The morning started well as I got to a PC Bang for the first time and Yvonne and I walked out to McDonald's for a healthy breakfast of delicious hamburgers American style which took about 20 minutes to emerge from the back of the Mickey-Ds. Still, beat the hell out of the breakfast we would have had with the Collective who chose to have Heh Jan Kook (or whatever the blood-clot and extruded intestine soup is).
I really don't understand the Koreans. One one side they are compulsive about some kinds of cleanliness. They won't wear shoes inside and don't want luggage on any surfaces (besides those floors they are so obsessive about) that they might sit on (yeah, it's a POSSLQ story). They claim that they used metal chopsticks because it is more sanitary and can detect (by coloration change) poison in food. On the other hand they will eat something that looks like a freshly carved out dog's anus. Still throbbing on the plate and twitching when you poke it with a chopstick (and, no, I have no idea what it actually was, probably not dog anus, but it certainly was on my plate three days ago ..... and it was throbbing). And they'll like it even better if it is served on a stick from a grubby sidewalk booth by an old crone who looks like a medical textbook photograph showing every kind of vitamin deficiency and opportunistic disease known to man.
I guess it's just one of those 'contradictions' that old Korean hands love to prattle on about.
Anyway, the entire island was coated with volcanic rocks when the Koreans got there and they dealt with this by using the rocks as fencing. This not only cleared the land, but it also slowed down the sometimes ferocious winds that hit young crops. The fences are put together almost entirely without any kind of cement, which is pretty impressive:
SOME OF THEM WALLS WITH BURIAL MOUND RAMPANT
WALL DETAIL
Jeju Convention Center was cool and while I'd love to go to a convention there, I'm not sure it is different enough from any other grand convention center to go into detail.
We also visited a National Park where the lava once hit the water and where women currently sell oranges. Some nice hexagonal (?) basalt formations where the lava had once hit the water. And now the water slowly gets its own back in a very lovely dance of water against stone. Jeju is the greenhouse of Korea... actually tropical, and one of the things that grows in profusion there are oranges of several kinds. Jeju tries to be a high-end vegetable shop, however (since they really can't compete against international price) and they only box their finest fruits. The rest are either destroyed or sent off to be used in perfumes and the like. Well, theoretically. Some enterprising old ladies snake some of these fruits between culling and destruction. Our tour guide gave a big lecture about how we shouldn't encourage this activity by purchasing anything. The Korean parents, thrifty to a fault, immediately purchased a crate of oranges which we ate for the next day and a half.
We also went to the Biggest Temple Yakchunsah in South East Asia where no one was and the nice woman said I could take one picture. It turns out the timing was good. I was with native Koreans and there were no Japanese in the temple (Ed says the prohibitions in temples are primarily aimed at the Japanese). I took three, so I put a couple thousand Won into their donation box for hungry children.
MASSIVE TEMPLE
INNER TEMPLE
Just as we left, hundreds of screaming school children landed at the temple so we got out just in time.
One 'feature' of the tours that is funny but sometimes boring is that the tour guides clearly get kickbacks for steering tourists to certain locations. Our next stop was one of these places
A mandarin orange, rock, and mushroom farm which was really more or less of a sales pitch for their mushroom based "medicinal" tea. I had some of it in tea, some as a honey drink, some dry, and some in Soju. If this cold I have doesn't go away I'll be very dissapointed. The mushroom farm is a series of branch stumps suspended in temperature and humidity controlled rooms and looks like this:
MUSHROOM FARM
On the way out we were offered the chance to pick and eat some of their oranges. POSSLQ heard "pick" but not "eat" and started into the trees like Paul Bunyan intent on whacking down an entire forest. When Ed reminded her she had to eat what she had clipped, she was downcast. I type this in the tour bus and Yvonne has not yet come back. So maybe she is giving it the old family try.
As it turns out? She only ate three.
Probably not wise since lunch was up next.
Re-thinking that?
Probably quite wise because lunch was up next. While I have really come to enjoy kimchi and a wide variety of tubers, bbqd meat, and noodles, there are still some things on the Korean menu that I would never order on my own. They call that list of inedible things "a normal lunch" in Korea.
We also went to a pretty cool park of lava caves, tropical plants, bonsai, and cool rock formations/art.
BANSAI AND ROCK, CLEVERLY COMBINED
We saw many other wondrous things on this day, but I was slumped in the back of the bus wishing (probably along with most of the other occupants) that I were dead. I was in the full grip of the ague and it was probably only Jae's insistent, staccato and quite loud coughing that kept me on this particular side of the Styx.
Night featured us waiting in our condo "room" while the Koreans all went off and pondered the marriage thing. FInally, when they thought they had enough we went out to celebrate the agreements (still mysterious to POSSLQ and I) that had been reached. The restaurant at the condo was full of drunken Koreans on vacation who seemed to be having quite a great deal of fun. Yvonne and I stared wistfully.
When the drunk partying Koreans went outside to set off fireworks we surrendered completely and ran out to watch them. Eventually the hotel/restaraunt worker noted how rapt we were and pulled out the box of fireworks which they had offered to the partiers. Man, nice move Korean condo company! We went out and set off a few, danced a bit, and then learned we had to move to yet another drinking establishment for another "wedding meeting."
I'm skipping over all that wedding stuff as I will post it at the end - it has its own life.
Anyway, we set off fireworks while Ed conscienciously put out the small grass fires we started.
Here is a photo I snapped of the one pure moment of mindless fun we had on Jeju:
FIREWORK FUN!
And, for the bird watchers, my last bird photo:
LAND BOUND BIRD (FROM THE BONSAI/ROCK/PLANT FARM)
As I blog this stuff I am on my last day in Korea and will say that even with the bitter cold, bitter food, and bitter me? I'll miss it and I'm glad I'll be coming back in May to the wedding.
No comments:
Post a Comment