Jeju-rama

Probably my last big trip has been to Jeju. The weather was kind of crummy, but apparently there was "heavy rain" in the Sea of Japan, so I guess we're lucky to have escaped with glumness rather than a rainy beach vacation. Jeju is pretty much the same as the rest of Korea, but with a slightly different landscape and slower pace. The trees were actually more similar to Canada even though its supposedly sub-tropical. There were palm trees, but I they were the minority among the other pine trees. Anyway, the beach was awesome. Excellent waves that beat us up. I have honest to goodness scrapes to prove it. Lots of weyguks around, and not all english teachers. The lack of traffic and people was great. I think this weekend has been almost the only time in Korea that the atmophere could honestly be described as "sleepy", but that might be Cheusok, and not Jeju. I'll have to ask Jeff.

It was so quiet that we were often the only ones in restaurants. Our first night there, Corie and I had a Korean ajuma spend her whole evening hovering over our table cooking our Galbi. In Daegu ours have begun to leave us alone, realizing that we at least know what to do. Its pretty uncomfortable after a while, but I'm defintely much more non-chalant about being waited on and laughed at than I used to be. She gave us hell about grilling kimchi, so i guess they're a bit more trad in Jeju.



We also visited Udo, which was just like a mini-Ireland but with Korean style roofs. I haven't seen so much rock, since, well, Ireland. We ate far too much galbi this weekend. And steak. And spicy chicken. Too much meat really, until the last two days when we ate too much Family Mart food, and realized far too late that we hadn't had a real meal or vegetables in the better part of three days. Anyway, on Udo we managed to catch the Ujuma olympics, as they all came tearing out of their tour bus, straight into the water for foot races, stockings and all.... Now that's entertainment.






We travelled with Chelsea and Ian, which is good, they always come up with good stuff to do... plus its easier to do more stuff in a group of four, rather than as a couple.

More entertaining too. Mr. Kim was good to us, gave us one extra day at the end of Cheusok. I'm sorry about the paragraphs, but this stupid site won't allow them for some reason. At least, it won't allow me to do them, which is my pet peeve if you really want to know.



They provided a good ego boost, and plenty of derisive laughter. Apparently their rip off travel agency booked them into our "memories of shag" (in more ways than one) hotel for two nights, at a cost only 5000 won cheaper than our three night stay. AND they got the room with the post in front of the window. Chalk one up for my excellent contacts at Happy Tours. Unfortunately this kind of contributed to their already low estimation of Korean culture, which was at the 8 month low ebb.



We hussled our way briefly into the giant 5 star hotels on the southside of the island, and even bit the bullet and ate in one, which was a refreshing change from the ajuma husslers of the previous nights. Its funny when they think you're staying there and they really try to suck up to you and display their excellent English skills. We really should have taken more advantage of this misunderstanding, ordering drinks, massages, and so one, but we're just too bashful to get away with it before we've stammered away the advantage.