Seongsam Seaweed Soup
I think I found the only place in Korea with no PC Bangs. The last couple of days I have been in Seongsam staying at a redbrick Minbuk (guest house) with a view of this 5,000 year old volcano from my window. I did not indulge in the SCUBA that originally brought me to Seongsam.
Instead I meandered around the area with the zeal and speed of a 100 year old turtle. I tried one of the local beaches but it was so choked with seaweed that it felt like swimming in seaweed soup. Later, I climbed Ilchulbong and hot and sweaty climb was rewarded with this view. I did not however, climb it again just before sunrise as Lonely Planet recommends. It was just too... before sunrise to get my butt out of bed.
Instead I hopped a ferry to Udo island (Cow Island) which was conspicously absent of cows as far as I could tell. Udo has Korea's only coral beach which was tiny and also choked with seaweed. It rained the entire day so I have no pictures to share as I wasn't about to risk my camera. I was also too busy wisking around the treacherously narrow roads on a scooter. This was my first time on a scooter and the first time driving anything for almost exactly a year.
I almost got stuck on Udo. The rain came down in sheets and the ferry that I had arrived on stopped running either due to the rain or normal operations. Fortunately the kindly ajeoshis and ajummas that I rented the scooter from helped me get on a bus to the other ferry, but not before pulling me up a seat to thier table and shoving succulant watermelon in my face.
I ran into a Korean American from LA and her Korean husband or boyfriend. I had seen them a couple of times on the small island and was shock when she asked me if I was traveling alone in perfect Californian English on the bus. I was also approached by a chatty 73 year old man who was also traveling alone. He was a captain in the Korean Navy and had studied in Chicago. His wife had passed away three months earlier.
Now I just settled into a great hostel in Seogwipo. My room has a banging view and is just down the street from the dive shop. Although the rain has seemed to follow me here I am hopeful for my dives tomorrow and sunday.
One thing that has shocked me on this trip is how much my Korean has progessed. While I am hardly functional, my survival Korean flows so much more easily than my first clumbsy days where it would take me minutes to calculate even a couple of words in hangul. This is much to the relieve to the Koreans that are trapped behind the counters of the resterants and shops I step into. I can see a visible relief in Koreans when they realize I know how to read a menu or udnerstand simple phrases like "one more beer please" or "that will be 25,000 won".
Jeju is almost like whole other country. I suppose it is something like what many people call "sub-tropical". I could speak more on this but I think my photos show this much better than I can write about it.
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Peace and Love,
EPIK Justino
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