We're on holiday! We have been on the road for 6 months and decided we needed a break, especially as we both have had gunky colds. We headed for Jeju-do as planned, but instead of staying with a HC host in the north, we have taken a hotel room in the sub-tropical south, costing us a stiff but not unaffordable 15,000 won (GBP7.50) each a night. It is a 5 minute stagger from both the town one way, and the harbour the other.
We have a TV in our room, a bit of a novelty, so we have watched lots of movies on the English language channel, all subtitled in Korean. We have been out a bit - to laze on the beach, to lie in a hammock on the Botanical gardens, to wander along to a local waterfall, and to eat. The weather is fairly perfect - about 23C, morning, noon and night. Just enough cloud to be pretty without getting in the way. Blue sky, blue water, tangerine groves, lovely sunsets; definately beats working!
The only down side is the never ending presence of tanks of sea animals languishing outside restaurants waiting to be dinner: fish of all kinds, squid, cuttlefish, octopus of various sizes, abalone and crabby thingies. There must be hundreds of tanks at least, in this town alone. I have rarely been so glad to be vegetarian, and not, at least, contributing to the suffering, although I feel a bit guilty about not fighting it either. As a vegetarian, it is easier to eat here than Japan, as long as I like veggie bibimbap. Tonight however, I did succumb to a huge mound of cheese calling itself a pizza. Haven't really had cheese for ages, so a bit of a treat and have taken anti-foodintolerance stuff so maybe Andy will survive to another day....
Tomorrow we are going to try to bestir ourselves and venture to the east end of the island to a volcano and maybe, hmm, another beach. The bus will probably cost us a quid, which is OK, but will take about 2 hours, which is not so good, and may well crash, which is a bit crap. We have been in 2 near misses on buses here so far, but I suppose it's good training for S.E. Asia.
Current book: Les Miserables ***/***** Was the only book that looked likely to last me long enough.