Korea East Coast Trail Q&A | LTF Review 1
hello welcome to lost and found we just got back from our trip down the east coast bike trail on the east coast of korea and we just wanted to create this video to kind of leave a review for future travelers that want to bike down the east coast of korea first of all it took us 16 days to go from khosang to busan that's from the northernmost point to the southernmost point our longest day was 73 kilometers the shortest day was 13 kilometers in between sokcho and yangyang yeah the total distance from for our journey that's starting in sokcho going up to khosan and then back down to busan the whole journey was 680 kilometers or so that means with 16 days it's an average of 42.4 kilometers the total elevation gain was 5 306 meters that's an average elevation gain of 331 meters per day so if you look at it like that there's not really many days where you're just going kind of without hills right the wind was going from south to north for about 60 to 70 percent of the journey then when we got further south pohang that's when the winds they got strong but they actually helped us a lot too at the end of our journey when you're looking at the east coast bike trail the official trail is actually from the unification observatory which is near north korea and it goes all the way down to sunrise apart which is near uh so that's the official section with all the stamps that you can see in the video it's 17 stamps total after that from yongdong to usan it's still a bike path but it's kind of old right they used to have uh the stamp booths i think back in the day and then they they shorten the path up to the sunrise park so you can still see some of the old booths on the way down to usan that section starts to get a little less maintained in between uson and busan the bike path kind of ends randomly um we were trying really hard to follow the signs but i think this section is really old and we ended up having to ride on the highway for about i would say 30 kilometers total i would say usand of busan can't be called the east coast bike trail unless there's a chance we just got lost too we don't actually know we're gonna answer 17 questions that we think might help future riders that want to bike down the east coast bike trail what is the easiest section of the ride from yangyang to kangmu because there are so many stretchy roads riding near stabilization makes me feel more comfortable less pressure so it helped me psychologically like easier than other routes for me the easiest section was from koh sang to kanglang there weren't many hills the path was really well maintained during that section there are also a lot of convenience stores beaches amenities it's kind of full on civilization until you reach kangnam right so in my opinion from soccer to kosong or like puang area is too long so i feel like staying in a place for too long so that makes me tired so question number two what's the hardest section of the ride there were too many sections like hard dissection for me so it's a hard to pick just one i ought to say from ursan to busa because we had to ride on highways like with cars and trucks and they were so fast that scared me a lot so that was hardest part for me the hardest part was after tonge until young it's also the section with the least amount of civilization the views are really breathtaking and it's really beautiful out there but there's just so many steep hills and your body just starts getting tired after going for a while there were so many ups and downs the officers were too steep so downs are not healthy helped me so kind of depressed one weird thing that we noticed in between tonya and is a lot of the bathrooms were closed because of kovin at one point we wanted to camp next to a beach and there were two really good beaches at that time every bathroom was closed there was like three bathrooms that were closed so that was the reason that we had to pay for a camping site number three what was the biggest challenge to me riding with the heavy bags on any hill so the biggest challenge was the whole trail then but that is true for me the biggest challenge of the journey was between uson and busan riding on the side of the highway it's really hard to think properly because the cars aren't really good at yielding around you they're kind of going really fast like right beside us ah the shoulder of the highway is so small so there's sections where you want to ride kind of far away from the cars but you're you have to go right next to them i think that was the biggest challenge for me definitely mentally okay question number four what is something you didn't expect uh wind and the beauty of order fishing village unlike the farming area we've biked before so it was really beautiful and new to us they had this kind of unique vibe and there was like painting on the walls and little like old well-constructed houses that you don't really see that much in korea it's really colorful the thing i didn't expect was how easy it would be to wild camp i was expecting people to kick us out here and there because we weren't really going to official camping spots right but we camped everywhere like we even camped on beaches where it said don't put your tent up but nobody cared nobody talked to us a single time and that doesn't mean it'll happen to you but that whole time nobody gave us any hassles about camping that was great number five is 16 days normal for people biking down the east coast or do you think people will be faster or shorter i would say yes for those who cycle very often in daily life so they could have done this like this past in two weeks i'd agree actually so i think for intermediate cyclists that are used to riding about 60 to 80 kilometers on flat ground i think two weeks is a good amount of time for you uh going down the east coast bike trail we had way more gear than the average cyclist and especially like on the flat grounds it doesn't make that much of a difference having a lot of gear but on those really steep hills it makes a huge difference it's like biking up with two bodies or an extra person on your back and also with us filming getting off the bike setting up the tripod or setting up the drone i think that added probably one or two days total even on flat roads like against the winds that makes it everything hard it's unexpecting how much the winds will actually affect the journey especially on the east coast where there is a lot of wind because it's right next to the ocean there wasn't a single day without some form of strong wind what season or month should you go the middle of april would be perfect because there weren't many shades on the stretchy roads at the end of this journey it was a little hot so that would be so tough for hot days in my opinion yeah middle of april is really good even may or september would be okay i think the beginning of april was a little too cold in the northern part of the east coast bike trail so like the coldest nights we had camping were about two to three degrees at night it was way too cold honestly you need to be more comfortable than that if you want to bike from north to south versus south to north what would you choose if it's with the wind i would go from north to south and busan is a good place for finer destination i guess i'd agree with that i have heard though the winds normally go from the south to the north knowing that i think you'd have better luck with the winds going from south to north however the trip ending in busan is so nice just arriving there and busan is one of the coolest cities in korea i mean everybody who's been there knows that it's they just fall in love with that place so it's such a like epic place to finish so where can you camp on the trail i think you can camp anywhere with convenience stores and public restrooms definitely and just to add to that the beach too so a beach makes it kind of a little bit easier to set up all your gear and like people won't kick you out but other than that 100 the same number nine if you don't camp where should you stay staying at a motel is the best option i think so the motels can range between about thirty dollars to sixty dollars per night depending on what city you're in or how new the place is don't be scared of the old motels either they look kind of ghetto on the outside but a lot of them are really well maintained like the one uh yeah that uh a lady told us that it was really dirty and old but it was actually not dirty or old at all that was one of our best nights of sleep after the pandemic one more place that i would recommend is it which it's basically the sauna spa type hybrid where you're allowed to spend the night there and it's about eight to twelve dollars american to spend the night so after the pandemic that's okay during the pandemic do not go there there's been so many outbreaks at gym and if you're a light sleeper oh oh yeah i think you should go to a motel and if you do go to a gym dip on definitely bring an eye mask and uh ear plugs a lot of people snore at least in the men's section i don't know if the ladies snore as well but of course we are human too yeah number 10 this is a simple one how many bathrooms are there there is a heparin it's a tray a walking trail so there are so many public bathrooms for trailers so there are enough bathroom for bikers too yeah i would say every two to three kilometers there's a public bathroom so really easy number 11 how can you eat we had so many food from convenience stores or you can get delivery foods so easily it's not healthy but so easy to get full yeah a full meal at a convenience store can range from about two dollars to five dollars so that's kind of the budget option if you're not cooking then there's also a lot of restaurants which range from about five dollars to fifteen dollars depending on what kind of meal you're getting i wish there could be more kimbap changu oh yeah restaurant for those that are wondering kimbap changu is basically it's just a standard korean restaurant with like 60 options of food you can choose a kimbap tango is like the same price as a convenience store but it's like having a whole meal almost so it's really good with so many veggies vegetables go bad so easily while putting in our bags so it's really it was really hard for us to get notorious food number 12 how many bike maintenance shops are there there are smaller bikes stores in even in little cities but it would be really hard for you to find the a specific component to fix your bike so i think preparing extra component would be a good idea like let's say a walmart type place like an e-mart or a home plus they don't really have as big of a sports section as they do in north america at least for things like biking so you really have to prepare better or find like a really good bike shop and those are only in the big cities cities now so that would be like sokcho kang pohang busan in between uh kangnin and pohang there's probably 300 kilometers with no good bike shops number 13 what is the thing you wish you knew before riding the trail the set gear doesn't have to be a set in your bag so lighten your stuff because we brought too many like dishes we haven't used so that was kind of a waste of space in my bag the thing i wish i knew the most is i wish i knew how bad the road was between usan and busan we weren't expecting to ride on the highway like that and that was kind of a bad surprise at the end of the journey most riders in korea avoid the highways just so you know you almost never see bikers on the highways and if they are they have like a escort car behind them a lot of the times ah like they're they are a big group yeah so they take up a full lane just so they're safe number 14 what was your biggest mistake not wearing some block because i was lazy especially on my thighs and knees it hurts a lot the biggest mistake in my opinion was not accounting for enough rest days we thought that it was good to just go like every day just little by little as as much as we could go your body doesn't actually get the right recovery that it needs so in the future if we would do it again i would say seven days of riding one day rest seven days of riding one day rest we haven't tested that yet but i think it's gonna be a lot better than what we did number fifteen what did you plan the best diet for breakfast oats is really good grain healthy grain so oats maple syrup sliced nuts sometimes peanut butter that's optional we really wanted to add banana but it was a little hard for us to find at the convenience stores it was a really good meal to start a day for cycling the thing i planned the best was my clothing so i had three pairs of underwear three pairs of socks bike shorts and t-shirts i had two pairs of shorts to wear on top of the bike shorts two pairs of pants one thermal layer for upper body and lower body one puffy insulated jacket a toque a pair of gloves and one gore-tex rain jacket i think i could be a little bit lighter to be honest i just had the extras just to make sure whenever we got to a hotel i actually had something clean to wear number 16 what did you plan the worst right after what you answered like clothing especially underwear because i had only three pairs of underwear i always estimated my passion for washing dirty underwears every single night i got tired and lazy at the end of our journey i didn't wear any underwear the thing that i planned the worst was uh i thought i would be using my good video camera which is filming us now which is two kilograms it's just it's actually really heavy and uh we didn't even pull it out of the bag once so the only thing this stupid camera did was just get some sand in the lens which i had to clean out later and it was just a dead weight that will never come on any other trips the final question what did you learn from this journey the more you open yourself to others the more other people welcome you people are so nice and kind in general i guarantee if you're not korean and you just want to come to the east coast bike trail alone people will be so kind to you and so friendly at the beginning of our journey it was not easy for me to say hello to other korean people because we don't normally like do small talk i made a goal every day like okay today i'll i'm gonna say hello to other people like 10 people and i did quite an experience for me the other day resting is important yeah for me i think it's staying healthy the resting is really important like i mentioned earlier and avoiding junk food we ate way too many snickers bars we ate fried chicken all the time we ate pizza all the time we really didn't take care of our health because uh this was a trial to see if we could actually kind of live on our bikes and film and upload these videos to youtube but uh now that we've done it we definitely know that uh we want to eat healthier so now we'll talk about our overall opinion what i found with this journey was the beauty of older fishing village right that was really big to me so i just wanna wanna share this experience with other people so i highly highly recommend this course if you take into account a lot of the things we said like uh staying light on your bike having enough rest days going when it's not too hot out and hopefully the wind isn't too bad i think this is the nicest most beautiful biking trail that i've done in my life i will give the east coast bike trail an 8.4 out of 10. that's a really high number for me this is the absolute most beautiful bike journey in korea by far of any places we've gone so far in the last seven and a half years i've lived here i think even if you've lived in korea for a long time you'll see new things at the east coast pike trail there's so many friendly people so many beautiful cities such good food such good places to camp the roads are amazing until ulsan honestly this is a journey that people should take over the seoul to busan for rivers trail 100 in my opinion i'm pretty generous generous about it so 9.2 wow because you can be surrounded by like beautiful ocean views staying with nature for a quite a long time is amazing it depends on a perspective to me like ups and downs it was hard challengeable but that's why i learned to so many things psychologically this journey like helped me out a lot to grow my mentor house now we have the rest of korea to travel we've done the hardest road first so we're going to start our next journey in a place called quesan it's kind of the middle of the mountains and we're gonna bike down to kunsan so you can look forward to those videos starting the next week after this one is uploaded thank you so much for watching the videos uh we really appreciate it we really appreciate if you guys like or subscribe to the channel because this is something we really want to do in the future for the unforeseeable future we'll see you next sunday what is this four
2021-05-18 22:48
