Jeju-Do (재주도)

The trip to 재주도, advertised as Korea's Hawaii, did not go as well as expected due to bad weather and Dan catching a slight fever. The ferry ride was a lot of fun (as are all ferry rides for me). We had a nice Korean meal after we got on the boat at 7pm, accompanied by some soju (Korean rice wine). Metal Slug4 kept us entertained for a while as well as eating dried cuttlefish and talking about American pop culture with our newfound Korean friend "Chris".

We didn't make it to our room until 2am at which time we crashed on the floor of our bedless, third class room, shared with one other person. A 5am arrival time at Jeju had me tired and cranky, but after catching a cab to our motel and passing out until noon I felt much better.

We spent the first day doing some typical tourist activities such as waterfalls (very nice) and botanical gardens (kind of lame). That night we tried out the infamous black pig barbeque (흑돼지 - heuk dwae ji), which is indigenous to the island. Although it was my first Korean BBQ while in Korea, the black pig unfortunately did not live up to its reputation.

The next day we intended to get up at 7am for a 10 hour hike up to the crater lake at the top of Hallasan (한라산), the island's largest volcano. However, due to heavy rains the night before the park was closed. Also, Dan was feeling pretty horrible so we hung around the town where we were staying (서귀보 - Seogwipo) for the day and night. While Dan rested I spent some time practicing reading and writing the Korean alphabet, which he had been teaching during the trip (thus explaining why I've practiced writing so many words throughout this post). It is a surprisingly easy script to learn due its logic and simplicity, especially in comparison to Chinese (which was previously used as the writing system in Korea before the 15th century).

Fortunately 한라산 was open the next day. However, since our ferry left at 7pm that night we weren't able to hike to the crater and only could do a shorter hike 200m short of the summit. However, the hike was still amazing and the highlight of the trip due to the extreme weather through which we hiked. As we hiked along the ridges intense winds blew us up against the volcano with powerful rain that felt like sleet and hail. We could barely see a few meters in front of us the whole trip due to the cloud we were surrounded by and thus the mountain seemed that much more mysterious and exciting.

That evening we caught the ferry back to Busan, resting most of the way (despite a few rounds of Metal Slug) and arrived back at Dan's apartment early in the morning for some much needed sleep. This was of course after a filling breakfast at 맥도날드 (I'll let you look that one up if you really want to know *^_^* )