Korean Hawaii!

Three weeks ago I went to Cheju-do, an island of the southern coast of Korea that has been called, among other things, Korean Hawaii. It's a semitropical island with a big extinct volcano in the middle, plenty of beaches, and Korean tourists and honeymooners galore. My new coworker Rob and I took a 5 hour train from Seoul down to a town called Mokpo on the southwestern coast, where we got a 4.5 hour ferry the next day to Cheju. Actually, we almost didn't get the ferry because we were at the end of a long waiting list, but one of the guys working there had pity on us foreigners and let us on in front of all the Korean people who had their names on the list before us. This was amazing because 1) it was blatant racial discrimination, 2) none of the Koreans seemed to protest the act, and 3) we rather enjoyed it, as wrong as it was (if we hadn't gotten on the boat we would have had to wait another day in Mokpo, where there was absolutely nothing of interest except a Korean midget we saw at some street performance the day before).
In Cheju we hiked the extinct volcano (Halla-san), but not to the top because the last bit of the trail was closed off for "environmental protection". We also explored caves created by lava flows, ate a gigantic raw fish feast, went to a beach or two, and went windsurfing, which was cool. It was actually not as hard to get up on the board and pull the sail up as I thought, but it was a little tough to do more than just go in a straight line. People in Cheju were friendly to us (as almost all Koreans are), and although it's the peak season, it wasn't as crowded as I had expected. It wasn't the most amazing place I've been to in my life, but I'd go back if I had the chance, and do the things on our list that we didn't have time (or money, really) for, like hangliding, horseback riding, scuba diving, etc.
I didn't take many pictures, Rob took some good ones, like these: