Saturday, May 28, 2011

5/17/11: Tour of Jeju-do

Beautiful Jeju! Taken from the deck of the submarine Jiah.
On our first full day in Jeju, HanaTour first took us to a glass museum. It turned out to be a kind of theme park with outdoor displays of glass trees, flowers, animals, sculptures, etc., as well as a few indoor exhibits of glasswork from around the world (e.g. Venetian glass and Bohemian glass). To be honest, the whole place felt rather on the kitschy side, but most people seemed to enjoy the photo-ops. Afterwards, we went to another event that I was surprised to find on our itinerary: a circus. The main attraction was the final act, in which up to six men at once rode motorbikes at high speed in a spherical cage with a diameter of perhaps 20 feet. I really don’t know how they learned/rehearsed the moves without suffering debilitating accidents…

Green tea plantation.
 Following the circus, we went to the O'Sulloc Tea Plantation. It was a sunny day, so the rows of green tea bushes were quite beautiful. Per our tour guide’s recommendation, we each tasted a leaf picked straight from the bushes; it was very bitter.

After lunch, we headed to the Cheonjiyeon waterfalls (천지연폭포). The bridge to the waterfalls offered spectacular views of the surrounding landscape, and the main waterfall, while not exactly Niagara Falls, was still worth the visit.


The main waterfall at Cheonjihyeon.
We then had a tour of an orchard, where several Jeju specialties were grown: a seedless orange-like citrus fruit known as hallabong (한라봉), kumquats (called 금귤 [geumgyul]), and sanghwang mushrooms (상황버섯). The flowers of the hallabong trees smelled absolutely heavenly; the fragrance was very similar to that of acacia blossoms. The mushrooms were also very interesting: they grow on tree stumps and take three years of cultivation to be harvest-ready. Within the Eastern medicine tradition, it has long been thought to have medicinal properties, and those claims may have some truth to them: a Boston University School of Medicine study in 2006 found that extracts of the mushroom boosted the efficacy of a chemotherapy drug.  

Geumgyul, aka kumquats.
Sanghwang mushrooms being
cultivated on chunks of trees.

The diver following the submarine.
After the orchard, we were treated to a ride on the Jiah submarine, which went to a depth of about 40 meters. A diver followed the submarine and fed the fish, which clearly knew to expect dinner. Lastly, we took a short walk along a portion of the Olle trail (a 200-km walking path, much of which is along the pristine coastline) to see the Oedolgae Rock (외돌개), a 20m high volcanic basalt pillar. K-drama tidbit: a little further along the trail is the place where the death of the character Han Sang Gung was filmed for the popular 2003 drama Jewel in the Palace, aka Daejanggeum (대장금).     

Oedolgae. Some say it resembles a
grandmother's head...

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