Jeju: Days 1 and 2

After the initial shock of snow on an island that had been sad to have "mild winters" and was at approximately the same latitude as L.A., Eric and I found our way to the taxis and were driven to our hotel. We made a game plan of trying to find the bars that had been recommended in the Lonely Planet (oh, LP, the default travel guide and maker or breaker of hostels) and just relaxing as Eric hadn't had any time to recover from jetlag and I was being a cranky two year old at the disappointment of actual winter being here too. X-/ I was also pretty hungry at this point, so that was adding to my crankiness, so we went adventuring to find these supposedly magical bars in Jeju-si that had real beer!

The first place we tried was closed, and the brewery misunderstood me when I called and told me they were closed until 5pm (turns out they were open for lunch and then closed again later, but whatevs). So, we decided to try and go to one of the many restaurants in the northern part of the city--they had all either shut down or were closed because it was Sunday, we never found out which because we never tried to go back. We ended up adventuring through Jeju's small underground market, giving Eric a small taste of what awaited in Bupyeong later. It was the day after Christmas, and we found this great tree with a Star of David on top. Go Korea, mixing things up or covering all its bases, who knows? I'm voting for the mix up.

After our unsuccessful attempts at finding a veggie friendly place (I vetoed all Korean food because I had my heart set on the foreign foods I had read about, and I wasn't going to gamble on bibimbap). So, we went back to the hotel area as the brewery was about to open, stopping at a shop to pick up some crackers so I wouldn't throw a tantrum like the 2 yr old I was channeling.

The brewery--Jeju Modern Times Brewery--was amazing! Good beer on tap! Good food (a little over priced, but tasty)! And couches to sit on while you enjoyed all of it. Eric and I each had a couple of beers with dinner--pasta with veggies for me and kimchi fried rice for him, both came with a salad and the waiter made sure I had a vegan dressing! Waiters caring enough to check on the ingredients of the dressing is also rare, but this guy spoke English well enough to have patience with me. I <3 Jeju Brewery. To top it all of, their logo is Charlie Chaplin--good randomness. I still need to investigate if they bottle their beer.

After dinner and drinks it was back to the room to watch Starcraft TV. I kid you not. Starcraft. On TV. Only in Korea.

Plans for Day 2: Hiking Manjanggul (Manjang Caves) Lava Tubes then hitting up the museums in Seogwipo-si (Seogwipo City). Would Day 2 turn out better than Day 1? Let's find out!

Day 2:
OMGSUN!!!! I opened the curtains and saw it--sun. Holy crapoli, Batman! Blue skies and sun! It must be freezing still, right? Just like home? Nope! I unnecessarily wore two thermal layers like I would back home and an over coat, and the extra thermals ended up causing me a lot of grief via static electricity (which somehow doesn't really happen in the colder weather) which caused painfully itchy legs and yet another two year old mentality stint.

Anyway, we ate some cereal for breakfast and got on a bus toward the bus terminal so we could take another bus to Manjunggul Lava Tubes. It was about an hour's ride away, so we settled in for a bit and enjoyed the changing scenery.

When it had been about an hour, we started looking around for any sign that we were close to our destination. I noticed that there were three girls (I thought they were high school students, turns out they were actually uni students, so I guess that makes them women) sitting in front of us. Knowing that high school students all take English, I figured they were our best bet as far as asking directions. They pulled out a bus route map (why hadn't the woman at the Terminal handed me one?) and told us we were getting close and counted out the stops for us. We chatted a bit with them and then waited for our stop to come up. When it did, the whole back of the bus told us it was time to get off and we had to walk to get to the caves. Oh, Korea. It was sweet.

We got off the bus at a place that looked like it could have been Scotland, Australia (the greener part, but not the rain forest) or New Zealand, in other words it was just missing sheep, and followed the signs to the Lava Tubes. We passed a cool looking labyrinth on the way but didn't go in as we were hoping to hit up museums after the tubes and didn't want to miss the open hours. Finally reaching our destination, my first order of business was to find a way to get lotion onto my legs as I was close to tears with all the itchiness. I (thankfully, or I would have lost my shit) was able to get some lotion from the "English Information" hut. With legs a little less itchy (at this point, I was still under the impression it was dry skin and not static that was the problem), we ventured into the darkness of the lava tubes. I guess I could make it sound all poetically awesome like, "The gaping mouth of the earth waited. We descended into her bowels, slowly making our way through the darkness that enveloped us." But really, we climbed down some stairs and followed a footpath and there were lights making it a little more easy going.






The tubes were cool, they looked like a giant snake had made a burrow and that we would happen upon her at anytime. There weren't many impressive stalactites or stalagmites, because the caves were formed from lava and not water dripping, but there were crazy texture patterns and a rock that was a pretty accurate miniature of the island of Jeju--naturally formed by the lava (try reading that word and either not hearing Dr. Evil's voice saying "Mag-ma" afterwards or Will Ferrel and Cheri O'Teri's characters saying "Lover", it's difficult... for me at least). After that 1km walk, we ventured back the way we came so it was faster going as we didn't have to stare at the walls and ceiling as we went.

We went back to the English helper hut and asked how to get a bus to Seogwipo. One of the people working in the hut volunteered to drive us the 2k back to the bus stop. Korea is full of people who will do things like that, I feel guilty accepting sometimes, but it saved us the 2200 won of a taxi.

We hoped on the bus for what I thought would be another hour ride, but it turns out we were farther north than I thought and it was a 2 hour ride. We passed through a city that I was wanting to stop at because I read they had veggie burgers--veggie burgers are not common here, and I've been jonesin' for a good one for a while--but we decided to keep going lest we miss the museums after going all this way.

We got to Seogwipo Terminal as it was the closed to where we come from we decided to get off there and trek to the Cheonjiyeon Falls. On the walk from the bus stop to the falls, I bought some lotion to try and sooth my crazy legs, but it did not work for long. >.< But, I was happy to have Eric with me and trying to not be a whiny baby the whole time. We passed by a basketball court with teens playing, but they quickly stopped when they saw waygooks (foreigners) approaching. "Where are you from??" they shouted. "USA---Migu!" we responded. "Yay! USA! USA!" was their retort. Then an adorable little girl came running up with her ribbon dancer ribbon saying, "Hello!" I gave the expected, "Hi, how are you?" And she played her part after a moment of thinking about the trained response of, "I'm fine, thank you." Oh, Korea. Super surreal.

I had hoped that since it snowed the day before the falls would be a little fuller than a trickle. The falls were in a subtropic area (who knew those existed in Korea?) and was beautiful, though the water wasn't flowing at it's fullest. I had to stop myself from doing all the trinket shopping there, but I got a pretty sweet set of Jeju statues (one man, one woman) with creepy eyes for Alan, continuing my gifting him creepy statues with a male and female sporting crazy eyes. After some looking around, we trekked back into town and went to dine at Mr. Pizza ("For the Love of Women" is their slogan, no idea why)

After the falls, we were going to try to get to the Sound Museum so we climbed on yet another bus. It took some crazy negotiating with a young couple to talk with the grumpy guy in the Looney Tunes sweater behind the glass, who just wasn't going to try and help English speakers even if we were pointing at a map of his city. We got on the bus and headed toward the area with the Sound Museum, but it closed earlier than was printed in the LP. So, we hopped in a cab (by this time it was dark and I was feeling defeated) and went to the World Cup Stadium to see if we could get to the Eros Museum before it closed (supposedly at 9pm, and it was 7ish). No luck. Grr.

What to do? We had decided going back to the brewery would be better than trying to figure out if there was something to do down here, noting a poster for Tron for future entertainment purposes. How to get back to Jeju-si? We headed toward the E Mart that was in front of the World Cup Stadium, and were stopped by two teenage Korean boys. These boys ignored me and were all over Eric. Here is their exchange (roughly):

Korean Guy (KG): Oh! Handsome guy! Where you from?

Eric: USA. Los Angeles.

KG: Oh! USA. You know Obama?

Eric: Yes, I know Obama.

KG: He's a very good looking guy! Where are you going? Club? Bar? Sauna?

Eric: Yes, a bar. In Jeju City.

KG: Oh! Dancing? Where?

Me: Jeju City, not here. Where are you going?

KG (as if just realizing I existed): Sauna. Showers. (Back to Eric) Look! iPad! Computer! Internet!

Eric: Ah, right, well. Do you know "fist bump"? (motions with his hands)

KG: Fist bump?

Eric: You go like this. (makes fists) And I go (fist) and we meet. Okay? Ready?

KG: Okay.

They fist bump.

KG hugs Eric and asks for any and all contact information possible: You have phone? You have email? You have Facebook? etc etc.

Eric: Nope, sorry. Gotta go.

We leave. This was a totally hetero exchange by the way. It made Eric feel famous and me feel ugly, even though I thought the guy was ridiculous. Woo. But I got over it pretty quickly as we had more important things to attend to. When we got to the E Mart, I figured since there were people inside we would be able to find someone who spoke enough English to get us to the bus stop we needed to get back to Jeju-si. I was wrong.

I walked up to the E Mart information center knowing it was info center for the store and not the city, but figured it was a good stab in the dark. After much gesticulation, I had gathered that the guy behind the counter was telling us to cross the street but I didn't want to go out and get on the wrong bus. It was getting late and I didn't want to have to dump 50,000 won ($45ish) on a taxi if the buses stopped running. So, what was I to do? I looked on our map (not the best one out there, Jeju-do, work on the details please) as it had numbers tourists might need. There was an info line for Jeju! Woo! I phoned, it was after hours, and got transfered to the Seoul Info line. Not Busan. Not Daejan. Seoul. All the way across Korea (the length of Illinois). *sigh* But, that meant I had a Korean who spoke English on the phone and that person had internet access. Naver-do (my own term for using their search engine "Naver," derived from the term "Google-fu") proved do be a saving grace. The woman on the Seoul Info line got all the information for the two buses we could take, and then asked me to hand my phone to a Korean to confirm the information. Woo! I love the Seoul Info line! I'm sure they aren't too happy when I call, but it's amazing.

Anyway, we hopped on the bus headed for the Airport and then made our way back (after getting on the wrong bus after we were back in Jeju-si and hailing a cab after I had already kinda figured out where we were but the map wasn't detailed enough for me to figure out how many small streets we had to pass to get to the one we needed to turn on) to the hotel. We went back to the delicious brewer for more beers.

End day two.