Isles of Jeju and U-do

Seoul to Jeju was the world's busiest air transport route last year with over 10million people flying it. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard Koreans tell me you need to go to beautiful Jeju, or the comparison between Jeju and Hawaii. 

I went and had a great time but felt a bit underwhelmed, I've been to more beautiful places in Korea, for example deokjeokkdo last month is a much more scenic island and it has the advantage of being much quieter and 'less touristy'. That being said I still had a good time on Jeju, the highlight was the boat trip to U-do where we rented quad bikes in the rain. It rained almost the whole weekend and the grey skies reminded me a bit of the Hebrides of home.

A little deviation from the standard jump photo this is more of a floaty one

Gotta get the geographical features in there.

On the boat to U-do

Trip to Andong and Gyeongju

Street art in Andong 

Big swings at Andong folk village

Standard jump

One of my fave Korean foods 안동찜닭

Night temple in Gyeongju 

Deokjeokdo - 덕적도

Deokjeokdo is marked here, and you can see the ferry route from Incheon harbour. It takes just over an hour by one of those ski boats (hydrofoils)  as I've heard them called.

Leaving Incheon, the weather was really windy so the boat was delayed quite a bit.

This is the beach at Seopori, it was pretty grey and very quiet. The water wasn't that cold though.

A couple of ajummas hard at work. They break the shell with a sharp claw and scoop out the shellfish.

Lovely views from one of the islands peaks.

Looking over Seopori beach and further afield.

it was a pretty difficult climb in flip-flops and I almost slipped a couple of times.

After dinner we got some fireworks and beers for the beach.

Lighthouse on the other end of the island.

The journey home, under the largest bridge in Korea.

Last post on Myanmar I promise!

This is a video I took of a guy in Mandalay just practicing his painting. He is hoping to get an apprenticeship as a sculptor, which is a very difficult job so first he has to prove his skills as an artist. For me it is always amazing to watch artists at work as I am so bad at painting myself. I forgot I had this video so when I found it I just stuck a backing track on it (my sleeping karma) and left it as it was.