Jeju Birthday Weekend or Remembering just how friendly Koreans are in general

What a weekend... and where to begin?

Ty arrived in Mokpo on Thursday night (his dodgy hogwan having given him the day off on Friday for his birthday), and on Friday morning, he came to school with me. We started off with some cake in the staffroom with my Korean colleagues. It was actually quite funny - he stood on one side of the table and everyone else stood on the other side and stared at him and told him he was handsome and giggled... We wandered around the school a bit, getting hugs from the students and whatnot, until it was time for him to teach my classes for me. We'd made a PowerPoint about South African animals and the kids just ate it up. Some were a bit surprised that he wasn't a) Black or b) wearing a loincloth (such is the Korean stereotype on Africa), but he was a total hit with the kids.

After lunch, we ran down to the ferry terminal for our boat to Jeju (my school had given me the afternoon off so that we could get to Jeju on Friday night and not Saturday afternoon). On the five-hour boat ride, Ty managed to make friends with a group of guys from Seoul who were going to Jeju to shoot a movie.... yeah, I know. We should have seen if we could have been extras or whatever, but ... meh. Perusing the brochure, we tried to figure out the best way to get to the southern part of the island (Jungmun/Seogwipo area) - which seemed to be the airport shuttle, but how to get to the airport from the quay? Fortune smiled (as it did for the whole weekend) and we ended up being loaded into a rented van with a random tour group that detoured out and dropped us off at the airport - where we caught the (really cheap) bus to Jungmun and Ty did his Canadian Connection phone interview (that's a whole other story).

We hopped off the bus at a random corner, ran to a depanneur and stocked up on "groceries" (wine, coffee in a can, Pringles...), then grabbed a taxi - asking the driver to take us to a "minbak ... pissoyo no!" (cheap inn). He drove us around for about 15 minutes, stopping at 3 different places before he found us a room, then carried our bags up 3 flights of stairs before wishing us good night (I was a bit worried that he was going to go so far as to tuck us in...). Once again, it was just a case of super-friendly Jeju folk.

The next day (my birthday) was cloudy, but since we would be spending that day underwater, it didn't really matter. We got to Seogwipo, and so began our scuba diving day. A few years ago, I went scuba diving in Cuba (twice) and I loved it - BUT, my ears hurt so much after that I wasn't sure that I'd ever be able to do it again. The Jeju dive would tell me if I was physically able to scuba, which is kind of important when you are seeing someone who owns his own wetsuit.


The boat had taken us to a bit of a rocky... island? Ummm, lump of rock in the middle of the sea, just south of Seogwipo. There were about 40 other people on the island with us - all Korean (except for our dive instructors) and all kitted out like real divers. Because I was not certified, I had my own dive instructor - an American guy named Mark who had lived in Thailand for three years.


We went over all the equipment, the hand-signals and the importance of equalizing (that would be the "not letting your eardrums explode" part of scuba diving) and I just got more and more nervous. We got all our stuff on and hit the water. Being more experienced, Ty went down quite quickly and kind of sat at the bottom and waited to see if I could do it. But... slowly... hand over hand, with a lot of patience on Mark's part, and a lot of nose-squeezing on mine, I managed to get down to 12 metres.

We were diving off the lump of rock/island, which looked like nothing from above water, but was a sheer wall of life and colour. Orange and purple somethings sprouted and shook from the wall, schools of fish moved around, and the bubbly-crackling sound of coral surrounded us. Because I'd taken so long getting down the rope, our first dive felt like it was over before it began. We rested for an hour on shore, then went down again.

The second dive was completely different. First off, I was way more relaxed, so my descent was quicker and easier than the first. And, because I wasn't obsessing over my ears, I could actually look around and enjoy what I was seeing -- like angel fish, a bright orange slug thing, and swimming with Ty. Mark took us further out from the wall, guiding us between narrow passageways. At one point, he floated over me and waved at me with both hands.. ... both hands? He wasn't holding on to me! I had been swimming alone and not even realized it. The three of us knelt on the sea-floor, letting the currents move us, and blissing out over the whole experience.

Once on dry land, we heard that Seogwipo was having a festival for the Cheonjiyeon waterfalls (not to be confused with the Cheonjeyeon waterfalls that I visited on Jeju in July), so we walked down to the pier where we found tents, a huge stage, tons of people and lots of food. We bought a roast chicken (stuffed with rice) that we devoured with chopsticks while watching traditional singers and dancers, smiling at children and being filmed by a TV cameraman (we were pretty much the only waygookin there).


We headed out to try to find these mythical waterfalls, and ended up wandering down to the waterfront, where the sun was just beginning to set. Along the way, I instigated myself into a gang of clapping-dancing ajummas in pink shirts....



On the seawall, we were befriended by a dozen middle school girls who asked us questions, giggled and then foolishly demanded that we kiss so that they could take pictures of us with their camera-phones. An older man approached us, took my camera, and started posing us in front of the sunset.


Once the photoshoot was over, he invited us to join him and his friends for a few rounds of some really good soju. We hung out with them for about an hour, using our limited Korean and a lot of hand signals (and a lot of soju) to understand that they wanted us to have two children (note to Mom: NO).


Feeling a bit tottery, we headed back to the festival, walking through gardens along a stream until we came to the waterfalls, where we sat for about two hours before returning to the stage where the concert was still going strong (and included a dance troupe, a salsa-ing couple and a lady in a red silk pantsuit belting out tunes).


The next day (Ty's birthday) was gorgeous and sunny. We caught a cab with the world's nicest cab driver (I would like the cab drivers of Jeju and Mokpo to change places....) to a bus that would take us around the eastern part of the island -think amazing sea views, cliffs, fields, old stone cottages - and up to Gimnyeong and the Manjanggeul lava tubes... It took a bit of walking from the main road to get to Manjanggeul, but it was a nice walk along a tree-lined road under a bright blue sky, and we ignored our rumbling bellies by singing every song that included the word "road" or "street".

The Manjanggeul tubes are now a UNESCO heritage site, but only really live up to their hype if you ignore the warning signs, climb over the rope barrier and keep walking until you're standing in the dark and cold, listening to water dripping -- until a lava tube employee comes and brings you sheepishly back to the exit.

From there, we headed on back to Jeju-si for our ferry home. Ferry trips between Jeju and Mokpo seem to be an excuse for people to sit around and drink, and dance, and sing, and gamble. It's got to be the happiest (and noisiest) place in Korea (besides Jeju) and is also a sort of "feed the Foreigners" time. During the trip, we got oranges, chocolate, green tea, and gum that tastes like urinal pellets.... and all of these things were handed to us quite randomly by someone who was just passing by or standing in line with us. I mean, how many times have you handed chocolate to a total stranger?

Nothing that I've written here can adequately capture the amazing beauty of this weekend. It was certainly my most memorable birthday ever for a myriad of reasons... including the discovery that I've finally, after 33 years, found someone to travel with.