Jeju: Day 3--The Sex Park Adventure and other nonsense

Jeju is an island just south of South Korea. It has a more laid back nature and is called "the Hawaii of Korea" since it's warmer and the are known for their citrus and cacti as well as this island being a honeymoon destination for Koreans.

Jeju has a park, which most of you have now heard of, called Loveland. Loveland was designed by art students from Seoul and is a celebration of sex. Mostly vanilla, and 98% straight, but that's far more public acknowledgement of this essential part of humanity than anywhere else in Korea. There is also an acknowledgement of female masturbation--which is unusual anywhere that isn't the porn and sex toy industry.

So, of course, this was the main reason for my wanting to go to Jeju-do. I saw photos of my fellow English teachers climbing on statues of giant penises and a woman jilling off and knew this would be my favorite place in Korea--aside from maybe the brewery, but I can live without beer for a year.

Eric and I started our third and final day in Korea by packing up our bags, watching more Starcraft and English instruction tv, and another bowl of cereal. We hailed a cab, and were off to find this legendary park! But we had to turn around because I had forgotten my cell phone at the hotel--go me! After running back upstairs and finding, we restarted our adventure. We were off---again!

We walked in and were greeted by a sign with a stone penis on top, and all the directional arrows were shaped like penises. The journey through the park is not one to be rushed, there are lots of little statues heading with the bigger ones. I can't really do it justice in words, so here are some photos (though the Rosloff clan has seen them already):






After browsing through the park and the accompanying shops, Eric and I decided to head back down to Seogwipo to try and get to the museums we had missed before. We hopped on the bus and got off at the Sound Museum. A museum for sound? How cool!

It should have been called the "Thomas Edison photographs, phonographs and RCA dog figurine" museum. They love Thomas Edison at that place, sooooo many photos of him. A ton of old phonographs, which were cool to look at but not worth the price of admission (I think it was around 7,000 won). And the owner may have possibly been obsessed with RCA dog figurines, they were all over the place.

The highlight of the museum for me was the giant keyboard, like the one in "Big," watching and listening to Eric play Carol of the Bells, and playing on a beaten up drum kit in the hands on room. Other than those things, the museum didn't have much to offer.


Next, we hit up the Chocolate Museum next door. The smell when you walk in should be the first sign that this is not the chocolate museum you want to go in--it smells of paint. Regardless, Eric and I paid the 2000 won each to get in and were gifted with 4000 won in coupons for the use in the store of the museum. I was hoping for some good dark chocolate or hot chocolate (I'd been on a kick of drinking it almost every night at home during the coldest part of winter), but was disappointed to find the museum only had milk chocolate and no beverages other than bottles of soda. We used the coupon to get some green tea chocolate (I regretted purchasing milk products but did so anyway as I'm more familiar with self-disappointment than stepping up for the animals at times. Don't worry, Alex, I did eventually snap out of it and had a long discussion on animal rights and my reasons for being vegan and why I would not bend again).

With my curiosity over what a chocolate museum in Jeju had to offer satisfied, Eric and I decided to hit up the Korean restaurant across the way for lunch. I usually cringe at the idea of going to a Korean restaurant, but my supervisor at Garim had been really awesome with finding things for me so I was more comfortable with searching the menu for options. We ended up having sub-par (in my opinion) bibimbap with veggies that looked as though they wanted to join Bok Choy in a suicide pact against having any life after cooking. Eric liked the meal alright, which was a big relief for me as I feel guilty when my veganism and adjusting to being vegan in a foreign country interferes with another person's ability to enjoy lunch--though, if Eric weren't as awesome a person as he is and had insisted on having meat I wouldn't have enjoyed my lunch.

We had to walk for a bit afterward to try and find a cab so we could get a ride back to the World Cup Stadium to check out the Eros Museum. This tiny museum had a creepy dancing Santa outside of it, but is worth the small admission to see how obsessed with sex the world is and always has been.

There are poorly blown up photos of landscapes that have the shape of a penis or vagina, old tools and statues with phallic (which, by the way can apply to the clitoris I just found out) and vaginal imagery and (of course) erotica and porn. The museum was pleasant and had a different vibe to that of Loveland. The Eros Museum was made of older art and only when things like giant penises set up to look like canons, a masturbating fat Buddha, and the signs of different sexual positions being exhibited with the partners separated did I really laugh. I found it fascinating to see how something so vital to our culture and on everyone's minds has been pushed away from the mainstream. The ridiculous images of giant penises that had to be slung over shoulders. What is it about penises that makes size such an obsession? Anyway, it was at the Eros Museum that the only tip of the hat to pregnancy as part of sex could be found--it was a single metal piece of a pregnant woman's torso.









With our whirlwind tour of all things sexy at an end, we hopped on the bus to have one last delicious beer at the Jeju Brewery before getting on our plane home. Our plane ended up being delayed because of the snow in Seoul, and we had to do laundry before our tour of the DMZ the next morning at 6am. Ugh. Oh well, totally worth it. Nothing could make me really have a bad time. Eric was on the same continent as me!

There was no game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. :( Small hiccup, but I got over it.

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.

Christmas Cooking with Allison and Jeju-do Adventures with Eric

SO, here comes the first of a few updates! We'll start off with Christmas cooking and Jeju-do adventures.

Christmas dinner was to be an epic event. My good friend Allison and I had been salivating over all the goodies we were going to make--all vegan and all delicious. We were going to start at noon-ish and have everything ready by 5 so we could eat, drink, be merry and then I could merrily go to the airport and pick up my oh so amazing Christmas/Yuletide/Winter Whatever gift--Eric visiting for 10 days!

When the day arrived, there were some hiccups, but we got started right around 1pm, so we weren't too behind. We cooked for six hours! It was a lot of fun, but we were definitely hungry by the time the meal came together. We had wassail--which I had never had before, but will now be including in my holiday ritual--, garlic knots, carrot-ginger soup, roasted veggies, spicy green beans, vegan quiche, mashed potatoes and chocolate mousse. It was amazingly satisfying--though the recipes I made other than the quiche could use a little tweaking, all of Allison's food was stellar! Photo credit: Allison Peasley


So, we stuffed our faces and recouped a bit before heading to the subway so we could head north and part ways as I ventured to Incheon International Airport. I ran into my acquaintance Kiwi James (not to be confused with my friend Brit James) who is a public school teacher and (trying not to be bitter here) has time off until February and was headed to Malaysia for two weeks.

Anyway I got to the airport and had scribbled a sign that read, "Komrade Boyfriend"--a play on Eric's Hell's Gentlemen name. I felt like I was waiting FOREVER, but eventually Eric came out of the gate sporting his Tron sweatshirt. And, social norms of Korea be damned, I totally kissed him in the airport! Woo!

After he suited up to greet the Korean winter-- about -15* C or 5* F-- we made the hour long trek back to my apartment. When we got back to my place we had to assess what would be necessary for our trip to Jeju-do, an island to the south of the Korean Peninsula that is warmer than Incheon by about 10*C, so significantly warmer but still not Thailand. Then it was time to collapse as we had to wake up by 7 to get out of the apartment to make the flight to Jeju the next day.

It took us an hour on the bus to get to Gimpo, but we made it in plenty of time and got to people watch and play some Word Warp--all terribly exciting. We got on the plane, and that's when the difference between traveling in the States and traveling in Korea was apparent. The walls of the plane were decorated in scenes of flight--both standard aviation and space.


Then there was a revolution. Or what looked like a revolution, suddenly, about 3/4 the way through the flight the flight attendant said something in Korean (whereas all the announcements prior had been made in both Korean and English, this was only in Korean) and everyone's fists shot into the air. Now, being that Eric and I were the only white people on the plane, I naturally began to fear for my life. Eric and I chuckled at the "revolution" and then waited to see what would happen. Suddenly, I recognized some Korean "Gawi (scissors), Bawi (paper), Bo (rock)!"

Eric's legs on an Asian budget airline:


Now, for the three people (Eric is one of them, and he was there for this, so it's really just for Sally and Cooper that I make this reference) who read this and have watched Farscape, there is an episode in which Chriton teaches D'argo how to play Rock, Paper, Scissors, and the two are playing pretty much the whole episode. That's how Koreans play Rock, Paper Scissors. You see it on the streets, in stores, on the subway, and apparently on plane rides to Jeju-do.

So, yes, this was a plane wide Rock, Paper, Scissors game. The first few rounds were determined by beating whatever sign the flight attendant threw down. Then it was down to the last two people and whomever won received some sort of gift certificate. I was pumped and thought there would be another game--I've recently been called a "Rock, Paper, Scissors Master," but I was wrong. :( Alas, I didn't get to join in, but I was ready, for the next time.

We landed safely in Jeju-si (Jeju City) and I was pumped to be somewhere 5 degrees Celsius warmer than the -bajillion degrees I was facing back home. Seriously, on Christmas Incheon was colder than Moscow. >.< I was so excited, lalala, and then, I saw the snow. Boooo. It was really surreal, really. Snow on palm trees. So began our journey in Jeju.