Jeju

I just got back from my summer vacation, which amounted to about four days in Jeju, an Island off the coast of South Korea which can be equated (as far as such a comparison is possible) to Hawaii. It is a tropical island, formed via volcano with white sand beaches and black sand beaches. People tend to go there for honey moons.

On Wednesday, Geoff and I caught a bus to Busan Airport to catch our 4:25 pm flight to Jeju. We managed this without problems, somewhat remarkably considering our other traveling records and express inability to do things easily or correctly.

Our plane flight was brief. I had water.In Jeju we caught a bus into Jeju-Si, the main city which our guidebook claimed housed a Mexican restaurant called El Paso. This is the same guidebook that led us so deftly astray in Seoul, so it wasn't completely surprising that we found ourselves on a series of streets that had many restaurants, many signs but no sign of the illusive El Paso.

Luckily an overzealous host of another restaurant came out to try and entice us in and I solicited his assistance in finding the damn place. Which he did, with the help of two other local passer byers.

The food was arguable in its adequacy. For me, there was salsa and something green that might very well have contained an avocado. Thus, I was happy. Geoff made the mistake of getting something a bit too exotic (enchiladas) and was accordingly let down. However, even unamazing Mexican food is better than no Mexican food. But above all, we'd successfully navigated a foreign city and found the restaurant we wanted and that felt fine.

We next found a remarkable roomy and cheap room ($25 for a bed, a bathroom, a mini fridge and all the Korean porn we could hope for) and made our way down to the pier. There we watched some very inattentive children biking and skating all over the damn place and very serious, skin tight suit wearing adults who zoomed about very professionally and quickly, if futility, given that they were going in a circle.

The biking or skating children, many of whom were quite young and damn cute, were criminally negligent of the activities at hand. Many of the younger kids found themselves compelled to tricycle without looking, instead choosing to gaze behind them, marveling at the distance they had covered. But goodness would they pedal with ferocity, without reserve. It was adorable. They pedaled like they had somewhere to be. I was in love with all the children and sort of transfixed by the horrifying possibility that this arena of children and these speed of light traveling spandex wearing adults had to end in some kind of high speed collision. How could it not?

Breathless and sort of oddly hungry, I watched. Hoping that the accident would not entail a child, that maybe two of the fit nitwits would collide. But of course fit nitwits tend to be well graced in the prospect of not colliding. And they didn't. In fact no one did. Which was a let down.

After we'd satisified the strange desire to watch people not crash, Geoff and I went back to our hotel and watched the only English thing on T.V. which unfortunately proved to be an airing of one of the later installments of The Mummy movies with Brendan Frasier and the delectable little Rachel Weiz. Neither of us had seen this particular instance of the Mummy saga and it was nice to sit around making sarcastic comments. The plot was far fetched, to say the least.

The next morning, we took a bus to Seongsan Illchulbong, which is on the eastern side of the Island and which houses Sunrise Peak, an inactive volcano crater that is sort of famously ascended at sunrise by many, many Koreans. We got there and realized we didn't want to be there until the next morning and that we wanted to be at a beach.

So, we bickered about what should be done next. Geoff wanted to go half way back across the Island and go to a beach there. I didn't, given that we'd just spent two hours on a bus to get where we were. I wanted to go to a more nearby beach.

Then we bickered about how we would get to the more nearby beach. Then we got in a taxi and paid three bucks to end the argument. Well worth every penny.

The nearby beach, called Sinyang, proved respectable in that it wasn't crowded and the sand was white and the sky was blue and the sea was welcoming. I laid myself out, intent on getting some semblance of tan. I even remarked casually to Geoff that I intended on getting "browned as a Boston baked bean." When basking on the sand became too hot, I went and lay in the ocean. It was great. It was exactly what I'd wanted from a tropical vacation.

I decided to have a little nap, which proved to be a really very bad idea. Geoff woke me probably very quickly thereafter and we stumbled into a cab and went back to Seongsan Illchulbong, where we fell into the first thing we saw that said Inn. The Inn proved to be one room in a couple's apartment. Which had no bed. And no air conditioning. But both of our brains, heads and bodies were sun fried, so we paid the nice couple $30 bucks for a room without a bed.

My discovery that I had been basically assaulted by the sun took maybe much longer than it should have. But in the shower, I realized I was significantly sunburned. Like pink. But pink in a kind of orange, dreadful, third degree burn from a hot surface way.

Minus my bathing suit, my body looked like I was some kind of flamingo/lobster colored alien woman who was wearing a white bikini. Which distressed me because when I'd put the swim suit on earlier that day, the exact opposite had been true. I had been a white woman wearing a pink bathing suit.

Geoff was in a slightly better position due to the fact that, as a man, his bathing suit covers a lot more of his body. But being a man, he also found reason to bitch and whine about his sunburn a lot more than I did. I also found it kind of funny. If things are a little bad, I usually am pissed. But when things get to the point of bad where you are sunburned in the guest bedroom of some crazy Korean couple who speak NO English, in a room where there is no bed and no air conditioning and no aloe vera....I usually laugh a lot. And I did.

But first I slept some more. Geoff woke me and we went and found some food. Which was good. I probably would have died, happily and giggling, otherwise. Then we went back to the room, turned the fan on and lay there trying not to touch anything because it hurt our respective burns too much.

Of course, the challenge of not touching anything with your burnt body is added to slightly when you are laying on a fucking floor. But we were optimistic in the way people often are when they find themselves with absolutely no other choice.

It was the most unromantic night I have ever spent with anyone. We basically did not sleep, such was the extent and the misery of our burns, but lay side by side, not touching and trying to hog the fan.

We initially forgot our wounds and moved towards each other to embrace or hold hands. But as soon as our skin touched, even accidentally, we found ourselves enraged, and drew with painful disdain, cursing each other in undertones. Later, Geoff, callous oaf that he is, accidentally stepped on a piece of my sun crisped flesh while getting up for water and I swore up and down and threatened his life and genitals and friends and loved ones and informed him that if he touched me again, I would wait till he fell asleep and then take a chewed finger nail to his burns. He was careful after that.

I lay on the floor, my body covered in sweat, burns and in the heat of a tropical room that lacked air conditioning. As I lay thus, spurning physical contact with my boyfriend and angry at the prospect, it occurred to me that most Koreans call Jeju "Honeymoon Island." And I laughed in a hollow, sardonic way and then immediately regretted it as my mirth caused parts of my flesh to touch the floor a little more.

After sleeping probably not at all, we were woken at 5:10 am to hike the goddamn volcano and see the mother fucking sunrise. We got up, clothed ourselves, cringing as fabric touched skin and somehow clambered up the peak. I walked with my legs as apart as humanly possible, trying not to let my legs touch. With every step however, my frazzled skin stretched and screamed in protest.

We made it though. I still can't believe we did it. But we did. And it was amazing. I climbed a volcano and watched the sunrise from it. How many people do you imagine can say that?

A ton of Koreans managed the asscent as well and they cooed, ohhhed and awwed at the rising sun in a way that was suprisingly contagious, considering that the damn thing rises every day, and especially considering the damage it had so recently done me. We took loads of pictures, chatted with a very kind Canadian couple and went back down.

In our room, we sort of looked at each other, realized it was six in the morning and that we basically had nothing to do. I considered sleep, but after a dismal stare at the floor, opted to just pack my bag. Geoff convinced me to take a taxi, rather than the far cheaper and more rustic bus that I tended to insist upon, to Manjanggul Lava Tubes.

I was too weak to protest and so we got into a cab and were conveyed, rather the way astronauts are conveyed on rockets, to Manjanggul. Our taxi driver ran red lights and hit such a speed while transcending a hill that the car's wheels briefly left the road. Madness is a pre-requisite to drive a taxi cab in Korea.

We tried some Jeju's famous fish Okdomgui in a handy resturant while we waited for the lava tubes to open. Okdomgui, which is something the kings of Jeju used to feast on, is partially dried and then cooked whole, leaving you to pick, pry and pull into it's flesh with chopsticks. It is absolutely delicious and I imagine the effect is not hurt by the decidedly barbaric and yet tedious efforts one must go to in order to dine upon it.

After that, we were more than ready for the tubes. And they proved to be everything one would hope for. Manganggul is the world's largest system of lava tube caves. It is almost entirely undescribable. But basically, lava travels up through the earth and within the earth as well as above it and the more times a volcano erupts the more the lava furrows and expands a kind of plumbing system for itself.

They were magnificent. I have never felt so certain that I was in the home of a dragon or serpent or other deep earth dwelling creature. You walk about 1 km into the cave, observing the stone floor and walls and vividly imagining that once this was all swirling lava that has now hardened and provided you with such a perfect, picturesque dungeon for you and the other tourists.

Even better than that was how cool the caves were. Trust me, if you ever go to Jeju and burn yourself past a decent level of understanding, go to the caves. They were cool and soothing as only a monster's lair can be.

We got a lift with a strange fellow Westerner to the bus stop and caught a bus back into Jeju-si where we got another room at our well priced hotel, which had a bed and air conditioning and was still somehow five bucks cheaper than our former torture chamber. We were both pretty beat at this point, having not slept all night and having been up at dawn to hike up volcanoes and then into them and what not.

So we took cold showers, which was the best idea of the whole trip probably.Then we lay around and watched more Korean television, finally opting to get up and go find something historical to take in.

We went to a couple of museum type places, bumping into some pretty insufferable newlyweds who generally mocked our guide book, our jobs, knowledge of Korea and status in life, etc.Then we wandered around searching for dinner and ultimately had some over priced sankipsal, but the famous Jeju black pork sankipsal. It was good. Not so much better than regular sankipsal that I think it was worth the price, but still slightly different and interesting enough to merit a one time expenditure.

After dinner we pretty much were done and retired to the hotel room to be sunburned.