Jeju Island

I know what you are thinking. This series of travel posts is long enough and you are tired of it.

I am tired too. But it kept going. 

I was invited to speak at one more conference, on Jeju Island, South Korea. When I received the invitation, I was already going to be in South Korea for the previous conference, and it was only two more days, and so I said yes. And I am glad that I went, although it added up to a lot of conferences in a row, and I was very tired.

In any case, I have far more pictures from Jeju Island than my other destinations, because the woman who invited me took me on tours around the island on Saturday afternoon and on Sunday after the conference was over. Also, one of the graduate students was from Jeju, and he had a lot of interesting insights. And everyone around me was Korean, and extremely friendly, and local, and already knew their favourite places on the island. And they wanted to show me. So in all, it was really an amazing experience.

First picture: the view from the conference hotel.

Saturday morning, I walked along the coast with a couple of grad students between breakfast and the first talks. This stone grandfather is a common figure in Jeju. He protects the villages? Or something like that....

Coastal views. It wasn't cold, but not exactly warm enough for swimming. And yet, early in the morning, off the shore, there were people in wet suits diving. Diving! The local said that Jeju is known for stone, wind, and women. And it is known for women because they are out in the sea working! Their diving women go out every morning and collect fresh seafood. And there they were, out in the ocean in the chill early morning.

Saturday afternoon, we went for three walks. The first was into a forest, and it was nice but not as photogenic as the next two.

The second walk was to the top of a volcanic hill. The island of Jeju is volcanic, with one major volcano that you can hike -- but we didn't because it would have taken all day. Otherwise there are many small hills, also volcanic. We hiked one of these hills and had a gorgeous panoramic view of the island.

And some photos with local cows.

The third walk was to the top of a crater by the sea. Here is a view from the front.

And a view from the top looking back to the land.

We left the grad students here. My host asked what I wanted to eat, and I was willing to try anything.

"Are you up for a challenge?" she asked.

And so we went to a very small local restaurant that served exactly the seafood that those diving women had hauled in earlier in the day: Abalone. Conch. Sea squirts. Sea cucumber. Octapus. Some fish eggs. None of it cooked. Bon appetit.

Below is a meta-picture. A picture of a picture of diving women collecting an octapus from the sea, at the restaurant where we ate.

Sunday morning exploring. This waterfall drops into the sea. It was very near our hotel.

A rock formation in the sea.

And a nearby swimming hole.

We both dipped our feet in, but neither of us had swimsuits on, so wet feet is all we got. 

Little stands all over the island sold juice of mandarin oranges. It was all very fresh and very tasty!

See how that bottle above is in the shape of this stone grandfather guardian below?

Our next walk was along the seashore. It began by dropping down through two steep cliffs.

And then walking along the wind and wave shaped cliffs. It kind of looked like Southern Utah, except with blue ocean and tide pools.

This lady below was sitting on the side of the sea with buckets full of live sea creatures. If you pay her money, she will chop them for you, still wriggling, and you can enjoy the very fresh taste of raw sea cucumber, conch, and sea squirt. I didn't do it. I tried all that Saturday night.

Me in front of the mountain.

For lunch, we stopped and ate eel. It was very good, but a lot of food for two.

In the evening, we toured a lava tube cave that stretches under the northwest part of the island. The long cool walk through the tunnel was a relief after the hot, humid air outside. (Although really the weather wasn't that bad in shorts and a T-shirt.)

Sunset.

Dinner: Korean barbecue. Cook your own food at your table.

And that was it. The next morning I flew from Jeju to Seoul. In the Seoul Incheon airport, this woman was playing a traditional Korean instrument. It was very cool and she was very good.

The end. Back to Melbourne. Done with work travel for a while.

On to South Korea

Friday I stayed overnight in London Heathrow. Saturday morning I flew to Seoul.

You wouldn't know it to look at a flat map, but London and Seoul are only a 10 hour flight apart. That's about the same length of flight as Melbourne to Singapore, or Melbourne to Hong Kong. It is much shorter than the 14 hour flight from Melbourne to LA, or Melbourne to Dubai. Anyway, my plan was to fly 10 hours over the top of the world from London to Seoul, arriving around 7:30am to catch a train across South Korea.

In London, we got into the jet, and sat for a while. And then sat some more. After two hours of sitting on the tarmac, we were told that the plane had a small problem and we were going back to the airport.

Six hours later, having eaten a nice meal and walked 10,000 steps around the London Heathrow airport, I boarded the new plane once again, and flew overnight to Seoul.

I had missed my train.

I inquired at the service desk about the next train to Pohang, and found there were no seats -- standing room only for the first hour, although I could get a seat for the final ninety minutes. The alternative was to wait another five hours for the train arriving at 11:30pm. I opted to stand.

Good choice! I boarded the train early enough that I was able to secure for myself a fold out seat between carriages. So for my first hour, I was comfortably seated after all. As was my second and third.

And when I arrived at Pohang, I recognised a colleague at the train station, there to pick up someone else who apparently was on the same train with me from Seoul. So rather than flag a taxi and figure out how to give them directions to the university, I got a ride with them. A little spot of convenience after an inconvenient six hour delay.

****

There was one other inconvenient thing from the trip to Pohang. The light in my hotel room had a motion sensor, which you wouldn't think would be inconvenient. It would come on conveniently when I walked in the door, or when I woke up in the darkness to use the toilet. But inconveniently, it also came on every time the mini-fridge turned on. Or when someone walked through the hallway upstairs. I was so tired after the flight and train ride that I didn't notice the light until about 3:00 in the morning. But then the bright light turning on with the refrigerator woke me up over and over and over. I tried to wear a mask so I could ignore it, but the mask didn't fit well. I unplugged the fridge, and that helped, but by then I was fully awake. Terrible motion sensing light!

The next night, I climbed up on my hotel chair and took the cover off the light and untwisted the light bulb. Ah. No unexpected bright lights tonight!

But then I couldn't figure out how to get the cover back on the light. So I left it off, on the desk in my room, hoping that the cleaning staff wouldn't fix the bulb.

That evening, I returned to the room to find the cover on the light attached again. But the bulb remained non-functioning. Clearly other guests have had the same problem, and made the same fix. And the wonderful housekeepers had fixed the problem for me perfectly.

****

Anyway, my four days in Pohang were mostly spent working and at the conference, and giving a talk that was not recorded. I also had a couple of very nice traditional Korean meals, and one lovely excursion into the nearby area on Wednesday afternoon. Below are a few pictures.

Traditional Korean meal: We took off our shoes, sat on the floor next to long tables, while servers brought more and more and more and more food. Until we all rolled away. 

Me in a museum, centered just under an ancient crown.

 At a Buddhist temple with friendly colleagues.

 J ringing the bell for peace.

 Another Buddhist temple.

 And another traditional meal.

This time I took a picture of the entire spread. And all of us on the floor for a long time. You get to build up your floor-sitting muscles. Except you don't really have floor-sitting muscles. Uncurling after the meal is just going to hurt.

So you see that visiting this part of South Korea was really nice. It was a wonderful conference, with wonderful colleagues, and wonderful meals.

But looking through the photos, I recalled one other small inconvenience of the trip. One of the last mornings of the conference, I woke up a little bleary, still somewhat jet-lagged, and crawled into the shower. With my eyes mostly closed, I rubbed soap all over my body. Then I put the soap down and rinsed. A moment later, the soap slipped off its place and landed upside down on the shower floor, and this is what I saw stuck to the soap:

That insect-thing was about the size of the last knuckle of my thumb. And I had just rubbed it all over my body.

I left the creature and the soap there on the floor of the shower.

Amusingly, at the end of the day the soap was still there for me, but a careful housekeeping service had scraped the creature off of the soap so I could use it again.

I didn't. I left it there when I headed to the airport on Friday morning.

Marseille

We landed in Marseille around 10am, local time. After getting out of the airport into the city, we immediately checked into a hotel and slept for four hours.

Feeling somewhat rested, we walked down the hill to the old harbour. There was a market going on. In jet-lagged stupor, I contemplated the idea of walking all the length of the old harbour to see the outdoor market. That sounded tiring.

And then I saw a sign advertising a cruise to the Calanques, part of a national seashore nearby. That was it! That was the way to fend off jet lag. Student and I hopped on and let someone else drive for a couple of hours.

After the boat trip, we ate at a lovely vegetarian restaurant that the student tracked down to suit her dietary needs.

We checked out of the hotel, and took a taxi up to the university, now late at night.

When we pulled up, we saw a family of wild boars.

Then we had to haul our suitcases a long way past construction, shouting all the way to the wild boars that we did not want to see them, and they should please stay away from us. We saw no more wild boars the entire week.

****

The workshop in Marseille was called a school, with lots of graduate students in attendance, and four professors giving a series of introductory talks in their fields. I gave one series. A friend who was organising the workshop gave another. The very first day, she mentioned that with all the organising work she had been doing, she hadn't had much time to prepare her talks.

I smiled, remembering the paperwork I had been mailed earlier that week, and asked if that was the case, did she still want to record the talks, to post them on the internet for ever and ever?

"Oh," she said, "no one is recording my talk. Your talk is the only one being posted on the internet."

"What????"

"We had to choose one, and we chose yours. I hope you are prepared...."

Great.

****

Since I was only in France until Friday, I decided I had no problem with remaining jet lagged. The first night I went to bed soon after 8:30pm. The second night I was tired and not hungry, so I skipped dinner and went to bed at 7:30pm. The third night I stayed up for dinner, going to bed at 8:30pm. The fourth night was their special feast, bouillabaisse, with soup and bread and more cooked fish than anyone could eat. For that, I stayed up until 9:30. The fifth night I flew to London, in preparation for the next stage of the trip. And didn't check into my airport hotel until 10:30pm. And so after five days of slowly staying awake later and later, I found myself terribly jet lagged again in Seoul on Sunday morning, after all.

Here are some pictures of my trip to Marseille, short as it was.

View from the top of the Calanques, out over the Mediterranean. I timed it. This was a 30 minute walk from the conference centre.

View at the bottom of the Calanques. Wednesday we had a free afternoon, and I hiked down with a woman from Greece. The water was gorgeous, so we stepped in to swim.

And it was freezing freezing cold. The Greek woman was very disappointed. Her Mediterranean is never as cold as the Mediterranean of these French people. But we both swam anyway. Very very cold.

Me giving talks. Now available on YouTube.

Singapore

I have been traveling a lot, and not keeping up with the pictures and adventures here on the blog. I'm now on vacation, and I plan to spend some time catching up.

I think we left off just after Okinawa, Japan. I flew home from Okinawa, spent a little over a week with the family, then packed up again and flew to Singapore.

Today's post: Singapore.

I had never been in Singapore before. I decided to stop there on my way to Europe, because flying to Europe from Australia requires about 24 hours of time on an airplane, split into two long long flights. Last time I stopped in Dubai. This time I decided to stop in Singapore, and spend a couple of days.

In any case, Singapore is a lovely city. I visited a colleague on Friday during the day. That evening I went to the Gardens by the Bay and took pictures.

I was traveling with a student. On Saturday, we checked out of our hotel around noon, then took a train to Little India for lunch. I had what was probably the best Indian food I've ever eaten at a random restaurant there. I took a picture so I'll be able to find it again the next time I fly to Singapore.

After Little India, we headed to the botanic gardens, which were lovely.

Pause here while I insert some pictures from the botanic gardens.

First, this huge lizard walked right out on the sidewalk in front of us and really scared me! Apparently they have huge lizards just wandering around in the sticky heat in Singapore.

Some lovely tropical botanic garden views. 

But we were right on the equator, and the temperature was about 30 degrees Celsius, and the humidity was about 90 percent. We were really hot, and totally soaked in sweat within half an hour. Our plan of spending the rest of the day in the gardens did not seem so great anymore.
So we returned to the hotel, and I hopped in the hotel pool for a little while before heading out to the airport. The hotel pool was very lovely. No pictures, unfortunately, but visualise turquoise blue on the top of a building in a tropical paradise.

Unfortunately I had no towel, so after a really nice swim, I attempted to air dry myself. And packed the wet swim suit into a plastic bag. And then took a taxi to the airport and let all of it moulder for a 14 hour overnight flight to London. Followed by a flight to Marseille, France. (Yeah, the swim suit didn't smell great by the time I arrived, but it cleaned up just fine, so the swim was totally worth it.)

The end for now.