Where's good? She sounded bored, almost exasperated. As I had alluded in my previous post on Hallasan, I had reckoned on being back in Seogwipo by 2pm. Hallasan reckoned otherwise. I was back at 4.30pm, long after Seogwipo had exhausted all of Mary's interest. Long after I left with Mary an annotated city map which had exhausted its validity. According to Mary, I had marked wrongly the landmarks that I supposed to be on it. Seogwipo beyond the market aisles where Mary and her mother wandered, re-wandered and wondered receded into oblivion.
Below: Mary always knew where to go, never needed maps, and so didn't know what to do with this one.
I bit my tongue. How about Jungmun? There's the Teddy Bear Museum.
An hour later we found ourselves standing outside the said museum in Jungmun, after missing our bus stop on bus 120 and retracing our steps in a taxi. Until 1978, Jungmun was a village some 14 kilometres east of Seogwipo. Then the world and big money tourism arrived with its conformity customarily camouflaged as cosmopolitanism - giant chain hotels named after London neighbourhoods and medieval Korean kingdoms but offering the same enfeebling opulence, museums dedicated to frivolity and the familiar chapels to consumerism where happiness is bartered in multiple currencies (in one shop you won't even have to pay tax).
Below: Believe it or not, standing up to kitsch in Jungmun, in front of possibly the most colourful building in the world with a Starbucks outlet.
Admission to the Teddy Bear Museum costs 8,000 won. That's a S$30 entry fee to a taxidermist's fancy dress party. We contented ourselves with photographs, in various poses, of a giant bear near the entrance. Ignorance and the failing light precluded a trip to Jungmun's famed beaches and other Korean drama filming locations. We skipped Cheonjeyeon, just minutes away, for Mary's aversion to Jeju waterfalls should be rather well-documented by now. Raids on the Lotte Duty Free Shop, 7-Eleven's and Popeye's provided the only other significant diversions, and it was back to our Seogwipo hostel for a dinner of fried chicken and cup noodles.
Below: The Lotte Hotel in Jungmun, where men pay to enter Babylonian Captivity.
We had our only day of rain on Wednesday, our last on the island. That, and the huge incentive it gave to lying in, prevented us from making the trip to Seongsan Ilchulbong, one of Jeju's 360 parasitic volcanoes which proffers beautiful coastal views from its 182-metre high basalt battlements. Instead we settled for a day trip to the provincial capital Jeju-si.
Two encounters there subsequently succeeded in making Seogwipo look like a relative backwater - Daiso (yes, but after conversion, things cost about S$2.50) and the heavily trafficked attraction of Yongduam Rock.
Below: On the streets of Jeju-si, with the steeples of the Catholic Joon Gang Cathedral in the background. Only the Hangul reveals we were in Korea.
Legends abound as to the birth of the formation, said to resemble a dragon's head. Most of these legends centred on the vicissitudinous exploits of a sea-dwelling dragon. While most ended in the dragon's petrification, some claim it was the result of an ill-fated attempt to escape to the heavens, others that it was a heist on Hallasan gone wrong. In its unmoving embalmment, the dragon ironically attained the immortality which eluded its grasp in life. Set starkly against the evening glow, free rein is given to one's imagination. But on the crowded viewing platforms, there was little room for these to wander.
Top and middle: Rain turns the Yongduam gorge into a giant gutter, the discharge of which stains the sea visibly for a good distance; bottom: finding a pocket of space on a crowded platform along a crowded coast, at a spot where wave, wind and rain have given birth to the stuff of legend.
So where do you want to go now? I asked Mary again, as day ebbed from a darkening sky. It was half past seven in the evening.
Mary yawned. Where's good?
I knew then that her mind had already departed from Jeju.
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