This weekend we took off to an island south of the mainland called Jeju-do. This trip was offered through another English tour company, and given the massive language barrier, we figured that it was easier to stick with the guided option. (As of yet, all I can do is ask for things in a restaurant, and say please and ‘mandarin orange’- the latter of which I’ve found most useful). The group met at Seoul’s smaller airport (still 3x larger than Winnipeg) Saturday morning. Everyone seemed nice from the preliminary chatting, and shortly after we boarded the plane.
We landed in Jeju-do 50 minutes later, boarded the bus and headed off the Fire Festival. The festival was in celebration of the first full moon of the lunar New Year. The festival grounds were pretty cool- lots of tents set up with shops and weird Korean food, a ring for pony fighting, a stage, and a really steep hill with huge pyres decorating its face. We hiked up the hill, and walked around the surrounding area, being careful not to trip on the cords attached to the fireworks.
We landed in Jeju-do 50 minutes later, boarded the bus and headed off the Fire Festival. The festival was in celebration of the first full moon of the lunar New Year. The festival grounds were pretty cool- lots of tents set up with shops and weird Korean food, a ring for pony fighting, a stage, and a really steep hill with huge pyres decorating its face. We hiked up the hill, and walked around the surrounding area, being careful not to trip on the cords attached to the fireworks.
Only after we felt like we had spent a sufficient portion of the 7 hours allotted to the festival, did we venture back to the festival grounds, hoping to meet up with some of the others from our trip. We bumped into a British guy we met on the plane and shared a bottle of Soju (Korean alcohol), before heading over to the stage.
Things were finally getting rolling, and there was enough dancing and singing and Korean pop music to go around. In the crush of people on the field we also found another guy from our trip, so the four of us watched as huge torches were handed out to the audience. The torch bearers marched happily over to the large pyres built at the bottom at the hill, and on cue with the fireworks, everything was lit at once. It was pretty amazing- huge amounts of fireworks were being shot off from the top of the hill, while the bonfires raged all over its face. It looked like the whole hill was burning and exploding with fireworks; we were all very impressed! A couple of girls from our group were among the torch carries, and they said it felt like they were in the middle of WWIII up there. Things finally cooled down an hour later, and we made our way back to the bus, along with the 10,000 Koreans at the festival.
We drove to the cabins where we would be spending the night, tossed our stuff in our rooms, and headed out to the courtyard for a barbeque and drinks. I was ravenous at that point, since lunch at the festival had consisted of fried pork. Unfortunately, dinner was a repeat performance, so myself and the other vegetarians/choose-itarians were relegated to the drink and canned fruit-cocktail table. Needless to say, the effects of the alcohol were not exactly dampened by the fruity syrup mix. We were all rowdy, playing games and chatting late into the night. I engaged in some kind of chase with a dog and another group member which resulted in large bruises, and a tear in my jeans, but unfortunately, no one really knows that details of that. All I can say is the next day we all paid for our night of hitting the sauce.
Sunday morning was ushered in by the glorious sounds of our group leader, yelling at us in an all-too-cheerful voice to get up and embrace the day. Unfortunately there were no tasty treats for breakfast; the only options to nurse our hangovers were the sour oranges from the trees in the back. This was cool though, since I’ve never eaten an orange off an orange tree.
We all boarded the bus, hungry, hung-over, and a little tired, but excited about our first adventure of the day; horseback riding. The ranch was a close drive from our “Bed and breakfast” (which actually offered neither bed nor breakfast), and had a beautiful view. Since all of have grown accustomed to the lack of grass, trees, and animal life within Seoul ( I actually had a student tell me that if she could see any animal it would be a squirrel), we were all quite shocked to see green pastures and trees, and a view of Mount Halla in the background. Mount Halla is Korea’s tallest mountain/dormant volcano, and can be seen from all parts of Jeju-do.
We were herded into the changing area, where we were all forcibly dressed in matching outfits; cowboy boots, red jackets, and cowboy hats. Korea seriously has a need to make everything uniform- conformity’s the thing here. So, fully clad in our Texas Star ensemble, we climbed onto our horses.
The horseback riding wasn’t as fun as I had envisioned. Actually, what I had envisioned was me riding bareback on a galloping stallion, and my hair streaming behind me, over the moors of England, with Colin Firth on a horse beside me, so needless to say, trotting around a little ring was a little bit disappointing. But being the optimist I am, I reminded myself that Tom almost looks like Colin, and that a cowboy hat and boots was way better than galloping off into the country anyways. Plus, I’m not even really sure what a moor is, so really, this might have been way better. Once we did start trotting, that actually was quite scary, and by the end I was clinging onto the saddle, begging to be let off. Unfortunately, the horse-back riding did nothing to improve the state of our hangovers, so many of us felt a little sickly in the bus afterwards.
After the horseback riding we visited a traditional Korean village, but we were apparently short on time, and only stayed for 12 minutes. So I really have nothing to say about it. Surprisingly.
We headed over to the eastern coast of the island for a ferry ride. The coast line here was fantastic- a huge rocky outcropping dominated the area, which we visited next. We only had 15 minutes again, which some people used to run to the top (it was really high) but we wandered down to the water. Jeju-do is actually renowned for 3 things: wind, rock, and women. We had only seen the first two so far, which had disappointed some of the men. Apparently there are a lot of women there who were widowed during the Korean war (I think this is the story) and now they are skin-divers living on Jeju-do. These women dive deep into the ocean apparently all year to collect shellfish.
The ferry ride was our next stop. We tried two times to get on the ferry- but the first time they just denied us for no apparent reason. All I knew was that we were moving forward, and then someone yelled “Retreat, retreat” and we all had to shuffle backwards off the ferry. The next time, we did manage to fight our way on. It wasn’t much of a victory, however, since the top of the ship was freezing and way too windy, and the bottom was sickly warm and smelled like fish, but we managed. The ride was pretty cool though- we went out to a nearby island that was all carved out by the wind and water, and then turned into this inlet, that was really high and echo-y. Then we turned around and headed back to the mainland where (we think) we saw some of the skin-diving women diving off a really high ledge of the cliff.
Back on land, we got back on the bus to head to the airport. By this time we were shaky with hunger, but fortunately we had a pit stop at a restaurant before heading home. And, lucky for us, once again they served fried pork. Mmmmmm! We did manage to find a small convenience store after the meal, which we almost completely bought out of all its chips and ice cream bars- it was seriously my life saver.
