Oh, Jamie... Good Job, Jamie!
Korea was........... so much fun.
I was excited to see Korea because like well yeah duh obviously it's going to be cool but I was not prepared for how fun and amazing it was. I wish I had had a little more time there but also the world is so big there is so much to see and I need to see it all!!! And I've been busy seeing it all which is why the exponential amount of time in between blog posts is becoming truly—and as a math major, I can assure you that I am using this word correctly—exponential. Yikes.
To people who haven't said anything: thanks for your patience! And to people who have said something: thanks for your impatience!! Because otherwise I might still be writing this post in 2027.
July 14-17: Seoul
After landing in Seoul and dropping my bags at my hostel, I decided to take a long walk through a nearby riverside park, which is usually a great idea for your first day in a new city. What is not a great idea is neglecting to check the weather beforehand and walking miles away from the place you're staying. Because sometimes when you do that a monsoon hits.
By the time I got back to the hostel, I was soaked to the bone—turns out my newly-purchased UNIQLO rain jacket was not waterproof but merely "water-repellent", which is secret UNIQLO terminology for "does nothing at all against water". So after returning to the hostel and wringing out several gallons of water from my clothes, I showered (which felt ironic), dried off, and went out with some new friends from Hostelworld. We grabbed some Japanese BBQ because—long story long—we had meant to get Korean BBQ but somebody wanted beef instead of pork and Koreans don't really eat a lot of beef and so when we went to a BBQ place specializing in beef it turned out to be Japanese because the Japanese do eat a lot of beef. I tried to ignore the irony that my first meal after spending a month in Japan was Japanese food. I guess you can take the boy out of Japan, but you can't take the Japanese beef out of the boy. Wait, hold on, that sounds weird. Ignore that. You can take the boy out of Japan. Period full stop.
After a few too many drinks of soju—you will come to see that this is a theme throughout my time in Korea, because the famous Korean 13% liquor is dirt cheap, delicious, and everywhere—we headed to another bar in Hongdae, one of Seoul's most famous nightlife districts. The monsoon had not stopped, and so after the 10 minute walk from the restaurant to the bar, we looked like a synchronized swim team who had forgotten to wear bathing suits and so just gone in their clothes.
We dried off over buckets of beer and before I knew it—by which I mean, after several hours of drinking—we were heading to a nightclub. Also, sorry, just to be clear—the beer was in bottles, not loose in buckets. Although with the way this night went, the visual image of a bucket full of liquid beer feels more appropriate. And if they had been serving beer loose in buckets, I probably would have been drinking it due to the way the soju was affecting my judgement.
Ok, before I continue... It's time to confess something that will probably get me disowned. Oh well... Here goes. Sorry, mom.
While abroad... I have maybe... Been known... On occasion... To maybe... Occasionally... On occasion... Occasionally...
Smoke the occasional cigarette.
Look! It's fine!! Even Google will tell you that cigarettes while abroad don't actually count!!
The point is, when you're out of the country, you're automatically fineeeeee... And if you're drunk while out of the country and you smoke them then it double doesn't count so you're basically smoking negative cigarettes!! Right??? Sorry, mom.
I am also very lucky to be blessed with a non-addictive personality when it comes to things that are not logic puzzles—I cannot stop doing Clues By Sam constantly all the time—and so I am certain that when I return to the states I will not be smoking. Unless maybe perhaps occasionally on occasion if it's a cigarette that doesn't count. Also, cigarettes are a really good way to make friends abroad, since it's a great excuse to strike up a conversation with someone in a quiet outdoor setting. Also, Asia has flavored cigarettes that are taste so good that they can't possibly be bad for you. Also, bars in Asia let you smoke indoors and you objectively look so so so cool while doing it. Also, sorry mom.
I'm sorry!!! I know!!! I know!!! It's bad!!! But not that bad!!! But yes bad!!! I'm sorry!!! Stop yelling at me!!! The foreign cigarette containers already show me how bad it is so I'm well aware!!! Well, they've tried to show me, but honestly these images made me laugh more than fear for my safety.
Let's just get back to the story.
Well, um, I'll try to get back to it, but this is the part of the evening where things get hazy. Partly because I'm writing this nearly 2 months after it happened (YIKES). Partly—and more importantly—because I think I may have singlehandedly polished off one of the buckets of beer and one and a half of the bottles of soju and then all of a sudden the club promoters were giving our group free bottles of vodka and what am I going to do? Be rude and refuse the Korean hospitality?
So I have vague memories of dancing on top of a table with a vodka in one hand and a cigarette in the other and vague memories of wandering through the still VERY rainy streets to get back to my hostel and when I woke up very late the next day, I discovered that I had drunk dialed my ex (who thank GOD did not answer), sent approximately 250 barely comprehensible texts to one of my best friends (who thank GOD is an angel on earth and put up with that), and smoked or (hopefully) given away nearly an entire packet of cigarettes, since I found an empty container in my soaking wet pants pocket that had been nearly full at the start of the night. To any of you thinking "Oh, Jamie...": don't worry, those words involuntarily came out of my mouth as soon as I discovered each of these things that I'd done. Although, like I said, the cigarettes were drunk AND in a foreign country so each one was a negative cigarette... Right? Right??? Right???? Right?????? Right???????????????? Oh, Jamie...
And even though the night may have ended in a blackout mess, I am 200% sure that I had the best time. Koreans are unbelievably friendly and fun, and they're far less buttoned-up than Japanese people tend to be. It felt much more similar to the US's party culture in a way that I appreciated. Everyone really wanted to make sure that everyone was having a good time, and at least for me, they succeeded with flying colors. My liver probably would have appreciated it if they had been a little bit less successful, but c'mon, when in Seoul...
On the bright side, because Koreans drink so much, they know HOW to drink. By which I mean that every convenience shop has dozens of brands of hangover-prevention tonics/jellies, and I'd had the foresight to have one earlier in the evening. And I was not able to entirely prevent a hangover—to be fair, I'd consumed enough alcohol to make a cow black out—but the fact that I was able to get out of bed at all the next day is a testament to the product. I'd do an official endorsement, but they already have massive ads with K-Pop artists—the Korean equivalent of Shohei Ohtani—all over town.
So after the herculean tasks of getting out of bed, showering, and putting on clothes, I wandered over to a nearby market where a coffee and a platter of fried chicken (both of which are famously good in Korea) brought me back to life.
My first stop was going to be Gyeongbokgung Palace, which was about four miles as the crow flies from the market, so I decided to walk there and see what I found along the way. And what I found along the way was a mountain. Specifically, Ansan Mountain, which had the beautiful and deserted Bongwonsa Temple halfway up, as well as some wooded hiking trails that went to the summit.
The humidity was awful, and I immediately undid my shower by sweating out enough water to make me feel like I'd been caught in yet another monsoon. The mountain gave me amazing views of Seoul from all directions, and the sweating also brought down the hangover symptoms a little bit, so honestly, I couldn't really complain.
I also stumbled upon... Something... I'm still not sure exactly what it was or what it's called, but there were long trails of wet red clay mud, and several old Korean people walking through them barefoot.
Obviously I joined them. I befriended a lovely woman who had actually lived in NYC for four years and so spoke perfect English. Everyone seemed shocked and delighted to see a young white boy doing whatever this thing was that we were doing.
There were also pits of little clay balls which gave a surprisingly painful foot massage.
And a very necessary foot wash station for after the mud trails, although despite my best efforts, my feet were dyed slightly orange for the next week. Maybe that's what it's for? Although in a much more real sense it's definitely some sort of skincare thing since Koreans are REALLY into their skincare. And it totally works because their skin is G L O W I N G.
I descended the mountain and came to the Hanok Village, a neighborhood with lots of traditional Korean houses, winding alleys, cute cafes, and people walking around in Hanbok, or traditional Korean clothing.
It was right next to Gyeongbokgung Palace, although the mountain excursion had taken quite a few more hours than I had expected so I wasn't able to go inside, but it was still gorgeous and enormous and very cool.
To end the day, I went to N Seoul Tower, a massive tower on top of another mountain, which I'd been told by many people was the best place to watch the sunset in the whole city and one of highlights of visiting Seoul. The guy watching it next to me described himself as a "sunset chaser," and we chatted and watched the sky transform over the course of a few hours.
The group I had been out with the night before was somehow running it back this night (even though we all had spent the day texting each other how awful we felt), but I did not join because I had already walked 25000 steps and had an early morning the next day to tour the DMZ. But it was clear evidence of how hard Koreans (and tourists in Korea) tend to go.
The DMZ, or DeMilitarized Zone, is the area around the border between South and North Korea. This area also includes the JSA, Joint Security Area, which is directly on the border and is patrolled by both North and South Korean troops. The JSA is usually where international meetings with North Korean officials take place, and it features some famous blue buildings. Until 2023, it was open to civilian tour groups from South Korea. This is no longer the case because in 2023, a 23 year old American soldier by the name of Travis King was facing dishonorable discharge and disciplinary action from the US Army, since he had been charged with multiple crimes in South Korea. After fleeing military custody at the airport, he went on a civilian tour of the JSA, where he just sort of... ran into North Korea. He'd assumed that they would take him in with open arms because he would be like "yooo guys I hate America they're the worst, am I right??" and they'd be like "yooooo totally come on in, my guy". In reality, North Korea was sort of like "um?? who are you?? get out??", and he was sent back to the US, where he actually faced almost no punishment beyond dishonorable discharge due to "good behavior" during his short time in military custody.
Anyways, I couldn't tour the JSA. Thanks, Travis.
Instead, the tour started with an area with several monuments (including the iconic bullet-riddled train) and a museum about life in North Korea, which began with a video that was... Weird. Basically, it showed some very grainy videos that had been taken a long time ago by some of the few cameras that had been allowed inside of North Korea. The video spent a long time describing the barely functional subway system within Pyeongyang, showed many images of the massive statues of the three leaders North Korea has had (Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong Un), and then they played the saddest piano music I have heard in my life while attempting to show the horrific poverty conditions in the country. Text would flash on the screen saying things like "people living in unlivable conditions", before showing huts with tin roofs, or "children playing in dirt", before showing, well, children playing in dirt. It looked... not that bad... Just sort of like rural poverty anywhere in the world. The video ended with a message about how reunification of Korea was necessary in order to save these poor people.
We then got to interview a defector from North Korea, which was fascinating. Her husband had been a fisherman, and upon learning that the government was going to seize the fishing boats of everybody in the village, the two of them decided to flee to South Korea with their child. They carried poison pills with them in case they got caught and took their boat to a nearby small island controlled by South Korea, then informed the South Korean government and were taken into government protection. She had been a news broadcaster in North Korea, so she was aware that life in South Korea may be better, which is not true for much of the North Korean population—in North Korea, it is illegal to consume any media from outside of the country. In fact, several teenagers were recently sentenced to death for watching Squid Game, which is horrible, and is crazy for so many reasons, including the fact that the show is extremely anti South Korea... Season one literally features a North Korean defector as one of the desperate people who—spoiler alert—dies!!! If anything, they should be encouraging people to watch Squid Game since the show implies that if you defect you'll end up dying while playing hopscotch or something, which actually sounds exactly like something that the North Korean government would publish as propaganda. Anyways, I digress...
It was fascinating to hear her story. During the Q&A, someone asked about what had happened to her family back in North Korea, and while they are obviously unable to know exactly what has happened, she said that they are most likely in a labor camp. This is part of what was so weird about the video that they had shown us to open the session—why are you trying to justify reunification with stories about poverty, which is a global problem that affects people even within South Korea, when North Korea is run by a full authoritarian government who runs labor camps and executes civilians for tiny crimes?? Like, you're clearly on the right side of things, but I don't think you need propaganda videos about poverty to make your point. It's like saying "Hitler was such a bad guy, he never washed his hands after using the bathroom." Like, yeah, I guess that's bad, but YOU CAN MAKE WAY BETTER POINTS WAY MORE EASILY.
We continued onto an observatory where we could see across the border into North Korea, although it was so foggy that we couldn't actually see much, except for some South Korean fortifications and an abandoned fake town constructed by North Korea to project the image of being a functional society, which is now falling apart so makes them look even worse. No pictures were allowed in any direction from the observatory, although again, it was so foggy that I'm not sure the pictures would even have been interesting.
The tour ended with a trip to the "third tunnel," which is the third of four tunnels that South Korea has discovered North Korea digging underneath the DMZ. Each time that this has happened, North Korea has claimed that they were just mining for coal and got lost, which is a hilarious excuse because:
- There is no coal underneath the DMZ
- The tunnel is literally just a straight line for 1.6 km. If you had found coal, presumably you would have dug out some coal and/or not dug in a perfectly straight line
- You would definitely know that you had been digging a tunnel directly in the direction of South Korea because it's, well, South...
- The tunnel was mined using explosives (which is how it was discovered). If you are mining for coal, you do not want to be using explosives for very obvious reasons.
We got to walk through the tunnel for a long way. The ramp to get there (dug by South Korea) is steep, and it takes a long time to get all the way down it, since the actual tunnel is 73 meters (240 feet) underground. We were given hard hats, which is necessary because the tunnel is short and rocky and I scraped/hit my head multiple times, as well as gave myself a ton of neck/upper back pain needing to bend over for the entire walk. Hey North Korea, next time you're building an invasion tunnel, can you at least have the decency to make it tall enough for 6'—I'M DEFINITELY 6' SHUT UP—American tourists? Thanks. Eventually, you reach one of the barricades set up by South Korea at the demarcation line, at which point you turn around and head back. It's a very cool thing to be able to do, and was definitely the highlight of the DMZ tour for me.
Actually, the other highlight may have been a kid who looked to be around 20 years old and was loudly vlogging the entire time. He had a camera on a tripod and would go "Okay, guys, we're pulling up to the observatory now. We're going to be able to see North Korea" which I was like, okay, yeah I guess that's a cool thing to show—other than the fact that you can't take pictures of North Korea, so his vlog will consist of him saying "okay we're about to see North Korea" followed by a cut to "okay we just saw North Korea". He also boarded the bus and went "Okay guys, so this is what the bus looks like", which is very funny because there was absolutely nothing special about the bus. I have searched high and low for this video on Youtube, since I know that there will be a clip of me looking at the camera very confused and caught off guard when he films the bus, but so far I have not been able to find it. Please let me know if you can.
As we headed back to Seoul, our tour guide, a young Korean woman, spoke candidly about reunification. She said that despite the messaging of the exhibits at the DMZ, all of which insist that reunification is completely necessary for the future of all Koreans, the sentiment among people in South Korea is much more split. Older generations, many of whom recall the separation and may even have family in North Korea, tend to be strong believers in the idea of reunification, but younger generations tend to be more skeptical. Now that it has been 70 years since the countries split, reunification would be a complicated and difficult process that would put a lot of strain on a society that has many issues of its own to deal with already. I really appreciated getting this perspective, since it feels like a potentially controversial topic (i.e. not something to bring up with a Korean person you've just met in a nightclub), but something that I was so curious about.
Upon returning to Seoul, I received a message that some people from the group I'd gone out with in Hongdae were going out yet again. For some of them, it was the third night in a row, and I cannot overstate how much respect I had for them and also how old that it made me feel. We headed to Itaewon, another famous nightlife district in Seoul, and the group happened to include someone who had been on the same DMZ tour as me. It was SO affirming to hear that they also thought that the video at the North Korean experience was so weird. A bunch of us drank on the roof of a hostel where many of them were staying then went to a couple fun dance bars, and I managed to avoid a full-on blackout, only smoke a few cigarettes, and have an absolute blast. Good job, Jamie!
The next day, I was going to head to Busan, a beach town in the southeast of Korea. I'd had grand plans: wake up, buy a train ticket, get on the train to Busan, and watch the film Train to Busan while on the train to Busan. This is a Korean film that I have been wanting to watch for years, since it is one of the most famous zombie movies ever made about a father and daughter taking a train during the zombie apocalypse. Anyone who knew me in high school knows that I was obsessed with The Walking Dead and zombies, and everybody who knows me now knows that I am obsessed with trains, so it feels like this movie was made for me specifically. However, my grand plans were wrecked by the fact that unlike Japan, in Korea you cannot reliably book same-day train tickets, as well as the fact that it was impossible to find Train to Busan anywhere online—other than the dubbed Spanish version, called Estacion Zombi, or "Zombie Station", which is way more to-the-point and definitely doesn't have the same ring to it.
So I re-evaluated and improvised. I managed to get a seat on an evening train and did what I had learned is the absolute best thing to do when you have time to kill and are a tad hungover. It was time for Spaland, baby!!!
Unlike Japan's SPA WORLD, Spaland only took up a single floor, and it was not as well prepared to handle non-native speakers. I did my best to do everything correctly by watching and following people around. So I got naked, showered, sat in various pools and saunas, and then put on a pair of pajamas and wandered through a set of doors, where I discovered the nap area. This was an enormous room, it allowed both men and women (hence the pajamas), had a full cafe, and there were probably 200 people in it, all of whom were Korean, and the majority of whom seemed to be teenagers on dates napping side-by-side. They had various rooms set to various temperatures, some of which featured the clay ball pits I had walked through on the mountain.
The strangest thing was the TV, which was playing clearly AI-generated content that appeared to be a movie or series about medieval Korea, so it featured a bunch of unnerving not-quite-live-action-not-quite-animated guys with swords and women in traditional dress and makeup. This was not the first time I'd seen people in Asia watching AI content—on my flight from Taiwan to Hong Kong, the woman sitting next to me had watched a similar medieval Asian AI show for the entire three hours. People did not seem to care about the fact that it was AI, which is a little bit of culture-shock, as most people I know in the West seem to be railing against AI art and video, which I totally get. I very much hope that the US entertainment industry is not going to embrace AI in the same way Asia has, but I have a hard time believing that a lot of people won't ditch expensive, well-produced content for cheap but compelling slop. It's sort of the direction the industry has been moving anyways—just now it can be done faster and more and more tailored to people's niche interests. And if someone told me there was a comedy show about a HANDSOME 28-year-old American man who quit his job to travel around Asia and ride trains and fight zombies... I can't say that I wouldn't be intrigued, especially since I COULDN'T WATCH THE REAL TRAIN ZOMBIE MOVIE THAT ALREADY EXISTS!! I LITERALLY WOULD HAVE PAID FOR IT!!
So after a restful day of sweating and soaking and rinsing and napping, I took the train to Busan—which was AWESOME because train woooo but sad because I didn't see even a single zombie—and then I reached my hostel and immediately passed out.
July 18: Busan
Busan is best known for its beaches, so I woke up in the morning, grabbed one of the hostel's free rental bikes, and made my way to Haeundae, the main beach area. It features a very long street of stalls/restaurants, mostly selling fresh seafood of various kinds. I stopped at the stall with the longest line, which let you pick out various seafood skewers that they would fry for you as well as tteokbokki, the most popular Korean street food consisting of chewy rice cakes in a sweet and spicy red sauce, which they had simmering in an enormous wok.
I also stopped to admire/look in horror at the eel tanks—nearly a dozen places along the road had them, and while I do love eel, I did not like seeing it like this.
I especially did not like watching one of the vendors skin one of the still-living eels, which I did not take a photo/video of because I was worried I was going to be ill. You're welcome. Many of the stalls also offered live octopus, or san-nakji, a Busan specialty where the octopus is chopped up and immediately served, so the chopped pieces of the tentacles are still wriggling while on the plate. I am one of the most adventurous eaters I know, and while I would like to say that I avoided this dish due to ethical concerns—which is at least partly true!!!—just the idea of this dish triggers such a primal feeling of fear/disgust in me that I am not sure I would have been able to eat more than a bite. I mean, like, obviously I would still eat a bite because I think my curiosity and desire to try everything in life once—with a few VERY notable exceptions, don't get any ideas—would outweigh my fear/disgust. But I didn't do that so don't even worry about it!!!
If you're curious what san-nakji looks like, you can watch this video. If you don't have a strong stomach, maybe don't watch this video.
I ate my fried (and thankfully non-moving) skewers and tteokbokki on the beach, had a little swim, and read my book. It was delightful.
I decided to avoid the afternoon rain by checking out another Busan landmark: the Shinsegae Department Store, which is the world's largest. In case I was unclear about that, immediately upon entering, I saw this:
I had bought a white UNIQLO t-shirt in Japan, and I discovered that it looked fantastic on me—apparently I have a build far more similar to the average Asian man than the average American man, which is unsurprising since I am skinny strong and not strong strong. Ohhhhh, maybe THAT's why people here keep calling me handsome.
Since these shirts looked so good on me, I thought that I should buy a couple more while still in Asia. So I went to the UNIQLO in the department store, found the section selling t-shirts, and bought two of them—only to later discover that both were the wrong material and one was the wrong size. Good job, Jamie! (sarcastically this time)
I did also buy an extremely confusing hat that I love and a full suite of Korean skincare products, so the visit wasn't a total wash.
The world's largest department store was enormous (shocking, I know), so I wandered around inside the buildings—it spanned multiple buildings—for several hours discovering things like an entire rack of clothing branded with my alma mater
a giant terrifying moving robotic human face
and the most unfortunate name for a clothing company that I have ever heard.
I began biking home, but within one block of leaving the store, the bike I had borrowed from the hostel (which had already been giving me issues all day) decided that it was time to give up completely. I know a bit about bicycles from biking to work most days back in NYC, so I was able to give it a full mechanical diagnosis: the thingy with the spiky round thingys had completely broken off from the thingy that wheel thingys go on. So there was no hope of fixing it and what was supposed to be a 40 minute bike ride back to the hostel was going to have to be a 2.5 hour walk back to the hostel wheeling the broken bike next to me. Luckily, it was sweltering and humid, my phone was nearly dead so I couldn't listen to music or podcasts, and I was super tired already. :)
On the DMZ tour, I had befriended an Australian guy who was studying in Seoul that semester, and he had told me that something he had found very strange about Korea is that you almost never see children out and about. So it was surprising when on my long horrible walk, I stumbled upon a playground where a group of several Korean boys who looked to be around 11 years old were all riding bicycles. One of them spoke quite good English, and he asked me where I had gotten my bicycle since he thought my tires looked cool. I told them I was borrowing it and that it was broken, then I complimented him on his English. He and his friends spoke to each other in Korean for a little bit, turned to me, and began shouting something in Korean and vigorously gesturing at their crotches over and over again. I immediately walked away, since I didn't think that an American man standing in a playground surrounded by Korean boys gesturing at their crotches was a particularly good look and I did not want to have to try and explain that THEY were the ones harassing ME actually, officer!! I have no idea what the boys were saying or what their gestures meant, but it is nice to know that 11 year old boys are the same around the globe, and even if they're spending their days sexually harassing American tourists, at least they're outside and off of screens! That's better, right?
Upon reaching the hostel and returning the bicycle, which in mechanic terms could best be described as "completely fucked", I took a VERY needed shower and met up with a group from Hostelworld for some Korean BBQ, drinks, shaved fruit ice, and more drinks.
There was supposed to be a drone show on the beach that unfortunately the weather prevented, although they still lit up the bridge and it was spectacular.
July 19-21: Jeju Island
I woke up early and hopped in an Uber to fly to Jeju Island, a volcanic island just off of the mainland. The Uber driver was the most friendly man I've ever met in my life, although he didn't speak any English, so our conversation had to be filtered through Google Translate's talk-to-speak. Generally this worked pretty well, but at one point we entered a long, underground tunnel and I asked him "is there water above this tunnel?", to which he responded "Honey, you." Either this was a mistranslation, or he was trying to convey something too profound for me to comprehend. As I left his car, he gave me a laminated four leaf clover and insisted that I put it in my phone case. Like, insisted. Like, REALLY insisted. Anyways, it's still there along with the fortune cookie wrappers I already keep in there. So I should be the luckiest guy in the world at this point. However, some foreshadowing: I had some VERY bad luck in Germany, so wtf four leaf clover cmon.
On Jeju Island, I picked up a rental car since the island is somewhat accessible by bus but WAY better with a car. For the second time in several months, I found myself on an island in the Pacific behind the wheel of a car. Thankfully, this time there were no monsoons and I was driving on the right side of the road so had a grand total of 0 near-death experiences. Which is probably worse for the blog but definitely better for my cortisol levels.
At the hostel, in the designated smoking area (sorry, mom!!), I met Jessica from Scotland, Rob from England, and Grace from New Zealand, the group of people that I would spend pretty much the entire rest of the weekend with. So, like I said, you need to give cigarettes at least a little bit of credit for doing something good (i.e. friends). We all headed to a nearby KBBQ place where we got to try Jeju Island's famous "Black Pork". Much like the black eggs in Japan, it tasted like what it was: pork, but black. So, pork. But we had a great meal and a lot of soju before attempting to find a bar, although we quickly realized that every single bar in town was closed (it was a Sunday night), and so we went to a convenience store to pick up more beer and soju, then sat by the port drinking too much, smoking too much, getting eaten alive by mosquitos, and talking and talking. It was a delightful evening. We made a group chat that I titled "hey cunts"—once again foreigners were obsessed with how uncomfortable that word made me and insisted that I repeatedly say it—and we planned to meet up the next morning to drive around the island and see some of the sights.
Waking up the next morning hurt (hangover) and itched (mosquitoes) for all of us. I think the alcohol had helped numb the mosquito bites, because we had all known we were being bitten, but none of us had known quite how bad it actually was. I apologize in advance to anybody who's squeamish, but a picture's worth a thousand words, or in this case, a thousand mosquito bites.
Rob was AWOL (sleeping it off, we correctly assumed), and so we set off without him to Pyeoseon Beach, a relatively close beach where you could walk for hundreds of yards through water that only came up to thigh height.
We rented an inner tube, because this is a quintessential Korean beach experience, and pretty soon after, Rob woke up and took a cab to join us.
He said that the cab fare was his penance for the amount of soju he'd drank the night before, and I thanked my newly-acquired four leaf clover for warding off my own penance.
We walked to a nearby seafood restaurant to get some lunch. All the restaurants in the area had large fish tanks outside full of eels, fish, and sea snails—which are a Jeju island specialty.
It was once again pretty gross, especially one tank which contained a shark that looked like it was on the verge of suffocation. A friend had mentioned that he really hated the way that Korea treats fish, which felt like a really specific complaint, but now I get what he means.
We briefly explored the nearby "Folk Village", a tourist attraction featuring traditionally built houses and explaining Jeju island's history and indigenous community's practices. Jeju Island is famous for Haenyeo, female divers who are in charge of the semi-matriarchal society. Many of them continue diving up into their 80s, and they can hold their breath for up to 3 minutes and dive up to 66 feet below sea level. It's like the most badass thing I've ever heard of, and it's where many of the sea snails on the island come from. The village also had the coolest 7-Eleven I'd ever seen.
We then continued on to the Manjanggul Lava Tube, a UNESCO heritage site which is 9 kilometers long, and which lets you walk through for up to 1 km of the cave system. Upon arrival, we began to wonder if "hangover soup" was actually meant to trigger a hangover, not cure it, as we all began to feel a bit nauseous. Maybe the Korean woman had been yelling at us to warn us about this, or (more likely) she had mildly poisoned us because we had DARED to try and EAT FOOD at her RESTAURANT. But the lava tube was freezing cold, which helped, and it was amazing.
You could see the marks along the wall where the river of lava had once flown through, and signs helpfully explained all of the other geological features and how they'd been formed.
We made a quick stop at a 7-Eleven before heading back, only to discover that this was actually the coolest 7-Eleven on the planet. It was just off the side of the highway and was run by a lovely old Korean couple. The outside area had a full vegetable garden, chicken coop, two dogs, and the most adorable newborn kitten who would pounce on our feet and then run to hide in the bushes. The Garden of Eden is real and (of course) it has an Asian 7-Eleven.
After returning to the hostel, we walked to get the most authentic Korean food we could find. By which I mean, we went to Subway because someone had mentioned Subway earlier in the day and ever since then we had all been talking about Subway over and over again and daydreaming about Subway and folks we just really wanted Subway and also had maybe just been slightly poisoned by the traditional Korean food so like it's fine that my last dinner in Asia was Subway!!
And the Subway was... fine, I guess. It was, ya know, it was Subway.
Before driving to the airport the next morning, a few of us went to see the Cheonjiyeon Waterfalls, the most famous attraction in Seogwipo, the town in Jeju where we had been staying.
The falls were gorgeous, and the fact that a woman had brought her small dog along with a full bag of different outfits for the dog in order to do a massive photoshoot made it SO worth the stop, and also seemed like the perfect final image of Asia for me: someone doing something slightly strange and silly in front of gorgeous nature, which is pretty much exactly what I'd been doing for the prior two months.
Remember how I ended the last post talking about how far behind I was falling when I was 2.5 weeks behind? Well, I thought the best way to fix that would be to wait a full month before publishing again so that time becomes completely irrelevant and nobody even notices or cares because after all time doesn't exist because do we even exist??? Checkmate.
And to update the estimate from last time based on this new data point... The new ETA on when I am done with this travel blog is...
589 days. Aka, I'll be done in 2028. Oh, Jamie.....
Korea was possibly the highlight of my trip, and definitely the place I liked far more than I had expected to. The people were fun and friendly, the food was amazing, and it was so easy to have such a fun time there as a solo traveler. The nature was beautiful, the cities were cool, and I have nothing bad to say about the place other than a particular group of youths in Busan need to learn some respect. Or not, I kinda really appreciate those little shits in retrospect.
I would keep writing here but maybe I'll save my words for the next blog post so that I can maybe make some progress on catching up. Hopefully. Probably not.
See you in Europe!
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