Alrightreads: Me

My childhood dream that I was always too lazy to realise has come true. I'm finally a published... photographer?

The author of a book on Coastal World Heritage Sites asked permission to use one of my photos of South Korea's Jeju Island. That was nice, she could have just stolen it like the BBC and everyone else.

I've reproduced the extract without such permission:

oh! NO~

I was a little surprised at the existence of Jeju Love Land on Korea's favourite holiday spot, Jeju Island - though the focus of this sculpture park and 'museum' is pretty much squarely on titillation (particularly penisillation) rather than anything too extreme. Despite their reserved manner, Koreans aren't compulsively puritanical, and this attraction isn't any more outrageous or corruptive to the young than the average British joke shop or seaside tat stall at Blackpool - until it dawns on you just how heterosexual the whole thing is. To a fault.

For a place so obsessed with cocks and presenting a softcore smorgasbord of sexual practices from around the world, the very notion of same-sex love or activities is glaringly omitted to the point of denial or ignorance here - as in pretty much all aspects of Korean life and culture. The light-hearted yet confusing and potentially offensive sign pictured above is practically the only admission that these sort of practices exist, and the caption doesn't seem particularly flattering. Though the inclusion of a heart confuses matters - are they admitting that romantic love accompanies this disgraceful act, or was it just a lazy choice for fig-leaf-style censorship?

(To avoid ambiguity, other signs depicting 'hilarious' sexual incidents all featured both a man and woman, the latter of which can be identified by being pink and having long hair like all women do).

Return to Hell

Image: yourenotfromaroundhere.com

Korea is covered in mountains but disappointingly low on active and deadly volcanoes, the bloody not-choking-to-death spoilsports. Even the stand-out feature of Jeju Island, Seongsan Ilchulbong, disappointed me slightly when I reached the summit and discovered it was a filled-in, Arthur's Seat-style extinct volcano rather than a Bromo-style sulphuric belcher. Well, it was a nice view.

But Jeju still had a few surprises left for me, including an extensive network of lava tunnels underground that made me feel like I was heading back to Hell. And we all know the ordeal I went through last time - I still can't look at a frying pan without wincing.

Jeju - The Isle of Wight of South Korea

The language barrier and ethnic homogeny clearly delineate South Korea from Great Britain, but in other ways this East Asian republic isn't a million miles away from England (actually, only about 5,400 miles). Take a look at this scene from Jeju Island, for example:

How am I managing to survive in such an alien environment?

South Korea is also roughly the same size as the UK and even its coastline doesn't look all that different, with South Jeolia jutting out to the south-west like some kind of Cornwall, and South Chungcheong basically being Wales. I guess that makes North Korea the Scotland of Korea? I can't see any problem there.

That means idyllic and slightly backwards Jeju Island, the southest you can get, is an ideal candidate for the Isle of Wight of South Korea - not its Hawaii, as the tourism industry wants you to think. Anyway, what's Hawaii got that the Isle of Wight hasn't? Exactly. Stop talking, I already said 'exactly,' which closes the debate.

Here's more stuff from Jeju.

Holiday

Because I don't celebrate Christmas or New Year, I usually get annoyed around that time of the year when the Western world shuts down and less work comes my way. This problem wasn't so severe in Korea (or in Taiwan the same time last year), but to curb any remaining Scrooge-style festive frustrations, I gave myself permission to take a holiday in the last few weeks of December. Everyone else bloody does.

Let's be clear that all this travelling around Asia and a couple of other places over the past sixteen months hasn't been a holiday - I've still been working as much as I can, and between work, blogs and the day trips necessitated by the blogs, there hasn't been much time to relax. I don't think I've been on what could be accurately categorised as a holiday since a weekend break to the Lake District in 2009, which was extremely rejuvenating and put me in a great mood for a long time after. I understand the value of holidays, I'm just not very good at taking them.

So last month I informed my editors that I'd only be able to do about two hours of work per day. I'm on holiday. And I had to be careful with my money due to an impending, whopping tax bill. Holiday. And I'd still be spending more hours than you think writing these blogs, of course - otherwise, what's the point of going anywhere? I'm on holiday. Then Kim Jong-il died and South Korea declared a state of emergency. Holiday.