Yes, wildflowers are prettier than cultivated ones

[cerealjoe]

By my count, this will be the before-last post covering Jeju. It's from yesterday and the arboretum. I have about fifty photos but would they actually interest anyone? Probably not. So here are some stuff that I found more than fascinating or pretty or just plain old interesting. Would it be mean of me to say that the prettiest flowers I found at the arboretum were wild flowers? Alas, yes, that arboretum isn't all that well taken care of. Some parts are clearly returning to their natural state and in some of the "gardens" I couldn't find where the plants were. Actually my taking photos of wild flowers highly amused one ajusshi who felt the need to stop and show me that indeed it's a thumbs up thing I was doing. The rose garden was well devoid of roses, we'll blame the fact that it's not really rose season right now. Local wildlife. BTW, I also saw a deer in the distance. More local wildlife. The high school girls could not understand why I was taking a photo of a spider web that's along the most walked-by path. Eventually I found some space without hoards of people. This was the "landscape" area. I do not understand what is its link with landscaping but everyone wanted a photo there. And ajummas were going around the area while energetically waving their arms. I have already mentioned the shrines/tombs that are all over the place? These were close to the "Green Showers Area". I think they named it "green showers" because by the time you climb up there you're so drenched that you look like you've just gotten out of the shower. I couldn't find a good way to get a contrast so that all the layers of volcanoes can be easily seen. Basically there are three different mountains in the back... alas the fog makes it hard to capture in a photo. All the places where you can walk have these rubber mats and they were around the trees at the top of the arboretum where the ajummas and ajusshis were talking and exercising. Most just used the trees to lean on to stretch but some were hitting the trunks with their palms. On these occasions I really wish I could speak Korean so I could ask them just what they were doing... maybe getting some evil spirits out of the trees, or more likely, just exercising their wrists or something. Jeju <3 <3 <3 As I said previously, I am really 12 years old at heart and these kinds of things easily amuse me. We'll also blame the lack of flowers in the Orchid expo house to it not being the season. This was one of the few ones that were in bloom. If I didn't have my water bottle I'd have tried drinking out of one of these. Spot the real, the fake and me! And as a final note, let's remember the happiness and weirdness factor that fangirly Korean high school girls bring. Yup, I'm not a creeper... so no proper pictures but that's them going away after taking photos of yours truly. Oh yeah, and Busan is all kinds of awesome even though right now it's raining. But hey, I'm here in an air conditioned space with tea and a red bean strudel... I doubt that life could get much better than this, holidays with red bean and kimchi are up there at the top of my awesome holidays list. Although this place kind of looks like the headquarters of the local version of the yakuza (what's the Korean name, anyone know?), there are tons of beefy looking guys dressed in nice suits just kind of idling around.