Category General
42: the answer to life, the universe and everything
For those of you who have read the book ‘Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy’ by Douglas Adams, the title is self explanatory. For those who have not read this series of books, ‘Forty Two’ is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything. In our case, the answer to a little challenge: how to cross Korea from west to east, avoiding all major highways.
In Korea, motorcycles are not permitted to travel on expressways, the main direct highway system between cities. Travel must be done on secondary roads and we discovered that highway 42 starts close to the Incheon airport where Streak and Storm arrived and runs across the country to our port of embarkation for Vladivostok at Donghae on the east coast. A good starting point.
We will need to overcome a number of challenges in this journey, the first being that the only two roads connecting Incheon and the mainland are expressways, but luckily there is a small ferry service which will give us access to the mainland. Our second will be to cross the Seoul Capital Area which has a population of some 24 million people. Still we are always up for a challenge so off we go. We start with broad avenues and no traffic, excellent. Someone here in Incheon built all the road infrastructure around the airport way ahead of any population development. Easy riding.
We are blessed with sunny weather, which will allow us to bed in our brand new, and very slippery Heidenau K60 Scout tyres that need 200 km / 120 miles to be run in to both settle the tyres on the rims and scuff the tyres to remove any chemicals used in the manufacturing process.
Early urban planning, Incheon
We track the ferry down and find ourselves waiting with one car and about 20 foot passengers. I cannot say I am looking forward to riding the new tyres on a metal deck but off we go, slowly. The ferry’s deck is fine, but appears to be well spotted with bird droppings? The source of the droppings becomes apparent as hundreds of seagulls start to circle the ferry in a clockwise direction, Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ comes to mind as the ferry slowly backs out, but no people throw food to the seagulls as they pass the deck. Our car driver spends the journey in a losing battle to keep seagull droppings off his car. We suffer one pannier strike, for luck I assume.
Waiting for our ferry to mainland South Korea
Down the steep ramp onto the ferry
Anthony doing the U -turn on the ferry
On the ferry to South Korea’s mainland
Ferry to Incheon on the mainland
We depart the little ferry, up the ramp and through a giant amusement park that would dwarf Sydney’s similarly located Luna Park. A couple of minutes later we are in the thick of it, riding in Seoul proper has begun.
I have found that Korea is a visual assault on the senses, Hangul (한국말) as the language is called seems to adorn buildings, street signs and vehicles, sensory overload when one is also trying to ride and follow the GPS. Highway 42 starts almost immediately after we leave the ferry, interesting how this one road links our ferry disembarkation and embarkation points. We quickly realise that the easy riding days back around the airport are over as we try to adapt to the Korean driving style. In addition to the no expressway rules for motorcycles, we had read that we must always stay in the right hand lane, not overtake and only pull out to turn left 30 metres from the junction! We understand these rules apply to all slow moving vehicles, trucks, buses etc, but as usual this information comes from websites that rank highly but may be dated. How does one determine what is relevant?
Typical road signs on route 42
Oops, wrong turn, Seoul
What we have learned about the Korean driving style is as follows:
– Fast acceleration and heavy breaking are the norm, scary in the rearview mirror when you are slowing for red traffic lights
– Red traffic lights are sometimes treated as advisories only, especially when turning right, use your own judgement
– Changing lanes is indicated when the bonnet/hood of the car next to you starts to get closer, but does not illicit horn honking or road rage
– Highway speed limits of 60 kph are always exceeded by at least 20 kph except where there are speed cameras
– Busses will pull out in front of you, especially to turn left.
– Motorcycles do overtake and travel in the centre or left lanes.
– We have yet to discern the signs for hairpin bends!
There will be a video, but as usual the best bits are missing as I am busy riding, not thinking of filming at that time.
Anne has planned a route today of a couple of hundred kilometres to a forested area south east of Seoul, we would have to see how the GPS will cope having turned off the main roads option to avoid expressways. This plan quickly evaporates as we make slow progress through the crowded streets. Our aim now is to get out of Seoul then see where we are before making a decision on the day’s destination.
Anne has written up a list of 43 forbidden expressways and 8 different road numbers to get to the first temple which she is carrying in her water pack for quick reference. The problem is that some backroutes directly lead onto forbidden ones so you have to be very careful. We don’t want the police closing the expressway to chase after us as we have read!!
Traffic lights seem to dominate the landscape, at every intersection it seems equal time is allowed for all permutations of crossing, I am surprised we are not bombarded with street vendors given the captive nature of the traffic, coffee anyone while you wait? An hour after leaving the ferry, we have progressed about 8 miles or 12 kilometres, the Greater Seoul Area is endless. We are lucky to find that although we have no idea what the signs say, number 42 is displayed at each major intersection so we at least know we are heading in the right direction. The occasion miss leads to an interesting combination of back streets via the GPS to recover our momentum.
Loud electronic advertising along the side of this truck, Seoul
Rice paddy fields, Icheon
Progress is made slowly: at the end of the day, we will have spent six and a half hours riding to cover only 77 miles / 120 kilometres, we really are the 2slowspeeds. After a number of hours in the saddle, we start to see trees. Seeking a hotel, we head for a forest resort, identified on my GPS and Anne’s Mapsme app. Sounds like a great location to rest after a busy day, unfortunately unlike Canada which has seen ski resorts become summer destinations, everything is closed. We are directed to the next town, Icheon where we find a grand looking hotel, well a grand looking Korean hotel, where the room is completely empty, bedding including mattresses are in a cupboard. It is nice however that each room here has a vestibule, no shoes allowed inside, just like home for us. We have also realised there is no 4th floor as the words for ‘four’ and ‘death’ sound similar in Korean, Chinese and Japanese. This manifests itself in tetraphobia, the fear of the number four. A word I did not know and a great addition to the scrabble board. A meal at a Japanese restaurant outside our hotel rounds off the day. Sleep follows quickly.
Our hotel room in Icheon, Korea
Where to find breakfast, well, one we can understand, we walk the rows of shops trying to make sense of the contents, then hey presto a place to buy WD40 one element missing from our arsenal of glues and gasket makers due to the high flammability of WD40 clashing with Dangerous Goods clearance for the flight from Vancouver to Seoul.
Everything you could ever want from belts to bearings here in Icheon
Got our WD-40 in Icheon
A 24 hour resturant offers bone soup for breakfast, we are not that ‘Local’ yet. Broth is tasty but he photos of the soup with bones in it and the pungent smell puts Anne off. Further searching leads to ‘Paris Baguette’, a Korean company that has now gone global with 3,500 branches provides ‘authentic French baking’. Croissants and coffee, we are saved. With our slow first day, we decide to travel directly but slowly towards Donghue on highway 42. We cannot afford to miss the weekly ferry as our Russian visa has a fixed starting date. Progress is sedate as we leave cities behind but the hilly and undulating nature of the terrain, plus the highways 60 kph speed limit our progress. We try to find a group of temples en-route, but the GPS and Mapsme lead us to a blocked entrance. As I have wondered before, what is the provenance of the data that supports our global maps? Traffic has thinned considerably and we are now scooting along at a fair clip, keeping up with local traffic. We have however been introduced on a regular basis to one of our lesser favoured surfaces: grooved concrete. This wet/icy anti skid road surface gives an unpleasant wobbly feeling and we have found it to be used here on downhill sections near traffic lights, tunnels, bends etc. We know the answer is to slow down and relax, but still not a pleasant surface.
Korea’s unpleasant road grooves
Along highway 42
Auraji, home of the Jeongseon Railbike, Korea
Auraji, Korea
Civilisation hugs the narrow valley floors with tree festooned hillsides looking down on us as we zig and zag eastwards. I never get the feeling we are out in the wilderness, on our route anyway. A short stop in Jeongsoenup and the purchase of a single bottle of Coca Cola introduces us to the shop owner who, while, we are sitting outside her shop brings us a green tea ice-cream each. While I eat mine, Anne cannot eat cream based products, she returns again with two local energy drinks as gifts. When we complement her on her plants outside her shop, she immediately runs into her shop, gets a parcel out of her fridge and hands it to Anne: two massive cucumbers. We cannot exchange words, but we understand she has two sons, both living away and sadly her husband has passed. Her actions speak for the generosity of people to strangers. We are lucky to have met her.
Our lovely shopkeeper
Our shopkeepers gifts
Our generous shopkeeper and her smile
As the afternoon wears on we reach Imgyemyeon, a small town at the junction of highways 42 and 35. A towering hotel by local building standards beckons and we will stay two nights, this place has a nice feel to it. Dinner is a Tofu and mushroom dish and we learn our host makes the tofu from scratch, another memorable meal and we are now just 50 km from the coast.
A day packing and sorting and exploring Imgyemyeon, covered in a separate blog entry, followed. Saturday morning and we are off with our sorted load and extra fuel containers filled. It is interesting that at each gas/petrol station they will only fill to the automatic stop level, regardless the amount of pleading ‘Full, Full’. They just will not exceed that limit.
Sinheungdong mountain ranges, Korea
Some sharp twisties climbing and descending make for the most enjoyable ride to date. Much closer to the type of riding we favour. The highway 42 does actually finish at the port main gates, a real ferry to ferry road. We have ridden across Korea and now the adventure begins.
Which way to Donghae passenger terminal?
– Anthony
PS how to entertain small children at a wedding, now where are those permanent markers?
Kids having fun with the Just Married couple’s car, Donghae, Seoul
Relaxing in Imgyemyeon
As we ride into the tiny village of Imgyemyeon, just 40kms out of Donghae, I spot a tall motel. It is too soon to get to Donghae, so we pull over and I go back to have a look while Anthony stays with the bikes. For some reason, the place has a good feel, I am shown a lovely room, I quickly check the current availability and rate at the hotel we had booked for 2 days later in Donghae and decision is made, we’ll stay here for 2 nights. A good base to spend the remaining of our time in Korea (locals only refer to their country as ‘Korea’, not ‘South Korea’).
Imgyemyeon is not a quaint, pretty little place, but a thriving farming community. It feels gently alive. Our 2 nights here were spent repacking, washing, walking, blogging, eating, exploring, shopping, eating, using Google translate to communicate and of course sleeping. While we didn’t sleep on the floor this time, the mattress was not only rock hard, but was circular – we had the love room!!!
Enjoy your stay in Imgyemyeon through the photos.
– Anne
Our love bed, with mood lighting above, Imgyemyeon
Sign in the shower, Imgyemyeon
Is it soap, moisturiser, cleanser?!
Dinner of tofu, mushrooms and ground beef, Imgyemyeon
Dinner in Imgyemyeon
Cooked eggs in the local supermarket?
Yes, cooked egg for breakfast but brown!
Dried octopus
Most advertising has a photo of happy woman
Take your pick
Not sure what this completely painted hut was about, Imgyemyeon
So many farming hardware shops in Imgyemyeon
Local police car – choose the appropriate number to call, Imgyemyeon
A walk along the river, we try out the various exercise machines, Imgyemyeon
Cabbages for Kimchi, Imgyemyeon
Most delicious dumplings, Imgyemyeon
Inside a dumpling, Imgyemyeon
Rice field in Imgyemyeon
Bridge over Imgyemyeon river in Imgyemyeon
On the edge of Imgyemyeon
View of Imgyemyeon with our tall motel
Fish ladder on the Imgyemyeon
Walking and cycling track sign, Imgyemyeon
Imgyemyeon is on Korea’s extensive walking/cycling cross countryntrack!
Temple in Imgyemyeon
Imgyemyeon
Imgyemyeon
Enjoying peaceful Imgyemyeon
Seoul
Waiting to board our flight from Vancouver to Seoul, we eagerly watch for any new pallets being driven to our plane to see if we can spot Streak and Storm. At each sight of large brown crates we rush to the window for a closer look, no, still not them… Time to board, we wonder if they’ll be on our flight as planned… 11 hours later, after a smooth flight, practicing writing some Korean words to memorise them when we see them on the road and having well and truly contoured North Korea, we arrive in Seoul.
Crossing over Russia
Staying well away from Pyongyang
Our immediate feeling at the airport is that everything is clean, calm and ordered. It is hard to describe the atmosphere. It is immediately clear that we are not to jay walk and walk on the correct side of the pedestrian crossing as identified with arrows – saves bumping into people walking in the opisite direction.
We get our first taste of hotels in Korea, although this one is clasified as a ‘tourist’ hotel. As you open your hotel room door, you are greeted with slippers in a sort of vestibule, and a little step to the main door. In the room is a tray with all sorts of men’s grooming products, even a hair brush (can you imagine using this hair brush?!) but the funniest is the large spray can which looked like hair spray, except for the picture of a cockroach lying on his back. Anthony reckons it too is a man’s grooming product designed by women who probably consider men to be cockroaches! The bed is super hard which I am looking forward to.
Porch into our hotel room
Free toileteries
Once we connect to wifi and I find yet another frustrating email from our shipping contact here, Wendy: in addition to being asked a few times before our departure if we had arrived yet, despite having given our departure and arrival dates several times and her having our Airway Bills with all the details, and my asking several times where we would meet on Monday 12th, we arrive to find out that our bikes arrived a day early and she wants to meet us at the airport at 19:30 that evening, equivalent to 3.30am for us – sorry, not tonight! Same time tomorrow she suggests. And no word from the shipper… Pretty disappointing to say the least as this means we will be charged additional storage fees for having our bikes there over 24 hours. It is already equivalent to 1am for us but we decide it is in our interest to return to the airport asap and start the customs clearance process to save us time and money tomorrow.
The whole customs clearance process will be detailed in our Visas and Borders section soon, but suffice to say here that the customs staff at the airport terminal were incredibly helpful. The customs officer we were directed to immediately called an interpreter. They had our Airway Bill in their system as we understood our name being mentioned. Within the first half hour, three people were involved and placed 6 phone calls. We then lost count of the number of calls and people involved, I think another 5. At one point the interpreter came over just to chat with us – it was her duty she told us to be with us while the paperwork was being processed. When she had to leave, after the official closing time, another customs officer called us over to her desk. She spoke good English and she too explained that it was her duty to chat to us so that her colleague could continue her work for us and feel less pressured that we were just waiting alone. Such amazing courtesy and consideration. Two hours later, we had all the paperwork we needed to clear the bikes out of the warehouse the next morning. Time for some dinner and some sleep before an early morning for the next stage of getting the bikes out.
Every government office or bank provides these
Delicious dumplings
Breakfast is a funny mixture of western and local food. We try our first kimchi, pickled chilli cabbage, it gives a bit of flavour and a bit of a bite to otherwise bland food. By the end of breakfast, we can see that are growing to enjoy Kimchi already. The next day was another whole process made the more interesting by a series of ‘helpful’ signs – which office are we meant to go to?! Yet again, someone came to our rescue: one of the Korean Air Services staff organised a car to drive us to a building to collect the original Airway Bill. It would have taken us hours to walk there and back. Paid the warehouse charge and after returning to the first office, got more signatures and stamps, we were ready to be taken to the warehouse to receive the crates.
Information sheet
Where to now?!
Crate removed
Time to finish reassembling the bikes
2.5 hours later, we are on our way!!! We are back at the hotel by noon – plenty of time to go into Seoul but not before lunch. We had been told of a great little restaurant around the corner from our hotel and decide to give it a go. What a feast, great dumplings. With Kimchi again of course. We are struck by the assault on the senses, just in our little area alone.
Left then first right to our hotel
Quiet Incheon where our hotel is
Cash machine
Toy arcade?!
We take the airport express subway into Seoul centre, which is 60kms away. Again, we are struck by the efficiency, cleanliness and ordered feel of the subway. It seems that a lot of thought has been put into making travel easy and stress free.
Next train approaching
Reserved for pregnant women, whether showing or not
Subway entrance for kids
I have a little wandering tour planned out to take Anthony on. When time is limited, I prefer ambling the streets rather than visiting important landmarks or museums as I find you get a better sense of the place as it is today, and can still read about the history. I had read of an arty suburb called Gahoe-dong with good views of the city. Getting there would take us past the Gyeongbokgung Palace, the National Palace, where one can watch the changing of the guards, except on Tuesdays, that’s today.
Impressive motorcade near the national palace, Seoul
King Sejong statue in front of the National Palace, Seoul
Seoul
As we meander the streets, we come across two young ladies taking lots of photos of each other. Too photogenic, I ask them if I can take a ohoto of them and ask why they are in traditional dresses. Just because they are spending the day together Vivi tells me as Chong-Ing from Busan on the right is visiting her. There is something special to see people proudly wearing their traditional dress. After them, we came across many more, young and not so young.
Vivi and Chong-Ing
Steps in Gahoe-Dong, Seoul
View from Gahoe-Dong, Seoul
Seoul
They do like cutesy cartoons to give messages
We stumble across an amazing art exhibition
Police barricade to military base – with plastic plants on top!
What a full first day, a sensory feast but we can’t wait to get out into the country side tomorrow and visit some old temples.
– Anne
The Untold Story
When we thought of doing this trip, a northern hemisphere summer round the world trip, we knew that we would be time and weather challenged but we both felt it was something we wanted to attempt.
Weather challenged we have certainly been for the past 2 months. We had hoped we would be late enough to ride up to Alaska but that was not to be. Winter across the USA, as it turns out this year, has been fierce and long and spring unseasonnably cold and wild. Instead we ended up going as far south as Arizona in pursuit of calmer and warmer weather but also to fill the time before our booked ferry trip to Vladivostok.
We certainly have had a great trip, enjoyed reconnecting with friends and family, making new friends, stumbled across gems we knew nothing about and simply letting fate or luck or whatever guide us to our next destination. But because of the freezing conditions, we have not camped as much as we had planned and accommodation has been horrendously expensive. While we have ridden in some pretty bad conditions, at the end of the day, if we want, comfort is never far, so long as we are prepared to use that plastic card… Having no fixed plan is something we have found we both enjoy. And yes, despite the weather, we’ve had a great trip so far.
The 2slowspeeds enjoying travelling despite the cold!
But… yes a big ‘but’ I wanted to share with our faithful readers. There has been a lot of soul searching. The but relates to the next stage of our trip. Due to the constraint we have put on ourselves of completing the trip during a northern summer, and due to visa restrictions (ie being limited to 30 days to cross Siberia, Mongolia and out of Russia before getting to Kazakhstan), we will have to rush this next part, Vladivostok to Ulan-Baatar especially, a mere 4000kms to cover in 10 days. How do we feel about this constraint? At least we’ll have long riding days with late setting summer sun. Do we really want to do this trip? Do we want this pressure? We can always back out at any time anyway. Should we rather just go to Alaska now and spend more time in Canada? And of course there’s the news of our unstable world at the moment – North Korea firing missiles, terrorists anywhere and everywhere. Our thoughts go back and forth… What shall we do?…
Anyway, all this just to let you know that we did question whether we should or whether we wanted to continue with our RTW trip. After much soul searching and checking with each other, we have decided it is something we both would like to complete. We really only finally decided about a week ago. The main aim was to visit friends we had made on the last trip and next on the list now, we really want to return to Uzbekistan and Iran (Turkmenistan willing). And discover Mongolia.
When we handed the keys to Streak and Storm to Justin at BMW-Ducati in Vancouver, I felt my first pang of excitement towards our next stage. This RTW is happening!!! Of course I will have to wait until the plane lands in Seoul before I can get really excited.
– Anne
2slowspeeds 