Caveat: … or not off the grid?

I should have known it wouldn't be easy to escape (or leave behind) civilization… especially in crowded Korea. 

I'm on Ulleungdo, and I just couldn't resist popping into the PCBang (Korean style internet cafe) just up the street from my pension.    Yes, they have PCBang in Ulleungdo.  Sigh. 

Pohang is a depressing, charmless city for the most part.  But I walked the length of it, from the bus station to the ferry terminal, and saw more fish for sale (mostly still wiggling) than I ever thought possible, at the market.   The city is famous as Korea's "steel town" (a kind of Pittsburgh by the sea, I guess) but that's all a recent development of its history — 50 years ago it was just a generic east coast fishing village.

The ferry crossing was… stunningly boring.  Once again, even though this wasn't a hydrofoil, passengers were not allowed on deck.  And my seating section didn't even have windows.  It was like spending 3 hours in a shaking, rocking, rolling room full of 300 hungover and picnicking Koreans.  Hmm.  Next time, remind me not to be stingy, and to instead go ahead and blow the extra 7 bucks for an upgrade to First class, where, apparently, at least they have windows.

But landing at Ulleungdo Dodong harbor and stepping out was like stepping into a movie set.  This verdant, tiny island fishing village, with hawkers and sellers and the entire day's worth of departures and arrivals for the island's only transport connection to the world bustling around the dock.  I had read in a guidebook that people will accost all obvious tourists (which I am no doubt one, given my complexion and physiognomy if nothing else) with offers of lodging at the various pensions and hotels to be found in the town (of about 5000, I think).  

I took up the first ajumma (older Korean woman archetype) to make me an offer — entirely on the criterion that she obviously knew no English whatsoever.  Finally, someone who will force me to speak Korean with them.   She wasn't very chatty as we walked up the street to her pension (two rooms in the back of her storefront that she rents to travelers), and her price seemed steep, compared to the guidebooks, but still less than the generic hotel I'd stayed at last night in Pohang.

But she unleashed a monologue of discussion (what did I want to eat, I got that) when I'd gotten settled in my room and come back out to go off exploring.   "뒤에" [later],  I said, but I wasn't sure I was using the right word, until another ajumma came by on the street and yelled at my proprietess "뒤에!  뒤에!"  and added something to the effect of  "just listen to him, he said later."

I still probably wasn't using it quite correctly.   But at least I wasn't completely off the mark.

OK, I'm off.  In theory, given I showed I can do a 15 km hike in about 5 hours in Busan, on Saturday, I could walk around this island in a day (well, a long day).  According to the guidebook, it's 73 square kilometers.  That's a pretty small island.  I don't think I'll try that.  More later.