So this adventure was centered around the western island of Biyangdo and some Japanese war tunnels and anti--aircraft gun positions. Biyangdo is the island you can see from Hyeopjae Beach.
It is said that a thousand year ago, there were 99 small mountains on the main island of Jeju. Because it was one short of 100, it was not able to form a big country. One day, a small mountain was flying to Jeju Island. Just before it arrived at Jeju Island, a woman was surprised by the roaring sound. She went outside and shouted "Stop"because she thought it would hit the village. Then the small mountain stopped and became what is now known as Biyang Island. Some say that Jeju Island could have developed into a large country with 100 mountains except for her interference.
So the Saturday Island Adventure Crew headed out with the addition of JuRyoung who helped a lot with translations. We arrived at the harbor all groggy, one that didn't drive probably slightly inebriated, and purchased our tickets for the ferry. We had a little time so we took some pictures of the port, and went and grabbed some Makkali. In front of he Makkali place we thought we found a phone/beer/coffee machine. How incredible would that be? But it was simply a phone booth with beer advertising, and I think you could get a tiny cup of sweet Korean coffee if you tried.
After lunch and some makkali drinking at one of two stores on the island, we headed back on the boat around 3pm. This ride was definitely rougher, but it didn't stop most of the crew from passing out for a couple minutes.
Back on shore, JuRyoung headed back to Jeju-si and we went and found the tunnels. They were pretty impressive and intimidating. They were large enough to fit an full-sized army cargo truck into, and were built using Korean slave labor. (These poor people on Jeju have been through hell. Mongolians, Japanese, way too many massacres.) There were quite a few ceiling collapses in the 1500m worth of tunnels under the oreum, so we only explored about 300-400m worth. We saw a couple bats, but unfortunately no artifacts or anything. In a few places you could still see the pick-ax marks on the wall from the manual labor. On top of the oreum we watched the sunset (but it still won't set into the ocean, just into the haze) and walked around the anti-aircraft weaponry positions. It was a pretty incredible day, once again, and this time followed up be a delicious turkey (yes turkey in Korea!) dinner at Geckos. Min-ho and the gang were nice enough to save 4 dinners for us just in case they got close to selling out. After not having turkey for a solid year, and spending my first Thanksgiving away from my family (you know how Greeks have to get together...) it really made me think of home. What a great day.