Jeju Island...fantastic

First, I posted lots of pics in Picassa....I suggest you read this post first before looking at them...some of you may be a bit apalled from a certain museum we attended.
Today is the 23rd of July.

On last Thursday night Mong and I went to Busan and boarded a ferry that took us to Jeju Island (or Cheju, Cheju-do, Jeju-do), a small island formed entirely by one volcano which last erupted between 100,000 and 300,000 years ago. The island is off the south west side of Korea…we arrived at about 6am Friday morning. To start, it was awesome…it was absolutely beautiful…subtropical/warm temperate climate. That meant there was an extraordinarily large number of different plant species…so much biodiversity!! Also, the island is tiny, I’d say it would take about 2-3 hours to drive around it completely, on the costal roads.

So I suppose I will just write down by day what we did…the highlights I suppose…

Thursday night we took the ferry, and had an awkward nights sleep in a large hard-carpeted room on the 2nd deck with about 80 other people in it…capacity was over 200, so we had nice space. There were pillows but no blankets or pads, because Koreans are highly capable of sleeping on absolutely anything, no matter how hard or strangely shaped it is. The pillows were little rectangular cube type things, about a foot long and 6inches wide—just a hard chunk of foam with a vinyl cover. I sorta slept. However we had both applied those sea-sickness patches behind our ears as we had heard the ferry can cause pretty bad seasickness. I had never seen nor heard of such a thing, and just hoped it would work. I was kind apprehensive that some kind of sticker put on 3 hours ahead would seriously change the motions of my inner ear, but I did not get sick. Although the side effects just downright sucked. Not until we got home yesterday did I find out that my horrible case of dry-mouth that lasted 24 hours after removing the patch was caused by the patch. And then when we came home I used it again. This time the dry mouth was worse, and my vision blurred---couldn’t read up close and when I read it can cause blurry vision yesterday, I looked in the mirrors and my eyeballs were horribly dilated. Then, all day yesterday I felt like my balance had been stolen and replaced with alcohol…I almost fell over walking down the hall, two times, when the ship was completely still after it had docked…nor could I see that straight. It was rather interesting…although I don’t think the dry mouth makes it worth it…I probably drank 15 glasses of water yesterday!!!! After reading about it, it’s no surprise that you need a prescription in the US to use them! They were only 1500 won for 2 patches here (about $1.50).

Friday: After arriving at 6am, the town was dead…we arrived in Jeju city, the largest city on the island but still much smaller than Masan or Changwon…which together make a metro area over a million, I think Jeju city has 200,000 or so. We had reserved a scooter online for our mode of transportation, a 2-seater. We took a taxi up to the place where we were renting the scooter and he gave us a tip as to where to eat. After eating udon noodle soup and kimbab (like sushi rolls, but only with vegetables, Koreans like them with tuna, carrots, pickles, cucumber, and strips of flat cooked scrambled egg) for breakfast (I still prefer bread, toast, and cereal type foods), we wandered around and sat in an internet café for an hour to kill time. They’re super cheap here---50 cents an hour and open 24 hours…there were about 7 other guys in there---probably between 14 and 45 years old…4 of them were passed out over the keyboard with their hands on the controls and their battle games frozen in the scene. It was funny.

We went up and got our scooter, strapped our lightly packed backpacks on (yes, mother and father, I CAN pack light), put on the helmets and zoomed off. There aren’t real highways here, so that was a relief to me. Just small streets…not too many main roads and very little traffic…most cars you see are rentals. We headed up to the “Ghost road” which is a mysterious road where things roll uphill. Of course, it’s not true, but rather and optical illusion. From the “bottom” of the hill, it REALLY looks like the hill is going up and I set down my water bottle and there it went…began to roll up the slight incline. Several tour busses, vans, and cars drove from the bottom end, turned off their engines and began to roll “up” the hill. It’s really cool looking, but after hearing and reading the explanation, it makes sense. The surrounding trees and small lumps of dirt that line the road make it appear as if its uphill, but when you go to the “top” you realize you really are at the bottom of the hill, although it pretty much looks flat from that angle. It was cool though. And, there were cows next to the road, which made me realize that living in a city for the first time in my life really made me appreciate and LOVE the smell of fresh cow poo. It was a blessing and smelled like Bella vista, Palo Cedro, Finland, and Germany all in one big swirl. That little area actually looked like Finland, too.

After, we headed down the road towards the beach and came across an outdoor museum called Loveland. Basically, it was a museum full of “erotic” statues so we went in to see what there was. It was quite amusing. Really, it was just a pretty park like area with ponds and grass and trees decorated with statues from 2 feet to 30 feet long (oh, and one mosaic structure that was probably 50 feet long shaped like a large, ehm, libido) of people…you get the gist. There were also many sculptures of just women’s legs, from her belly button down, in high heels…most of them were upside-down, which was just kinda bazaar if you ask me. The funniest part was the sculptures of “love” portrayed in different countries. The American love sculpture had the man and woman dressed in colonial clothes, so he looked like George Washington and she had a lacy garter around her leg. The Japanese one was very Asian looking, with the man and woman’s hair pulled up and tied on the top of the head. There was a Greek one too—the man was half centaur so he had horse legs, hahahha. There was an African and Indian one too.

After that we went to a beach---I swam but Mong was too frightened from the sun after last weeks burn so he sat in the shade. It was nice…the water was perfect and beautiful. Further down the road we came to a realllllly pretty beach called Hyeopjae beach and ended up going back there our last day…it was the prettiest one in the entire island---green and blue teal like waters…clear and perfect temperature, with white sand. It wasn’t coral sand, but it was still white and soooo pretty. There is only one coral beach and its on a tinyyy island off the coast of Jeju island but the ferry wasn’t running the day we wanted to go because their was a typhoon near!! We were soo bummed…although the typhoon was rather west of jeju, closer to China and was headed North they wouldn’t run the boats on the east side. Oh well.

Then we went to Mini-land…which was an outside museum with mini structures of the most famous buildings and things in the world…scaled down from 1/15th to 1/40th of their real size. We saw the Taj Majal, great wall of china, Eiffel tower, Egypt’s pyramids, Aztecan pyramids, mount Rushmore, leaning tower of pisa, Notre dame, some Korean buildings, white house, Sydney’s big white opera house, part of Machu Picchu, a huge Buddha (but we didn’t walk up to it, we saw it behind trees…so I’m not sure where it is, but I think in Southeast Asia somewhere) and many many more things.

Then we drove down to the southwest corner of the island and checked out one of the many waterfalls Jeju has to offer and then went to another beach. After, we drove to Seogwipo, the second biggest city. But then again there really only two cities, Jeju and Seogwipo. The hostel we were staying at was in that city, which became quite hard to find but after asking the police station we found it. It had a kitchen in it we could use too, so we went to the grocery store and bought spaghetti sauce, ground beef, and noodles and I made spaghetti. We got some breakfast food too, and that covered lots of food for the next day. I had brought peanut butter with me in a small container so I bought bread and it became my snack if I was hungry. We met some French people there too, and Mong tried to pretend like he was American but eventually his accent gave way and the French guy asked Mong where he was from…we think he thought Mong was from Thailand or Malaysia or something because he’s now so dark. Mong kinda stuttered and I said, he’s Korean. It was kinda funny.

Saturday: Saturday we went to two more waterfalls, one in the midst of the subtropical forest…SO PRETTTTTTTYYYYYYYY. The other was pouring out over rocks and then the water ran down right into the surf of the ocean on a lava rock beach (many are made of lava rock). Quite beautiful as well, actually I liked that actual waterfall the best. We also checked out this famous cove of the ocean where a 20 meter tall chunk of lava rock protrudes straight up out of the ocean, it was created when the volcano last erupted. It goes straight up, pretty cool. The waves are intense their, crashing and super strong, surrounded by cliffs upon which we stood. That was also verrrry green and I saw a couple banana trees growing, one of them bearing the beginning of what would become a bundle of bananas. I jumped in and took a picture pretending like I was gonna eat it and then look to my left, and then to my right, and saw two large spiders…two different species. Kinda scared me, since I shoved my head in there within a few inches of each one, but I felt no bite so I decided to take pictures of them instead. In that rainforest-ish environment I felt so properly dressed---I wore the maroon tank top I took with me, the colorful toucan bird earrings I made, and bright colored scarf tied around my head I acquired some years ago from I have no idea where (probably a thrift store). And I was so thankful by this point that I took my cushy running shoes (saucony’s) rather than my flat black adidas sambas.

After that, we started to go towards the west side, and witnessed a large number of old women gathering seaweed in the ocean…wallowing through the water washing up on the lava rock (no big waves), and heaving it over their shoulders. Then they go and lay it out on the side of the road to dry. End of the day they scooter themselves back to home. Don’t know if I mentioned it, but tons of people here drive scooters, especially around the fish market. All along the southern part of Jeju, people are selling mandarin oranges. They are the most famous thing to buy here, and the oranges make up the second largest industry after tourism, I’m willing to bet. They are very delicious though, and they make mandarin chocolate too, which is tasty! Most of them are grown in greenhouses, but I saw many trees along the road also…but there are tall greenhouses everywhere.

When we made it to the town with the Jeju traditional museum, it started to sprinkle. We pulled out our plastic parkas which we had to use the day before in a 15 minute downpour (remember, its hot, humid, and clouds are constantly rolling in and out…so the island gets thunderstorms probably every day), put them on and arrived at the museum. We got our tickets and then went to a room with lockers where we left our backpacks and helmets. Mong put his flip flops on, and even though it wasn’t raining that hard I decided to also. Thank goodness, because after our 2 minutes in that room, we opened the door, and no joke, there were literally 2 inches of water on the ground…so it was kinda like wading through a museum rather than walking. To be honest though, it was kinda fun~! The rain stopped after 10 or so minutes then it cleared up and our little rivers drained away to feed the lush variety of plants. The museum basically just had reenactments of the buildings and villages of Jeju a few hundred years ago. The most interesting part was about the pigs. There is a special kind of pig that lives on the island, a black pig. Back in the day in the villages, the people didn’t have toilets of course, so they all peed in one pot. And if they had to go number 2, then went to the “bathroom,” where they sat on a pile of rocks that made a hole in the middle, and when one relieved himself the droppings fell right into the pig stall. Absolutely disgusting, the pigs are, but yes, they ate the human feces, and the urine jars would be poured into the stalls as well. That must have really stunk. Grosse, but interesting. Then the people ate the pigs.

That night we stayed at a jimjilbang, actually, that was the smallest one in all of korea, in the middle of the countryside. So small, we drove right past it and then at the stop sign we saw the sign that pointed backwards to it. A jimjilbang means steam room, but what it is, is you go there, they give you shorts and a tshirt to sleep in. Girls and boys go to separate sides, you shower (in open stalls...showers here are completely un-private, so I had to quickly get over my American privacy needs and just be like everyone else…take it all off and who cares), then go to the main lobby area and chill out in the clothes you were given. There is usually a variety of different saunas and steam rooms, although this one, being the smallest, only had one steam room, which we didn’t even go to because we were too tired and were actually only staying there for the price. Jimjilbang’s are very cheap…this one was 7,000 (about $7) per person per night. Of course, we slept on the floor, but the sweet old lady that owned it laid down a blanket on top of her bamboo mats and gave me a regular pillow. J There was one other man there, a 37 year old used-to-be stock broker (one of the ones in the pit) who hated his job, quit, and decided to wander around jeju for a couple weeks. He and Mong talked a lot before I fell asleep. It was really pretty there, the east side of the island is allll countryside. They don’t really have regular fences here, 90% of fences are made from stacked up black volcanic rock…most about 4 feet tall. Even for cows and horses they usually just use that, unless it’s near a road. It looks really cool though, really natural. Also in Jeju, there is a famous color: mud brown. There is a special kind of mud here that they use to dye all their clothes…so many Jeju people wear that color of clothing. She mixed it with her stucco and smeared it on the inside of the jimjilbang main room. Grandma Carolyn, you would LOVE IT!!! Before we left, the lady was concerned with my neck getting burned (even though we made sure before leaving that we were completely covered with sunscreen, spf 50), and she wrapped a scarf she mud dyed herself around my neck and gave it to me. She was so cute!! She reminded me A LOT of Grandma Carolyn; she had decorated the entire place herself. Also, it was funny to listen to her talking to Mong because she spoke Jeju dialect which I could easily tell is quite different. Example: thank you = komapsuhmnida. Jeju dialect thank you: kom’apsuudah. That isn’t actually that different, but it’s the only thing I can remember. Most times Mong asked for directions, they always asked him to repeat, and he visa versa. I heard “weh” a lot, which means “what.”

It is now the 25th. I took 2 days off between writing this.

The next day, Sunday, was a bit windy and overcast (although still not cold) because a typhoon was sweeping through the sea between korea and china. Originally, it was suppose to go right over the island, but it slowed down a bit and went slightly east. That night at the jimjilbang it rained pretty hard and a lot, but all day it didn’t rain! It was nice. That day we went to a big cave that was formed by the lava rivers when the volcano was last active. Mong told me they’re closing the caves in 2010 because the volcano, Mt. Hala (or Hala-san) has started to move very slightly and they predict an eruption within 10 years. He said something about it not going to be bad…im not sure what he meant. I asked if all the people are gonna move back to mainland korea but he said the scientists don’t think it will be really bad…I’m not sure.

We wandered through a 10 foot tall hedge maze near the caves that was fun. Mong won, but only because I helped him. He kinda cheated in that aspect, plus, he jammed my finger so I was temporarily stalled.

After that we really just hit the beaches along the coastal roads. That night we made it back to Jeju city and stayed in a much much larger jimjilbang. Once again, not so good sleep. But we were able to catch a spot on a bamboo mat rather than the granite floor…where most of the Koreans were sprawled out, sleeping like babies. Mong also stole a blanket from someone in the middle of the night to have some more padding for me to sleep on. There were only a limited number, and it was rather warm in there…he said the guy wasn’t really using it. Heheh

Monday, the last day, we went back to the beautiful beach we saw the first day. We swam, sat on the lava rock, and chased little creatures in the rocks (it was fun because I felt like I was in Washington again…I forgot how much fun it is to find rock crabs and hermit crabs and catch little fish!!! We also made a little sea creature zoo at a beach on Sunday too.

After that, we went back to jeju city, bought some mandarin chocolate, ate at the place we had breakfast at, and then got on our ferry and came home with dry mouth, blurry vision, and no balance.

All in all, it was awesome, a really fun trip, and a BEAUTIFUL PLACE!!! We kept it really cheap too! Hope you enjoy this longggg post.