I have managed to get down the first part of the our trip (which is a billion pages already) to Jeju for the Christmas break, and will keep you on the edge of your seats for the conclusion :)
Most importantly: Merry Christmas!!
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| on the road again... |
Secondly: WARNING!! This post has some ‘adult content’, so close your eyes and plug your ears when LOVELAND comes up....
Tim and I are now back ‘home’ in Busan after a mini vacation to the island of Jeju in Southwest Korea.
We departed from the Gimpo airport in Busan on Thursday, early in the afternoon, where we met our friend Christine, who joined us for the holidays. Antlers on head, and presents checked, we took off on Korean Air towards the land of Korean honeymooners via a 40 minute, barely there flight.
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| 2 of the 40 passengers on the 300 passenger plane...bad sign? |
Our base for the trip was in a small area known as Shin Jeju ( ie. ‘new’ Jeju), which was only about a 5 minute cab from the airport, and 10 minutes from the larger city called Jeju si. We checked into the ‘New Crown Hotel’, which turned out to be very similar to our The Shining-like hotel in Gyeongu this October: very outdated decor, not trying to impress anyone. This hotel was slightly better with restaurants (and a karaoke room, and sauna and beauty salon) that were actually opened and frequented.
We set out to find some food, soon after arriving, and stumbled upon a modern, bright, young restaurant where their main focus was their ‘ hand made man doo’ ( also spelt mandu). Mandu is a dumpling, a bit like an egg roll, with different fillings, sometimes steamed sometimes fried.
We were so excited to find such a nice place with Korean food, pictures, and food descriptions in ENGLISH that we ordered 5 items from the menu. Our waitress thought we were pretty big heffers - probably because Koreans seem to be able to satisfy their hunger by sharing 7 bites of food among 6 people... not sure what their secret is.
We ordered:
-kimchi fried rice
-kimchi/pork soup
-mandu
-veg soup
And ate it all... even if the last bites were spitefully gulped down.
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| a bite to eat. |
Feeling pretty festively plump, our next item on the agenda was a magical place we had all heard rumours about: LOVELAND ( the squeamish and easily offended can start stopping to listen *now*).
What is ‘Loveland’ you ask? Well, Loveland fills the void we have all felt for an amusement park/museum/sculpture collection that is of an adult theme. Perhaps because of the popularity of Jeju island as a honeymoon destination for young lovers, this sexy park is filled with mostly comical, partly awkwardly uncomfortable portrayals of sex in art forms such as sculpture, photographs, dioramas, paintings and educational displays.
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| one ticket to Loveland. |
Not really knowing what to expect, we hopped in a cab, spent the 7000 won admission fee and ventured into the outdoor walk around... with directional help from male genitals pointing the way on the walkway.
After spotting another male genital - this time in the shape of a door handle on the women’s bathroom door, I posed for a picture. As Tim was focusing the camera, an ajumma (older Korean woman) barged in front of me in true ajumma fashion and grabbed the bathroom door handle. Having just entered the park herself, she wasn’t accustomed to seeing genitals all over the place and in her haste to get me out of the way, seemed pretty surprised to look down and see the shape of the door handle she was grabbing. Luckily this moment was caught on film:
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| censored. use your imagination. you have a dirty mind. |
We took about an hour to peruse the rest of the grounds and displays and saw many hilarious things too off-side to mention before heading back to the hotel.
(this is where the erotic pictures would be posted if I had the nerve to do it. But, you know what they say : once on the internet, ALWAYS on the internet).
Third on our list of priorities was a visit to an Indian restaurant called ‘ Bagdad Cafe’ which Christine had suggested, located in Jeju Si. I tried, unsuccessfully to replicate the address for the restaurant in Korean, but when I gave the piece of paper to the cabbie, he looked at like it was written backwards (and it probably was). As a side-note, this was an unforeseen challenge of living and travelling in Korea. If you don’t know the exact Korean pronunciation of your destination, you better have a phone number for the cab driver to call, or the location written in Korean ( by a real Korean, not by me). There is apparently a huge difference to Korean ear between saying ‘ Jay song dong’ and ‘Ja sung dung’.
After the cab driver called the Bagdad Cafe for us, we managed to arrive at its doors and were actually greeted by the owner in the street - what service! She ushered us into a restaurant that had ‘ more character than all of the other restaurants in Jeju combined’. We ordered a combination meal which included a fruit plate, samosas, naan bread, curry, chicken, soup, and laskies (? milkshakes). A-maze-ing.
The restaurant employed at least 3 native Indian chefs, who actually served us our food, and was so warm and cozy, it was difficult to leave when our meal was finally done.
The weather was literally freezing in Jeju, and we were so lucky for it to snow almost the entire time we were there. We strolled around the City Hall area of Jeju Si and finally found ‘The Factory’, a bar that we had heard was a foreigner gathering place. When we opened the door and walked in, we were surprised to be greeted by a sea of Asian faces, all seeming to be waiting for a show by the white guy and his guitar-playing buddy on stage.
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| crashing 'teacher's' fan club party. |
Immediately, something struck me as ‘off’ ( kind of like plastic bag-head from that night a few months ago), given the age and weirdness of the group we were amongst but I ignored it... until I heard the singer on stage thank everyone for coming and comment that everyone was sitting in their ‘ class groups ‘. Ah Ha! We had stumbled upon a show being given by an ESL university teacher and were part of an audience filled entirely with his students (who probably hoped to get good grades by attending). Though this was pretty hilarious, it was not fun, so we cheers-ed, downed our beer and jumped in yet another cab back to Shin Jeju and closed down the night at the ‘Jeju Modern Times Brewery’, across the street from our hotel.
On Christmas Eve, I woke up fairly early to a clear sky which allowed me to see the ocean from our hotel window. I got really excited and figured I could make an easy run straight to the beach and just run along the ocean.
There is a much smaller foreigner population (from what I saw) in Jeju, so me being white, wearing tights, running down the street was quite a sight for many of the residents.
But! My efforts were worthwhile when I turned a corner and caught a glimpse of the beautiful blue East China Sea. The run there was less than scenic, but I have always found that the best way to get a feel for a place is to run it. Stopping at intersections and seeing street signs, shops and residents from the sidewalk, but going faster than a stroll gives a certain kind of perspective in a new city that always makes me feel a little more a part of it.
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| splish..... |
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| SPLASH! |
The part of the ocean I stopped at was not quite a tourist destination, but the overcast skies, flurries and giant waves on the volcanic rocks made it a pretty inspiring sight. When I stepped down to get some closer shots, I looked down and found a 10 won Korean coin and that warmed my heart because of the following little anecdote:
After my Mom’s father ( Papa! ) passed away a few years ago, every penny we found on the ground became a ‘Papa penny’, kind of a little gift from heaven to show he was thinking of us. Clearly, being in Korea, there are not many Canadian pennies lying around, but the 10 won coin is the Korean counterpart to the penny and finding one in such a beautiful place on Christmas Eve was one of those happenings that I just can’t write off as coincidence.
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| Korean Papa Penny!! |
I made my way back to the hotel, amid even stronger flurries, and that afternoon we departed from the Jeju Si bus terminal to visit Seogwipo, a small city on the southern part of the island. The bus ride cost a pretty 3000 won ( about 3 dollars) for an hour of travel over Halla Mountain (South Korea’s highest). As we climbed the mountain, my appreciation for the snow slowly turned to outright panic as the bus driver careened around cars up and down the windy road and out the window I saw at least 2 cars that had gone off the road. Then, as if by magic, everything white disappeared and we found ourselves in the slightly warmer region of Seogwipo.
And that's all for now - the rest is yet to come.....soon!
To be continued.....
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