional lunch. But the restaurants that online said that they would be open or closed. So the only place that was open was this sort of touristy shop. It's like a gas station. The food, the food was like pretty good. It was actually cooked. Yeah, it wasn't from the microwave.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

But uh it's the restaurant of this gas station, and it's this rest area, and obviously there was the gas station outside. They had a sort of convenience store on one side, and then this restaurant where you order at a little kiosk with the screen. The food was good, they cooked it then there, and then there was another part with selling clothes, I don't know. But so consider this. I was in the tunnel and it felt not claustrophobic, but it gave me a weird vibe, so it was a little weirded out, and again, maybe homesickness, all of these little things that at first are quirky, but then you add them all together in a week. I was like, whoa. And as Anna mentioned, we're in this little mountain town that's literally just one road off of the main highway with three or four restaurants, and we had seen that there was an Italian restaurant here as well, and so I thought, I want pasta tonight or pizza, I don't care. That's what I want. And it seemed to be open, but then Google said it was open, but then it was closed. First, we wanted to go to another one and have fish, but we walked to that one and everything was closed. The whole street was dark. Then we thought, let's go back to the restaurant where we had lunch. There's a cafe next to it. Worst case scenario, we're gonna eat a cookie. We also still have some food left over from the past few days, like some jerky and a protein bar, but those were closed as well. And I thought, okay, I know there's the gas station. Maybe the gas station has a convenience store that's still open because mind you, this was what, 8 p.m. Barely? Almost eight. Almost eight, not even eight. And so we thought, let's go to the convenience store at the gas station, we can buy some noodles and we can cook them at home because there's a microwave, there's a water heater, a kettle, so a stove. But then we saw that this place was open and they actually served food, so that was a relief. I had some meat with fries, ate it with a fork and knife. They even gave me a slice of garlic bread, and one thing that I thought today was I miss bread. Just a slice of bread. So I felt better after dinner. We thought about buying after dinner an ice cream and some supplies for breakfast for tomorrow morning, in case everything is closed tomorrow as well, because we've seen busloads of people in hiking booth, so probably they came here for the day, and tomorrow's Monday, so maybe this place won't get as much traffic as a Sunday or as during the weekend, so perhaps everything will be closed, and we thought, okay, if the cafe is closed, then we can't have a nice breakfast there. Because we had a little treat after lunch at the cafe and it was really nice. And from the terrace of the cafe, we saw these people like waiting in the river. And so, armed with Google Translate, I went to the this Korean couple, they were just lounging outside on the terrace of the cafe, and I asked them, what are these people doing? And they said, they're gathering little freshwater snails from the river. And then we saw more people doing that. So anyway, all this to say we wanted to have breakfast at this cafe, but if it's closed, then we thought we're gonna buy some food at the convenience store, like cookies and milk. But then by the time we had finished it, we had finished dinner at 8:30, the convenience store, the that side had closed. So tomorrow, hopefully, the cafe will be open. If the cafe is not open, hopefully the gas station is probably going to be open because there were some people having dinner there who were probably passing through because it's just off the main highway. Yeah. Not a very eventful day in terms of cycling, but very eventful for everything else. I'm looking forward to resting tomorrow, but I'm even more looking forward to going getting back on the bike.

Rerouting Toward Busan With Cushion

SPEAKER_00 13:26

We're thinking about changing our hotel plans for the next few days, because the way that we have we have it booked it now, we have four more days of cycling. One of them is 100 kilometers. The second one was supposed to be only 46, then 80 something, and then 107. And we don't really want to cycle 107 kilometers on our last day because we have to be in Busan by 5:30, as I said yesterday, to get our certification. And you don't really want to have such a long last day, especially after three long days. So unfortunately, there isn't much in terms of accommodation in that area, but tomorrow we'll be planning a little more. But based on a preliminary analysis of what we can do, apparently we can add 20 kilometers to the second day, so we can take 20 kilometers off of the last day. So we will only have to cycle 90 kilometers instead of 107. And tomorrow we might also want to do what do you think the ATV tour?

Anna 14:39

Maybe do the ATV tour. There are these like pedal bikes, like rickshaws, but they're on the track of this old restored railway. So there's some things to do around this area. And then we'll also be planning the next few days, washing our clothes, just relaxing, catching up on our journals and reading, maybe stick our feet in the river. Yeah, these snail collectors were in there for hours, like bending over nearly like completely submerged in the river, except for their backs, basically. So I can imagine that the river can't be that cold. So there are some things to do around here tomorrow. Definitely stock up on food, which it's always good to have an extra supply of snacks and not just snacks, something like a protein bar or nuts, or something that if all the restaurants are closed, you'll be able to have something for dinner. And it's been really interesting. We really enjoy traveling outside of Western Europe because it's just it's really interesting to see other people, other cultures. Everything is different. But but planning a trip like this from the other side of the world, using the resources that we had, like Google Maps or even reading things online, there's so much information you don't know until you get to the place. And for example, with these distances, I tried to book hotels along the route that were good, evenly spaced, close to the waypoints. But it seemed like, for example, on the last day, it seemed like there were no other options except for this place that I booked. And so that's something that that we're having to deal with. Fortunately, we've decided that financially it's okay because these places, there's no cancellation policy. So we're just gonna have to eat that money. But it's they're really cheap. The hotels are around 30 between 30 and 50 euros. Just thinking, okay, we're willing to eat that if it means it's gonna be a much more comfortable ride, especially on the last day. So that's been really interesting, dealing with how you try to plan it out as best you can before you leave. But then when you're actually here, you have to change those plans or definitely be flexible or have a little bit of a cushion financially. But fortunately, again, everything here is relatively cheap, even with the food in the restaurants. So many of the meals that are for two. So basically, both of you have to want to eat a stew, catfish stew served with all the sides, which is delicious, but it's it's a lot. And if you don't want to eat that, there's not really any other options. So anyway, it today was culturally definitely an adventure being in a very non-touristy town, which personally I didn't imagine that it was going to be. I thought this bike terror would be much more populated with Westerners. I don't know why. I thought that we didn't really know, but but certainly it's been really interesting to be in these small towns where there are there's basically no foreign tourists, but it's fun.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

We are in a pretty rural area, and the only westerners who are here are people who are doing the bike tour like we are. And our friend Cataline from yesterday told us he went to Angong Dan today, and he said he didn't meet a single other rider on the route. So I guess if you go off the beaten path a little more, then it's unlikely you'll meet people. It's I'm curious. We were discussing this over dinner. I'm curious to go back to Seoul, but I feel like I have to earn it and I have to finish it. So yeah, that's going to be interesting. And also, for example, we've met some people, right, before. So the Italian couple, they were going the other way, so we're not gonna see them again. Cataline went to Andong and he cycled 140 kilometers today, and then he's gonna cycle 130 more tomorrow, and he'll be in Gumi, so he'll be two days ahead of us. And even this group we've met today, the Australians with the Canadians, they're doing it in seven days, I think. So we saw them for the past few days, but inevitably they will be ahead of us. I don't know where they stop tonight, but we're not cycling tomorrow. So I think they'll be done in three days, three or four days, whereas we'll be done in five. So I wonder who else we'll be seeing so deep in the rural central South Korea. So it's it's time to go to bed now. We have no alarm set for tomorrow. We're just gonna rest. So we're nice and rested and ready for our 100 kilometer section in two days. It's gonna be interesting because I was telling Anna the last time I cycled 100 kilometers was like six years ago. So that's gonna be fun. Anyway, good night and bye bye.

Rest Day Café Win And Logistics

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Hello again. It is currently 9.54 p.m. of September the 7th. Today's a Monday, and we are officially at the end of a rest day in Jinnam in the Mun Yong area. I guess the recording is going to be a little shorter because we didn't do much today, but we were very productive anyway. So the day started with us sleeping in. I think we got up at 9.30 or something, maybe a little later, because we were out at 10.30 approximately, and we wanted to go to the cafe where we stayed yesterday. And I remember getting there at 20 minutes to 11, and it was closed because it opened at 11, so that was a little disappointing. But then it was actually better because we walked down the road to the only other cafe in this place. And after a few minutes of being a little confounded because nobody was in there, the lady who ran the cafe came back in, and we had just seen her crossing the road two minutes before, and she was very nice. We had some nice lattes and salted bread, which is basically like one of our corniti or croissants, but it has salt on top. Very good. So it was like this little fried dough. Yeah, it wasn't really a cornetto. Some of them, some of the cornetti are sfoglia and others aren't.

Anna 21:50

Uh cornetto, like the kind of the type that they have in some places in southern Italy. But it was it was a little bit fried. It was like salty and crispy. Outside, but salty, but not super salty. So it was that yeah, but sweet on the inside. Like it reminded me of that kind of salty sweetness of a fried dough.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

So yeah, we did that, then we took a little walk down by the river, and then we came back to our hotel, and we were extremely productive because we booked the taxi from our BNB in Seoul, and that's in six days? Eight days? When are we leaving? On the 15th. So yeah, eight days from today. We booked the bus from Busan to Seoul that will be on the 12th at 12:30 p.m. Obviously, not at midnight. We booked the premium bus, which is super cheap, but so basically it's like a big coach bus, but instead of having 50 or 60 seats, it only has 20. And they're like airplane business class seats, and it was only 35 euros each, so incredibly cheap. It will be funny to think about because it took us nine days to cycle with a rest day from Pincheon to Busan, and then it will only take us four hours to go back on a business class seat, basically.

Sean Solves Booking And Phone Barriers

SPEAKER_00 23:21

So I feel like we need to earn it. We did that, and then thanks to our amazingly kind and generous and precious friend whom we've met cycling two days ago, Sean, who is so nice because he's commenting all of our stories and being very encouraging and wishing us a good time. And he always says, I hope you make lots of happy memories. And a couple days ago he said, if you need anything for your trip, please let me know. And we did.

Anna 23:55

I think we've already talked about this. It was hard to choose places just using Google Maps. A lot of these hotels were not on Google Maps or not, I couldn't see them on cacao because cacao maps doesn't really work so well outside of Korea. So we realized that the distances for our last three days of cycling were unbalanced. It was just to do 46 kilometers and then around 100 and around 100, especially coming into Busan. Although it's going to be going downhill, but still we didn't want to rush on the last day. We want to arrive in time to get our certificates before the certification place closes at five o'clock. And so we didn't want to rush on the last day. And just cycling these unbalanced days. If you don't need to, it's silly to cycle for basically half a day and then have to really push yourself for two days. And as we were saying before, we decide to cancel and just eat the two places that we had already paid for. They're not that expensive. And so we managed to find these places, but they're probably really small or in these tiny, they're in towns. They're not in the middle of the woods, but they're in towns. And so Edo tried to book through Cacao Maps. It's like, it's like Google Maps. So it's a map service, but it has hotels, restaurants, and you can even book through it. All in Korean, you have to register. But he registered and did all of this stuff, and then ultimately he could not let me give you some more details.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

So basically, first you need to register, then that at first it was with just cacao and I had an account, but it wanted me to confirm. So it sent me an email. Then I go on the next step, and then every single thing that I try to do, every single page that opens up, I have to translate with the Google Lens. So it's incredibly slow. Finally, it tells me you can book using a cacao talk account, which is basically like WhatsApp. And so I finally do it, I register, but then instead of them sending you a verification code that then you put on the website, they want you to send an SMS to the verification service. And I realized I did not have enough credit on my phone. So I had to put 10 euros in. Then finally that sent. And basically, when I got to the last step, it wanted me to have a Korean phone number. So I couldn't do that. And as Anna said, some of these places aren't on Google Maps. And then there's another problem, which is sometimes there the names of these places change based on the app you're looking them up on.

Anna 26:56

We found these English names because obviously it's hard with the Korean characters. We can't pronounce them, we can't write them. So I don't know if they've invented these names or this hotel that we're staying at.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Outside, because I've seen pictures, it says Elegance Hotel. But then on one app it's Elegance Motel. Then there's an Elegance Hotel somewhere else entirely, but still within the same region. So the Western names are still similar. It was a whole thing. So we were way in over our heads. And this is where our friend Sean came in.

Anna 27:36

And so we we wrote to him and we are, oh, that's is that a lot to ask of someone? But he seemed like everyone who has been so kind and so helpful. And he really said, Really, if you have anything at all that I can help you with, ask me. And we are thinking, if it was us, if we were in a little town in Italy and someone needed help, because sometimes in these small towns, you if you don't have a local phone phone number or if you don't speak the language, like you need help from someone local. And so we ultimately we decided to ask him on Instagram. That's how we've been communicating. So he responded, he was like, Oh, yes, of course, I can do that for you. So he just called them. And he just called them. And that's how we imagined how, if the roles were reversed, if I was again in Italy and someone said, How easy would it be for me to call a little hotel in a small town in Italy and say, Oh, listen, is there a room for these people? This is their name. They're coming this day. They'll pay when they get there. I would, it would take me two seconds to do it in Italy. I would gladly do it for someone.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

And if you speak the language, then it's easier for you to communicate the nuances of what this person needs, right? So the fact that we met him cycling and we explained to him that we're cycling now into Busan, I'm sure that he probably told the hotels, like, oh, these two people are coming with a bicycle, so they might come in the afternoon, stuff like that. And there are two foreigners. And it's funny because I gave him all of our information, and he just said, Okay, the reservation is under Anna, because it was easier for them to write it down. So yeah, they know we're foreigners and that we're traveling by bicycle.

Anna 29:25

So we were so grateful because really, if he had not done that for us, I don't know what we would have done.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

But luckily that went through.

Clean Floors Local Food And ATV Track

SPEAKER_00 29:37

And uh yeah, so once we did all of that, we went to have lunch in one of those little places that's close by. Um, and we had some traditional food, just basically tiny little fishies, uh broiled, dipped in some spicy sauce that you wrap around in. They call it lettuce. It seemed more like cabbage leaves to me because they were rough and thick.

Anna 30:04

So it's really nice with the um wrapped up in the leaves. And the yes, the waitress had to explain to us how to eat them because I thought it was just part of it, looks like really pretty. The little fish were on the the middle of the plate, and the the leaves were like a garnish, I thought, covering the plate, and the fish were piled up in the middle, but um no. Um, and the restaurant, um, which we had noticed at other places, you leave your shoes outside. And I was wearing sandals without socks, but I saw other patrons of the restaurant in bare feet, and the floor was so clean, like unbelievably clean. Um, but we had noticed this, I think in another town, we saw a place where like, oh, is that restaurant open? Oh no, I think that's someone's house, and they just have a big family because there were all these shoes outside of the restaurant. And I think here oftentimes the people live above the restaurant. So sometimes it's not really clear like what what is a restaurant, what is a private home.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

Again, not being able to read any of the signs outside.

Anna 31:14

Yeah, without like reading the signs. So we have no idea like what because there's lots of signs. There's like lots of um writing on the buildings, on the windows, there's like lots of signs outside. So um, so we figured out that some of these restaurants you leave your shoes outside.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

And now just one last thing that we did today after having this lunch there. We went back home for a little while, and then we decided to do one of the attractions here, which was an ATV tour. It was not a tour. We just showed up to this place, and the lady was like, ATV, oh yeah, here. Sign this waiver, okay. Pick a helmet, okay, and they were just bicycle helmets. And then the lady's husband, I think, who was under the ATV sheds, they had a bunch of ATVs, said, Okay, here's your ATV. And we're like, where do we go? Follow the arrows. Okay, because for reference, we did an ATV tour in Cappadocia in October last year, and there must have been like in our group 30 ATVs and a guide that you had to follow.

Anna 32:27

It was still pretty rough, but there was like a guide telling us where to do go, taking our picture.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Yeah, and not only that, but it was there were several groups, and then there was the guys in the jeeps and the guys on the horses, so it was like, and it was flat terrain. This was not, because it was by the river. And then they had two courses, the beginner and the advanced, and it wasn't really clear which was which. There were arrows, and every time we saw the signs, we would stop, use Google Lens, and see which one was the beginner and which one was the advanced. But I think we ended up doing half of it on the advanced course. Yeah, and it was rough. This ATV, the steering was so hard, and it was kind of jerky whenever you accelerated. And riding a motorcycle, I had to fight the urge to put my leg down. But then after a while, I got the hang of it and it turned out to be fun. The first because it was a seven-kilometer course, like five miles, the first kilometer was terrifying because there was lots of ups and downs and these sharp turns, and the river was just next to us, and no protection there, and all of these big rocks. But it was fun. So then we came back to the hotel. We just chilled, we finished watching the last two episodes of the Zero Calcare show, D'Uspici, and I cried like a baby. Her face was all puffy for how much she cried. I recommend watching it. And then we we went to the to the service area where we had dinner yesterday.

Stocking Up And Breaking Down 100km

SPEAKER_00 33:53

We had dinner there tonight as well. I had a nice pork, fried pork cutlet, and I had some udon. We stocked up on food for tomorrow because now it's kind of late because it's 10:15, and we have an alarm set for 6 a.m. Because we want to set off at 7, and we have our biggest day tomorrow, 100 kilometers to ride. So yeah, we're gonna sleep now, and we will give you an update tomorrow once we arrive in Gumi after 100 kilometers. We're hoping that considering that when we rode 94 kilometers two days ago and there was the big climb at the end, that and that took us, I think we left a little after 7, like maybe 7:30, and we arrived at around 5 in Swambo. So we're hoping to leave by 7 and again maybe be Ngumi by 5 p.m. So we're scheduling, let's say, we're anticipating like 10 hours on the road and maybe six cycling, even though that day we stopped for we had a two-hour lunch basically because there was the bodybuilding contest and all these things, so that was fun.

Anna 35:05

And then we met Cataline.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

Yeah, and then we met Cataline, yeah, who is in Gumi tonight. He said it was fine to ride. He rode 140 kilometers, he's riding 130 tomorrow, and a hundred more the day after that. So he's basically riding 300 and what? 370 kilometers in three days. Because he's doing it in seven, but I think he's doing over 700, maybe 750 in total. The good thing about tomorrow is that we have to stop at three or four certification centers, and they're very evenly spaced precisely with where we want to have our breaks. And this is all in line with our strategy of doing shorter segments, like trying to get as much in the morning when I don't know. I honestly don't know. But yeah, the plan tomorrow would be to maybe cycle around thirty-five, thirty, twenty, and fifteen. But I think it's probably gonna be closer to thirty-three, twenty nine, twenty-ish, and eighteen or something like that. So yeah, again, no, we've been talking for 20 minutes still. Time to go to bed. Talk to you tomorrow.

First 100km Day And Century Hotel

SPEAKER_00 36:41

Yellow. It's uh 10.02 p.m. of Tuesday, September 8th. And today has been a pretty special day. Do you want to come over and tell us why it's been a special day? We just decided to record and Anna got up and left. So come here.

Anna 37:05

Today I completed my first century, which is 100 kilometers in one day. That was very exciting. I feel really accomplished. Very appropriately, we're celebrating in the Century Hotel in Gumi. We had a great day of cycling. We actually made our fastest time and had our longest day of cycling.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

Yeah, it's a pretty cool achievement. I remember that uh when I was cycling, just was a hobby back 10 years ago when I first got my bike that I'm still using today. It took a while to work up to 100 kilometers, and I've only done it two or three times in general. First of all, because obviously it takes a long time. Back then it took less time than it did today because obviously the bike wasn't loaded and it was more of a training ride. But especially in Rome, it was a little boring because I had to do the same stretch of road three times. So that's not something that I used to do a lot because it was a little boring. Honestly, I would go on shorter 50km rides, not to mention that a 100-kilometer ride takes like around yeah, four or four and a half hours of riding time. So that's basically a whole day gone. You can't do much, so I didn't really do a lot of those, so it was good. I think my last one was like five or six years ago, so I was just as impressed that I was able to complete it. And how do you feel after having done these a hundred kilometers in a day? It's a big milestone. How did you feel once we arrived at the hotel?

Anna 39:00

I was really happy. I felt accomplished, proud of myself. It was not as difficult as I thought it was going to be. I had a little bit of trepidation about today because it was going to be a long day. And even though we did pretty comfortably 93, 94 kilometers the other day, I was a little bit worried. So I was really relieved and happy that I did it, and then it wasn't, it didn't kill me. We were actually feeling like pretty good and just like happy and excited when we reached the hotel and really accomplished. Wasn't like I was really dying. And I guess it just goes to show that when you're out here on the road every day doing 80, 90 kilometers, your body does get used to it. You quickly build up endurance in just uh a few days of cycling.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

So this was the end of our fifth day. Day four was the day that we we skipped the mountain pass, so we only rode 20 kilometers. I don't know if you can even count that basically. But yeah, so this morning we left at 7 in the morning, woke up at 6, we were in Jinam, where we had spent basically the last two days, and we were a little worried this morning because there was this very low mist, and visibility was good, but we thought it was going to be very cold, and for the first day we actually rode in our jackets and leggings. Because when we woke up at six in the morning, it was only 13 degrees, it was very chilly. We had breakfast at the apartment, we set off very early, maybe five minutes past seven. And today the ride was very interesting. We had read about what was going to happen today, and we pieced it together because the Italians that we met on day two mentioned what we experienced today. And our friend Cataline, who is currently just 100 kilometers away from Usan and he's arriving tomorrow, because we're checking in every night, we're checking in on each other. He mentioned this as well, but I'll get to it. I'm just building up some tension here. So we woke up this morning and I think we did 33 kilometers or something before we stopped, before we had our first break. The very first certification center we hit today was just a couple kilometers after our starting point. And then I think we cycled 30 more or something to the first stop, which was just a rest area with benches, and we ate some of our snacks, and we met a couple from Australia. He's Australian and she's Brazilian, but I think they both live in Australia. They were very nice to talk to. And it's funny because we've talked about and we have a whole episode on how we've planned this whole thing. And they said they found out about it three weeks ago, and last week they just came over. We met them and another young Korean cyclist who spoke English, so we chatted with him a bit, and he had a $3,000 full carbon bike that probably weighed less than half of our bikes. I'm sure with all the gear you're carrying, his bike was probably one-third of yours, even though he had water bottles. And even the Australians were impressed by the fact that we were carrying all of that luggage on mechanical bikes, because basically they arrived here and they rented two uh e-bikes from Seoul and they're gonna return them to Busan. And they said it was something like a hundred, I think a hundred dollars a day. So I wonder if they meant Australian dollars, which is a little cheaper, maybe. Yeah. Anyway, they said it was their first cycling trip, and they said it was so easy with e-bikes, and I'm sure it was, but then the thing that we did hit several times during this day were

The Brutal Walls And Bike Pushing

SPEAKER_00 43:08

these walls. They're called walls. There were maybe five or six of these walls. What were these walls, Anna?

Anna 43:17

It's basically just a really steep incline, 13% grade, sometimes even 18, just really steep and beautiful, sometimes in the shade, but there were maybe leaves on the path. It was cement that had broken apart, so it was like almost like little rocks, so not a really secure terrain. And so we just got off and pushed, which actually you're still moving, you're going four or five kilometers an hour, but you're still moving, and it actually feels better on your legs, except for the one that was like 18%. That was just really difficult. But some of them that were not quite as steep, it actually gives your legs like a Cool down, a little bit of relief while you're still moving. And then you go up, and maybe you go down a little bit, but there's not that much of a decline after. So they're just these really steep inclines. And it's both up and down. And so then you get a really steep downhill, but it doesn't give you particularly a lot of momentum. And that can be scary too. So you can't even go fast down the decline. Yeah, some we pushed even going down because they look dangerous. There was a really sharp turn at the end. You don't want to hit sand, you don't want to hit another cyclist. So you're not even gaining time on the downhills. And they're just really frustrating and unpredictable because they're so short that sometimes you can't even really see them or understand how tiring they're going to be when you're looking at the elevation.

SPEAKER_00 45:00

They don't even show up on my classic computer because they're so short.

Anna 45:03

But these are all things that you have to take into consideration when you're planning your day. So that's why we really liked trying to get two-thirds of the day of the distance done before lunchtime. Because if you leave too much for the afternoon when it's hot, when you're tired, these are one of the unpredictable things that will really tire you out. These walls or headwinds, anything like that, it seems like something small, but it can really wear you down both physically and mentally.

SPEAKER_00 45:47

So we considered ourselves lucky also that we had mechanical bikes because they were so steep that on an e-bike you couldn't push them uphill. And I think they were still carrying, like this, this Australian couple was still carrying their luggage, but an e-bike is significantly heavier than a normal bike, so they had to push it there for sure. And Anne and I, in a couple of those sections, we had to help each other, and the two of us would push one bike because it was so difficult. And this is what, again, the Italians told us because they did this in the pouring rain going down to Busan the week before we got here, and so they decided not to go on the road that was super steep, but they went on these stairs and they said that was way worse, and they said, whatever you do, don't get on the stairs. And imagine doing that in pouring rain, carrying your heavy bikes, in bike shoes with cleats, no, no purchase at all.

Booking Ahead Versus Playing It By Ear

SPEAKER_00 46:50

And anyway, it was interesting because we met the these Australians, and they said, and uh lots of people are doing this, except Cataline, they don't book the places beforehand. They've been renting their bicycles, they said, for 11 days, and they said, Oh, it's actually we're going really fast, so it won't even take that long. And we even met a Canadian couple later on that we'd actually seen yesterday while we were doing our rest day when we went to lunch. We saw them fly past, and then we had a chance to talk to each other because Anna pointed out that his passport was yellow, and so I struck up a conversation and I said, Yeah, I know. I said, What why is your your bike certification passport yellow? And he says, Oh no, this is actually a little notebook because they started in Seoul because they didn't feel like going to Incheon. Anna will tell you more about this in a minute. And even they were not booking their their accommodation beforehand. They say that at lunchtime they see like how far they want to go. And I feel like it's we were discussing this earlier. I think it's better to have a set destination for the day because knowing how I am, I was telling Anna that on day two where I was feeling a little down, I probably would have stopped at 30 kilometers. What is that here? Hold this and I'll explain what I was saying.

Anna 48:16

That on the day that Edda was feeling a little bit down, he would have stopped at 30 kilometers stop for the day. And then you have to pay for that over the next few days to make up that distance. So it's just an interesting way of doing it. I think we we were afraid planning this trip weeks, months in advance from the other side of the world. We just didn't really feel comfortable coming here without having places to stay. We don't have camping gear. But once we got here, then we quickly realized, okay, these hotels are small, they're not full, they're cheap. So we actually had to change our plans, but still it's when you have a when you have a destination, when you have a specific hotel that you have paid for in a specific town and you have to get there, then it does push you. It really does. And of course, maybe regarding like brakes, you have to listen to your body. But if you have a destination, you will get there.

SPEAKER_00 49:18

Apart from doing the a hundred kilometers, it was also remarkable. The scenery was beautiful after the the last third of the ride just flew past because we were done with all of the walls and we started cycling along these raised platforms on water. So, like the bike path is literally on the river, which is pretty probably what 10 meters up or something. It was pretty cool. And uh yeah, we we had this chat with this Australian couple this morning. Then at lunch, we met a Thai couple that we had seen yesterday. They're doing it on foldable bikes, which is very interesting. And then we met the Canadians, and it's interesting because so far, except for Cataline, maybe again, who's super precise in what he's doing, the other people that we've met seem not as fixated on the bike passports and the certification. Because the Australians this morning said, oh, we we missed a few stamps, and the uh the Canadians didn't even have a passport because they started

Starting In Incheon Instead Of Seoul

SPEAKER_00 50:29

in Seoul. A lot of people started in Seoul, and the Canadians said they didn't feel like cycling to Incheon, which is over 20 kilometers away, and then cycling 20 kilometers back to start at the gate. And I was telling Anna that I felt like it did a lot of research about this, and so what are your opinions about us starting in Incheon?

Anna 50:53

So the starting Incheon was actually really smart. The airport is an Incheon, and we took, like the Canadian couple took in Seoul, they took two days a day for jet lag to get in and then get ready. But we stayed in Engine, which was closer to the airport. So when you're closer to the start, closer to the start point as well. For us, it just made so much sense. It's all right there. The start point, the airport, it's all an engine. So we might as well stay there. And it was perfect because all we needed to do was recover from the jet lag. We wanted a place that had maybe some bike mechanics, some sort of stores if we needed anything, if the bikes were damaged on the trip, on the flight, in the boxes. So it was perfect to stay and get ready where the start point was. And because we wanted to do the thing across the country, and Seoul is a little bit in a tiny bit inland, like Incheon is at the coast. And so it was a really perfect place to stay near the beginning of the bike path. So we were there that we had we used that sort of extra day to get ready to pick up our passports, and we had already spotted out like where to get them because for us that was important. You have the passports, so we were able to get them when we arrived, and and it was just really perfect to start from there. The Italian cat couple from Udine, they tried to go back to the start point from Seoul, and they couldn't. It was confusing because there's sort of two bike paths on either side of the river, and they couldn't manage to get, they took a wrong turn. So although they tried, they didn't get to start from the very from the actual beginning. So they're gonna be able to get it. Yeah. So they're now yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:51

But they couldn't get I don't think they got the certification in the case.

Anna 52:54

But can't you get the certification in general?

SPEAKER_00 52:57

Because you can do it in both directions.

Anna 52:58

Yeah. So I and we were the only people who we've met so far who did it like that. And so I was just saying to Edo, that was I think that was a really smart move and and something that I would definitely recommend for anyone who wants to do the cross-country path.

SPEAKER_00 53:18

Yeah, the way I see it originally when I was planning it was you would be tempted because it it seems normal to just start in Seoul, right? But my recommendation is to start in Incheon, then go back to Seoul with a bus, because it's not that difficult, and then take a few days there to visit Seoul. Because I didn't want to I'm a bit of a stickler for efficiency. I don't want to do, oh, we're gonna do that at the beginning, then we're gonna do it again at the end. I don't want to be, especially on a trip like this one, I don't really want to be in the same place twice. Because it feels like you're coming and going, like going back and forth, it's still it's just a waste of energy. And so I thought, okay, the downside to this is obviously we might be a little bored in Incheon before we start, because we arrived at 4 p.m. and then we left almost two days, almost two full days later, but we were never bored really in Incheon. The first day we were kind of jet lagged and you're discovering all of these new things, and then we put the bikes together. So it wasn't really a problem spending two days there. So I'm happy that we did what we did. I'm happy that we took a day off to which apparently nobody else is doing. The Thai couple and the Australi and the Canadians were thinking of taking. I don't know if it was the Canadians or the Australians. They're staying two nights in Daigu. Again, it didn't really make a lot of sense to me to spend two nights in Daegu because Daigu is tomorrow, and then you only have 150 kilometers to go. So I don't know, maybe it's a nice city to spend time in. But, anyways, we exchanged some information. I told them about the research we did about buses and stuff, because for example, the Canadians didn't know how to get back to Seoul. They thought maybe a train, they thought maybe to even ship the bikes to Seoul. I wouldn't do that. I don't want to be away from my bike, except when I'm on the plane, especially if imagine we ship the bikes from Seoul, from Busan to Seoul, and then we're there for two days and the bikes get lost, and we still have to leave. You leave them here, it's terrible. So yeah, today was

Two Days From Busan And Next Stamps]

SPEAKER_00 55:27

a fun day. We're very proud of each other. And tomorrow we have we only have 60-ish kilometers to go, which is incredible. 60 is still a very respectable distance, but after today it's just ah, it's a half day. In fact, we're planning to leave a little later and take advantage of the hotel's breakfast and maybe leave at around 8 instead of 7 or 9. I think we'll gotta put an alarm at 7. What do you think? 7, have breakfast at around 7.30, maybe leave by 8.30. Because the place where we're staying tomorrow is this hotel that's right by the bike path, but there's only a gas station and uh 7-Eleven there, so there's really no point in getting there before lunch. And then the day after we have 70 kilometers, and then 90, and then we'll be done. It's incredible because I was telling Anna that one of my ways to measure time is especially in days, oh, I just have to get to this particular day, and then I can say that the day after tomorrow, whatever event happens, right? Something that I'm looking forward to the day after tomorrow is pretty cool because then you break it down even further, and you're like, oh, I just have to get to tomorrow, and then I can say, oh, tomorrow this thing happens. It's a weird quirk that I have. Tomorrow, literally, we can say the day after tomorrow will be done. Which sounds insane, honestly. But yeah, as I was telling Anna, as Will Smith says in Independence Day, it's not over till the fat lady sings. So let's see what happens. And now it's just time to go to bed and to enjoy a good breakfast tomorrow. So see you again in 24 hours, hopefully, from the elegance motel. And I don't even know where that is, so yeah, good night.

Anna 57:45

After all the kilometers, the climbs, the unexpected detours, and the people we've met along the way, Busan is now just two days away. But there's still plenty of road ahead, and we're not quite ready to call this adventure over. So make sure to join us for the final stages of our journey across South Korea as we tackle the last stretches of the bike path, collect our remaining stamps, and hopefully make it all the way to the finish line. We're almost there. See you in the next episode.