Jeju, Day One: Lovely Love Land

I would like you to know that I am aware that my blog is on life support. It would be more difficult to blame myself than to blame an external factor for why this is happening, so I'll just do that instead. I am being facetious, but the next sentence is actually true. For some reason recently, Google (and thus blogger, being owned by aforementioned parent company) has had sporadic trouble loading, both at home and at school. So, when the rare time comes that I actually feel like posting in my blog, I have a 50% chance or so of it not being able to accommodate my request. I feel cheated and violated when this happens. You are not the only one.

As such, I will move on with my most recent excursion: Jeju Island.

For those of you who don't know, Jeju Island is the Hawaii of Korea. As laughable as that may sound, it is partly true. I was surprised to be greeted with humidity and an abundance of palm trees upon my exiting the airport. Other things the two islands have in common:

1. 
   
   Fickle weather


2. 
   
   Volcanic activity


3. 
   
   Resorts


4. 
   
   Honeymooners


5. 
   
   Higher costs


6. 
   
   Waterfalls


7. 
   
   Randomness

I'm going to probably hover around the "randomness" bullet point for most of these posts because Jeju Island is probably the most random place I've ever been to. I'm also breaking the trip up into days, mainly because the first day is so long. You've been warned.

Since we arrived in Seogwipo (the city on the south side of the island where we stayed) late on Friday night, we did nothing noteworthy before Saturday. On Saturday, however, much magic happened. As mentioned before, Jeju is the fickle mistress of weather. The day began pretty crappily and rainy and we had originally thought the entire day would be like this.

It began with us finding out how things work in Seogwipo: every restaurant is closed until at least noon. So, we loaded up on breakfast at the Family Mart before hopping into taxis bound for...THE LAVA TUBES!

The second thing we found out was how big the island was. In an illogical sort of way, we assumed that the bus we rode on the previous night was so long because it had to stop all over the place. We reconsidered that theory after our cab ride was about a half hour on the highway and costing $30. Alas, we arrived and were greeted with a much more varied park than we had anticipated (remember: random).

Since I mentioned it already, we'll start with the lava tubes. Somewhat uninteresting (note the lack of pictures) except that one of the two is the only place in the world where limestone formations reside in a lava formed cave. Interesting...to a SCIENCE TEACHER! I teach English, by the way.

Other things in the park: palm tree avenue, bonzai tree park, stone formations park, bird zoo, a traditional Jeju folk village, a "water garden,":

Holy crap its water!

some other tree park wherein trees were planted by various countries and we get to see ambassadors from said countries posing in front of the tree via photography, gift shop, and, obviously the best part: soft serve ice cream.

At this point the weather had given way to a cloudless sunny day, so we opted to head to the beach that was across the street. Here's a glimpse of that one fer ya:

Hey, how ya doin'?

Unfortunately, the water was still rather cold, so swimming was minimal. From there we hit possibly the highlight of the trip: Love Land.

A trip to Love Land is something that must be seen to be believed. It has been on my list of Korean attractions since the beginning, and I'm obviously glad I went. Love Land's origins are based in Jeju's reputation for being the honeymoon island. In the past (and party so still), Koreans were traditionally very naive and innocent. With a trip to Jeju Island for their honeymoon, they sometimes needed a little help to get certain sexual details correct ("You mean I don't pee in her?"). In fact, hotels even had to hire special "assistants" to coax Korean couples to consummate their recent marriage. The idea behind Love Land is to teach and "get couples in the mood." Instead of doing that, it has become a comedy scene of perversion with some pretty strange sculptures. I can only begin to post the most PG friendly of those, so if you'd like to see the good ones, ask me or gander at Facebook (or Google them [that is, if Google decides to work for you in your region of the world]). Anyway, here are some photos:

This is, apparently, how we perform intercourse in America, based on the international sculpture series.Notice the sperm swimming into the heart on the store front.

She's holding a pepper in her hand. Huh huh. Do you get it? It's subtle, right?

Forget about retaining any semblence of that Western coldness. Old ladies will be manhandling fake penises and old men will be mounting and groping sculptures, etc. Like I said, it's something that needs to be seen to be believed. Truly unique experience.

We ended the night by going to, perhaps, the only Western bar in Jeju. It indeed did have other Westerners, dart boards, and delicious Western food and beer. A treat of a day.