Archive: October 2005, Stories from Korea III

Arriving at Ulleung-do..

I went to the tourist information boot.
And without saying anything, the girl behind the counter pointed and said something about a sign below the counter: "free english guide". Although that was actually the last thing I wanted...a guide, I decided to wait for the guy since she already called him.

After 30 minutes he arrived, my tour guide for ulleung-do. I kind off forgot his name but I still have his business card somewhere so when I find it I will place it here. He introduced himself in perfect English and told me that he was born in korea, moved to the U.S., and came back to Korea again about 15 years ago. He settled on this island like a kind of tourist guide because it was such a quiet and distant place where living had a different pace than in the heavily overpopulated city of Seoul. He also told me that his house was already distroyed a number of times due to typhoons that hit the island often. His old home was located next to the sea, so as soon as the waves were getting a bit to high he could collect the scraps of his home.

We went out and already found a place to stay relatively quickly, for 30000 won a night I had a room with a view out to the ocean, a beautifull 2 person bed, a television, a shower and a toilet. Of course, it wasn`t the cheapest place, but before I went on my trip I decided that money wouldn`t be a constraint (untill a certain level). I was here to give myself a treat and that was just what I did. Later we had dinner and we decided to meet later that evening to get me a boat-tour of the island and a short walk along the coast.

The boat tour was pretty nice...although very noisy since the speaker on the boat was playing the ullueng-do song,,very, very,very loud. If it wasn`t the speaker annoying me it was the people feeding the sea-gulls chips. All in all it was a noisy tour on a boat cramped with tourists, just the thing I tried to avoid.

I also tried to avoid my tourguide a bit, but this was very difficult. Every person on the island seem to inform him about my position, and being the only non-korean tourist on the island also didn`t really help.
But eventually I gave up the stuburn attitude of: I WANT TO BE MY OWN GUIDE!, and let him guide me for some days of my stay.

The best day I remembered was a trip to a city where he had some children that he was tutoring. The village was a small fishing village with maybe a hunderd inhabitants. We went to a small house were we met one of the mothers of the children. He made sure to show me all the children I tutored (all girls) and I was pretty impressed. He told me that the children of this island had a different attitude than the ones from the city, and were a lot kinder and nicer too. He sent me out with them to give me a tour of the coastline. I got instructions to test their english ability..but like all korean children..it was very hard to get anything out of them (they were shy :)). We climbed some rocks, and again I noticed that they were a lot more agile than a 20 year old dutchmen. While they were jumping (without fear) from rock to rock, I was pretty afraid of slipping and breaking something. They brought me to a large space of relatively flat rock where they started to hunt for small crabs. I joined in the game and was actually enjoying myself. Here I am..on a small island in the middle of the sea..with some korean girls..hunting for small crabs. While playing the game there was actually some non-verbal interaction between me and the girls :)...they were..like most of the people i saw on the island..very beautifull, naturall, free and also very nice. Later we went back to their house and I met his oldest student who was about 16 years old. Her mother was pushing here to speak some english, and finally, after a few minutes..I heard some words..

What did I have for dinner on the island???...well..i`ve had a soup with a whole chicken in it, stuffed with rise. First you ate the chicken, then the rice, and then the soup. It was delicious. But the best thing I had was the squid-bulgogi. It was pretty spicy but the squid...it was heavenly tender and juicy...yumyum..probably the best meal I had ever (sorry mom and dad and microwave)

Other things I did their was climbing the highest top of the island, about 1000 meters. The day I decided to do it it was about 30 degrees celcius with a very high humidity. I made sure to have enough water on me, but if it wasn`t for the old lady sitting halfway up the mountain with some water and tea, I would have never made it. She was very nice and pretty surprised to see a white person climbing a mountain like this on such a warm and humid day. She offered me some more water and wished me good luck to the top. The landscape was just beautifull (as you can see from the pictures), the climb however was hard. When I came to the top my t-shirt was soaked with sweat. I actually took it off on the top and let it dry for a while. I enjoyed the beautifull view ib the top: Green hills whereever you looked and no sound except the a weak wind blowing through the leafs.

After a while I decided to go down and on my way I met some Korean climbers who saw my exhausted face and offered me some chocolates and..you can already guess it...soju. As always they were pretty amazed at the drinking skills of a westerner...hehe. Guus Hiddink got mentioned again and i got another shot of soju. With the sun shining on your head and a pretty high temperature I must say that those two shots hit pretty hard. Stumbling on my way down I again past the place were the old lady was sitting, and this time she offered me some tea and I bought some Pocari Sweat.

I went further down the mountain untill I eventually saw my village again and made a picture of it..
Than I finally came back and it was not long before I got a call from my guide, if I was ready for dinner, I told him that I just climbed the mountain, I called me crazy (in a positive way), and I told him that I was too tired to go out anymore.

In my 6 days of the island I often walked along the western coast line of the island. This was a beautiful path that was partially carved in the rock. So on the left you had a high cliff, and on the right you had the ocean. I often took strolls along it in the night. The only thing you heard then was the sea clutching against the rock and in the far distance you saw the bright lights of the squid boaths. On my way along the coast I came past a small cafe, if you can call it that, and one night I was invited to share a drink with some divers and the owner of the place. Although I couldn`t understand one word of the conversation, I did get that it was about the people off Ulleung-do and the people of the main land. The discussion became intenser and louder with every bottle of soju that they opened. It was pretty fun sitting there, enjoying the drink, and listen to koreans discussing matters you don`t know. Eventually one of the divers wanted a picture off me with his son, as you can see it the gallery. It is just great being invited without any reason by some random koreans to drink soju with them...no stranger in the netherlands would invite me for a free beer..

All in all the days were great on the island and I really enjoyed myself..although a bit of i-house company would have been fun too ;)...but they had to go to other countries...why search for paradise in other countries when Korea has one of its own? Ullueng-do...my paradise island..the place where I want to build a house for my last years :)

Paul