Ungilsan in Autumn: Achieved by focusing much closer than the subject itself and let the bokeh work its magic.

Although I was using a wide angle lens, the slope on the left and right is not an optical illusion.

This trip started as a routine mountain hike a little outside of Seoul at a place called Ungilsan (운길산) mainly because it is possible to get there by taking the suburban line 1 metro to a station with the same name. At least on the map it looks like there is a mountain to climb over there. And it looked like one of those popular places to go on weekends as there are quite a number of overdressed korean hikers (nothing new here). The metro line is supposedly quite new, going all the way to Yangpyeong town and going upstream along the Han River.

Ungilsan metro stop is new enough to be built less than a year or two ago. Just outside the station is a large map of the hiking paths that lead off the station. I counted at least 2 or 3 high peaks and many smaller routes. There’s no real need to memorize it for me since all routes would be new to me. Best would be to follow the crowd. The path starts by going back where the train came from, past many village restaurants on your left. This is where it is possible to load up on lunch by buying a kimbap or two (Korean maki rolls). Then the road goes under the train track and through a small village. Very quickly it starts to go uphill through some woods.

At the village at the bottom of the montain, some of the lower peaks around Ungilsan

Some parts of the hike is quite like an easy walk.

Hikers in Korea have this habit of stacking up rocks while making wishes. This is one of the largest I’ve seen to date.

I’m still wondering what caused this tree to grow in this manner.

The route is simple enough, and you do get tired from the slight incline through the woods. I’ve noticed that other than using the path in the woods, it is also possible to walk on a road that is possibly steeper and leads to Sujongsa temple. The hike is not really that difficult and not really that far. I’m guessing that the top of Ungilsan is not more than 3km from the metro stop. Very soon the path leads to the spine of the mountain where the path becomes a little easier to climb. I wouldn’t call it a climb, more like an easy hike.

Start of autumn.

This is one of the first red leaves I encountered on this hike, not particularly pretty, but still red.

In some sections the leaves are starting to dry up, getting ready for winter.

This is close to the rest area, showing the close proximity of the leaves, making it possible to take pictures of it without any specialized gears.

A few hours later hikers will reach a rest area where some adventurous sellers will sell you lunch or refreshments. When that happens you know it is an easy climb for some. From here the summit is less than 200m away. However on this day it is understandably crowded. The peak itself is crowded, and at the time I was up there, just after noon, the sunlight was so harsh, it was only possible to look at the view but not to photograph it. I guess I could but I would never be happy with the picture. Instead I took a geotagged photo with my iPhone for the token momento.

On the way downhill. Again, the slopes are not an optical exaggeration.

The hike is possibly even forgettable for me, but since we are in early autumn here in Seoul, trees are starting to shed leaves, and there are a couple of trees with very saturated red leaves. I’d want to call them Maple leaves but I’m not scientifically sure, so let’s just call it red leaves for now. When I see one I’d take a break and attach my macro lens and get to work documenting it. The lighting is not that easy to shoot with a Nikon D300, sometimes I wished I packed my heavier D3s. But with a little bit of luck and patience I’m sure I will be able to get something out of it. I try to look for a break where sunlight would be able to get through the canopy and illuminate the leaves. Sometimes I’m lucky, othertimes I get a nice arrangement of leaves but no good light. At times like this I normally try to shoot manual mode so that changes in lighting intensity do not mess up the pictures, and it helps also to dial in a fixed white balance since the WB between direct sunlight and shooting in the shadows can mean that the same scene be rendered in uncontrollable hues.

One of the buildings making up Sujongsa.

View from Sujongsa.

Main Temple

Buy a tile, write something and tile it up. Most of the tiles are in Korean, I didn’t see any alphabets on it.

As usual, my path downhill is usually a different one compared to the uphill trek. This time we decided to go down the path that leads to the temple called Sujongsa (수종사). Again, an easy walk down the hill to the temple, and right after the temple it is possible to take the road down to the metro station. At least when walking downhill, this road does look quite steep compared to the path through the woods, but it is not possible to figure out if this is a perception thing or whether it is really steeper. All I know that is that it is quite hard on the knees to walk down a steep road for a few kilometers.

Always need my picture of farm machinery.

Reading about this post after the trip, it sounded like one of the most unexciting posts I’ve done in a while. I’d say that this hike was not too bad, lingering around the “standard” level and not much more. If not for the autumn leaves I’d say that this trip would be quite boring. Maybe it would be better after a heavy snowfall in winter? Who knows… Maybe its time to try it out in the dead of winter.

*end*

Revenge of the killer seagulls. Just lucky timing, on the way across from Jamjin-do to Muui-do.

Fishing boat at Yeongjong Pier with Incheon City in the background

Panorama of Incheon City in the horizon from Muui-do

It seems that autumn is finally upon us. Temperature has dropped to 20C on a sunny day like today. Looks like the right time to explore some islands off the city of Incheon. Island hopping is a term I wanted to use, but it is technically not really any hopping at all, since by public transport I would be lucky to even get to one island per day. What more, everything is in Korea here so I will have to guide by chance and by the grace of my GPS. Good light also means I can ditch my big camera and go light with a D300, lunch and plenty of water. Always ready for an adventure.

Google Earth capture of the entire journey mapped by a GPS. Green path is the actual route taken throughout the day.

Getting to the island is a multi-transport discipline. On my research, it looks like the easiest way to get there is to get out of Seoul and get on the express train to Incheon Airport an then hop onto a bus. The alternative way going through Incheon and then a ferry ride to the Airport island looks to be a longer journey. In most cities, Seoul included, the authorities have this idea that tourists are beings meant to be fleeced, so for example a metro ride to Incheon city proper is less than half of what it cost to go to the airport. Price aside, I’ve said that getting out of the city to the airport by Metro is not an easy task. There are some signs at metro station that looks like you could get a A-REX express train to Incheon Airport at Seoul Station, but don’t make the mistake I did. There’s no train going to the airport as of 2010. The line should be ready in the future, but just not now. I wasted 1 hour looking for that phantom train. Some maps indicate that the line is there, but some doesn’t. Best way seems to be to get to Gimpo Airport using Line 9 and then hopping to the A-REX to Incheon Airport without getting out of the station at Gimpo Airport stop.

Outline for today therefore, to take metro to Incheon Airport and then onto one of the island next to it by bus. End the day with a ferry ride into Incheon city before dark. It doesn’t really matter how it turns out. What is clear is that I will have to take a bus over a causeway to Jamjin-do and then hop onto a ferry to Muui-do. Will make up the itinerary as I go along…

Incheon City from Yeongjong Pier

So now at Incheon airport, it takes a little bit of investigation to know where to go next. I used up at least 1 hr here figuring out that it is impossible to walk to the pier (2km away) because of the airport security, so a bus is the best option. Go to departure area on the 3rd floor and take bus 222. Unfortunately there is no way to know whether the bus is going to Jamjin island or to Yeongjong pier for the ride into Incheon city. Just have to take your chance or ask the driver.  Bus fare seems to be 1000W as I didn’t really pay attention to my stored value card as I put it on the sensor.

However I was one of the ones that got on the wrong bus as the first one I took was going to Yeongjong pier on the return trip from Jamjin-do. When I got there, it was time to wait for the next bus to go to the island I wanted to go in the first place. Good time killer is to hang around the pier and look at all the tent-restaurants that sprouted out at the parking lot, full of drunk Koreans munching on BBQ pork and kimchi.

After half and hour, it was time for the bus to start moving again. Somehow I have a feeling that there’s not more than 2 buses that services this route going from one end of the Incheon Airport island (that would be Yeongjong Island) to the other end. The bus goes through the airport to pick up more passengers (or victims) and then darts to the west, where I wanted to go, confirmed by my GPS. Right after the airport the bus turns left into a small lane full of korean restaurants, seemingly built so that patrons can look at the sun setting over the sea. After a while, going through a tight road and avoiding carks parked on both sides of the road, the bus goes over a causeway connecting Jamjin-do with larger Jeongyong-do where the airport is located. The bus stops in the small island just before the ferry point. Roads here are tight, as real estate is not plentiful. A building sells 3000 Won return tickets to Muui-do for pedestrians.

Ferry connecting Jamjin-do with Muui-do

Four lanes of cars, they go in on the left then make a u-turn at the end of the ship and get out the same way.

There are two ferries operating here, taking turns in a maritime ballet shuttling cars and pedestrians across. On this day, and at this time, there are more cars returning than going to Muui-do. It’s almost 5pm by the time I got to my destination, which rules out any possibility of exploring the island. Just enough time to enjoy the sunset. The trip itself is an adventure in getting lost and letting a bus driver determine my fate for the day. Muui-do is not very far away by ferry, it takes less than 15 minutes to get across. As the ferry glides across the straits, seagulls follow the wake of the ferry, I’m not sure if its because the boat of to feed off the bread crumbs thrown by passengers.

Jamjin-do’s ferry ticketing booth. Notice the small space which is almost all taken by roadside restaurants. No place to park for sure.

Ferry anchor points on Muui-do

The trip back is quite straight forward. I already have a return ticket, so just hop onto the ferry at the pier, get back to Jamjin-do and wait for the same bus 222 to get here at the front of the ticketing building. The trip to Yeongjong pier is long enough it is possible to get a nap here. It was already dark by the time I noticed the bus making a detour from the standard route and realised that the driver was going off course to get some fuel. Thought that only happens in Malaysia. Though the sun was already below the horizon, the cold evening and clear skies gave the sky a nice gradient between dark orange and dark blue. I couldn’t take a picture of the nice colours since I can’t set up my tripod here (nor did I remember to bring one) and my camera does not do high ISO that elegantly.

Small fishing boat at Muui-do

Evidence of what peopel do here. Drink beer, eat oysters and light up fireworks (on the bottom right).

… and fishing…

This reflecting pool is actually a small pond on Muui-do with the sea in the background.

View of Jamjin-do from Muui-do in the late evening.

The convenience store in Muui-do

Heed the warning!

These two guards are looking after the ferry boarding points on Jamjin-do. Muui-do is in the background. This picture was taken on the way back to the mainland.

At least on the map, Muui-do looks like a holiday place with beaches and resorts. However, by the time I got here, I have less than an hour before darkness, and perhaps the last boat back to the mainland too. So it would not be too wise to hang around here too late, so only thing to do is to hang around the main town just after the usual Family Mart convenience store and watch the moon rise from the east over Incheon city. There are some fishermen, but they look local, the rest of the people here are making their way back to the ferry for the trip back to Yeongjong-do. I was thinking of taking some pictures of the small fishing boats in the harbour but at ground level they do not look too interesting. I have quite a number of pictures of it, but I only kept a few as most of them are quite boring. I was able to isolate the boats with a 105mm lens on a DX crop sensor but in general nothing much to talk about.

Tickets for the ferry ride back to Incheon city from Yeongjong pier cost 3000w too. But quite sure this time it is one way, so it is not a cheap ferry. It would be cheaper to grab the A-REX and Line 9 from Incheon airport. It is getting dark and the next boat is at 8 pm, just 20 mins away. Other than loud Korean travellers, the night is peaceful tonight. We have full moon now and during the long Chuseok holiday, and add to that a cold and cloudless night. I am unfortunately outfitted for summer. But I still prefer to be outside during the boat ride to the part of Incheon with the seaside promenade and a big ferris wheel.

For this shot I wished I had brought a longer lens. Its a 105mm on a Nikon D300, not too bad framing, but I would have liked a little tighter cut. That’s the Incheon bridge in the background. One of the longest in this region.

The boat took 15 mins. Could see that the second ferry is finished for the night, hence the longer than usual wait. I guess for those who don’t mind paying, they could go by bus, taxi or private car over the long bridge connecting the airport and Incheon city too.

The boat landing site is a cacophony of tourist restaurants and neon lights. Looks like there is a couple of mid sized amusement parks here. For me, it’s getting late and I absolutely want to get back as soon as possible. The next chore I had to carry out is the kilometer or so walk over to metro line 1 guided by my gps and google maps on my phone. What would I do without technology? There is a monorail system that looks like it connects to the metro station, but at this time in the evening it is not operational anymore. I’m not even sure if it is ever working. Can’t really verify it today.

And like clockwork, now inside the metro waiting for 30 something stops before getting back to downtown Seoul. For the final tally, my odometer says I have done just a little more than 100 km, but that had to include the multiple bus ride. Long trip, spent 1 hour maximum at the destination, but still feeling a sense of adventure in the process of finding my way around here. The boat ride into Incheon was the highlight of the day, there was fireworks off a tourist boat moored close to the promenade and just the general feeling of seaside wind blowing for 15 mins or so. It was cold but refreshing at the same time. Looks like a sequel should be coming up soon.

According to this superimposition of GPS plots and places where I took some pictures, it’s clear that I didn’t take too many pictures at too many different locations today. Most of is just figuring out where to go. But the results were worth it.

Tranquility

Watch it!

*end*

Suwon old city wall

Architectural detail: An old door with armored metal sheets taken at one of the secret entrances into the city along the wall.

Alright, I’m here now in a new country, ready to explore the place out and what a better place to do this than during the golden weekend. We are now around end of September, and this is what the Korean calls their Thanksgiving and what happens is that the whole of Korea goes on holiday for a whole week. Equivalent to the lazy christmas week for the Americans and a shorter version of the French summer holidays. Offices will be closed. Everyone will either go home to visit their elders or gravitate towards the summer playground of Jeju Island. Whatever it is, I’m not about to go far on this long week, in fear of highway traffic jam, lack of return tickets on trains and flights, and overpriced hotels. Hell, I’ve not even had time to visit any place around Seoul yet. So its time to do a little research on Wikipedia and Google Maps for the best place to visit for this long weekend.

Suwon City, nothing special about it. This is the view from the top of the hill where the wall passes through.

Old city walls separate the ordinary residents from the Kings that live inside the wall. Not true of course, just cooking things up.

Map view of the walk. Train station is on the bottom left. Wall is that baloon formed by the orange line.

The old town of Suwon looks interesting. What it is, in short, a town with a core that has its ancient city walls intact. From the map it looks a lot smaller than the city walls of, say Nanjing or Xian in China, but perhaps they don’t have as crazy an enemy to protect against; who knows. Best of all, Suwon is just an hour or two out to the South of Seoul allowing travel by Metro in the morning and returning late in the evening. So the plan was hatched. I will need to plot a GPS course this trip while walking the whole circumference of the city wall, which looks achievable in a day.

I has been some break I have been having, so packing up for a day trip is starting to be difficult. My muscle memory doesn’t apply to packing. Small bag, a DSLR and a lens or two, Audio Recorder, GPS and phones is all I need for this. I’ve started to move towards using the iPhone and Android phones for navigation. Although good for live Google Maps, it still doesn’t replace a stand alone GPS for the ability to hang it out of the bag for 10 hours straight collecting GPX information every 3 seconds.

All ready, I leave late around 1 in the afternoon, thanks to my inability to wake up early for trips. It should still be summer this late in September but the cloudy day is causing temperatures to drop to around 20c. Weather forecasts is not too good, with chance of rain, but in the 30-40% range so I take play the probability game and didn’t pack a rain jacket.

Getting there is easy, just find my way to Metro line 1 heading south. Will be taking a train to Sindorim station on line 2 and then change to line 1. Line 1 also branches off towards Incheon city, so be careful not to get on to the wrong train. There are announcements in English so it should be easy. Line 1 trains are also a trekking advertising board, with all the recommendations of mountains and sights at the stations that it stops on the main map above the train doors. I take note. Stations are spaced quite far apart once out of Seoul, so the trip took a litte longer than I planned.

Arriving in Suwon train station, the first thing that grabs your attention is a large AK shopping mall with everything, even a Baskin Robbins, so this is a good place to stock up on water and other necessities for the walk ahead. I make an unconscious plan to return around dinner time so that I can have a meal before returning to Seoul. At least today there seems to be quite a number of foreign workers hanging around the train station. More than what I have seen in Seoul, outside of Itaewon of course. I see Africans, Filipinos and some Indonesians. No idea what they’re doing here, either there’s a big place that hires foreign workers or they’re here for the same reason as me.

The start of the wall on the left of Paldalmun

This part of the wall is quite obviously reconstructed

My walk along the old wall of Suwon starts at Paldalmun, which is the one of the main gate. The road leads up to it and then goes around it treating whatever is left of the gate as the centre of a roundabout. And this is dead in the city center. There is a tourist information center here but closed today thanks to Chuseok holidays. Looking at the map, the left of the gate is the part of the wall that goes up a hill and on the right side is a river. I thought it would be better to climb the hill first and then downhill all the way rather than ending the trip with a hill climb, so I will start on the left.

The start of the wall passes through a small forest. These stacks of rocks is something locals do while making a wish. No they’re not supernatural, although I thought it was so when I first saw it.

What’s sure here is that the wall is definitely reconstructed. There’s something not very pleasing to me about reconstructed wall. I prefer it in the original state. It even has flags and long staffs with fake plastic blades to represent a battle ready Suwon from ancient times. Having a new wall where the old wall is not the same thing. I shall go on a long monologue about reconstructing historical architectures in a different blog.

Big irregular boulders stacked up to form the wall. I believe that this part looks like an original part of the wall.

The first part of the walk was tough but not terribly so. Only reason it is so is because the darn hill. Its not a terribly high hill, but a hill nonetheless. Once I get to the top it is mostly level. The wall is punctuated with turrets and command centers. The ambience is enough countryside to be able to take a relaxing walk punctuated with the occasional car horn and traffic noise but perhaps faint enough not to be able to notice it. For me its loud enough I don’t do too much ambient audio recording there. There are signs on the wall describing each architectural feature of the “advanced” wall design, like regular areas where there’s a section sticking out of the wall so that archers can shoot sideways at infidel invaders – for lack of a better word – and arrow port holes on the wall that slopes 45 degree downwards. I find some of them so perplexing how one could shoot an arrow through a 2m long square hole without touching the sides and attenuating the force and range of the arrow, but got to trust the ancients.

This is one of the secret entrances into the city along the wall.

New part of the wall, this is at the top of the hill

Turrets like this punctuates the wall. Provides a place for the soldiers to hang about and a good place to shoot arrows at invaders while being chickens.

Command centre: There is a stair that leads to the second floor where the King can look over the whole battlefield.

Architectural detail of the Command Centre

Detail of a Bell located at the top of the hill close to the Command Centre

And the thingy to hit the bell with!

There are also a bunch of secret gates apparently built at hidden locations to allow transport of provisions during battles and at the top of the hill there is crossbow turret at Seonodae just next to an impressive command tower on the top of the hill. There is a ticket office there but today there is no one here so I get to save 1000 Won. The rest of the walk around the wall is easy, but long. No problem for families with prams to walk entire circumference with some heavy lifting up and down stairs.

If you notice in the map posted earlier, there is a river that runs through the old town. At both ends of the river, where the wall runs over the river there are huge gates (only one on the North still survives today) where gates prevent boats from entering when closed. However I have no idea how they could prevent the siege party from poisoning the river water and forcing Suwon to give up the battle. Then again when I look through the history books, looks like this place was never used as a place of residence for the King since he never survived to see it completed, hence the capital stayed in Seoul.

After the Command Centre, it is downhill all the way

Where this was taken I was still on the wall, but at one of those areas for archers to be able to shoot at invaders sideways, like a little balcony.

This is one of the gate at ground level, notice the extra level of protection given by the curved semi-wing that sticks out from one side?

Nothing much to talk about most of the walk. Its just a wall. That’s the thing I’m going to go on about. I’ve been walking along ancient walls that has not been renovated, displaying the injuries sustained in wars and scars. Each one seems to have a story to tell. You walk around and wonder how each mark was inflicted. There is a sense of intrigue and imagined plot. When a wall is renovated, it looks as fresh as the corner Macdonalds restaurant. Sure, you can tell me that some famous event happened there, but I’m distracted by the new thing sitting there.

This is a screen out of Apple Aperture showing the path and where the pictures were taken. I went clockwise, and the pictures were quite regular till the end when it started to get boring.

*end of post*

Inside Hong Kong MTR Train

Started off my new project weekend, to photograph the station names of every single MTR station in Hong Kong. I don’t know how long it will take to do them all, but 3 or 4 weekends may be just enough. The idea is simple, take a camera, one lens and stop at every single station and then move on to the next.

There has not been any over eager security guard asking me to stop photographing so far, and to keep things interesting, I’ve got 2 months of backlogged podcasts to keep me company while continuing the task. The only thing I learnt is that there is a limit to the time you can spend in the metro, once you pass the gates. Its about 2.5 hours. And I spent a little more than that, and the Customer Service office let me out without a penalty. Otherwise it would cost a little more than 20HKD. I believe it was 21HKD that they mentioned.

Chai Wan MTR Station

There’s no deadline to this project. It will be completed when its completed, and I will figure out then what to do with all the database of photos! Today I managed to shoot 512 NEF files!