Jeju in a day and a half

Jeju Air ad campaign: "Look! Whiteys fly us too!"

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.

Linda "wading".

Sunshine home day out.

Looking for crabs (snicker)

The wind turbines

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.

"I'll descend into your lava tube"

Thanks Japanese man who took our photo. Thanks for NOTHING!

The big spinning stick?

Asian maiden

The sign says "No kissing" - any excuse for a snog.

Finishee!

The maze from above.

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.

Enter!

"Wait your turn son."

Boob grab

I thought we were on Jeju, not lesbos.

Something about Linda mounting a massive cock.

"..."

Linda enjoying herself

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.

Well Korean

The beachee

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…

A

Jeokdeokdo

A couple of weekends ago we set off to do some offshore exploring among the islands in the West Sea, off the (air)port city of Incheon, where Linda lives. The most famous of these is probably Yeonpyeong-do, up in the north, which was the scene of a North Korean attack last year when we all got a little nervous. We eschewed this option in favour of the more southerly Jeokdeokdo, safely out of North Korean artillery range, but more importantly with nicer beaches.

We took an early ferry out of Incheon port, which at 44,000 won seemed rather expensive, but given that it worked out to 30 pounds return for an hour trip, probably just points to the fact that transport here is usually ridiculously cheap. This gave us the chance to have a look at the new Incheon airport bridge, which really is impressive. As you can see below, it's pretty long and must have been incredibly expensive. No wonder the Korean Highways Agency is tricking people into using it.

We get off the ferry and hang around in the port town for an hour or so, getting a coffee while we waited for a bus. This duly arrived, and we set off for the beach with about 30 other people. At the beach, everyone gets off the bus, and disappears. Linda and I are the only people on a 1km long stretch of beach. We're not really that sure where everyone went, but we assume it was to the pensions (houses you can rent for the weekend) up in the village. Wherever they went, it seems that these Korean people were not big beach goers.

The beach itself was really nice, a long stretch of sand, which turned into mud flats before the sea. There were many of the shells below around, which proved surprisingly mobile. The flats were also inhabited by lots of small fish, and huge crabs like the one below.

OK, so maybe not so huge, but interesting to look at at least. We also went for a paddle, and then just hung out on the beach. I wrote lovey messages to "Rinda" in Korean, and then we went off to get some Kalguksu for lunch. This turned out to be incredibly tasty, so much so that I forgot to photograph it.

After that, it was almost time to go home again, after having a quick beer in the park. There was time while waiting for the ferry to take a photo that shows what a nice day Linda had, and how much I hate photos.

I've just realised that this is a quite horrifically boring blog post. If you get this far I apologise. I will try to write something a little more exciting.

A

Geoje-do

Hmm, long time no blog. Sorry about that. Some of you might be fearing that this blog is going the same way as my ill-fated Guatemala blog, which evaporated into the blogosphere about five months into my time there, which, ominously, is nearly the same time as I've been in Korea. I don't think this will be the case, mainly as I have internet access at home here, and don't work 13 hours a day during the week, with a quick stint on Saturday just to make sure that the unhappiness really stings.

The reason for my silence recently was a rather special visitor who's been staying here for the last two weeks. More on her in later posts, but suffice to say that I'm now on my own in my apartment again, with ample blogging time. This means, just as I'm about to be inundated by the various precipitations of a month of typhoons, so you are about to be swamped by all of the stuff that I need to blog. With this in mind, here's a quick review of my short break on the island of Geoje-do.

I ended up going to Geoje-do as a fallback. Shannon and I had planned to go to the disputed island of Deok-do, and had negotiated a day off to do so. sadly, the ferry was sold out more than a month in advance. However, Shannon's friend Andrea had recently moved to Geoje-do, so we decided to head there instead.

It turned out to be a good choice. Geoje-do is Korea's second largest island, home to the highest density of foreigners in Korea, and is an amazing mix of heavy industry and outstanding natural beauty. The island is home to two huge container shipyards and builds something like half of the worlds container ships (fact stolen from Rough Guides). The shipbuilding equipment is visible from a long way around the island, and was hugely exciting to an overgrown child like me, and not at all interesting to Shannon. The industry brings many foreigners from central Asia to Korea, and gives the island a cosmopolitan feel, but without the sleaziness of a port town.

So that covers the industry. How about the natural beauty? Well, there is plenty of that too, as displayed in the following photos. The first set are of Haemeungang, a series of breathtaking rock formations which rise out of a striking green sea. There is something in the water here that gives it a striking turquoise hue, and mostly has the effect of making me want to climb on a few rock formations, and then hurl myself into it.

The rocks at Haemeungang are best viewed from a boat on the way to a small island called Oedo, and the two form an interesting contrast. Haemeungang is all natural splendor, it's rock formations sculpted by aeons of wear. Oedo on the other hand, has been sculpted by very human forces into a meticulously planned botanical garden, with impressive dedication since it's purchase by a couple in the 1960s. It's a different kind of beauty, but no less impressive, and reminds me a lot of a garden at an English manor house. Here are some of the photos I took there.

Post Oedo we headed back onto Geoje, and I stopped for a pint. This Guiness cost me 6 quid. And it was poor. And it was Guiness. And it was still the best pint I've had in Korea. Seriously Koreans, grow some hops and learn to brew.

The following day we set about soaking up some more of the natural beauty, and some sunshine. I even took my shirt off for a full ten minutes. Those that monitor my tan will not be surprised to hear that it didn't make a blind bit of difference and I am still deathly white. When we'd exhausted Daisy the dog Shannon and I took Andrea's kayaks for a spin. Truly, everyone should have kayaks. We had great fun paddling out to an island, where we found starfish, sea urchins and all kinds of other marine fauna. The we found a cave, which was even more exciting. We could have stayed a lot longer, but it was time to head back to the mainland again so we paddled the kayaks back to the beach, and headed for Busan on the ferry, passing several newly made container ships on the way.

So, this is the end of this part of the blog. I should publicly thank Andrea for letting us stay in her apartment while she camped in a forest, and also for lending us her kayaks. We had a great time on Geoje-do, and I'd definitely like to go back some day. In the next few days some shark diving photos should appear, so keep an eye out for those. Until then,

A