This summer in Korea has been, not to put too fine a point on it, shit. The two week spring rainy season that usually marks the beginning of summer came, and was still going three months later. It rained almost constantly, with tragic consequences for some of the country. On my side of the country it didn’t rain quite so hard, but it did rain persistently, destroying many of the local farm crops and much more importantly (ok, not really) my football season.
Korea is a very outdoorsy country. The fact that it’s almost entirely mountainous and a small country surrounded by the sea on three-sides means that a lot of the summer is spent hiking, going to the beach and picnicking. This means that if it rains all summer, life gets very boring. After finally getting a weekend of some promise a couple of weeks ago, the forecast returned to rainy. A certain someone declared that if she spent another weekend in the rain, she was going to go “literally insane”. As Mr. Rochester well knew, it’s not becoming of an Englishman to have a mental significant other and as my apartment has no attic space, drastic action became necessary.
Jeju is often called “the Hawaii of Korea”, mostly due to the fact that it’s an enormous volcano and the weather’s hot. Not surprisingly it makes for a popular holiday destination for Koreans and foreigners alike. It also happened to be the only place blinking out from underneath a swathe of cloud over Korea on the weather forecast. A look at the Jeju air website (Korea’s answer to Easyjet, right down to the colour scheme) showed two tickets left for the weekend, which we decided to snap up. A note to Korean residents, it’s well worth checking out Jeju Air; even last minute tickets were about KRW90,000 all-in (one way) and if you’re flexible with your times you can get about a third off that. It felt a little louche flying somewhere for just one night, as well as wracking me with guilt about my carbon footprint having got back from Bangkok just a week ago, but I also really wanted to see Jeju.
Flying domestic in Korea was a beautiful experience. Even arriving an hour before take-off, we had plenty of time for a coffee and a snack, and I think realistically we could have got from check-in to seated on the plane in about 15 minutes if we had wanted. I’m trying to figure out how I can fly domestic back to England next time I want to come home. We pitched up in Jeju with the noble intention of climbing Halla-san, at 1950m Korea’s highest peak, but the combination of it being stinking hot even at 8am, a blackberry wine nightcap the previous evening and feeling lazy led to us taking a two hour nap at the hotel instead.
A hastily put together new plan saw us heading out to explore the north-east coast of Jeju. First stop was Gin-nyeom beach, one of what I imagine is one of Jeju’s less famous beaches, owing to its small size, preponderance of rocks and over-craning wind turbines. I thought all of that made it more charming actually, and definitely less crowded. When we got bored of paddling there were rock-pools containing hermit crabs, shrimp and small fish to explore.
After that it was a short taxi-ride to Mangjanggeul – apparently the world’s largest lava tube, where once molten rock from the volcano cone burrowed its way through the island to the sea. In all honesty, you should prepare yourself for a fairly cold, damp walk with only a couple of interesting rock formations to maintain interest. It is just about worth it for the petrified lava flow at the end though, which descends from the ceiling a bit like an elephant’s leg (and by extension, I reckon, like a doner kebab stick).
Just down the road from the lava tube is a rather wonderful maze park, though curiously you are given a map of the maze so you can figure out the route, which seems a bit self-defeating to me. Perhaps Koreans don’t like getting lost (the preponderance of sat-navs in this country would seem to bear this out too). Anyway, apparently about 10% of people complete the maze in 5 minutes. I’m guessing that’s with the map; it took us nearer half an hour, and that was with following a couple with a map who rushed past us at a key decision point. Still, the maze is great fun and a very entertaining diversion for a few minutes.
After that we headed back to Jeju City to what was undoubtedly the highlight of the weekend – Loveland. Describing this is tricky. You’d have to describe it as an erotic sculpture park I think, but that gets nowhere near to capturing quite how much sheer fun you have there. Everything there seems to be about sex, from the giant penis and labia that form the centre-piece (lol) of the park, to the cute mating pigs which ornament the ponds. It’s not so much the statues though, as the wandering around in the dark with a bunch of half-drunk Koreans giggling at things. At one stage I joined the back of a three man queue to simulate sex with a statue. One man's heavily pregnant wife took the photo; I couldn’t really tell whether she was having a good time or not, nor strangely, whether he was. It’s a weird place, Loveland, never more so than when we get the sex-gift-shop sales pitch: “This is bestseller!” shrieks a lady at us holding a fiercely vibrating pair of beads. We blush, and leave hurriedly. Where on earth did Korea’s repressed sexuality disappear to all of a sudden? Anyway, we leave the park still giggling – Loveland comes highly recommended.
Then it’s back into town for a pint of Jeju’s own micro-brewed ale from the Modern Time brewery. Disappointingly, anything that looks interesting on the list of beers is unavailable, so we go for a pint of stout and a pint of the regular, neither of which were anything special, sadly. I’m still waiting to have a really good pint on the peninsula, though Alley Kat deserves an honourable mention. We also end up trying a bottle of Hallsan Soju, the taste of which now makes me feel like a bit of a wuss when I drink Chamiseul.
In the morning we actually manage to get up in time for breakfast at the hotel, and then head off for the beach. A bit of a false start at I-ho beach (not that nice, but good for plane spotters) we end up at Hallim beach, which turns out to be a great tip from our taxi driver, and as you can see from the photos, is stunning. We spend the morning swimming and relaxing under a parasol (I’m going to change my last name to Kim pretty soon, but at least I avoided nuclear sunburn this time) and generally having a great time.
The banana boat stand wasn't doing so well
So yeah, turns out you can do Jeju in just one night, and it’s very worth it. Only problem is, you really want to go back…
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