Day 233

Day 233 - 25.06.10

Busan, a city I fell in love with right away. I might have something for port cities.

Yes, wildflowers are prettier than cultivated ones

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. (  <img src= ) 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.

Black pig and other food

As all regions in the world, Jeju has its specialities: oranges/clementines, chocolates and meat from a local black pig. On the last day I finally tried the black pig meat. As everyone knows, I'm not a connoisseur in terms of meat... it just tasted like pork with all the fatty bits. I liked the veggies and the sauce though. This brings me to the question of food in Korea. So far, as expected, I've had some trouble finding meals without meat in them that weren't kimchi stew or bean based. I really do look at all the options for the food but I still can't really bring myself to ordering meat dishes often. The lack of tofu dishes is quite a change from China, I suppose it's not a very popular thing around here. ( Gali tries more snacks and funky drinks and visits more airports ) As a side note, what's up with the trend for guys to have huge rocks on their wedding rings? I knew that some SK males were all about being metrosexual but damn! And as a side side note, I saw one of them Krispy Kreme doughnut places. First time I see one in real life, I've only read about them and their crazy waiting lines in Japan, apparently they're also here.