South Korea: All About The Love(in)

For Monday, October 17, 2011

Seogwipo

I walked to Cheonjiyeon falls, near my hostel, about a ten minute walk. I learned you can just look for bunches of tour buses to locate the good tourist attractions. The falls were beautiful. The water looked nice and cool, a deep greenish-blue color. Signs said that a freshwater eel could only be found in those waters, but I couldn’t see any from the paths. I saw an older couple dressed very nicely taking pictures in front of the falls. Perhaps they were just married? I walked behind them back to the entrance after having my picture taken. Then I took a bus toward Jungmun Daepo to see the Jusangjeollidae (basalt cliffs) on the coast there. Then I took a taxi to the Yeomiji Botanical Garden and strolled around the trails and rooms, taking in the various gardens and vegetation growing there. I noticed a large bridge spanning a ravine adjacent to the garden and wanted to go there, so I exited the garden and walked next door and discovered that it was Cheonjeyeon falls, which I had seen on the map but hadn’t planned on seeing. I entered the park and hiked to see the three different waterfalls. Sadly, the highest one was dried up. Being the island of romance for Korean couples, there are several “love” museums in Jeju, and I decided to stop at a couple in between the places I wanted to see and check them out. There were lots of statues, pottery, sculptures, carvings, paintings, and pictures illustrating various sexual acts, phallic symbolism, and the like from several Asian countries. All of the labels and information was in Korean, unfortunately (because I went there for the articles). Some of the carvings were surprisingly tiny. A lot of it was highly amusing. There were CCTV cameras all over (to prevent people from doing what, I don’t want to guess), but I managed to snap a few pictures for the archives. I rode a bus back to my hostel and ate dinner at the same Korean restaurant across the street. My feet were very tired, having walked a long way that day. I decided to order some draft beer, but the sizes were 500, 1000, and 2000 cubic centimeters, and I didn’t have a clue how much beer that would be. 500 cc sounded too small, so I went for 1000 cc of beer, and they brought out a pitcher that had about four glasses’ worth of beer in it. While I worked on that, I entertained myself by eavesdropping on the conversation of about eight American girls about my age. They were very involved in a discussion about women’s issues and sex. I tried to ignore it, but overhearing talk about sex is kind of distracting. I went to bed, and found that I had the room all to myself that night.