breakfast by the pool, Dave went with Abby's husband, Jason and a few others to Jeju Island, a sub-tropical area south of Korea's mainland. With them were Jason's long-time friend Chris, and his friend from work Matt. The plan was to see the ladies off, then get on a ferry for the ride to the island. Things started fine, Jason and I said goodbye to our respective wives at the train station and then headed over to his place where the other guys were waiting. We decided to get some chicken for the ferry ride, but we had timed it wrong: when Chris and I were getting back, we had lost track of time and made us a little late. A slow, long, painful cab ride to the ferry terminal saw us miss our boat by minutes. So we decided that a night spent drinking at our place wouldn't be such a bad way to start the trip. So we ate chicken, drank beer and played cards. The hot night was passed slowly, and 5:30am came WAY too early. But we made it onto the boat at last. However, we were quite a bit worse for wear: during the 3 hour ferry ride, Jason was sick in the bathroom, and the rest of us were not too well either. So we had a slow start, but once we were off the boat, we were fine. We had to get ourselves from the north of the island, Jeju City, to the south of the island, Seogwipo. The easiest way is to bus it, which took us about an hour and a half. Once we were near to our destination, we called the minbak (basically a hotel room where you sleep on the floor) that we were booked at and they said they would pick us up. Half an hour later though, sitting in the hot sun by the bus stop, we decided that they were having trouble finding us. So we hailed a taxi and had him call the minbak to find it. Probably should've done that in the first place. It was a nice place, really nice room, it even had a bed! We unpacked quickly and headed down to the beach. Swimming and tanning and drinking was done until the sun went down, and we headed back to the minbak. We then took a cab into greater Seogwipo, where we had dinner at an awesome restaurant that looked over the river. Wandered for a while, looking for a bar. We found one, but found also that nobody parties on Sunday night in Seogwipo, so we finished our keg and then went back to the minbak and slept.Monday was spent sightseeing and traveling. We checked out the various waterfalls around the southern part of the island, including Chungbang, which is the only waterfall in Asia that flows into
the ocean. We also saw Chunjeyun, which is a beautiful gorge with loads of plant life and a few waterfalls. None of them are really spectacular, but the whole place was really nice. Bought some souvenirs there, then started our journey back up to Jeju City. On the way we stopped at a gun range! Jason and Chris both fired some shots, and we all enjoyed just hanging out for a while. Quite a nice place really, with a ton of different guns to fire. They even had a large yard where you could shoot clay pigeons. After that we headed off to the city!Jeju City is kind of a hole, it's dirty and seedy at times. We got to see this up close when we rolled in late in the evening of the Tuesday. We had a minbak booked somewhere, and we had planned to call the tourist info line to help us find it. However, the localized tourist info that is available during the day was closed by the time we called it, and the general info based in Seoul couldn't help us. So we had our taxi driver just take us to any place he knew that was in the area we wanted to be in. Eventually we found a fairly nice little love motel that had a large minbak style room. We took it, and enjoyed it for the most part. The seedy part was that it was across the street from a REAL brothel. In Korea you see a lot of little "da bang"s (literally "tea room", but just a name) which routinely send women out to wherever anybody wants them. They typically drive around in small skinny vans (which we have dubbed the 'booty bus'), or on scooters I have noticed in Gwangju. But this was a real brothel, complete with red lights! Don't see that too often anymore!
We decided to go out and see the nightlife before we had to head out in the morning, so we went first to the casino area, which was near where we were staying. The hotels that the casinos are in are REALLY ritzy, and the casinos are really well kept, and the staff all speak English. However, they aren't as enjoyable as the casinos we are used to, because it is illegal for Koreans to gamble. So these places are 'foreigner only' establishments. And since it was low season for tourism, there was NOBODY else there. Not fun at all. The other problem is that since the only people who can stay at these places are rich, the minimums on the tables were crazy. We talked them down to $5 minimum bet at a Blackjack table, though it was originally $20 I believe. We decided that casinos were boring, and that we should find a bar to check out. However, that also was a chore as there were no bars nearby, except for a nightclub. That option would have been expensive and there probably wouldn't have been anybody there, as it was Monday night. So we got some beer at a Ministop and drank in our hotel room.
The next morning it was time to get out of Jeju. Our ferry was late in the afternoon, so we were able to sleep in a bit. We had lunch at Lotteria, and while wandering after lunch we found a cultural icon in Jeju, the Mok Office. It had been an important building, and as things happen in Korea, had been burned down and rebuilt many times. Nonetheless, it was interesting, and a fun way to kill a few hours before we had to go to the ferry terminal.
Taking a ferry in Korea can be good or bad, depending on how much money you spend. We spent a bit of money getting to Jeju, and it was a really fast boat, we had seats and a table, and it would have been nice had it not been for sickness. Getting back to the mainland we spent less money, so we had a slower, bigger boat, were stuffed into a large room with a larger number of Koreans, and it would have been really bad had we not spent all of our time on deck hanging out and taking pictures. When we saw what our tickets got us on this boat, we all expected there to be Irish people drinking and dancing with Kate Winslet. It was as though we were stowaways, along with the 150 other people in our room. We just walked in, took note of the amount of space allotted to each person (none) put our bags in an inconspicuous place and left. Up on deck it was windy, but nice, and we found a bench to sit on and hung out for the long ride back to Mokpo. We took some nice sunset pictures and just enjoyed not having to do anything. There was also some entertainment to be had a little later on in the trip: a duet between a man and a woman, singing
along to canned music. Actually the guy was playing some keyboards and did a decent job. This all took place down in the extremely crowded cafeteria. There was this one old guy (who took a liking to Chris because they had the same hat) who kept getting up and dancing with the girl who was trying to sing, and she kept leading him back to sit down. We got to Mokpo fairly late, so we just went our separate ways: me to our place and Jason, Chris and Matt to Jason and Abby's place. The next morning we had to pick up our wives at the train station, so it was early to bed for me. Overall, good trip. Though I wish we had had that extra day on the island...
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