Sometimes Life does not cooperate with the general flow of blog posts. Sometimes nothing happens and I have nothing to post about. Sometimes I don’t have time to post, or things are too personal to post. But sometimes, sometimes, I have supersaturated days, where I want to make sure I blog about everything that happened (even if you don’t want to read it). And these days are so supersaturated that it’s nearly impossible to write about them, because the updates will turn into the blog version of A la recherche du temps perdu. Length-wise.

My last full day on Jeju in South Korea was one of those days. So make yourself a cup of tea, break out a box of madeleines, and put on your reading glasses (they aren’t lost, they’re on the top of your head), because things are about to get Proust-ian. Length-wise.

“So where will you go today?”

“I think I’ll go to Udo Island,” I said.

“I wish I could go with you,” he replied.

And that is how I came to spend my day with a Korean man who came up to my chin. Sayeong worked at the front desk of Yeha Guesthouse. The way he smiled at me and talked to me whenever he had free time, I could tell that he was the Korean Yusup, but with better English. And not teenaged.

“It is my honor to go with you today,” he said as we walked to the bus station.

Visiting foreign countries is so much more enjoyable when you get shown around by a local who’s got a thing for you. I don’t thrive on attention from others, but I’ll admit, especially after the “Mark” fiasco, it was nice to be doted on the whole day (not financially—I paid my way).

While we waited for our bus at the station, a woman in funky purple glasses started chatting with Sayeong, and I didn’t need to understand them to know they were talking about me. Seems she and Sayeong had something in common, as she took a shine to me right quick, and told me I was the prettiest foreigner ever to grace the bus station. And then, naturally, she asked me to guess her age.

DANGER DANGER WARNING RED ALERT

“Thirty-five,” I answered. She looked like she was in her mid-forties.

She liked me even more after that.

Then Sayeong insisted we take our picture together, the first of many, many pictures. We stood side by side in front of the bus, and Sayeong grabbed my arm, draping it over his shoulder as he placed his arm around me.

Though the bus ride only lasted about an hour, the driver seemed intent on testing Newton’s Law of Inertia, stopping and starting as smoothly as whiplash. Soon I was queasy and clammy. Sayeong, distressed that my hands were chilly, proceeded to give me a hand “massage-y” to improve my “calculation.”

See why it’s great to be shown around by someone who likes you? Free massages. But he also made me guess his age.

Sayeong is from a small town but moved to Seoul for university. He stayed there for ten more years until he decided he wanted to live somewhere with fresh air, so he moved to Jeju. It also didn’t hurt that there are far more women than men on Jeju, so the odds are in his favor when it comes to finding a wife. He had been in Jeju for two months when I met him. He wants to take the exam to become a government official, since those are the best jobs, but the exam is excruciatingly difficult and, he said, nearly impossible for anyone to pass.

When we finally arrived at the dock, we found we had missed the one o’clock ferry by ten minutes and would have to wait until two. Sayeong had insisted we eat jjajangmyun once we get to Udo, so I was characteristically famished. Thankfully he yielded a bit to my bitching blood sugar and bought me some fried rice puffs.

I ate about half the glorious bag before I made the mistake of looking at the nutrition information. I made Sayeong take the bag away from me.

Soon the ferry lurched to sea, and fifteen minutes later we were docking at Udo Island and heading out for lunch.

On Jeju and Udo, the roofs of most houses are painted red, blue, or green, which denotes the inhabitants’ clan/surname. And since Kims, Lees, and Parks together make up half the population, I guess they only needed three colors.

Soon we arrived at the jjajangmyun restaurant Sayeong had researched (this was also his first trip out to Udo). Since we were the only diners, it didn’t take long for the jjajangmyun to arrive. What is jjajangmyun? You mean you can’t tell from the name? So much for studying Latin!

Jjajangmyun is noodles.

And brown, fried soybean sauce OF BOWL-LICKING GLORY.

Take sauce, dump on noodles.

Use chopsticks (in Korea they use skinny, flat, metal chopsticks, which utilize an entirely different muscle and skill set),

and toss.

Make sure you let the Korean do it, unless you’ve done chopstick cross-training and can adeptly juggle slippery noodles using two needles.

Eat.

You can take pictures of ellis eating if you like, but since ellis runs the blog, she doesn’t have to post the unflattering ones. She’ll pick the flattering photos, gamsahapnida very much.

We also had this lovely seafood soup.

Filled with noodles and octopus and shellfish and rainbows and singing birds.

Sayeong seemed to enjoy doting on me, and this is a behavior I’ve noticed with Chinese men as well. They will, at least in the early/courting phase, take very good care of the girl, opening doors, putting food on her plate, peeling or de-boning food when necessary, refilling her tea class, carrying her purse, and basically, trying to impress her. (From what I’ve observed, in most cases, this tends to cease after marriage. Go figure!)

Once we had cleaned our bowls, we hustled out, since the last ferry back to Jeju was at five. The owner of the restaurant kindly drove us back to the port

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so that we could

It seemed the best way to see the island in a short amount of time, plus I think it satisfied some macho part of Sayeong’s ego to drive an ATV around the island.

I just made him promise not to kill me. There are so many things I haven’t eaten yet…

So around we drove. Please keep in mind that most of the following photos are taken from a moving vehicle; they won’t be quite the Plate of Wander quality you’ve come to expect.

The ‘sand’ on this beach is made entirely of pieces of coral.

It was the perfect vacation afternoon: with a new friend, doing something new and exciting in a beautiful, different place.

Sayeong was really in to taking pictures. He’d point to things and say “Take a picture of that.” Everywhere we went he’d ask if I wanted a picture. And strangely, I think I got the highest percentage of good photos of me since having a personal paparazzo in Beijing two and a half years ago.

And while we waited for the ferry, he insisted on taking more pictures.

On the ferry back, Sayeong didn’t want the day to end, so suggested that instead of going back to Jeju city, we should first go to Seopjikoji, a picturesque area on the coast not too far away.

Good thing I said yes.

It’s famous not just because it’s pretty, but because they shot some famous TV drama/soap opera there.

Sure, Sayeong, there are lots of girls on Jeju, but major bonus that you live somewhere with such beautiful sunsets.

We slept the whole ride back to Jeju.

I then treated Sayeong to dinner at a restaurant of his recommendation, where they serve the fish Okdom, which can only be found in the waters off Jeju and a nearby area of Japan. As our day was ending and my time in Korea was ending quickly, I called for a big meal that cast aside worries over digestive and financial limits. (Luckily it didn’t turn out to be that expensive.)

First, of course, the kimchi spread.

And then some makgeolli, a traditional Korean alcohol made from rice. It has a milky color and it’s sweet, not too strong, and you drink it from a bowl.

We ordered two soups. First, sea urchin soup.

I know, it sounds kind of ehhhhhhh, but actually, wow. Salty, light, seaweedy. Sea urchin is kind of like the ocean’s natural matzoh ball.

And then this spicy fish soup with veggies.

Sayeong was nice and let me eat the fish cheeks, the best part.

But what you really need to know about is the okdom.

The okdom. Sounds like something from Lord of the Rings right? It tastes like a fantasy too. It’s grilled, so the skin is really crispy. I ate the skin like it was a potato chip. I tell you, I had NO idea fish skin could be so amazing.

Sayeong took it upon himself to skillfully debone the fish.

And then he let me eat almost all of it. So of course I did. It was so good. It’s also incredibly salty, so Sayeong reminded me a few times: “Because it is very salty, would you please to eat it with the rice.”

It was SO. GOOD. OMG OKDOM NOM NOM NOM.

Ahem. Excuse me.

As we walked through the neighborhood back to the hostel, I could sense Sayeong’s sadness that our day was over and soon I would leave. “You are so beautiful, like a supermodel,” he said. I laughed. He said he liked his job because he could meet pretty girls like me.

“See Sayeong?” I replied. “Soon you’ll meet another beautiful girl and forget me.”

“No,” he said. “You are the most beautiful girl. No one is as beautiful as you.”