Hello, everybody! Sorry it's been such a long time since our last update, but we have been incredibly busy, with trips to the zoo, a traditional folk village, and then our anniversary trip to Jeju island!
The zoo was a mix of the insane and amazing. First, it was pretty much like a zoo out of 1960's (or earlier) America. Most of the outdoor exhibits were comparable to the bear displays at the Pittsburgh zoo (i.e. vague molded brown concrete and nothing else), whereas the inside exhibits were mostly just bars and concrete, sometimes a stick for monkeys or a rock for alligators. But I am making it out to be much worse than it is. The clientele was the biggest problem; there were so many drooling peasants feeding junk food to animals. I yelled (in Korean) at one young lass who did so, and Amy lectured her afterwards. She and her boyfriend soon fled. But we saw amazing animals like binturongs, giant anteaters, tapirs, badgers, tanuki, capybaras, Himalayan goat-things, and all the regular African, Asian, etc animals. It was really great, and we are looking forward to our next visit.
The weekend after the zoo, we went down to the traditional Korean folk village in Yong'in. There was not much going on despite it being a sunny weekend afternoon. There were plenty of old-fashioned houses, farms, artisans, etc that you could visit. We wandered around a bunch and even saw a staged traditional Korean wedding. Maybe all you readers will be able to see one with the writers of this blog in the future...
Here I am standing in front of hundreds of vats of preserved food chilling away in earthernware jugs. The dishes include the omnipresent kimchi, a fermented bean paste stuff called tenchang, possibly kochuchang, and other delights.
There was also a series of strings hung with little bits of paper. This was very familiar to me, having weathered plenty of shrines in Japan with a similar deal. You write a wish on a strip of paper, then tie it onto the string and it will come true. Amy and I each made a wish, but we're not sharing.
One fun craft-y thing we got to do was "help" a lady dye some handkerchiefs in various traditional vegatative-y dyes. (we hung on for dear life as she dipped the hankies into a series of starneg colored solutions producing moderately-pleasing tie-dyed style hankies at the end)
Here is Amy with a traditional Korean cow. All the cows in this country are this kind; basic and brown and boring. Many people keep a cow like this; chained up in a little shack by the house. Amy's grandmother did, in the past.
Here I am, showcasing my souvenir purchase from the village. It's a traditional Korean pipe, an item needed to complete my outfit to wear to my coworker Jackie's wedding.
Ideally, I will pretty much look like one of these dudes: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Koreans_oldest_pic_3.jpg
OK, on to our exciting trip to: Jejudo, Chejudo, Jeju Island, Cheju Island...
No matter how you spell it, it all means the same thing: fun!
Jeju is a small island (dwarfed by even Rhode Island) off of the southwestern coast of Korea. It is famous for its milder climate and quirky history, having been occupied by some pretty interesting folks over the last few dozen millenia.
This is one of the dol hareubang statues that the island is famous for, kinda like Korea's Easter Island heads.... They are kinda protector spirits for the island.
Here's an outside view of our hotel, the Hyatt Regency Jeju. I don't recommend it, at least for non ocean-view rooms. It was kind of outdated and a little run-down, despite the name and pricetag. It was part of a massive resort complex known as the Jungmun Resort. However, it was the hotel closest to ocean, which allows some of its rooms to possess simply STUNNING views. The other hotels in the area had nicer grounds and better facilities, especially restaurants. Amy and I spent most of our trip money on food, by far; we went all out, desperate to get good food in Korea. We hopped around between the resorts, visiting gardens, beaches, forest paths, and more.
Here's a little peeing statue dude on the grounds of the awesomest hotel at the resort, the Shilla. Note the koi, which in some places all but teleported towards people in search of food.
The Shilla also had these cages in a garden with lovebird/parakeet-y annoying birds, cute rabbits, hedgehogs, ferrets, and chipmunks! It was like a free little zoo! We visited a few times each day to feed the rabbits, experimenting with various local flora.
The flora and fauna of the island were especially impressive. There were so many pretty flowers, awe-inspiring palm trees, big banana-spider-esque spiders, weird dove-looking things that half-cooed and half zombie-moaned, pelicans, and more.
Here I am sitting down to one of our many gourmet meals at the resorts. Here is my seafood-tastic salad; it had baby octopus, sea squirt (possibly?), salmon, some shellfish (albalone? Jeju is famous for it), and more. I ate it all, except for the salmon.
All in all, the resort food was pretty good, but still certainly not up to par with what would be offered at similar locations in Japan, the US, Europe, i.e. any REAL INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. Amy Lee wholeheartedly backs me up on this statement. here is one of the desserts, a pretty tasty arrangement of mango sorbet and tarts (in terrible frozen-cookie tasting shells, not pastries). For the love of God, send pastry chefs to Korea! They'd be billionaires in days! I'm not joking in the least; the area Korean-made cuisine suffers most in is in the realm of baking and sweets.
Here is the view of the incredibly corny swan-boat-strewn lake in front of a cheesy trio of random windmills at the Lotte Resort, a palatial pastiche of garishness. We did go for a pedal-powered swanboat ride, which was really fun!
Here is the view of the Shilla's helipad, overlooking the Lotte Resort (note the overly-decorated architecture that pervaded Lotte's complex)
Here is Amy Lee in front of a teddy bear folk village at-- where else-- the Teddy Bear Museum, one of two on the island. Guess who's idea it was to come here... They had a bunch of historical displays using teddy bears (Korean folk village, Normandy, Charlie Chaplin flick set, and other inanities), as well as a presenttaion of 100 years of teddy bears, going back to the earliest Steiff ones, teddy bears dressed as fruits, miniature teddy bears, a grand teddy bear wedding, and more.
We also visited the Yeomiji Botanical Gardens. Think Phipps Conservatory, except with less Chihuly and more ignorant-Koreans-walking-through-exhibits-that-are-clearly-fenced-off. It was kind of the off-season, so there weren't that many blooming plants, but it was still very cool. They had a big glass dome tower thing that you could trek up for a great view of the surrounding area.
Here we are in the desert/cactus room.
Here I am with some rather racist simian sculptures.
Watch out! The dinosaurs are here!
One of the coolest things we did was go on a submarine tour out on the bay. We took a small boat out to a submarine dock, then went on an underwater tour of the amazingly diverse aquatic life of Jeju, including a stop by a shipwreck! It went down to 40m at the deepest, and a scuba diver tagged along at shallower depths to lure in fishies with food loots.
The Young Man and the Sea
Here is Amy posing, just for the sake of taking a picture of the lame newlyweds (it's safe to assume most couples on Jeju are newlyweds, as it is the most popular BY FAR destination for honeymoons) in their matching couple shirts, pants, shoes, etc. They seemed to be an arranged couple, as they were pretty awkward and not all that close together and did cheesy things like drawing stuff in the sand. But for all I know they have a more romantic story than ours (yeah, right).
Here I am on a wall by the sea. (yay, completely pointless caption!) There were some old ladies selling VERY fresh seafood, which you could get either raw or slightly boiled, a little further up. And there were plenty of orange vendors. That's another thing Jeju is famous for, namely its orange/tangerine/citron/etc groves. Literally along pretty much every road, you would always see the familiar round green shapes of citrus trees dotted with endless orange fruits. November is the big Orange Festival, so we pretty much hit the season perfectly. There are citrus stands almost everywhere, and for a few paltry thousand won, you can buy a big bag of delicious little seedless tangerines. My mouth waters at the memories.
Here I am climbing the woody path back up to the resort areas from the beach, still covered in drying saltwater and sand.
We also visited a few waterfalls, for which Jeju is also renowned. This particular one was called Cheonjeyeon, and the latter one is called Cheonjiyeon. Very creative nomenclature, right?
Here is a remarkable example of Konglish:
Well, here I am being photographed in the zone.
At Cheonjeyeon Falls, supposedly a bunch of goddesses come and party naked every night. There are a bunch of carved reliefs, paintings, signs, etc all telling of this legend. I wanted to return after dark but it was too heavily-guarded...
Cheonjeyeon, the other waterfall. No naked goddesses here, just tons of rare eels. Seriously.
Back to Cheonjeyeon...
Here I am throwing a coin into the 5-headed turtle fountain. It had a: turtle head for longevity, mandarin duck for love, dragon for nobleness, carp for sons, and piggy for money. I threw between the turtle and duck. :P
Finally, a parting shot of me and the boys.
Stay tuned for more!