Enjoy the now...that's the biggest lesson I learned through my temple stay. Ironic that I'm writing this because I am now going to recap the last week of traveling.

I finally built up the courage to leave Seoul as I ventured to the most southern part of Korea in Jeju island. I say that because the longer you stay at my hostel in Seoul, the tougher it gets to leave. I would say that's the sign of a good place to stay. The Koreans call Jeju the honeymoon island. What a fitting name for the three guys who were going there; Jon, Charlie and I. The island was formed some thousands of years ago by the shifting of the tectonic plates forming a volcano and as the lava came pouring out, it formed Jeju-do. The island is famous for its main mountain in the middle called Hallasan, its many lava tubes and numerous museums.

Due to weather, we were not able to climb Halasan which was quite disappointing. We dis climb another mountain nearby but couldn't even see Halla as it was too cloudy. The lava tubes were very cool. I felt like we were in an Indiana Jones movie walking under ground surrounded by rock that looked like lava. We stayed at a really nice hostel that seemed more like a hotel and we were treated really well as there were very few other guests. We were taught a game called "go-stop" which a form of Korean gambling. Luckily for my sake, we were not gambling and just playing for fun to learn the game. One of the nights, I felt like Ashley Humphrey at Becky's cabin trying to convince everyone else around me to go for a midnight swim. The only difference is that this wasn't a lake but the ocean and there were no other Canadians. I only had one taker, a Korean man. We jumped in and the water was really nice and it was extremely shallow for a long time. I bet we walked about 100 feet and the water was only up to my hips. We could see a nearby small island from the beach and we easily walked halfway there. I decided not to go too far maybe partly due to my surfing experience in Taiwan.

Last but not least, the three of us and the Korean swimmer all went to Jeju Love Land. It was hilarious. There were so many rocks and statues in the shape of penises and vaginas, many pictures to share but not until I get home. I don't know who all looks at my blog so those will be shared at a later date. I just want to mention so I don't forget that we rented a car for a very reasonable price of 67,000 won for three days. The car came with a Korean GPS which helped a lot. I don't think Jeju had any traffic police. I don't think they need any because they have so many speed bumps and the GPS actually warns you when you are coming up to a speed camera. It's pretty hard to get a ticket but it's also hard to go anywhere really fast because there are so many cameras.

I was going to talk about Busan and my temple stay but I'll do that in the next blog.