South Korea 2010: A day by day retrospective
The Korean march continues, but I'm not exactly sure why. I am stubborn and am impressing myself (as usual). Here are a few disparate thoughts and images from the fourth day.
During this day, we learn what makes this island so strikingly beautiful and at the same time, what's undesirable about it. The island's caretakers it seems have had a very difficult time trying to establish its purpose and direction. Just as you see something stunning in its natural beauty, you'll see an ill-advised man-made structure in the corner of your eye (or possibly right next to it). For every breathtaking destination our tour guide introduced us to, there was another place where we were encouraged to buy horse bone pills, man-made ginseng, etc. That's why it is no Hawaii. Jeju is certainly beautiful but it's difficult to be enveloped in it.
Day 4; More from Jeju Island
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Lava rock. That's basically how I would sum up our fourth day in Korea (and second day in Jeju-doh). Our tour bus zipped us back and forth across the island all day to see the various forms and manifestations of hardened lava rock that sprang to life this popular Korean destination hundreds of thousands of years ago.
The natives learned to use if for sustenance - housing, tools, art, you name it, it's pervasive and a distinct symbol of this place. What I didn't realize was that the island is the birthplace of those whimsical volcanic rock statues that all Koreans are familiar with (harubang). You find them everywhere, and they appear randomly in all Jeju shops - I'm proud to say we didn't find any in our luggage when we came home.
The highlight of our entire three days on the island was our venture out to observe the beautiful land forms that exist on the island's shores, centuries of the Jeju wind and sea harmoniously eroding away at the rock to mold a magnificent canvas. I did my best Ansel Adams impersonation (below).
Lastly, leading up to our trip, I grew more and more excited by the possibility of encountering the famed haenyo, literally translating to women of the sea, and purchasing their fresh catch of the day. We never got to see these fascinating matriarchs in action but did come across a group of older women selling a variety of fresh product on the shore replete with condiments and soju. I quickly gathered that these weren't the famous women of lore, but wily capitalists taking advantage of unsuspecting tourists. After all, they were selling steamed octopus - where could they possibly be doing this?
It didn't matter, we scarfed down some luscious seafood - a combination of octopus, sea squirt and sea cucumber (this trip really did help me understand some of the inspiration behind my parents' own restaurant).
Mission accomplished. A half more day of enduring this psychitzophrenic land and we would be back in Seoul. End day 4.
Sweet. Flickr now offers larger embedding sizes. I don't have to go with the rinky-dink 500px images anymore for the blog. Enjoy!
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