Seoul Tourist Jeju City

... d been in a cold stretch until a few days before, so the sun felt amazing. We stayed at the top for about 5 minutes taking pictures and then climbed back down.
After we saw everything we wanted we caught the same bus we had come on and continued on the road that basically goes around the outside of the island. It took about 25 minutes for the bus to come, but it was worth it because the fare was only about 2,000won/person ($1.75) for another 30 ...

... without having a contat number and there was no way that I was going to leave my passport with them) so I resorted to Plan B. Wandering in towards the city centre along the river I found a lovely little hotel just in the IIdo-dong area, just up from the waterfront and all the fish resturants. Costing a whopping 40W per night (about 20 pounds!) it was a double the money than the Roach-motel in Busan but a world away and well worth it and I luxuriated ...

... traversier au milieu de nulle part, pour me faire dire que le bateau ne va pas jusque la ou je devais revenir, mais plutot ne fait qu'une petite demie-heure jusqu'au quai suivant... Voila donc finalement la recompense de ce detour majeur, fait a l'origine pour trois heures de bateau: 30 minutes de bateau et j'arrive quand meme nulle part au bout de la ride. Encore chanceux que sur le bateau j'ai fait la connaissance d'un jeune Irlandais marrie a ...

... the peak is on the west side of it. But the trail only lets you go up to the east peak. He showed me around a bit, and then - and this is the good bit - he took me off the trail and took me INTO the crater!! Sweeeeeeeet. So I have a photo of me inside of the crater. Sweet. Came back down after taking in the views and went home to a much, much needed shower. So we had galbi and some soju. Still talking in limited English so ...

... were so cute. They were too shy to talk to me at first so I had to ease them into the games and then they did and it was adorable. The boys were boys and got really tired of the class for the last ten minutes but that will happen. I need to be able to speak a little Korean so that we can start playing games. I don't know if I'll get bored of this teaching stuff, I mean if I do the math I have a lot of days left to teach and I don't know how to handle that.

Sunday I traveled from Pohang to Gimhae Airport via Gyeongju to catch my flight to Jeju City. It was the easiest time I have ever had with a flight. After I got off the bus it was no more than 20 minutes until I was on my flight. This was helped along by the nice woman at the counter getting me on an early flight at her own suggestion and much to my surprize. Security took only 2 minutes ...

... twisting chasm with water dripping from cracks in the jet back volcanic rock. The walls of the tunnel display evidence of the ancient lava flows with strange shapes contorted from the solid rock. At the end of the 1km section, there's a large lava tower formed by lava dripping onto the tunnel floor from above, and then quickly solidifying to built a large pillar of rock. There're many other interesting features created by the heat and the ...

... going through that. Then, a taxi pulled up straight out of heaven, and offered to drive us to the bus station in Jeju-si (near the hotel, on the other side of the island) for 12,000 won. This is cheap!!! And saved us 1.5 hours and the hassle of buses. Wahoo!! After getting back near the hotel, we stopped to play a crane game. I LOVE the crane game!!! And I won! I'm now the proud owner of an Astro Boy! A successful day all round! :)

So I woke up early to a tiny bit of sunshine, which was enough to go to a beach about 10 miles outside of the city. Of course it started raining as soon as I got there, so I ****** around in a PC room for an hour. When I got out, it stopped raining and I sat on the beach for a couple of hours, almost completely alone the entire time. That was definitely nice. At about noon, a guy who rents kayaks, Seo Seong Man, set ...

... have been dwindling drastically in recent years, but it didn't take us long to spot them. Watching them duck into the water and come back up for air one by one, over and over was fascinating; the sounds they made as they rose up, gasped and then went down for another dive made them seem almost like denizens of the ocean themselves. I remember remarking to Mayu that they sounded awfully akin to the recordings I once had of whale and dolphin calls as a child. Riding along ...