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
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