Jeju

On a Day Off from Yagu

Seogwipo at night

Monday, June 25, 2012

Seogwipo, Jeju Island, South Korea


Outside of the Game:
So Mondays in Korea, as in Japan, were an off day for baseball. Not having a Kyoto to go to and needing to work the Korea Baseball Hall of Fame into my trip, I decided to go to Jeju Island, the southernmost island in Korea and home to said hall of fame. Primarily, the island is a vacation resort similar to a much nicer Key West, from what I gather, and its relative proximity to Japan and China have made it a popular international destination as well. I couldn't care less about the rest of that. I just wanted the yagu.

It was another early morning to drag myself out of bed, and, as per the book so far, I woke up naturally before the alarm anyway. One of these days, I'm just going to drop dead; I just know it. When I checked out, the counter clerk suggested that I take a cab because the subway didn't go all the way out to the airport. It turns out he was working with old information, but I decided to go with the local suggestion and get a cab. It was a short drive to the tiny airport. I checked in within minutes (though the bag was still overweight and had to be handed over), and then I had some time to kill. The French national volleyball team was in the airport for some reason as well. After walking around a bit and getting some breakfast, I decided to take a walk outside the airport, because, really, how often can you do that?

No, really: the French National Volleyball Team

A brief trip outside placed me at the farm next door. Now, I haven't taken a walk outside of many airports, as mentioned, but I know for a fact that there aren't any farms next to most of them. I think it was rice farm, and I can only assume that they know that the rice isn't harmed by all that jet fuel, or perhaps they don't care. Either way, it is pretty up there on the "what the hell am I watching?" scale.

Nope, really. Farm next door.

After my jaunty pastoral ambulations, I went back into the airport to wait for my flight. The downstairs waiting room seemed slightly cooler than the upstairs one (as confirmed by the huddled masses waiting there), so I settled in until boarding. Oh, boarding and security were one singular thing. They called flights to go through security and board at once. Security took two minutes. Seriously. What are we, as Americans, doing so wrong here?

There was a slight delay in boarding due to the plane coming in a bit late (I got the impression that this plane was largely a bus making the flight to and from Jeju all day). We made up the time in boarding, and settled in for the short flight. We got fruit candy, and the entertainment was a "best of" reel of American YouTube "fail" clips. I kid you not. The brother with the toy tractor running over his singing sisters? Check. The cat falling off the counter? Check. The passengers were laughing their asses off at it. America: Amen.

Getting sorted out at the airport was a quick thing. I had my bag and was off to find the cross-island bus to take me to the southern part of the island in under 15 minutes. There was a special "limousine" bus service that crossed the island in just about an hour, cutting through the giant national park that is the center of said island. Though it is the main attraction for most visitors, the bus ride marked the only time that I would see it.

I got off at the stop next to my hotel in the southern city of Seogwipo, checked in, and then dealt with my main problem, which was this: Although I am better-than-average at navigating urban Asian environments, I'm not quite sure what to do with the semi-rural areas. When I can't walk there or subway it, I'm a bit at a loss. I talked to the attendant at my hotel, and after figuring out where the heck it was I wanted to go, he said I would have to take a cab.

Okay, fine, but how would I get a cab to come back? Oh, just call one, he suggested, assuming I had a working cellphone in my possession. He helpfully called the cab company to come pick me up, and he wrote down everything so I could just show it to the driver on the way back, and I assumed that worst comes to worst, I could just use the phone at the Hall of Fame. I was not 100% down with the fail-safe level of this plan, but it was the only plan I had. So off we go.

Another cheery Korean cabby picked me up and we set off looking for the hall of fame. The top-level navigation was easy enough, but the hall itself was part of a large sports complex built for the Olympics, and it took a good deal of driving around in blind dead ends before we found the item in question. I paid the nice man and set off.

Hall of Fame sign

... to find it closed. Now, I was fairly worried about this possibility, to be honest. A lot of tourist things are closed on Mondays, so I double- and triple-checked all my available sources, which said that the hall was open daily from 9-5. No days of the week were mentioned anywhere as being verboten. Nor was it on the ticket window of the hall.

Hmm.

You can sort of see inside

Now, the building itself was open, so I was able to walk around and see most of it anyway. The actual hall of fame itself was in a hallway in the building. I was only unable to get to the main exhibit hall, which wasn't all that big and was all in Korean anyway. There were a number of exhibits outside the main hall, anyway. From what I read doing research, there are a couple of cities on the mainland bidding for the re-location site for the hall of fame, so they probably aren't doing any additional work on this place until the move. It may also explain why it wasn't open. Either way, I probably hold the world record for traveling the farthest distance to visit the place only to find it closed.

Plaques were outside

Since it was all in Korean anyway and the actual hall was outside, I wasn't too upset about missing the display hall. What I was concerned about was how I was going to call the cab to come get me. You may recall that this part of the plan involved another human being at the hall of fame and all. Okay, no problem. I searched the building for a pay phone to no avail before deciding that my best course of action was to go to one of the other buildings in the complex to find a phone. This qualified as the best plan as I had at the moment.

I found another building similarly devoid of human and phone life before wondering what all those cars in the parking lot were doing there. I went to the biggest building by the entrance, which was some sort of gym complex, to find it also phone-less and curiously person-less, and I started to wonder if I might die here. Then, a class or practice or something ended, and one of the locked doors on the other side of the hall opened and teenagers starting pouring out like a plague. An amazing, welcome, phone-carrying plague.

I asked the first one down the hall if there was a phone around. He said there were none around anywhere. I think I might have dropped my poker face at that point, because the glorious bastard offered me his phone. I pantomimed that I had no idea how to use his Korean smart phone, and then I told him I just needed a cab. He graciously made the call for me, and then sweatily walked off into the future with my external thanks.

Once I got back to my hotel, I decided to see what I could see of the island. The hotel was right by a main tourist area of Seogwipo, so I walked down a cliff walkway to get to the coast. By a house on that path, there were two dogs frolicking. These were easily the most adorable dogs I had ever seen in my life. In fact, the smaller one was in serious danger of being snatched up into my bag so that I could hug it whenever I didn't feel happy. I mean, this dog had more personality than easily 95% of humans that I had ever met.

I like this dog more than I like 95% of you.

Now, I'm about to discuss something involving Darwinism and dog eating, two subjects I've been led to be believe are quite controversial, so you may want to go put on your big-boy pants or skip to the next paragraph. Although less so today, Koreans still eat dog as food. I'm not going to get into the right or wrong of it except to point out that there are probably some dogs so cute and personable that even the most cold-hearted butcher couldn't put them down. And those dogs are the ones who survived to breed, and so and so on. Which would lead to the Kwisatz Haderach of cute dogs eventually being bred in Korea, which makes a whole lot of sense, because every single dog I met in Korea was well-behaved (if scampish), adorable, and personable. And when that destined puppy is whelped, it will rule us all in its precious iron-mailed paw, and we will love it unconditionally and saw "Aww" as his equally adorable minions whip us to the mines.

Once down by the beach, I took the obvious walk to the tourist information center and got my pamphlets and whatnot. There was Cheonjiyeon Waterfall nearby, so I took the walk over to see that, and then headed over a large pedestrian bridge out to a small island. That bridge, called Saeyeongyo, must be translated as the Windy Mc Winderson Wind Memorial Wind Bridge, because you find yourself in severe danger of being blown out onto the bay at least several times during the traverse. The area under the bridge must be layered with several feet of hats, maps, scarves, and other various unattached sundries that have been carried off over the years. It would not surprise me if they had to dredge the area on a weekly basis.

Saeyeongyo Bridge

Once over the perilous chasm, this was about as south in South Korea as they let people go. There were several other small islands to the south, but those were being kept as nature preserves. From here, it was pretty much Australia or bust. I took a brief walk around the island and then, keeping as low to the ground as possible, I walked back to the mainland. There were a couple of boat tours and a submarine tour of the bay. I was obviously interested in the submarine tour (having not been in any except for the Disney Land version thereof), but I had arrived too late and all the tours were sold out for the remainder of the day. I drowned my sorrows with a cruller from Dunkin Donuts (which has an inexplicably huge presence in South Korea), and then made my way up the cliff past the cutest dog in the world to head into the city.

The problem with Mondays, at least on vacations, is that many tourist attractions are closed, because even the locals dependent on the commerce of foreigners need a day away from us. Not having any particular place to go, I wandered around under I found the art section of the city, dedicated to artist Lee Jungseop. There were a bunch of his works lining the street, and an art museum dedicated to him, predictably closed. I followed an "historical trail" dedicated to his life and ended up in the restaurant area of town. I just poked my head into a couple of shops before heading back to the hotel to get cleaned up for diner.

The big-deal cuisine on Jeju is the indigenous black-skinned pig. Having worked up an appetite and feeling of relatively sound constitution, I looked up the best of the best in my guide book, and set back down the cliff, where I found the dog just rolling around on the ground with a ball. It was a short walk to the restaurant, and after a mild confusion on where the entrance was (due to a meat market right next door [literal, not figurative]), I was seated on one of the Western-style tables overlooking the night bay. I went for the best cut of the loin (which cost about $12), and I soon had pork happily barbecuing in front of me while a night breeze blew through the establishment.

Dinner

All Korean meals come with a number of side dishes to pick at, especially when you're waiting, hungry and impatient, while your attendant grills up some insanely good pork in front of you. One of the side dishes was some manner of slices of garlic, and, as it is known, I am all about the garlic. If you had told me a day before that I would ever find anything garlic-related that was too spicy or garlicky, I would have laughed at you with disdain. Well, point for Korea. By Grabthar's Hammer, that was spicy. I saw through time, space, and all those other dimensions that string theorists talk about but you can't quite comprehend. My server smirked at my reaction. Retaining my composure as best I could, I let out a weak, "Mul?" ("Water?") She gestured to an unseen bottle to my right, which I picked up as casually as possible, filled my glass, and then emptied. This process was repeated for a minute or two until I could actually perceive time linearly again.

And then I had another piece. Because whatever else it was, it was good. She dumped some on the grill for me to cook with the pork. After a time, the pork was ready, and she gave me a garlic dipping sauce for it. It was better than any pork I've had, to be sure, and eating it while overlooking the coast at night no doubt contributed to the enjoyment. I contemplated having another order, but I could not imagine having to leave some of it uneaten, so I demurred.

Out to Munseom

I took a walk on the coast at night to help the digestion and then headed back up the cliff to my hotel, where I decided to call it a day.


The Accommodations:

Sun Beach Hotel

The Sun Beach Hotel must have been something back in the day. The huge edifice, viewable from pretty much anywhere in Seogwipo, has several restaurants built into it, in addition to event halls, stores, and a karaoke club. But it clearly has seen better days. Many of the attached businesses are closed, and the hotel seems stuck at the last time it was renovated and then slowly left to degenerate. A guide book accurately describes it as a grand dame past her prime.

My room was nothing short of humongous. I had a balcony overlooking the beach down the cliff, a complete living room with furniture and its own TV, and a large bedroom and bath. But all of the furniture was a little shopworn or in disrepair. All of the fixtures were a little loose. The tables with the built-in consoles no longer worked, so you had to control everything from dodgy switches. But there was still something strangely appealing about it, if only for the residual memories of better times past.

And I never could get lost in the city, as the hotel towers above it all, providing a convenient reference point.

In addition to the ubiquitous mosquito spray, the room also came with a small plug-in mosquito zapper that proved its worth during the night.

Click here to see all the photos from this trip.

2012 Korea