With that exotic lunch out of the way, we walked up to the entrance to pleasantly discover that the entrance fee was waived in celebration of "the spring scents of Jeju". Sounds good to me! The hike up Seongsam was short, but difficult. The peak is about 180 m (590 ft) high, and you're literally walking up stairs the whole way up. The peak was very beautiful though, or, as the English-language recording said, "it projects beautifulness at all times, in all directions". This recording also said, "do not leave rubbish, and no snacking". This time I actually took pictures of what the signs said for your enjoyment:
After hiking back down and resting my calves for a bit, we happened to realize we were only 5 minutes away from a performance of the famous haenyeo. These women, mostly somewhat elderly, swim out into the water in only wetsuits and eye masks and free dive up to 10 m looking for seafood, mostly abalone. When we first got down they were actually selling their catch before breaking out in song and heading into the water to dive. We were lucky that we happened to show up right when this happened, as it only happens two times a day.
Also seen from Seongsam was Udo Island, the place where the peanuts for my peanut rice wine are grown. This was also where the seashell festival was being held.
After seeing these great natural sights, we went to the Hanwha Aqua Planet aquarium, mentioned in a previous blog. Despite their whale shark logo, and the general prevalence of whale shark imagery in the aquarium, they did not have a whale shark. Further research shows they had two whale sharks at one point, but one of them died unexpectedly. They said that it had a disease, but some argued it died due to being in captivity, so to avoid controversy they decided to set the second one free to its home. Nonetheless, this was a good aquarium. I don't know if it was 39,500 won good, but I enjoyed myself, and my favorite parts were seeing the otters, rays, and sharks. The fish portion of the aquarium had enough English for me to understand and appreciate what was on display. However, the marine science portion, mostly about the geological processes that create the features of the ocean and ocean weather, left much to be desired, as it was almost all in Korean and looked to be somewhat in disrepair.
Yes, I know, that's a lot of pictures. After enjoying the aquarium, we took a long walk to the bus stop and took the 2 hour bus ride back. After doing all this walking we decided we were due for a good meal. There is a Korean fried chicken place right next to our hotel, so I figured we could check it out. I cannot remember the name of this place, and it's not showing up on Korean Google-like maps, although I can walk by it tomorrow when I'm doing my last minute shopping and find the name. Korean fried chicken is definitely popular here, based on the amount of ads I've seen on TV, and it differs from American fried chicken mostly by being twice fried. It is then coated with sauce. For about 23,000 won (< $23 USD) for the two of us we got enough fried chicken to feed a family and two big bottles of maekchu, beer. The beer here is generally sold in 500 ml bottles at restaurants. I knew we'd be getting a lot, but I had no idea we'd be getting this much, and watching the woman take each piece of chicken out of the sauce bowl one-by-one seemingly endlessly was almost comical. I thought this chicken was delicious. It was very crispy from being twice fried, although surprisingly it wasn't greasy. The sauce was spicy enough to feel heat, but not enough to take a break from eating, and it was also sweet. Because it was twice fried, some of the smaller bones were chewable, which I actually like (I kind of like to eat the smaller chicken bones in fried chicken, if they can be chewed). It was served with a side of pickled radish, as is traditional.
Well, thank you for reading, everybody. Tomorrow morning we will fly back to Gimpo and stay at a hostel in Incheon. My flight to O'Hare leaves the next day at 10 am, so if I have anything to write about it will be about something I did in Incheon. I will probably not post until I get back to the U.S., since I had to give back the adapter I borrowed, and posting this blog brought my battery down to 30%. Overall, Jeju is an incredible island. I feel like I did not do a fraction of what there is to do on Jeju, and I think even if the entire week had been devoted to free time I'd feel the same way. I can certainly see why this is such a popular place for tourists from China, Korea, and Japan to come to, and maybe if I'm lucky I'll find myself back in Jeju in the future. Annyeong-haseyo.