Ulleungdo-Pohang, back to the mainland

We started the morning off with a boat tour around the island. Before the boat even left, both Danthemanstan and I weren’t too excited about one aspect of the boat ride. Almost every other passenger (they were all presumably Korean) was infatuated with feeding the seagulls. Now, I don’t have any disregard for seagulls, and am more than happy to see a few and snap some pictures (they aren’t so common in Iowa). But, when all fifty people on the deck of the boat are holding up some shrimp flavored Cheetos-like snacks, the seagulls become too much. A rational person might think that seagull poop would be a deterrent…but he would be wrong. More than a few people got pooped on (luckily not Danthemanstan nor I) but they, or their friends continued to feed the seagulls. On the definitively strange side of things was a man who took advantage of the seagull surplus, and went primitive-catching seagulls out of mid-air in his hands. It was pretty awesome, I saw him nab three of them, and Danthemanstan got a good picture of it, which may be on his blog. On the whole, though, the boat tour was awesome and provided great views of the island and the beautifully clear ocean. After lunch we checked out of the guesthouse. Well sort of, in fact, we hadn’t seen the staff since check in, and they weren’t at home, so we just left the key on the floor in front of the door. We saw the grandma from the guesthouse on the way down the road, and did our best with non-verbal language to tell her as much. When walking around the island we ran into a man we had met on the ferry. He was a college professor of sorts, and spoke great English. We chatted about traveling, and he was very enthused for his trip to Dokdo. Apparently tickets are hard to get to the two rocks, as there’s stiff demand from the geriatric tour groups getting in the nationalistic pilgrimage before they’re too old.

While waiting for our ferry back to Pohang, we had a very interesting conversation with an older gentleman. He started chatting with me, and I found out that he had been a high school teacher for quite a long time. He said he taught ethics and because we don’t have that in the States, I requested he elaborate a bit on it. As he stated, it wasn’t really ethics but actually just anti-communism-so more of a political science class. He explained that there wasn’t much of a need for the class anymore, and it’s been falling off most curriculum lists around South Korea. Apparently when you’re ranked among the twenty wealthiest nations, and your communist neighbors to the North need international food aid to feed 1/3 of the country, anti-communist rhetoric becomes unwarranted. Hooray for Samsung, LG, and Kia!

Our boat ride back to Pohang was much calmer than the ride there. Once back, we headed back to the Rich Hotel, but this time the friendly and feisty owner wasn’t there. This was no deterrent, as we were able to simply write down our desired price on a piece of paper, which was accepted, we gave the receptionist the cash, and she gave us the key. Nice, easy, quick transactions, one more reason to love South Korea. As well as the PC with Internet connections in every room of the Rich Hotel! I had a painfully spicy dinner, but it was my fault, as I didn’t fully appreciate the meaning of the three chili peppers on the picture menu. Warning to any future Korean travelers, three chili peppers means three chili peppers. Even Danthemanstan, who has a spicy tongue, stated candidly “yeah, that’s hot”.