Of drunken dirtbags and sweet schoolgirls...

Before we get started...random picture...horse riding on Hyeopjae Beach on Jeju Island...

While drugs are apparently rather hard to come by in Korea, they sure do love their alcohol. Any school or social function you go to, the beer and soju flow freely. Both are dirt cheap, especially soju, which is rumoured to have something like 20% alcohol. A bottle of it (not sure how big it is, I think 350-500mL) is less than a dollar. This means that you can get wrecked for next to nothing, and get wrecked they do. Also, drinking in public is A-OK and everyone drives like maniacs, so picking out a drunk driver in traffic is next to impossible...so the incentives to not get smashed drunk before 2 p.m. are pretty few around here.

Yesterday when I was on my daily run, I just about tripped over some guy lying in the middle of the sidewalk. At first, I was concerned and thought that he was sick or something, so I went into the restaurant a few feet from the guy to tell people about it. They seemed more annoyed with me bothering them than happy that I cared enough to stop and they simply told me/showed me (making the drinkie-drinkie gesture) that the guy was okay just drunk as a skunk. This was at around 6 p.m. I'm not sure what's worse...the fact that this guy was so ridiculously drunk by 6 p.m. that he passed out in the middle of a sidewalk or the fact that no one seemed to care...(sorry for the crappy pic, I just took it as I was running on my way back and didn't want to stop and draw attention).

Drinking is also huge in the local parks. There are tiny little parks (about as big as an apartment building) everywhere, which is really nice. They usually include a few bits of exercise equipment (which I love!), a playground, a few trees, and a little pagoda-type shelter. Unfortunately, 99% of the time the shelters are used by either old men and women to drink heavily in the middle of the day (I've seen ones that had 30+ 1L beer bottles and a liberal sprinkling of soju bottles scattered everywhere) or by teens to smoke at. Every now and again (especially at the nicer ones in real parks) you see families having lunch or just people chilling out and chatting at these things, which is really nice, but sadly that's the minority.

At first I couldn't pick out the drunk people (though I've heard that there are tons of them around), but now I'm getting pretty good, and man there are a lot of them staggering around! It's funny because the bus drivers drive pretty violently...they fling people back and forth as they grind their way through the gears (I swear to god most bus drivers are getting kickbacks from local transmission shops...it's like their wives just left them and they're determined to take it out on the poor gearbox). Anyhoo...one of the funniest things to watch is drunken middle aged men trying to stay upright on a bus. Oh yeah...I had another interesting encounter (besides the drunken man who kissed me)...in Jeju City.

I was walking around when I heard this big slap-crash, looked behind me and saw two cops who had just finished tossing some drunk dude out of their squad car. It wasn't too late, around midnight, but this guy was so drunk at first I thought he was dead. I just looked stunned for a second before I realized what happened (that the cops just threw the guy out and he landed face-first on the pavement, so drunk that there's no way he could have avoided the harsh landing). Once the cops saw me, they realized that this might be bad for Korea's image and expressed their caring by poking the guy with their feet and looking at him with less-than-sincere concern.

So, on the one end of the social spectrum we have the drunken old men, on the other we have the sweet schoolgirls. I swear they constantly make my day (I'm trying not to sound like Humbert Humbert from Lolita here haha).

Not only do they come up to me EVERYWHERE to say "Hi, how are you?" and giggle as I smile at them and tell them I'm great and ask them how they are, but they get all excited about taking pictures with me, give me little gifts (the girls in the next picture gave me a little box of cookies, other girls in my school have given me candy and other sweets), and generally are genuinely happy to come up to me and say hi.

The girls also tend to be more enthusiastic about English (my afterschool club is 99% girls, only one guy shows up about once a month, and the upcoming speech contest entrants from my school are all girls), which also puts them in a little more special spot in my heart. I love it when anyone around here gets enthusiastic about English and try to encourage and help them as much as possible. Yesterday one of the girls in my English club told me that one of the boys in her class was saying how he hated me and that she jumped to my defence and told him to stop talking like that. I mean how cute is that? (To paraphrase Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye...that kind of stuff just kills me :)).

Moving on...since today has been heavy on the typing and light on the pictures...here's a random picture for you guys. Yet another reason to love Korea...it's so safe and theft is such a small problem, that this is how they deliver pop:

Back home, this thing would be robbed (or at least randomly picked away at) inside of 20 minutes. In Edmonton, 20 seconds.

That's it for me today...I've finally started cleaning my apartment...because Mark is going to be in Korea in just over 48 hours!! This is freaking exciting! I think I'll take the 6 a.m. bus up to Seoul on Saturday and spend Sat/Sun/Mon (long weekend, baby!) up in the capital city with Mark. Should be an amazing time :)

Cheerio!
T

Random acts of kindness, Korean style...and some random randomness...

I have blogged about the good and the bad of Korea, when it comes to seeing it through the green-blue eyes of a foreigner. I have said before that the mountain of good stuff that happens to you as a foreigner far outweighs the handful of negative experiences, usually the result of being on the receiving end of racism.

Well, yesterday, I think the coolest thing happened. After dinner I went to the local Lotte Mart to steal me some internets. The whole reason for being there was good, one of my students came up to me at lunch time and asked me to help her with her script for some English speech contest she's entering. Naturally I was excited that one of my students is taking such an interest in English and agreed to help her, but the school's ancient computers couldn't open her new docx file. Since she's pressed for time and converting it to something the school's computer could read the next day wasn't an option, I told her to just send it to me in the body of an email when she gets home and I'll do it after work.

So, there I was in Lotte Mart, proofreading her script (which was very impressive!), when a middle-aged man came up to me and started talking. This happens quite often, and they usually keep going even after I tell them both in English and in Korean (and in body language) that I don't speak Korean. After a minute of this he left, and shortly after returned with an order of fries from the nearby KFC and walked away. I mean how cool is that? It was inexpensive, but the gesture is priceless. It felt really good to have something like this totally randomly happen to me. Maybe it was just the usual Korean kindness, maybe it was Karma paying me back for helping the girl out or maybe it was our time to be fed by the Koreans after filling their kids full of junk food on the weekend haha.

On our Wando trip on the weekend, a bunch of teens came up to us and talked while we were having our picnic, so we gave them a bag of chips to munch on...then, on the bus some elementary school students got on and we started chatting with them, and I offered one a potato stick or two...she took the whole bag. It was pretty cute, Korean kids are not bashful at all about accepting food. After she took it, though, she passed it around to her classmates and offered them all some munchies.

Anyway...even if I have a bad experience in Korea (which happens rarely), it's overshadowed very quickly by something good happening.

And now, for something completely different...let the randomness begin.

I think I'm getting a little too Korean. The other day all I bought from E-Mart (Korea's home-grown version of Wal Mart) was rice and a bottle of Chilsing Cider (think Korean Sprite or 7-Up)...

From Hyeopjae Beach on Jeju Island...panorama, clicky-clicky for big version :)

And another one....the white sand, blue sky and teal sea were amazing!

I was contemplating buying this just so I can ask people if they wanted to put my Dick Stick in their mouths...

That's about it...oh yeah, one last thing...I just got my invitation to my convocation today :( As much as I think those things are lame, I was really looking forward to it. It took me 11 years and a month to get my degree, I went through a lot of crap to have that piece of paper in my hands and I was actually looking forward to having a grand finale to the whole thing. Plus, I love Kamloops and any excuse for a road trip to ol' Loopy-loops is welcomed. It sucks missing out on stuff back home (in just over a month my friend Casey is getting hitched and I was really looking forward to that wedding too). On the bright side, instead of being at my convocation on June 10, I'll be on some beautiful beach in South Korea with my friend Mark from home...soooo it's not all bad!

Have a great day, everyone...talk to you soon!
T

w00t..made it to Wando Island...and it was worth the 19 hours of commuting!!

So, I heard about the Wando foreigner beach party before I even came to Korea and I was pretty excited about it. I love beaches, I love a good party and I love meeting new people and exploring new places, so this was going to be right up my alley.

I left my house at 8 a.m. on Saturday, met Leticia, Nerina, Greg and Amber at the Masan bus station and we took the first bus to Suncheon. However, the bus decided (for some silly reason) to take a 15-minute break halfway (even though it's just a little over an hour away), which meant that we missed the 11 a.m. bus to Wando by...get his...ONE MINUTE. The next bus left 3 hours later. Bit of a downer, but we were all in good spirits (in part thanks to the seemingly endless bottles of wine the girls kept producing). We decided to have a little picnic on the sidewalk in Suncheon and a bunch of friendly Koreans came to talk to us, say hi, etc. We finally made the bus, which took around 3 hours to get to Wando, where we grabbed a cab and ended up at the beach just before 6 p.m., fairly exhausted and some of us showing the first signs of a hangover. But...the beach was worth it! It was a gorgeous sandy beach, and even though the weather wasn't too great (overcast and kind of chilly), the mood was awesome. My beach pictures are from the next day, because the weather was much better (I'll have a pano soon, too). Sorry, the pics aren't the best, I left the beast at home and just took the little Canon G9 with me:

My backpack/tent (with my blanket on the beach) at our home base...just to give you guys an idea as to the gorgeous views we had all day:

Foreigner city on the beach:

After settling in, we mingled with the crowds and bumped into some old friends, though I think I set the record for the oldest friend to randomly bump into there. I went to TRU with Pete (we were both in the journalism program) back in 2006-2007 and then we briefly worked together at the Grande Prairie Daily Herald-Tribune newspaper in 2008 before I left for Edmonton. Pete has been in Boseong for about 9 months, so it was awesome to catch up on stuff. Pretty crazy that we keep ending up in the same places.

When night fell, the Fire God (some half-naked, tattooed dude who made it his mission to not only birth, but nurture the fire the whole night long) started a bonfire that went all night long...it was a wicked atmosphere with everybody making friends with everybody, some people playing guitars and singing, others just enjoying the ocean (including some hairy dude who decided that skinny dipping about 100 feet from the crowd was the best thing to do). Oh yeah...they also had some fireworks...pretty neat...some pics from the night:

Fireworks:

It was very misty/hazy at night...made for some cool shots...

The crowd around the bonfire at around midnight:

I called it a night at around 2 a.m., and it was surprisingly easy to get to sleep. I set up my tent (just to see how easy it was, I waited until nightfall and did it alone...got it all done in about 10 minutes!) just off the beach , and the sound of the waves crashing on the smooth sand put me to sleep in no time...it was blissful!

In the morning, we woke up early and it was very, very foggy, which gave the place a wicked feel...our home base...from left to right...Nerina and Greg in sleeping bags, my tent, Leticia's tent...they're cheapo little 20k won (aka about 17 dollars) tents from Home Plus (think Wal Mart) and they are wicked! Small, light and perfect for one or two people for a couple of nights:

Once the weather cleared up, this was the view from my tent...can't really complain!

Leticia and I were up before the rest of our gang, so we went for a bit of a walk and saw some really beautiful stuff:

Life guard chair in the mist:

Wheels for opening and closing a dam...in the mist:

Some neato fields with morning dew on the flowers:

People spreading what looked like seaweed on the pavement...they were doing this EVERYWHERE around the beach...I'm guessing they were drying it out:

After our walk, we went back to the beach and hung out in the sun for a few hours. I don't have pictures of that yet, but Greg was nice enough to take a few of me when I went into the ocean. I just had to ask him to take pictures of that historic moment, since those of you who knew me in Canada know that as much as I looooove the ocean, I usually stay out on the shore and rarely get deeper than ankle-deep into the stuff. (Mostly because the water back home is cold, the beaches are usually rocky and I hate crabs. I know, it's dumb. But crabs are stupid.). Well, here the water was warm, the beach was nothing but sand and there wasn't a crab in sight, so I went in, jumped in the waves, ran around and tripped and fell on my face, swam around and let the waves carry me around, drank about a gallon of seawater, etc...it was soooo beautiful. It was exactly like I'd imagined playing on a tropical beach would be. I really, really didn't want to leave. But, sadly, we had to.

So, we left the beach shortly after noon and caught the 1:35 bus from Wando to Busan. We figured that rather than bouncing around Suncheon or one of the other hubs and waiting hours for connecting buses, we'd overshoot Changwon, go to Busan and backtrack. It was a little more expensive, but a lot more simple and actually faster, as buses from Busan to Masan go every 10-15 minutes. The busride home was good, but we were all getting sick of being on buses. Especially because they're generally fairly full, the drivers drive like madmen and the air conditioning is pretty weak, so it was pretty stuffy and gross in there.

On the bus, I finished my book (Catcher in the Rye) and I have to say I wasn't all that blown away by it. I bought the book a few weeks ago in a book shop in Masan and I was pretty excited about it, but it was really underwhelming. If the book was 80 pages long, it would likely have struck me as brilliant, but to stretch what few ideas he had (great as they may be) to 210+ pages was a little over the top for me.

Anyhoo. After getting back to Masan and saying bye to everyone, I took a bus home and walked through my front door at around 10 o'clock.

I don't think I'll ever do this trip on a regular weekend again, it was just way too much travelling for not enough time on the beach, but I'm very glad I did it this time. The party was great, meeting all the people and hanging out with my little group for two days was well worth the endless hours on the bus!

I have to go (gotta pay my whopping $7 gas bill), but I hope you're all having an awesome day and you've all had a great weekend too :)

T

Jeju: The Final Installment...also, I'm locked out of my classroom...

I love, love, LOVE the way Koreans do things. Giving advance notice on ANYTHING is pretty much unheard of, and if something affects you, you're usually the last one to find out.

Let me give you guys an example. For months I have been asking them to fix the locks on my classroom. The best they did was to buy me a bike lock, which the students promptly stole.

Well, it looks like finally last night they actually fixed my locks. How did I find out? I got here this morning, tried to get into my classroom and couldn't. I was hoping (foolishly) that my co-teacher would have the keys. Nope. He doesn't have keys either. So, right now we're waiting around and hoping like hell that the guy who fixed the door will show up to school before my first class. Luckily I don't have a class in the first block (right now), otherwise I'd be out in the hallway with 35 hyperactive 14 year olds.

They also just told me that we have a department meeting...in 3 hours. This is probably the most notice I've had on anything here :)

Moving on...last night I started packing for my camping trip this weekend and I'm pretty happy with my backpack! I have a big blanket strapped to the bottom and the tent shoved into a side mesh pocket with still enough room inside for a couple pairs of underwear, couple pairs of socks, an extra T-shirt, a hoodie, a camera and enough room for food. It's also really comfortable to wear even with all that weight in it...can't wait to try it out for real tomorrow! I still have to get a sleeping bag, but I spent enough on the backpack and the tent this week, I'll wait a week or two with that...

And now...the fourth and final installment of Jeju. (I know...for a while it was looking like the Rocky series...will it ever end???)...

So, on Saturday I woke up in Moseulpo in my little hostel and headed straight for the Marado ferry (Marado Island is the southernmost point in Korea)...I got there more than an hour before the ferry was supposed to sail only to find out that because of fog it had been cancelled. Because these boats book up quickly I would have had to wait until 11 o'clock to take the boat over and would have had to come back with the 12:30 (the only one with space on it)...I figured it's not worth waiting around (it was still before 8 a.m.) for that long just to be on the island for an hour. It'll give me something to do the next time I'm on Jeju!

After that, I started making my way up the island's west coast and I figured I'd just stop along whatever beautiful beach I saw.

Self-portrait while waiting for the bus in Moseulpo:

I had seen a few pictures of Hyeopjae Beach, so I made that my first stop and wow...it didn't disappoint. It was beautiful white sand, puffy white clouds, blue sky, and a gorgeous teal green sea with a perfect little island just a little ways off in the distance...I made camp there and just chilled and took pictures (only have this one right now, but I'll get to the rest soon!) for a few hours.

I also made a little time-lapse video of the beach...check it out (btw I love it that I can leave my camera on the tripod for 10 minutes and nobody steals it)...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tamasv/5744814113/in/photostream

I moved on from Hyeopjae once I realized that I accidentally burned myself pretty badly in the sun...thankfully (this is a week later now) my arms didn't peel and my nose and forehead only peeled a tiny bit for a day or two, so it could have been a lot worse, but I really should invest in some sunscreen haha. On the bright side, I have a killer tan now haha.

After that, I went to Gwanji beach a little farther up the coast, but by then the weather was starting to suck (it had clouded over and was looking like it was about to rain any minute) so I headed back to Jeju city.

While there, the weather kept getting worse and as soon as I felt the first raindrops I decided to bail. I figured there's no point in spending a rainy night in Jeju just to have to wake up at 7 a.m. to make my 9 a.m. flight back home. So I went to the airport and in no time (and for absolutely NO CHARGE) they changed my flight on the spot and put me on a 9 p.m. plane that night. Just awesome! Gotta love that sort of customer service.

At the airport I ran into my final bit of racism...they had a separate lineup for "Foreigners" (it was actually marked as such), even though I'm a resident of Korea and it was a domestic line-up. I didn't really like the look of that, so I tried to go in the normal people lineup, but as soon as they saw my white face, they directed me to the segregated lineup. I figured that at least the people in that lineup would speak English, but nope...not a word...they just want to separate us outsiders. Oh well.

The flight back was pleasant and I managed to find my way to the nearby bus station (thanks to some friends who gave me a few pointers). However...interestingly enough...they shut down the bus station, apparently to save money, well before the last bus leaves. So you have to walk quite a ways away from the actual main terminal and find a little shack (no bigger than a couple of phone booths put together) in the corner of a parkade where they sell tickets. Thankfully my uber-limited Korean reading skillz came in handy again...I found signs that said "BOSU" in their alphabet - Konglish for "bus" - and followed them until I found the shack...I got back to Masan around midnight and managed to catch a bus back to where I live, so the whole thing was pretty dang cheap/painless! Also, it was nice to find out that buses run that late :) The whole Jeju trip, including gifts for people here and back home, food, motels, transportation, plane tickets, etc was around 300k won (or less than $300)...really can't complain considering it was an amazing 4-day semitropical vacation :) I'll definitely be back!

Okay...that's it for me, I have to do some work. This weekend I'm off to Wando and sadly won't take my real camera just the little G9, but still hoping to have some decent pics and maybe a video or two!

Have a great weekend, everyone!
T

I finally got a sweet travel backpack and a tent...plus Jeju Part 3 :)

Woohoo! As some of you may know, I have a bit of a backpack/camera bag fetish. Back home I had a cheap, but very nice hiking backpack that has been serving me well for years, but I couldn't bring it with me (I had 0.1 kg to spare in my bags)...so I have been wanting one ever since I got here, but backpacks here are ridiculously expensive. Unless you go to a street vendor (who will sell you a cheap bag that lasts a week), the cheapest backpacks in stores start at around $20-30. A decent hiking backpack is usually in the $150-300 range.

Random...teaser pic from Jeju (more of this later in the post):

Well, yesterday I went to Home Plus (kind of like a Korean Wal Mart) to look for a tent (found one....$20! It's supposed to be a kids' tent, but it's pretty damn big...I think it's nearly 7 feet long...definitely big enough for me). Anyway...while I was in the outdoor section, I started checking out the backpacks and, after nearly 2 hours of comparing every backpack they had, I decided to go for the best one they had because it had the nicest materials, tons of pockets/anchor points for stuff, and it just seems really well-made. They had a few backpacks that have this new system where the part of the backpack that's supposed to touch your back is actually arched, so it doesn't actually touch your back. Instead, there is a mesh that rests on your back. It feels surprisingly comfortable and natural! The downside is that you do lose a little bit of space in the backpack, but this one is a 30L pack, so it's not that big of a deal. The upside (and this is HUGE around here) is that this system allows airflow between your back and the backpack. When I went to Jeju, my biggest problem was that as soon as I put my backpack on, my back was soaking in sweat. It's hot and humid here, so if you're active you'll be sweating. Add a 25-30-pound (which is what my backpacks weigh usually) backpack on your back and things get ugly fast. I'm hoping this will help with that issue, it was a little embarrassing that I was constantly drenched in sweat in Jeju.

The backpack and tent:

And the airflow dealio:

I kind of splurged on the backpack, it was about $85, but considering how much I travel, I think it's money well spent. It would have been awesome to have in Jeju, it'll be great in Wando this weekend, then I'm going to Seoul for 3 days, probably Pohang for the weekend after, maybe Jindo for a weekend and possibly another Wando weekend after that...and that's just the 5 weekends coming up!

I live really cheaply, as my friends here will attest to it...if we go to restaurants, I usually don't eat anything (partially because everything has meat hidden in it, partially to save money), I'm really frugal with stuff at home (my last gas bill was $7 for a month, last electricity bill was $12 for a month, I don't have cable or internet), so I think I've earned this backpack! :D I'll let you guys know how it is when I'm back from Wando!

Okay...onto Jeju stuff.

After the waterfalls, I took a bus to Moseulpo. Finding the bus was not an easy task, as it turns out that the small town of Seogwipo (population of around 100-150k people) has THREE intercity bus terminals. This is pure insanity, but whatever. Two are right next to each other and they were telling me the other one is the one I needed or they told me the one I needed is way far away (and pointed to a place on the map that was nowhere near the actual location of the bus terminal). So, I started walking in the general direction and wanted to ask a woman having a cigarette outside where I was on the map. This led to my second racist encounter on Jeju Island. I walked up, map in hand and said "excuse me" very politely. She looked at me, screamed like I was raping her, threw her cigarette a good 10 feet and actually RAN away. In the middle of a crowded downtown street. Yeah, it was a little awkward. However, the situation quickly improved when a guy who saw all this happen came up to me and offered to help...he accompanied me to the nearby bus station and told me which bus to get on to get to the correct bus station. This is pretty indicative of my entire experience in Korea...I do encounter racism on a fairly regular basis, but for every bit of racism I experience, I have 50 positive experiences, many of them people going well out of their way to help me.

On the way to the bus station, I randomly ran into this...a stadium used during the 2002 FIFA Soccer World Cup:

My destination, Maseulpo, is a little fishing town on the west coast of the island, which was perfect, I've been looking to explore more of small town Korea. It's really funny, I wouldn't want to live in a small town (at least not one that's very close to a big city), but I loooove visiting them. I got there early in the evening and had a nice little picnic on the beach and just enjoyed sitting around. The plan was to hang around in Moseulpo on Friday then take the boat to Marado Island (the southernmost point of South Korea) on Saturday morning.

On the beach where I had my dinner:

Then I started walking around the town, both looking for a place to spend the night and to sightsee. The atmosphere was very small town-ish, which was nice after the hustle and bustle I generally experience in Korea.

While walking around, I usually "read" Korean signs, but 99.999% of the time I have no idea what they say. Well, this time I lucked out...on the side of an ordinary-looking building I read, in Korean "GESUTU HASU"...I was thinking "gesutu hasu...gesutu hasu..." they usually insert usless U's into English words, so drop a few and I realized that what I was looking at was a guest house, or hostel. I went in and inquired...10k won (or about $9) for the night...can't go wrong with that...the other two hotels in town were 30k and one of them only provided a very thin mattress on the floor, not even a bed! At the hostel, there were only 4 other people, so I got my own room...this is half the room (the other half is exactly the same):

Once night fell, I monkeyed around with a few long exposure shots of the harbour (including the teaser pic)...and...

and...a ship in dry dock:

Okay...this post has gone on for long enough...I have to go make a lesson plan or two...I'll do another installment of Jeju goodness tomorrow (should be the final one!).

Have a great night, everyone...

T

Jeju...part 2...

Eek...I'm really getting behind in this whole blogging thing, I apologize. I've been pretty busy, trying to finish all my lesson plans for the rest of this semester at school and getting into shape and trying to go to bed early after school.

Teaser pic of stuff to come in this post...massive palm trees in Seogwipo (south Jeju Island)

Anyhoo...not much is new with me here, I'm going for runs/weights every night after work and eating much, much healthier (gone are the nights of chips for dinner...nifty, crunchy, fatty things have, for the most part, been replaced by fruits and veggies, which are becoming more and more delicious to me every day). I must say I feel much better...I had a goal weight in mind for the Wando beach party weekend that I managed to reach a week early, so I'm pretty stoked and I find myself craving exercise and healthy foods and walking through the junk food aisle and having no desire to fill my basket with goodies from it.

Today at school we have parents' day, which means that I'll have two "open classes"...parents can come in and observe me teach. The other teachers keep asking me if I'm nervous and I keep telling them that no, I'm not. Not because I'm oh-so brave, but because I'm thoroughly ignorant of what's around the corner. I have no idea what these parent days are like, so I'm not scared of them. Ask me next year, though, and I might give a different answer haha. Anyway, the way I look at it is the parents won't understand a word I'm saying, so even if I royally mess up it's not going to be a big deal.

Okay...onto Jeju...the volcano was pretty sweet, the top (I have a panorama I have to get to one of these days) was kind of boring, it was just a big green field, but still sweet to know you're looking at a volcano's cone.

On the way down, I took a quick video from the beach/base of the volcano...check it out:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tamasv/5746438340/in/photostream

That night, I bumped into a couple of women (one my age, one a little older) at a bus stop and we started talking...they were journalists from Hong Kong and the younger one spoke English incredibly well...we chatted the whole hour-plus long bus ride to Seogwipo (the major city on the south side of Jeju Island) and they invited me for dinner, but I declined...didn't want to butt in on their holiday and there is not much for me at most Korean restaurants anyways.

I got myself another cheap motel (30,000 won this time) and went to bed fairly early...the next morning I headed off to check out the waterfalls in the area. There are 3 main ones, so I decided to see at least two of them.

The first one was Cheonjiyeon Waterfall, a few kilometres from downtown Seogwipo and it was beautiful (though hard to take pictures of, there must have been thousands of high school students there!)...anyway, here is a quick unedited snapshot of it...I'll get better pics of it when I get around to going through my pictures:

It was pretty dang nice! While at the falls I must have had at least a dozen groups of high school girls come up to me to take their pictures with me...they even photobombed me haha

And...since I don't have too many pics of myself...I asked one of them to take a picture of me with the Stone Grandfathers...yay

Leaving Cheonjiyeon Falls...famous bridge in Seogwipo half-covered in the morning mist...on my way to the falls you couldn't even see the bridge:

After those falls, I headed off to Jeongbang Waterfall, which has the distinction of being the only waterfall in Asia that drops right into the ocean. I got there at low tide, so it didn't quite make it to the sea, but it was still pretty neat!

The walk to Jeongbang Waterfall was awesome...can't complain with random scenery like this:

I apologize, I don't have any shots of the waterfall right now (gotta go through them, I'll have one up in a few days), but the beach around Jeongbang was pretty amazing too:

While at the waterfall, I met a really nice couple from America (Uhriel and Jannie) and we chatted for...I don't know...well over an hour, I think. Jannie had a pretty cool story...she was born in Korea, but adopted into the States as a baby. This was her first time back to Korea, which must have been a pretty trippy experience. Anyhoo, they were both awesome and I wish I had more time to hang out and chat with them...if I ever make it to Florida I'm definitely looking them up :)

On the way back to Seogwipo from Jeongbang, I bought a famous Jeju orange. They're one of the island's biggest exports and reputed to be delicious, so I didn't mind spending the 2,000 won for ONE orange haha. I gotta say...it was well worth it! It was probably the most delicious orange I've ever had! Best consumed while walking under palm trees too ;) I offered a slice to a stone grandfather, but he declined :(

Ack...the bell just went...I have 4 classes in a row now, so I'll continue this tomorrow (and let you guys know how the parents' day thing went!)

Take care, guys...glad to see the weather back home is finally starting to look half-decent!

T

Back from Korea's Hawaii! (Jeju Island)...and yes, it was amazing.

What's up faithful readers? :) I just got back from Jeju Island, so I'll try to sum up my 4 days there as concisely as possible, but I apologize in advance, as this will likely be a looooooong post. On the bright side, I'll try to post  some neato pics for you guys to peruse. Oh yeah...I have so far uploaded about 30 pictures and a few videos on Flickr, so there is way more stuff there than I'll post here...I took about 1,000 shots on the Island, so I'll keep rolling them out in the coming days (weeks?). Teaser pic...

So...on Tuesday, as I was leaving school the vice principal came up to me and said I have a bonus 3 days off. I was supposed to deskwarm for Wed/Thurs/Fri, but since I have all my work done and said I wasn't going to do anything but screw around on the net, he gave me the days off.

I went home, tried to get some plane tickets online, but none of my usual websites (expedia, cheaptickets) would let me buy tickets...they would make me go through the entire process of buying the ticket and at the very end they would tell me the flight wasn't available. I got fed up, packed and headed into Masan to take the bus to Mokpo and then ferry to Jeju. In Masan I got the runaround from the ppl at the bus stations and taxi drivers as to where the bus left for Mokpo and when it left. Finally, after two hours of running around Masan wasting my time I came home at around 10 and resolved to take the first bus in the morning...that's when my awesome friend Laura called me and told me about Busan Air's site, so I booked my tickets on the spot...$125 for last minute round-trip tickets? Hell yeah!

So, on Wednesday morning I went to Busan to catch my plane, a 1 hour flight...since I love airports and photography...and I had a few hours to kill...I snapped a few pix0rz...

At the airport, a ton of highschool girls came up to say hi to me and take their pics with me (I'll post that later...haven't even gotten to going through the pics I took with the G9)...one of them gave me a box of chocolate...despite the racism I encounter (more on that later) on a fairly regular basis, I can't stay mad at the people here in general. For every bad experience, I have 50 great ones that leave me smiling and feeling like a rock star.

The flight itself was a little under an hour long, super smooth and comfortable. Once in Jeju, I started walking around and decided to pop into a car rental place because so many people suggested that life on Jeju is much simpler with a car...well, they told me that if I don't speak Korean I can't rent a car. A nice way to say they won't rent to a whitie like me. Oh well, more money in my pocket, less in theirs.

I walked around Jeju all day and all night and I must say I was thoroughly disappointed. It was a bit of a rundown city with very few redeeming qualities. The waterfront was very industrial and the town itself was boring. I had to amuse myself by taking pictures of stupid things and giggling to myself about what a few minutes of photoshop would do:

(For those of you who are wondering...they sometimes have the speed limits painted on the roads here...as I walked by I started laughing at the "70"s looking like "OLOLOL" upside-down...so when I got home, I crudely cloned the first 0 and the last 70 out of it and got this...yay me.

But, I did bump into a few cool places...including a Buddhist monastery in the middle of a park...

When I was walking around downtown at night, I bumped into a couple of local foreigners and hung out with them for a few hours, walking around, talking and having dinner. It was a great time. :)

That night, I stayed in a 25,000 won-a-night "love motel" ie: cheap motel, but they're clean and neat and don't smell or anything, and have one channel of porn (or in this motel's case) a rack of porn videos for your viewing pleasure. Just lovely. They also had a condom instead of a Bible in the drawer in the night stand...manufactured in 2002, expired in 2007...yikes.

However, it was a decent place to spend the night and I woke quite refreshed in the morning and headed out for the great unknown! They have a ton of buses on the island, including a route that takes you around the entire island (taken all at once would probably be 8-10 hours, it's a fairly big island). Anyway, I headed east, wanting to check out Manjanggu cave, which is actually a lava tube. The bus took roughly an hour, then I had to walk about 3km from the bus stop to the cave on this beautiful "country" road in the sunshine with the breeze blowing...it was absolutely sublime!

Then I got to the lava tube...having been always interested in volcanoes and stuff (I remember having a book about them in Hungary when I was a kid), this was an amazing experience. In true Korean fashion, the entry fee was laughably low (less than $2) and it was very well maintained. You have to go down about 40-50 metres and end up in the "public" area of a nearly 8 kilometre long lava tube. The part open to the public is one kilometre long, which is insane...so crazy to think about it that you're that deep in the earth!

Couple of pics from the cave (I'm so happy I brought my mini tripod with me from Canada and that I took it to the island...these shots are 20-30 second exposures):

I wasn't too happy about the coloured lighting, I would much rather have had them just light the place with simple white lights, but Koreans LOVE their coloured lights....ESPECIALLY if they change colours (which, of course, they did in the cave)...kind of cheesy to have this stunning natural beauty and then a flickering green-blue-purple-red-yellow light dancing around like in some moronic night club...oh well...

The "frozen" rope lava on the floor was wicked too...

At the end of the tunnel they had a really cool 8-metre tall lava falls thing that's supposed to be the tallest or one of the tallest in the world...pretty neat (and managed to catch it with the red light so it looked fiery instead of purple, which just looks cheesy haha)...it looks like something from the set of "Journey to the Center of the Earth"...so I guess they really got the movie right haha

Wow...I just realized this blog is going to be ridiculously long...might have to do it in installments.

Anyhoo...after the cave I walked back to the bus stop where I met two girls and I asked them how to get to Udo (Cow Island...because it looks like a cow lying down, apparently). They were so excited to meet me that they not only told me how to get there, they said they were going there too and I should join them. And what kind of a gentleman would I be if I turned down two cute 22 year old college girls? Not much of a gentleman at all!

Udo Island...

Unfortunately, we got to Udo pretty late and had less than an hour to explore, so we just went to a beautiful white beach...it was really awesome, all the rocks were black volcanic rocks and the beach in between was sparkling white...

After that, we sadly parted ways (but not before I got their phone numbers...booyah!) and was going to head for the hills...since the hill was actually a volcano! Seongsan Ilchulbong volcano is the easternmost tip of Jeju island and is a volcano that erupted from under water to form an island and slowly became part of Jeju island. Pretty neat stuff.

On the way in Seongsan (volcano behind me) I did something I almost never do...I bought myself something sweet (it's pretty funny, I walked so much that even though I ate a ton of unhealthy stuff while on the island I actually lost a pound by the time I got home):

From the base:

On the way up:

Wow this is becoming long...I hate to do this, but I'm going to leave it sort of half-done here...I'm going to meet some friends for dinner and I need get off my ass for a bit, I've been sitting in the same chair for 4 hours loading pics, doing the blog and talking to friends...I'll try to do another installment tonight, though.

Have a great night, everyone...talk to you soon,
T