I’ll make this a short entry… I have to catch my ferry back to Pohang. I went around to Chusan and Cheonbu again this morning, and also rode the cable car to the top of the hill here in Dodong. Mostly just wandering-around-sightseeing, as I tend to do.
Ulleungdo is famous for the things it makes with pumpkin, among other things, and although pumpkin is not normally one of my preferred tastes, they have these pumpkin jellied candies (섬더덕 제리) that are pretty good. [Correction!–dated 2009-09-17–섬더덕 is not pumpkin, but rather Codonopsis lanceolata (see wikipedia). I was confused because the woman selling to me was confused, but a friendly man on the ferry back from Pohang enlightened me. Anyway, I like the candies a lot, and probably the fact that it’s not pumpkin explains why.] I have bought some bags of them to take back to the LBridge kids, if I get a chance to pass them out on my last goodbye visit next Monday/Tuesday.
I’m pretty sure I’m headed back to Seoul tomorrow. Not that there aren’t tons of other places in Korea that I haven’t seen and that I would love to see, but I have a week left, at this point, and although I lived in Seoul (well, suburbs) for two years, there are a lot of toursity things I never got the chance to do. This will be my chance to explore and get to know a bit better the city that’s been my home.
Day: September 15, 2009
Caveat: Clockwise. Counterclockwise.
I went around the island of Ulleungdo twice today.
First, to make up for the viewless and deckless ferry ride across, I decided to get one of the "round the island" ferry excursion tours that are offered. Well, first thing in the morning, I walked out to the 도동등대 (dodongdeungdae, a downright stunning mouthful of frustrating Korean vowels, which means Dodong Lighthouse… actually, I think "Dodong" just means "island town"). That took about an hour. Then I got on the excursion boat at 9 and rode it around the island, which took about 2 hours. The boat was crowded with tour-group people, mostly large tribes of middle-aged and older Koreans, shoving and pushing and chatting and yelling and picnicking and taking each other's pictures. I tried to stay out of everyone's way. I noticed they had a second boat full of teenagers (middle schoolers or highschoolers on "school trip" most likely), so I probably should consider myself lucky. Then again, teenagers are more likely to be sociable with "foreigners" like me, as they are too young to care what the foreigner might think or say. But, the scenery was fabulous. So, that was "clockwise" around the island.
Then when I got off the boat, I got on a bus to 저동 (Jeodeong), which only took about 10 minutes. And I began walking. The island had no roads until 1976, only trails and round-the-island ferries. The government has been developing the island, and they've managed to complete about 80% of their island-circling highway. The northeast quadrant, between Jeodong and Seokpo, roughly, is not yet built. So, to go around the island by land, one has to walk at least this stretch of it. There are some stretches of highway of the "road to nowhere" variety because they don't connect to any town properly, and there's not bus service for that reason. So I had to walk about 5 km of highway and about 4 km of rough mountainous trail. There was a lot of up and down. But unlike in Busan, I'd remembered to get a big plastic water bottle, and I didn't feel lost — I followed the right signs, including one which memorably read "길없음" (gil-eops-eum = "no road existing" and pointing to the left, which therefore convinced me to take a right even though it was against my intuition of the moment. So, I didn't get lost. And by 3:30 pm, I was in Cheongbu, where I could catch a bus back around the north, west, and south sides of the island and back to Dodong, which is on the southeast corner. That was counterclockwise. It was a great day. I'm tired.
I took some video of both trips, and when the battery on my camera ran low, I took some pictures with my cell phone (which isn't allowing me to make calls, unfortunately, but which I still carry for it's handy pocket-watch and korean-english dictionary functionality). I'm not posting any pictures, from here, however, as I have to get things loaded across to my computer, and then, preferably, I should try to find a place where I can wifi directly online and not have to transfer to a USB stick to upload on a public computer.
So anyway, that was my day in Ulleungdo. I think it's the most beautiful place in Korea that I've seen, and it's in my top ten list of most beautiful places anywhere.