This weekend Joe and I traveled to Jeju Island--allegedly "Korea's Hawaii." We took a super easy one hour flight from Daegu Airport into Jeju and rented a car. A sidenote here: not having a car in Korea has been and continues to be one of the most difficult things for me and Joe to deal with. We miss the freedom having a car gives us. Not having a car seriously puts a damper on our adventuring. Anyhoo, we got a car for Jeju, which was a good thing since Jeju has no train/subway system, and though there are many bus stops everywhere, there didn't seem to be any actual buses. Having a car, even for three days, made us feel like adults again. It was niiiice. Along with feeling like adults, the car also allowed us to stop whenever and wherever we wanted, and since Jeju Island is a veritable melting pot of weird attractions--Minimini Land, Teddy Bear Museum, Butterfly Museum, Citrus Museum, Anti-Japan Memorial, The Sex and Health Museum, and so forth--we were able to pull over whenever the whim took us.
We stayed at the Hyatt, which was built on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It was pretty decadent, and I'm not quite sure we could afford it, but we decided that it was our honeymoon, damn it. Coming to Korea kind of got in the way of the whole honeymoon thing, so Jeju was it. This line of thinking allowed us to drink bottles of wine that were way too expensive and eat marked up hotel dinners. It was worth it. The hotel was amazing--multiple restaurants, a spa and pool, an island bar (a bar surrounded by a koi pond, with the kind of low lighting that could make Robert Redford look like the hot kind of Robert Redford again), a karaoke bar, a casino, and so on. Oh, and the toilet in our room had a heated seat. Joe was pleased.
Here are a few of the things we did:
Jeju Love Land: We'd heard about this from some friends who had gone here, and we wanted to check it out for ourselves. This place is not for the prude...or the squeamish. Basically it's a park filled with sexually explicit statues. Doing sexually explicit things. In a big way. For example--there was a ginormous mosaic penis sculpture that shot out a jet of water from the anatomically correct location. There was a statue of a satyr pleasuring a Greek lady. And so on. It was intense, and hilarious. The best part was all the old Korean ladies who were cracking up at every naughty statue, and doing a little too much touching for my liking.
Teddy Bear Museum: God help me, but I did not want to go here. I was adamant that I was not going here. But then Joe made me. This museum had cases filled with teddy bears. Great. And teddy bears posing as characters in historic and/or iconic settings--D-Day, the Titanic, the moon landing, the Beatles, Michael Jordan dunking, Napoleon Bonaparte, Ghandi, Mother Theresa. You get the picture. And then there was the teddy bear rape of art--bears posed as Van Gogh (sans ear), Klimt's The Kiss, The Thinking Man. And as if that weren't enough to make anyone turn to drink, there was a teddy bear park where life-sized bear statues where put into human scenarios. Oh, look, that bear is placing a call in a phone booth! Fun! That family of bears is barbecuing what looks to be one of their own hind legs on a spit! Bully! Oh, what's that? Only a bear driving a 1940s car. Whimsical! This place robbed me of my will to live. Joe loved it. :)
Daeyoo Land: The most picturesque shooting range ever seen. The concierge told us it was 35,000 won (around $30) for 50 rounds, but it turned out to be for 12 single shots. We were super bummed out and felt like we had been robbed. Nice landscaping though and there was a real fire burning in a beautiful fireplace in the shooting hut.
Seongsan Ilchulbong (aka Sunrise Peak): A dormant volcanic cone on the east side of the island. You can climb to the top and look into its grass-covered basin. The view is amazing--ocean and cliffs as far as you can see. Loved it.
Gwaneumsa Temple: We stopped at this temple on a whim on our drive back to the airport. It turned out to be one of the best things of the trip. It was built into the mountain, and there were various temple buildings staggering upward from the parking lot. Statues of Buddha were everywhere, lining the walkway to the main temple building. The best part was a huge Buddha statue, overlooking the rest of the temple grounds, that was surrounded on one side by ampitheater type seating. Filling about half the seats were row upon row of smaller Buddha statues in various poses and guises. It was like what I imagine the Terracotta Warriors to look like, but in miniature, and not all warriored up.
We saw a lot of other things throughout the island, all with the aid of our trusty car. We drove through Hallasan National Park. We drove from one end of the island to the other. We drove like nobody's business.
It was a great weekend, and a beautiful island. And a kick ass honeymoon.
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