Mood: I ate what!?!
Music: Various (same playlist as last night for a chunk of this morning)
I woke this morning in plenty of time to actually make it down to breakfast before being met by my guide for the day. I opted for the Western breafast over the Korean on and was pleasantly surprised when it consisted of a bowl of huney nut cornflakes and a plate of scrambled eggs, fruit and two cold chips.
Once I had finished this I met Victor, my guide for the day and the person who'd put together my whole tour in Korea . Victor is a Russian from Vladivostok, who first moved to Korea to teach foreign languages in schools but after moving around a bit, settled in Jeju and now runs a small one man tourist company. His English is near perfect and this allowed me to converse in a little more detail about a few subjects and also discuss the state of Russia at the moment.
The first stop on our trip was a free standing and fairly tall rock formation on the coast, just out of the town where my hotel is. Next up was the Natural History museum. It's a fairly small museum detailing the lives of the local peoples and also some of the geography of the area. It was fairly pleasant as museums go but hardly something to write home about.
After that we went to the airport to pick up another couple, who would be joining us for the rest of the day. Micheal and Patricia are a German / Malay couple who happened to meet in Glasgow of all places and now live in Malaysia, just north of Singapore.
The next stop on the island tour was a rock formation said to look like a dragon's mouth. Rolf is photographed next to this formation.
After that we drove across the island to a folk village, where people live in the traditional thatched housing of the area. As it is normally very windy on the island, the thatch has a rope lattice covering the surface.
Apparently, the thatch is mostly paid for by the local government in order to maintain the area as a local tourist attraction. It works fairly well as the place is very scenic. We also stopped here for lunch.
Next was one of the largest and busiest tourist spots of the day. That of a large volcano on the coast that had formed underground and made a castle / crown shaped circular island, now joined onto the main part of the island by a small spit. It is a couple of hundred meters climb to the top but the views are quite impressive.
Penultimate on our tour was the end of an overground lava tube. This had worn much of a rock away in a long trench that leads down a few hundred meters to the sea. At the end of this was a black sand beach from which we skimmed stones for a while.
Last up was the other waterfall in the region of the town I'm staying in. It falls into a rock pool which leads directly into the ocean via a short stream and is really quite impressive.
As the other two are staying in the same hotel as I, we decided to go out for food this evening. After much wondering about, Patricia plumped with a place that said "grilled chicken" on the outside. The thinking was... at least we know what animal this comes from!
After realising that they had no menu at all other than what was displayed on the walls we decided on a spicy dish that appeared to contain chunks of chicken, according to the photo. When it turned up it was actually grilled chicken intestines in a spicy sauce. We only discovered this a mouthful in each and then tried to communicate with the owner to find out what part of the chicken this came from. Needless to say that we did not make much headway into the meal before leaving!
After that we went to a bar and drank a couple of beers and also some of the soju (local rice wine). The bottle of soju costs the same as a bottle of beer but is the alcoholic equivalent to a bottle of wine!
I really ought to go to sleep now as I'm up early to catch my flight in the morning...
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