There is a chain of stores in South Korea called Emart, where you can buy basically anything you would ever need, a store so universal that the only modifier “mart” needs is the single most common letter in the English language. On Saturday nights the place pops, free samples of everything, excited crowds all over. You can go there and just fill yourself up with samples and it adds up to a pretty decent meal. Ron is a young man that works at the Emart, and therefore a very decent human being. Today, Ron decides to take a little day trip out to Manjanggul, a famous lava tube system on Jejudo, Korea’s foremost honeymoon or semitropical holiday destination. He rents a little car in Jejusi and quickly takes a liking to it on his drive. I like to imagine him humming a little bit as he takes the turn for Manjanggul, rain pattering on the windshield. He swerves slightly to avoid the spider-legged corpse of a ruined umbrella, tumbleweeding its way along the road. The umbrella is not the most forlorn thing he will see that day, or even that minute. A couple hundred meters down the road, he finds a damp backpacker in full trudge. Ron is an empathetic kind of guy. He stops and rolls down his window. “Manjanggul-eh ga-yo?” he asks. I laugh and nod. “Manjanggul.” In the cave and on the ride to Seongsan, our fortunately shared final destination, I tell him about my trip.

I didn’t tell anyone about this beforehand because I knew some of you would flip your lids, but I took a ferry to Jeju. Those flipping lids would recall that the MV Sewol, which sank in April and killed some 300 people, was also en route to Jeju. This ferry was an overnight, 11 hours from Busan. I was a little sad to leave what was my favourite city in a while, but the views on the way out were some consolation. I spent most of my waking hours on the rear deck, watching the sun go down or come up. The ship rumbled and rattled and coughed fumes like a 6 MPG muscle car. It was funny to me at first, waiting for one of the freighters to pull up alongside and gun its engines, but after a while I started to feel the stacks depositing a layer of grime on my arms and wonder how long it took to contract black lung. At night, far from shore, the ocean sucked up the ship’s light in a matter of about ten feet, and I thought about what it would be like to be dropped out there, in the middle of the ocean, in the total darkness. I thought I would die of fear before drowning. Even the sky at least had stars. That sight spent some time bouncing around my mind, and I half woke midway through the night, sure I was dreaming. It was a pretty good explanation, I thought, for what I was doing on a mat on the floor down in third class of a Korean ferry. But more than that, it was an explanation for the water’s darkness: I had failed to imagine anything beyond the boat’s railings, and there the world ended.

My first day was spent on Udo, a little island off Jejudo that reminded me powerfully of PEI. There were horses just chilling all over the place. I saw a cow. There were all kinds of vehicles for rent, scooters and ATVs, but I ultimately went with a bicycle because I had lots of time, it was cheap, and I really missed my bike. Renting this bike was possibly the best decision I’ve made in my entire life. The index gear shifter didn’t work, but I didn’t want out of 3 anyway. I need to find my way back to bike ownership.

Back at the guest house in Jejusi, I joined the owner, a Chinese chef and his brother and uncle, an ocarina craftsman, and a Hong Kong student for a few beers. South Korea is cool that way.

I enjoyed my breakfast today. Toast is considered a treat here and bread is nearly always sweet, so the breakfast cereal = candy thing we have going in Canada actually can and does go farther elsewhere. Before leaving the city, I wanted to check out the “noodle street” that’s apparently famous. I wandered on over to that part of town, again reminded of PEI, this time Charlottetown, an anemic city that tries its hardest to look good for the tourists, but no one’s fooled. It was spitting rain and almost everything was closed, I assume because it’s Sunday, so I allowed myself to be ushered into the first place I found that looked open. The proprietor’s friendliness was quickly explained to me by the three empty growlers on the table he was sitting at with his friend. It was 12:15. The woman in charge of cooking (and, seemingly, everything – I’m not sure what the official function of the two men was) was sober enough to put together a very nice bowl of soup, though, so I left happy and hiked over to the bus station.

I got off the bus at a stop clearly marked “Manjanggul”. I looked around. There were no caves. There were only two other people at the same stop, a young couple that were quickly picked up by a taxi and left me alone and confused. Ludicrously, I resented them. I knew that, generally speaking, I needed to head south, and there was only one north-south road in the vicinity. The rain was coming down a little harder, but I knew it wasn’t going to get any better. I pulled out the umbrella I had had since Busan. The sharp-minded reader will recall that I was in Busan during Typhoon Nakri, which means that this umbrella had seen some pretty serious punishment. I remembered it as having one broken arm, but it had broken another at some point. The main shaft wasn’t in very good shape either, having been wrestled against unfairly strong winds, and wouldn’t lock at its full length anymore. It was better than nothing, I figured. It actually turned out to be about the same as nothing, but I guess it wasn’t worse. I set off. I hadn’t gone far when a strong gust inverted the umbrella and pulled it to the edge of my grasp. I moved to bring it back in, but as I pulled on the handle, it broke off, and the umbrella sailed away down the road. I gazed sadly after it. I knew that I wasn’t going back to the bus stop, having only this one day to see Manjanggul, and knew further that there was no way I was going to find another umbrella sooner than the end of this road. I squared my shoulders.

I hadn’t gone another hundred meters when Ron stopped up ahead and reversed to meet me, which made him one of my top 3 best friends in the world. Manjanggul was pretty cool, and now I’m at some other guesthouse in the middle of bloody nowhere. I didn’t realize where it was when I booked it, but, so it goes. There is, apparently, a restaurant nearby that the owner has offered to drive me to when a table opens up. He seems like a nice man. I will make a final assessment of his character at the restaurant.