Jeju Randomness - Photo Post

Deliciousness at Bagdad Cafe, Jeju-si

Creeping cloud near Seongsan Ilchulbong, the crater/peak we climbed on our last day. 

BOOBS

Particularly disturbing art at Love Land.
This girl was cowering as her parents had sex in the same room.

Trying to escape 'The Kiss'

Jangmun Beach. 70% empty. Despite beaches on all sides, most Korean people can't swim.
Beaches here are heavily guarded and there's even a net keeping people in the right place.

Troublesome art in Seogwipo

It's troublesome this passes as art. Chocolate Land, Seogwipo. (Save your 2k won, it SUCKS.)

Making faces in the Ripleys Believe It Or Not mirror...

... the other side of the mirror! Spent 10 minutes here laughing our asses off!

Possibly my Best Evening in Korea

Last week we visited Jeju-do, an island off the southern coast of Korea usually described as Korea's 'Hawaii.'

Although not as tropical as advertised,* the island boasts a number of cheesy/hilarious/touristy 'lands' dotted all over the place to entertain the locals. Some of the lands available include:

• Mini Mini Land (small-scale models of landmarks like the Eiffel Tower etc)
• Teddy Bear Museum
• Chocolate Land (not as good as it sounds)
• Psyche World
• Stone Land
• Love Land

The last one's my favourite, and I've wanted to go for months since Haesindang Park gave me a taste for this sort of stuff. It's a park full of statues of people doing it.

For the technical stuff - the park is a 9,000 won cab ride out of Jeju city. Entry is 7,000 won and it's open from 9am until midnight. It takes about an hour to walk around the park and I've been told the best time to go is right before dark. At night, the statues are lit up in all of their sexy glory! Now, on to the pictures. 

Oh, and on the off chance you hadn't figured it out already - extremely not safe for work.

BOOOOBS!

 

There are vending machines all over Korea. This felt appropriate. 

NZ represent!

Not sure it's water in the tub eh?

I got stuck in this sculpture and ended up bruising the hell out of my leg while my lovely (cough) boyfriend took pictures.

Birthday present to myself.

Loveland was amazing. I've got a few things I want to post about Jeju but this was the best, worth the round flight tickets alone.

*One of the best tricks I've used to cope in Korea is something I call the 25% Rule. 

Koreans I've met tend to be extremely patriotic (something I think New Zealanders can learn from) but sometimes this patriotism is a bit much and gets in the way of realism. Most of the time, activities and festivals and locations in Korea are about 25% as good as they're described by the locals. If you expect everything to be 25% as good, and the attraction is actually pretty damn awesome, it's a great feeling - my visit to Geumsansa was far more awesome than expected. If an attraction sucks and you've expected it to suck, the disappointment is a little less crushing. I forgot to apply the Rule to the Nonsan Strawberry Festival - just look at the beautiful pictures on that link! - and I was completely heartbroken when greeted by a muddy pit with barely any strawberries. The Rule. It works.

In Lieu of a Real Post, Here are Some Pictures

T-shirt of the day.

Song Hak - one of my worst (but sweetest) 6th graders.
Song Hak has a HUGE crush on one of the English teachers. (hint: me)

Perfect for all important documents. 

Beautiful Lotus Blossoms near Bukdae in Jeonju. They are the size of dinner plates.

Kids splashing in Cheonggyecheon, Seoul.

Yup, it's Kimchi Chocolate, and it's coming to a care package near you. 

One of the Four Major Theme Parks in the World.

I asked Tom to name four major theme parks he said Disneyland, Tokyo Disneyland, Disney World and Euro Disney. Take a moment to think of your own list. I'll wait.

*moment*

If you included Everland on that list, well done. That's certainly how they market themselves however I hadn't heard of the place before coming to Korea. My students are a little obsessed with it, and I've used it a few times in my lessons which resulted in a class full of hyped-up students chanting 'Ebah-landuh, Ebuhlanduh!' They get so excited it's almost as if I've given them a free trip there instead of showing an image on a PowerPoint slide.

I LOVE theme parks (probs because there's only one in New Zealand) (Splash Planet doesn't count, Tom) so I left Tom to climb a mountain and missioned out to Yongin with some of my friends. We caught a bus from Nambu Bus Terminal, if you're travelling from there take exit 4, walk straight ahead to the t-junction and cross the road. There's a bus stop to the right. It's supposed to take 50 minutes, but our trip took an hour and a half. Grr.

When you get to the outskirts of the park, there's a huge parking area where you must catch a (free) shuttle to the park itself. We'd been strategic with our Everland visit timing and hoped that by going on a Friday we'd miss all the weekend lines. WRONG. Visiting a theme park is a popular day trip for Korean students, so as we watched shuttle after shuttle get packed with busloads of teenagers our hopes of short wait times were dashed.

We got to the park about 5 minutes later and went in. It's the priciest theme park I've been to in Korea, at 38,000 won per ticket ($44), although you can get a 'foreigner discount' (of about 3k) on the Everland website. Like most of the theme parks in Korea, tickets are also cheaper after 4pm.

And here's where my useful commentary ends. Rather than give you a breakdown of the rides available blah blah blah, I just want to say that I personally think Everland sucks. There are some good things about it (matching couples, the Safari, the cover ups on the water rides, the garden area) but the lines are far to long, the price is too high, it's way too far away from anything and most importantly - the rides aren't very scary. I guess Everland's more of a family park, but so is Lotte World and some of the rides there had me crapping myself.

I understand that if you're in Korea you'll probably want to visit, but my advice would be - go to Lotte World instead. The rides are three times as good and it's half the price, as well as being near the middle of Seoul.

Below are some pics and a few words about the good stuff.

The water rides were kitted out for those who don't actually like getting wet! We got this big cover thing....

And dryers/fans for when you're finished.

 

Pro tip: bring a pen and some post-its. With wait times of over an hour,
playing 20 questions kept us sane (while the Koreans in line stared and giggled)

I really enjoyed the 'Safari' which had a Jurassic Park-esque antechamber to separate each enclosure.

The bus (which is pimped out to look like a tiger) drives through a number of enclosures housing lions...

White tigers, giraffes, elephants, zebras and....

one liger! That's a lion/tiger mix of awesome.

Just one of the many troupes of school kids in the park. These were cuter than most.

Lauren is modelling my current favourite Korean t-shirt.
Mine says 'Ho Phuture' and has a combi van on the front. Of course.

Pieces of Korea

Ajumma resting on her trolley as she walks home.

'Think'

Took a trip to Iksan this weekend, played peekaboo with this guy the whole way!

Korea doesn't really have rubbish bins, so instead the
Ajumma Army cleans up the streets every Monday.

Indeed.

The Boon and the Bane of my Korean Life

I spend half of my week amongst Koreans aged 6 to 12 and some of them are total meatheads. After an hour of disobedient 6th graders yelling at me and ignoring my timely evil eyes I forget why I'm in Korea and  long for my days of being a Personal Assistant. And then one of my kids runs up and says or does something that makes me happy again. This is a pictorial representation of that moment.

Making Mother's Day cards with my 3rd graders.

Sujin wrote love on my hand.

 

Some of my third graders, eating apple-flavoured popsicles.