My Island Catfight

Well a day away from the intermenet and I got some excellent emails. Thanks. Some really pleasant surprises. I also got some lil sunburns as I sat on the beach in the sun, soaking it up.
We didn't get to Muuido, but we did get to an island to some beach - ended up going to Yeongjongdo, which is the island Incheon airport is on, now joined to the mainland by big bridges over the mud flats. Steph and I went the long way there, catching a ferry and then a suicidal bus to one of the beaches on the far side of the island.

Ferry ride was a highlight, though it only went for 10 minutes. I love ferries. And memories of other great ferry rides came flooding to my mind as I watched the Koreans throw prawn chips to the seagulls. We were absolutely knackered when we finally got off the bus - I'd had some god-botherer pestering me with questions about the semester dates for Uni Melb and what projects UNICEF had going in India. Erm? So knackered and hungry that we weren't sure which town we were in. Didn't matter. What did matter was that I don't like seafood and every single restaurant had MASSIVE tanks out the front from which diners chose fish, sea dick, mussel, crab, prawn, or whatever for dinner. We ended up desperately asking one of the spruikers where we could get barbequed meat and got the hook-up. Steph and I instantly fell silent when the meat was ready and we stuffed our faces with pork, chili sauce, kimchi, and garlic all wrapped in sesame leaves.
After stopping at a hof and drinking 2000cc of beer while we watched guys and drunk girls test their strength on those annoying boxing machines, we bought some longnecks and parked ourselves on the beach to watch and listen to the fireworks everyone was setting off. Yeahhh.
Had a bit of a sore head when I woke up, which was fixed up by going for a really lovely walk all the way around the bay, climbing out to some rocks and gazing out over the fisher people to the water and sun. Lots of big granite rocks, families having expansive picnics, men scaling tiny fish, tiny crabs running across out path and fresh air. We went back to the same restaurant for some soup and rice and as we were arriving the ajumma spruiker was starting a fight with the ajumma spruiker from the restaurant next door. (Ajummas are a Korean phenomena, basically women working in businesses... they are older, terrifying... it's hard to explain. And in this case, all of the restaurants there had painted ajumma spruiking invasively as the cars crawled along the dense, neon beachfront) All the customers and staff watched with interest, amusement, then horror as the fight quickly became physical: pulling each others; hair; ripping t-shirts; and grinding faces into the wet, fishy gutter. Another highlight!
Whiled away the arvo lying on my Singapore Air blanket reading the beginning of Zen and the Art etc and watching the tide creep in. Also noted the Koreans don't swim at the beach; don't wear swimmers; don't read at the beach; don't use rubbish bins at the beach and don't much play sport at the beach. They do, however, wear high heels on the beach, ignore the smell of piss and shit coming from the toilets; ride around in circles on noisy quad-bikes; fish and cook their fish anywhere in the sand, using noxious smelling accelerants to ignite briquette thingies; and stare stare stare at me.

Felt sad as I was coming home, via the Airport Limousine. Last time I caught it was when I'd just farewelled My Dearest Charlie. It's hard not to think I'm crazy. Anyways. Home. Thanksgiving holidays over and less then a month til I'm in Melbourne.