My Last Night Walk in Korea, Two Days Before the Nha Trang Flight

My camera had already moved to Vietnam without me. The timestamp on the footage says 19:28, but every clock in Korea said 21:28 that night. Two days before the flight, and my gear had emotionally emigrated ahead of my body.

Quick rewind. I am a Korean designer, I decided to move my whole life to Nha Trang, and this was my last filmed evening in Korea. On paper it was a simple plan, ship out in two days, start over by the sea. In my chest it felt like standing at the top of a water slide and remembering I cannot really swim.

So I did what any rational adult does with pre-move panic. I strapped a DJI Osmo Pocket 3 to my chest and went for a walk around the neighbourhood, saying goodbye to things that cannot hear me.

The elevator got the first goodbye

It started in the elevator of my building, the one with the gold walls that make everyone look like they are inside a trophy. I stood there fixing my hair in the reflection like the elevator was going to remember me fondly.

It will not. It is an elevator.

I have lived whole years of my life inside routines this small, and I only noticed them once they had an expiry date. The hallway outside, the gray doors, the fire extinguisher cabinet I never once opened. All of it suddenly looked like a museum exhibit of my own boring life, and I mean that as a compliment.

The garage where my ride lived

Down in the underground garage the ceiling pipes run in blue and pink like somebody let a designer loose on the plumbing budget. Signs pointing to B1, rows of white cars, and a pillar marked 103 with a wheelchair symbol on it. I have walked past that pillar hundreds of times and could not have told you the number until this footage.

My little two-wheeler was parked in its usual spot, the one with a Korean flag sticker on it, which is about to become the most patriotic object I abandon. In Nha Trang I will be the guy learning to ride among people who were born knowing how. Pre-grief for a parking spot is a real emotion and I am not proud of it.

The street that stays open without me

Back up at street level, the neighbourhood was doing its usual evening thing. The Olive Young was lit up like always, shelves glowing, sidewalk empty. Around 21:40 Korean time I just stood there looking at a cosmetics shop like it was a landmark.

That was the part that got me. None of this pauses when I leave. The signs stay on, the shelves get restocked, the street keeps being a street. I always assumed places kind of dimmed when you left them, like a fridge light. They do not. The fridge light was me.

I kept walking past a showroom with what looked like new cars behind glass, over brick pavement with grass pushing up through the joints. Even the weeds here have more roots than I will have on Tuesday.

A friend showed up, which ruined my brooding

Somewhere along the road a friend joined the walk, in a light blue football shirt, walking ahead of me along the roadside like this was any other night. Which, for them, it was.

It is very hard to feel like the tragic hero of an emigration story when your friend is right there treating it like a Tuesday stroll. We walked the dark road together, streetlights and yellow lines and not much else, and honestly that was better than any farewell dinner. No speeches. Just steps.

The stairs glowed green like they knew

The walk ended on the wooden boardwalk behind the buildings, the one with bamboo crowding one side and little green lights glowing on every fence post. They looked like solar caps, though that is my guess. By 21:50 Korean time I was climbing those stairs for the last time as a resident.

The whole loop, from elevator selfie to boardwalk, took 22 minutes by the timestamps. Twenty two minutes to say goodbye to a neighbourhood. It felt both way too short and exactly right.

Now, if you are ever two days out from leaving a place, here is what I learned the dumb way. Do the boring walk, not the highlight tour. Skip the famous spots and walk your actual route, the garage, the convenience street, the back stairs, because that is the footage you will actually rewatch. Bring a camera or at least your phone, since your memory will keep the feelings and throw away the pillars with numbers on them. And if you can, drag a friend along, because goodbyes shrink to a walkable size when someone is beside you treating it like a normal evening.

Pro tip from someone who learned it the dumb way: set your camera to the new timezone early if you want, but write down the offset somewhere, or future you will spend an evening doing clock math on his own memories.

Two days later I got on the plane, and this walk is the last thing my chest camera saw of Korea.

What about you. What is the boring, unfilmable route you would walk one last time if you were leaving your neighbourhood this week? Tell me by email or find me on Threads, I read everything.