Photo giganto-post: Cheju Island, Korea
What follows is an account and massive Buttload of Photos™ of my annual company trip this past weekend, to the island of Cheju (also spelled Jeju-do), in the Korea Strait.
tl;dr: It's a fascinating place, with a deep history of being crapped upon by various world powers but now is a pleasant municipTOURISTTRAPality with lots of beautiful natural scenery. It's the best company trip I've taken to date.
This is a rambling chronicle classified by event or location. Large sizes for all photos, including ones I didn't include with this article, are all on my Flickr site.
1. Trying to get in the country was a pain.
My passport was issued in Osaka in 2002. At the time, apparently the US embassy in Osaka was working out of someone's broom closet, because the passport I was issued had my photo affixed to the page with simple glue and a pressed seal, and my passport number was handwritten into a box. This has of course received untold countless "you gotta be kidding me, right?" looks from various immigration goons in both the US and Japan over the years since, but at least they didn't detain me and call their superiors. Until last Friday when, as I presented myself before the Korean border officer, he seemed to have a real problem with it.
I stood there for ten solid minutes while the officer fondled and flipped through the passport, apparently trying to make it fall apart like the cheap imitation fake that he perceived it to be. He then took exception to the passport number I'd written on the entry card -- that matched the number in the passport, written into the box labeled PASSPORT NUMBER -- and eventually crossed out the number on the entry card, replacing it* with the number that had been perforated into the passport pages when it was issued (the meaning of that number was, and is, a mystery to me, but it sure as hell isn't the passport number). And then, he called over his boss and they both inspected it thoroughly for a while, before finally stamping it and waving me through. I wonder if they were testing me to see if I would sweat and look shifty-eyed.
* This becomes significant later.
2. First impressions.
I had first visited Korea in 1994, when I had to leave Japan to receive a working visa and then re-enter the country using that visa. I stayed near the Japanese embassy in Seoul waiting for the visa to be issued, spending the intervening time skateboarding around the city and getting drunk. Thus, I barely remembered the place. 16 years have passed so I figured it would be quite a different experience now; add to this the fact that a small island out in the middle of the sea was going to be ass-backwards from the gigantic tangled spaghetti-pile of humanity that is Seoul.
As it turns out, Cheju is almost exactly the same thing as Anytown, Japan. I caught myself occasionally thinking: So this is what Japan looks like to someone who can't understand the language. Except for the cars driving on the right, just about everything else was a copy of, say, Gifu, in one way or another. The license plates are arranged the same, the traffic lights are sideways, there are FamilyMart convenience stores all over the place, and you see familiar-looking old temple gates. Oh, and Koreans bow, too. They have old feudal-era dramas with sword fights on TV, too. They have irritating boy bands, too.
One may think that this is simply because Japan tried to obliterate Korean culture back in the day, but I think this precedes that. Korea and Japan are far more similar than either country (regional rivals since ages past) wants to admit. From architecture to cultural quirks, they are very much alike, and it's pretty obvious if you've lived in either country for any significant amount of time. Sure, there are also enough notable differences, so I would hesitate to call Japan and Korea "siblings", but they are undoubtedly first cousins. Cousins with a love-hate relationship, whom often regard each other with envy and suspicion... but relatives just the same. Neither would tell you that. But we all know it's true. (Japanese and Korean DNA, incidentally, share a common Chinese origin. Look it up.)
3. Tourism.
We had a tour bus to ourselves for the three-day visit, tended by a Korean lady tour guide who had grown up in Osaka but moved to Cheju as an adult.
As we puttered around the island in this tour bus on Saturday to various locations, she told us about the history of this Hawaii Big Island-sized mound of basalt and lava. Itself a sovereign nation in ancient times, it has regularly been the site of occupations and smackdowns by various warring factions, most notably the Mongol hordes, the Imperial Japanese, and... well, the Koreans themselves in 1951. This is where our tour guide's story got personal: her grandparents, like so many other islanders during the Korean War, fled Cheju to escape the violent anti-Communist purges that claimed hundreds of lives. If even a relative of yours had so much as blown his nose in North Korea, you were a Commie by association, and were ostracized and abused by your peers -- that is, if you weren't shot outright by gangs of (rumored US-backed) militia. And this was only five years after the Japanese had commandeered the entire island during World War II, amassing a garrison of tens of thousands of troops to defend the Japanese mainland from Allied invasion, raping and pillaging as they went. (Meet the new boss, etc.) With nowhere else to go, the Chejuans fled their home to the relative safety of... Osaka. To this day, 90% of the rather sizable ethnic Korean population in the Kansai region are from Cheju.
However, even after a history like that, time does pass, and Cheju now appears to be a rather peaceful, laid-back sort of island of 570,000. It looks like it has a self-sustaining economy that doesn't have to rely solely upon tourist money for survival, although visitors must account for a large part of its income. The island is home to two three UNESCO World Heritage Sites, one two of which we visited, and also has a plethora of Venus-flytrap-like locations to ensnare tourists and suck the cash out of their wallets. There were gaggles of Korean tourists from the mainland; the foreign tourists were overwhelmingly Japanese and Chinese. I saw very few Europeans during the entire trip.
I shall describe the visited sites here:
a. Manjanggul (UNESCO World Heritage Site)
This is a 3/4 mile long underground natural lava cave that is the size of a subway tunnel. Formed millennia ago when the volcano that created Cheju was still active, this was basically a subterranean river of molten rock. You can walk all the way to the end, past multi-colored lighting, where there is a curious-looking lava column that rises 10 meters overhead.
We had to follow the tour guide at a rather brisk pace to the endpoint, but we were free to return to the surface at our own pace. I took this opportunity to stop every 10 feet or so to compose pictures, now made possible by my D3s at ISO 12,800, and piles of basalt that served as impromptu tripods.
As I happily clicked away -- at one point taking my 10,000th frame with the camera, achieved in just over two months -- I was unaware that I was being watched. Or at least I assumed so, later, because there really was no other reason for what happened next. A young Korean lady walked up and asked, in English: "Excuse me, are you a tourist?"
"Uh... yes," I answered. I sometimes get asked this question in Japan. This was one of the few times I could ever answer that question in the affirmative.
"Yes, well, I'm with KBS Television and would you mind answering a few questions?" she continued, as a cameraman and lighting guy approached to either side. My supervisor and another coworker had been watching this exchange from about 10 yards away, and were now laughing themselves silly at the sight of my Korean television debut.
So, with no chance of escape, I was interviewed for 5 minutes. I was asked questions about what tour I was with, and how I liked Cheju, and whether I knew that Manjanggul was a World Heritage Site, whether I'd visit again, etc. At the conclusion of this little chat (about 3 seconds of which was probably used, if at all), they asked if they could film me taking photos. I said sure, why not; enough damage was likely done to KBS's reputation that a few more seconds of footage of some pudgy white guy with a battle-tank camera firing his ridiculous submarine periscope flash unit into the gloom wouldn't hurt.
I had my wide-angle lens on at the time, so I panned over far enough to catch myself being filmed for a frame or two. Priceless evidence of my 15 milliseconds of fame.
b. Sunrise Peak (Another UNESCO World Heritage Site)
This was just pure scenery porn: a huge upthrusting of rock along Cheju's eastern coast on an impeccable autumn afternoon. You could reach the top of the outcropping, 280m above sea level, via a nearly ladder-steep series of staircases. I huffed and puffed my way to the top in about half an hour, taking these shots in the process.
At the peak, where there was a painted sign strategically placed for group photos, I had several coworkers pose for a snap or two. I still had my camera set on CH (continuous high) motor-drive mode; when I fired the shutter and took nine frames in rapid succession, there arose a chorus of "ooooooh!" from nearby tourists waiting in line to take their own pictures. "You're popular today," my boss said.
Bonus tidbit: At the foot of this outcropping, on this little island out to sea in the Korea Strait, was: a Dunkin' Donuts.
c. A traditional Cheju village
This was a stop at a small collective of old thatch-roof houses surrounded by a stone wall, with a couple of gated entrances that resembled the guard houses you might see on Japanese castles. Unlike other preserved old houses in, say, colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, modern families still occupied many of these little homes.
A boisteriously loud local guide with a screeching voice accepted us at the front gate and ran us through a short tour of the village. Up to that point, there had been nothing wrong with it, and her description of the customs of Cheju residents of ages past was rather interesting. That is, until the tour suddenly turned into a live 3D Home Shopping Network infomercial.
A preliminary discussion about locally made herbal tea ended with us being herded into a smallish enclosure (with, I noticed, only one exit) populated with nothing but rows of benches and a table where various products were on display for sale. We were then forced to sit there for thirty minutes while this bombastic lady rapid-fired a sales spiel into our faces about herbal teas and traditional health pills that looked like fish food pellets but were actually made out of horse bones, a year's supply of which can be yours for five hundred smackers.
Thirty minutes I could have walked slowly around that village immersed in photography. Thirty minutes that I can't have back. Needless to say, when we were finally released from our sales prison (no, no one bought a god damned thing), I was more than a little pissed off.
d. Playtime!
I was jonesing for some payback when we reached our next destination, a smallish amusement-oriented facility out in the countryside that offered off-road ATVs, horseback rides, and go-kart racing.
Now, I have an ingrained fear of ATVs because of the various YouTube videos I've watched, where unsuspecting idiots on ATVs totally crash and get thrown 40 feet through the air accompanied by a "Yakety Sax" soundtrack; also, as it turns out, I was too heavy (at 99kg) to ride the horses. Plus, I'd never ridden a horse in my miserable life, and I wasn't about to do it now. So, that left the go-karts.
I couldn't fit into the goddamned seat. Apparently my American ass is too wide to fit into the cockpit of a Korean go-kart. So I had to sort of wedge myself in between the seat and the steering wheel, mashing my foot onto the accelerator and streaking around the track at full-tilt with a steering column that felt like it was connected to an aircraft carrier. But I had paid 25,000 won to ride this thing, and I was going to take my frustrations out on the circuit. Force ME to listen to a sales pitch about horse bone pellets, I thought. I'll show 'em. Suddenly, I was taking corners like Michael Schumacher. I was inches from the wall like Mario Andretti. I was flooring it like Joey Chitwood. I was...
... sore-handed and sore-assed fifteen minutes later when the attendant waved me off. But I felt a lot better mentally.
I spent the rest of the time shooting photos of random people riding the horses, because no one else (save for three girls who rode the ATVs, proving me a wuss for all time) had done anything but stand around. Like the horses.
Here's about six years' worth of bones for your pellets. Order now.
e. Mystery Road
Sorry, no interesting photos of this one. It was a road. Although it was a downhill road, local topography presented the illusion that it was an uphill grade. Thus, if you stopped the tour bus and shut off the engine, the vehicle would mysteriously appear to roll uphill of its own volition. Oooooooh. Aaaaaaaah. Here, buy some roadside trinkets.
You can tell, at this point, I do not suffer tourist traps gladly.
f. THE SUPERMARKET!!!!111
This was Lotte Mart. It was far more interesting than watching cars roll uphill, powered by horse bone pills. It was a department store and supermarket. You know, the one where actual local residents use.
The best way to take the pulse of a nation is to look at where the locals congregate and conduct their daily lives. Yeah, there were tourists like us buying souvenir seaweed off the shelves like some crazed group of refugees fleeing an impending nuclear strike, but there were also Korean families buying washing detergent and socks and spatulas for the kitchen, and their kids were shrieking at mommy in Korean to please buy them the space robot action figure. It was comforting, somehow, to wander around looking at the Samsung televisions and sporting equipment. No overdone tourist sales here, just a recorded announcement telling shoppers about today's special deals on fresh mackerel. It was, in other words, just like home.
When I bought my obligatory seaweed, as requested by M beforehand, I went right through the checkout line unaided despite the inability to speak one word of Korean. This was because, of course, Korean cash register people say the exact same thing as Japanese supermarket people, or American supermarket people. Do you have a point card? Would you like a bag? That'll be $MONETARY_AMOUNT [look at the cash register display, you dumbass]. Here's your change. Thank you!
While I waited for my coworkers to emerge, I stood around outside and did some of that camera shit.
g. Back to base
After a seafood dinner at a seaside restaurant, we returned to the Jeju KAL Hotel and went our separate ways for the evening. Some of the guys went to a pub, some other guys went searching for the hootchie-kootchie clubs, and still others just went to bed. I took a little walkabout around the hotel, shooting more photos, before taking a trip to the hotel's top floor to the Sky Lounge, and having a beer.
And then I went to bed. Total camera mileage for the tour: 1,032 frames. And I still had 1/3 battery power remaining.
4. Trying to get out of the country was a pain.
Remember when I came in, and the immigration dude entered the wrong passport number into his Bat-Computer? Well, lo and behold, it came back to bite me in the tuchis on the way out, too. As soon as I walked up to the officer to get stamped out, the officer on duty inspected the travel document (this has to be a euphemism for masturbation amongst border control officials) and called over his superior. Again. They both murmured in Korean to themselves for some more minutes -- for all I knew they could be saying "So, which part of this guy do you want, wing or leg?" -- before I pointed out that the man who had stamped me in used the wrong number.
After confirming that I was sufficiently frightened out of my wits, the supervisor guy banged his DEPARTURE stamp on page 27. I was free to go.
That is, until they had begun boarding the airplane, at which point a woman came over and asked to see my passport again. Then she scurried off with it for another ten minutes, just to make sure I wouldn't flip out and start tearing the ticket counter apart. Thus satisfied of the soundness of my mental faculties, she brought back my passport unmolested.
Just in case, I kept it in hand, waiting for someone to barge on board the aircraft and demand to see it again. Thankfully, they did not.
Edit: And what do you know, the day after I get back here, suddenly it's got top CNN coverage as the hottest destination in years!!1!!!1 Maybe it was my interview.
.
tl;dr: It's a fascinating place, with a deep history of being crapped upon by various world powers but now is a pleasant municipTOURISTTRAPality with lots of beautiful natural scenery. It's the best company trip I've taken to date.
This is a rambling chronicle classified by event or location. Large sizes for all photos, including ones I didn't include with this article, are all on my Flickr site.
1. Trying to get in the country was a pain.
My passport was issued in Osaka in 2002. At the time, apparently the US embassy in Osaka was working out of someone's broom closet, because the passport I was issued had my photo affixed to the page with simple glue and a pressed seal, and my passport number was handwritten into a box. This has of course received untold countless "you gotta be kidding me, right?" looks from various immigration goons in both the US and Japan over the years since, but at least they didn't detain me and call their superiors. Until last Friday when, as I presented myself before the Korean border officer, he seemed to have a real problem with it.
I stood there for ten solid minutes while the officer fondled and flipped through the passport, apparently trying to make it fall apart like the cheap imitation fake that he perceived it to be. He then took exception to the passport number I'd written on the entry card -- that matched the number in the passport, written into the box labeled PASSPORT NUMBER -- and eventually crossed out the number on the entry card, replacing it* with the number that had been perforated into the passport pages when it was issued (the meaning of that number was, and is, a mystery to me, but it sure as hell isn't the passport number). And then, he called over his boss and they both inspected it thoroughly for a while, before finally stamping it and waving me through. I wonder if they were testing me to see if I would sweat and look shifty-eyed.
* This becomes significant later.
2. First impressions.
I had first visited Korea in 1994, when I had to leave Japan to receive a working visa and then re-enter the country using that visa. I stayed near the Japanese embassy in Seoul waiting for the visa to be issued, spending the intervening time skateboarding around the city and getting drunk. Thus, I barely remembered the place. 16 years have passed so I figured it would be quite a different experience now; add to this the fact that a small island out in the middle of the sea was going to be ass-backwards from the gigantic tangled spaghetti-pile of humanity that is Seoul.
As it turns out, Cheju is almost exactly the same thing as Anytown, Japan. I caught myself occasionally thinking: So this is what Japan looks like to someone who can't understand the language. Except for the cars driving on the right, just about everything else was a copy of, say, Gifu, in one way or another. The license plates are arranged the same, the traffic lights are sideways, there are FamilyMart convenience stores all over the place, and you see familiar-looking old temple gates. Oh, and Koreans bow, too. They have old feudal-era dramas with sword fights on TV, too. They have irritating boy bands, too.
One may think that this is simply because Japan tried to obliterate Korean culture back in the day, but I think this precedes that. Korea and Japan are far more similar than either country (regional rivals since ages past) wants to admit. From architecture to cultural quirks, they are very much alike, and it's pretty obvious if you've lived in either country for any significant amount of time. Sure, there are also enough notable differences, so I would hesitate to call Japan and Korea "siblings", but they are undoubtedly first cousins. Cousins with a love-hate relationship, whom often regard each other with envy and suspicion... but relatives just the same. Neither would tell you that. But we all know it's true. (Japanese and Korean DNA, incidentally, share a common Chinese origin. Look it up.)
3. Tourism.
We had a tour bus to ourselves for the three-day visit, tended by a Korean lady tour guide who had grown up in Osaka but moved to Cheju as an adult.
As we puttered around the island in this tour bus on Saturday to various locations, she told us about the history of this Hawaii Big Island-sized mound of basalt and lava. Itself a sovereign nation in ancient times, it has regularly been the site of occupations and smackdowns by various warring factions, most notably the Mongol hordes, the Imperial Japanese, and... well, the Koreans themselves in 1951. This is where our tour guide's story got personal: her grandparents, like so many other islanders during the Korean War, fled Cheju to escape the violent anti-Communist purges that claimed hundreds of lives. If even a relative of yours had so much as blown his nose in North Korea, you were a Commie by association, and were ostracized and abused by your peers -- that is, if you weren't shot outright by gangs of (rumored US-backed) militia. And this was only five years after the Japanese had commandeered the entire island during World War II, amassing a garrison of tens of thousands of troops to defend the Japanese mainland from Allied invasion, raping and pillaging as they went. (Meet the new boss, etc.) With nowhere else to go, the Chejuans fled their home to the relative safety of... Osaka. To this day, 90% of the rather sizable ethnic Korean population in the Kansai region are from Cheju.
However, even after a history like that, time does pass, and Cheju now appears to be a rather peaceful, laid-back sort of island of 570,000. It looks like it has a self-sustaining economy that doesn't have to rely solely upon tourist money for survival, although visitors must account for a large part of its income. The island is home to two three UNESCO World Heritage Sites, one two of which we visited, and also has a plethora of Venus-flytrap-like locations to ensnare tourists and suck the cash out of their wallets. There were gaggles of Korean tourists from the mainland; the foreign tourists were overwhelmingly Japanese and Chinese. I saw very few Europeans during the entire trip.
I shall describe the visited sites here:
a. Manjanggul (UNESCO World Heritage Site)
This is a 3/4 mile long underground natural lava cave that is the size of a subway tunnel. Formed millennia ago when the volcano that created Cheju was still active, this was basically a subterranean river of molten rock. You can walk all the way to the end, past multi-colored lighting, where there is a curious-looking lava column that rises 10 meters overhead.
We had to follow the tour guide at a rather brisk pace to the endpoint, but we were free to return to the surface at our own pace. I took this opportunity to stop every 10 feet or so to compose pictures, now made possible by my D3s at ISO 12,800, and piles of basalt that served as impromptu tripods.
As I happily clicked away -- at one point taking my 10,000th frame with the camera, achieved in just over two months -- I was unaware that I was being watched. Or at least I assumed so, later, because there really was no other reason for what happened next. A young Korean lady walked up and asked, in English: "Excuse me, are you a tourist?"
"Uh... yes," I answered. I sometimes get asked this question in Japan. This was one of the few times I could ever answer that question in the affirmative.
"Yes, well, I'm with KBS Television and would you mind answering a few questions?" she continued, as a cameraman and lighting guy approached to either side. My supervisor and another coworker had been watching this exchange from about 10 yards away, and were now laughing themselves silly at the sight of my Korean television debut.
So, with no chance of escape, I was interviewed for 5 minutes. I was asked questions about what tour I was with, and how I liked Cheju, and whether I knew that Manjanggul was a World Heritage Site, whether I'd visit again, etc. At the conclusion of this little chat (about 3 seconds of which was probably used, if at all), they asked if they could film me taking photos. I said sure, why not; enough damage was likely done to KBS's reputation that a few more seconds of footage of some pudgy white guy with a battle-tank camera firing his ridiculous submarine periscope flash unit into the gloom wouldn't hurt.
I had my wide-angle lens on at the time, so I panned over far enough to catch myself being filmed for a frame or two. Priceless evidence of my 15 milliseconds of fame.
b. Sunrise Peak (Another UNESCO World Heritage Site)
This was just pure scenery porn: a huge upthrusting of rock along Cheju's eastern coast on an impeccable autumn afternoon. You could reach the top of the outcropping, 280m above sea level, via a nearly ladder-steep series of staircases. I huffed and puffed my way to the top in about half an hour, taking these shots in the process.
At the peak, where there was a painted sign strategically placed for group photos, I had several coworkers pose for a snap or two. I still had my camera set on CH (continuous high) motor-drive mode; when I fired the shutter and took nine frames in rapid succession, there arose a chorus of "ooooooh!" from nearby tourists waiting in line to take their own pictures. "You're popular today," my boss said.
Bonus tidbit: At the foot of this outcropping, on this little island out to sea in the Korea Strait, was: a Dunkin' Donuts.
c. A traditional Cheju village
This was a stop at a small collective of old thatch-roof houses surrounded by a stone wall, with a couple of gated entrances that resembled the guard houses you might see on Japanese castles. Unlike other preserved old houses in, say, colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, modern families still occupied many of these little homes.
A boisteriously loud local guide with a screeching voice accepted us at the front gate and ran us through a short tour of the village. Up to that point, there had been nothing wrong with it, and her description of the customs of Cheju residents of ages past was rather interesting. That is, until the tour suddenly turned into a live 3D Home Shopping Network infomercial.
A preliminary discussion about locally made herbal tea ended with us being herded into a smallish enclosure (with, I noticed, only one exit) populated with nothing but rows of benches and a table where various products were on display for sale. We were then forced to sit there for thirty minutes while this bombastic lady rapid-fired a sales spiel into our faces about herbal teas and traditional health pills that looked like fish food pellets but were actually made out of horse bones, a year's supply of which can be yours for five hundred smackers.
Thirty minutes I could have walked slowly around that village immersed in photography. Thirty minutes that I can't have back. Needless to say, when we were finally released from our sales prison (no, no one bought a god damned thing), I was more than a little pissed off.
d. Playtime!
I was jonesing for some payback when we reached our next destination, a smallish amusement-oriented facility out in the countryside that offered off-road ATVs, horseback rides, and go-kart racing.
Now, I have an ingrained fear of ATVs because of the various YouTube videos I've watched, where unsuspecting idiots on ATVs totally crash and get thrown 40 feet through the air accompanied by a "Yakety Sax" soundtrack; also, as it turns out, I was too heavy (at 99kg) to ride the horses. Plus, I'd never ridden a horse in my miserable life, and I wasn't about to do it now. So, that left the go-karts.
I couldn't fit into the goddamned seat. Apparently my American ass is too wide to fit into the cockpit of a Korean go-kart. So I had to sort of wedge myself in between the seat and the steering wheel, mashing my foot onto the accelerator and streaking around the track at full-tilt with a steering column that felt like it was connected to an aircraft carrier. But I had paid 25,000 won to ride this thing, and I was going to take my frustrations out on the circuit. Force ME to listen to a sales pitch about horse bone pellets, I thought. I'll show 'em. Suddenly, I was taking corners like Michael Schumacher. I was inches from the wall like Mario Andretti. I was flooring it like Joey Chitwood. I was...
... sore-handed and sore-assed fifteen minutes later when the attendant waved me off. But I felt a lot better mentally.
I spent the rest of the time shooting photos of random people riding the horses, because no one else (save for three girls who rode the ATVs, proving me a wuss for all time) had done anything but stand around. Like the horses.
Here's about six years' worth of bones for your pellets. Order now.
e. Mystery Road
Sorry, no interesting photos of this one. It was a road. Although it was a downhill road, local topography presented the illusion that it was an uphill grade. Thus, if you stopped the tour bus and shut off the engine, the vehicle would mysteriously appear to roll uphill of its own volition. Oooooooh. Aaaaaaaah. Here, buy some roadside trinkets.
You can tell, at this point, I do not suffer tourist traps gladly.
f. THE SUPERMARKET!!!!111
This was Lotte Mart. It was far more interesting than watching cars roll uphill, powered by horse bone pills. It was a department store and supermarket. You know, the one where actual local residents use.
The best way to take the pulse of a nation is to look at where the locals congregate and conduct their daily lives. Yeah, there were tourists like us buying souvenir seaweed off the shelves like some crazed group of refugees fleeing an impending nuclear strike, but there were also Korean families buying washing detergent and socks and spatulas for the kitchen, and their kids were shrieking at mommy in Korean to please buy them the space robot action figure. It was comforting, somehow, to wander around looking at the Samsung televisions and sporting equipment. No overdone tourist sales here, just a recorded announcement telling shoppers about today's special deals on fresh mackerel. It was, in other words, just like home.
When I bought my obligatory seaweed, as requested by M beforehand, I went right through the checkout line unaided despite the inability to speak one word of Korean. This was because, of course, Korean cash register people say the exact same thing as Japanese supermarket people, or American supermarket people. Do you have a point card? Would you like a bag? That'll be $MONETARY_AMOUNT [look at the cash register display, you dumbass]. Here's your change. Thank you!
While I waited for my coworkers to emerge, I stood around outside and did some of that camera shit.
g. Back to base
After a seafood dinner at a seaside restaurant, we returned to the Jeju KAL Hotel and went our separate ways for the evening. Some of the guys went to a pub, some other guys went searching for the hootchie-kootchie clubs, and still others just went to bed. I took a little walkabout around the hotel, shooting more photos, before taking a trip to the hotel's top floor to the Sky Lounge, and having a beer.
And then I went to bed. Total camera mileage for the tour: 1,032 frames. And I still had 1/3 battery power remaining.
4. Trying to get out of the country was a pain.
Remember when I came in, and the immigration dude entered the wrong passport number into his Bat-Computer? Well, lo and behold, it came back to bite me in the tuchis on the way out, too. As soon as I walked up to the officer to get stamped out, the officer on duty inspected the travel document (this has to be a euphemism for masturbation amongst border control officials) and called over his superior. Again. They both murmured in Korean to themselves for some more minutes -- for all I knew they could be saying "So, which part of this guy do you want, wing or leg?" -- before I pointed out that the man who had stamped me in used the wrong number.
After confirming that I was sufficiently frightened out of my wits, the supervisor guy banged his DEPARTURE stamp on page 27. I was free to go.
That is, until they had begun boarding the airplane, at which point a woman came over and asked to see my passport again. Then she scurried off with it for another ten minutes, just to make sure I wouldn't flip out and start tearing the ticket counter apart. Thus satisfied of the soundness of my mental faculties, she brought back my passport unmolested.
Just in case, I kept it in hand, waiting for someone to barge on board the aircraft and demand to see it again. Thankfully, they did not.
Edit: And what do you know, the day after I get back here, suddenly it's got top CNN coverage as the hottest destination in years!!1!!!1 Maybe it was my interview.
.