Tough Guys Don't Cry

Although I was immensely happy to have left the hubris of Seoul behind, my sleep in Mallipo wasn’t as sound as expected. The room was just too hot and poorly ventilated, resulting in a fitful night of tossing and turning, getting up and down to adjust the fan’s speed and a seemingly endless procession of bizarre dreams.

Bizarre dreams have been a feature of my sleep for nearly as long as I can remember with one friend, the London-based “Hunt” (Michael Vanderstoep), once telling me that I had interrupted his 12-hours-per-day minimum of sleep by yelling out in an Irish brogue while we were sharing a room in Vancouver, Canada.

Reminds me of the lyrics from the Indigo Girls song “Galileo.”

“And then you had to bring up reincarnation
Over a couple of beers the other night
And now I'm serving time for mistakes
Made by another in another lifetime”

When I did finally awake, I was groggy and not up for the day ahead, but a quick swim helped sort all that out and within the hour I was packed, backed on my bike and backtracking along the same road that I came in to Mallipo on for Taean.

The ride back to Taean is only short, perhaps 15km at the most, but with a brutal headwind thrown in for laughs, it became a nightmare. Add a little bike trouble into the mix -- the rear derailleur had slipped out of adjustment -- and you have a recipe for a long, slow and painful ride.

After arriving in Taean, I found this dodgy little bike shop care of the local constabulary where I stopped for directions. The owner not only fixed my bike in the blink of an eye, but also threw in a can of coffee for nix.

Lovely fella and a lovely town overall, for those thinking about coming to Korea to teach English, Taean would be a great police to spend a year. Clean, cheap, friendly and not far away from Seoul while being close to the beach and Anmyeon Island.

Sorted out breakfast at a mini-mart down the road -- tuna and rice triangles washed down with a couple of complimentary strawberry juice and blends, and then it was time to saddle up and make haste for Yeongmok, situated on the most southerly tip of Anmyeon Island.

What started out looking to be a prefect day from the comfort of my chair in front of the mini-mart, turned out in fact to be a Kafkaesque nightmare, with searing heat, high humidity and outrageous headwinds combining to create the single most miserable conditions that I have ever experienced while cycling. This was so bad that it made Vancouver’s freezing cold rain squalls seem like a walk in the park by comparison.

After about two hours of hard slog, I had travelled about 25km and at one point while freewheeling down a very steep hill; I attained the death-defying speed of 12km per hour. The only positive was that the countryside on Anmyeon Island is absolutely stunning. Everywhere you look you see mountains, hills, lush green vegetation, brightly coloured flowers, sparkling streams, lakes and of course, rice paddies.

Emerald green is the colour that stays with you as a constant while your moving through the countryside, interspersed with splashes of blue for water and the bright yellows and reds of the flowers sprinkled across the landscape as if a great handful of hundreds and thousands, (sprinkles, nonpareils or jimmies depending on which part of the world you’re from) have been scattered in the wind and fallen where they may. I’m told that this island is renown for its flower festivals during season, and after seeing what grows wild, can only imagine the results specialty growers must obtain.

The Beach Road tracking the western coastline of Anmyeon is great scenic tour and a must for those visiting the island. Its beaches are incredibly long and wide with off-white sand and on this day, a lot of surf. As it turned out, there was a typhoon in the area which may explain this phenomenon as several foreigners have mentioned to me that there is “no surf in Anmyeon.” One friend from England, Leigh from Busan, even went so far as to say that “it’s impossible for there to be surf at Anmyeon because there’s not enough space between Korea and China for the waves to build up.” Hmm ... he’s an Englishman; say no more.

By the time I conquered the last major hill climb leading up to Yeongmok, I had had enough, feeling like it was 300km I had worked through as opposed to the shamefully low 78km. Arriving at Yeongmok Harbour, I hunted around for the ferry which would take me to Dacheon on the mainland only to discover that it had been cancelled due to the typhoon and no one had any idea when the service would restart.

But just as I was about to set off and find a yogwan for the night, I noticed an over-sized speedboat taking on passengers at the far end of the dock. Quickly cycling over, I asked the captain where he was going and although his reply made absolutely no sense, I agreed to the 10,000 won fare and dragged my bike and myself onboard for parts unknown.

As it turned out it was a good decision and in 30 minutes, I was standing on the shoreline of Jango Island, an islet located off the western coast of Anmyeon in the Yellow Sea.

Covered with low-lying scrub and fringed by a rocky shoreline, Jango Island is a tiny fishing community which 350 residents call “home.” It has several beaches with coarse sand but its waters are cool with small waves and on this day, quite clear and free of the floating debris common to these parts.

I’m not sure where all the rubbish in the Yellow Sea comes from. Many would blame China, and given that country’s deplorable track record on environmental matters, I’d be inclined to agree. What a shame that such a massive country is being allowed to not only destroy its own environment but the rest of the worlds too. I wonder how long it will be before someone stands up to these global polluters, forcing them to understand that they aren’t the only humans on the face of this planet.

Actually, these thoughts brought a smile to my face as I was cycling into Jangodo’s sole village, reminding me of an alcohol-fuelled conversation that I had with Stephen Downing, an intense but extremely interesting American who has spent a lot of time in Central Asia. I was advocating a limited US nuclear strike and full-scale invasion of the Chinese mainland to bring an end to their selfish destruction of the globe’s environment (the hypocrisy is brilliant: drop a nuclear weapon and start a war to bring an end to pollution). His response was a table-thumping beauty, bellowing that the US was involved in enough “quagmires” (pronounced kwaagmires) and didn’t need to add another one to the list.

Still, it poses an interesting question doesn’t it? As the Chinese don’t give a damn about anyone else except for themselves, economic success and attaining superpower status (such an outdated goal in this day and age), it makes you wonder how long it will be before the US, or a declining Russia, is drawn into a showdown with this dangerously ambitious lot. I suspect that our only hope is that Chinese will implode in another civil war as their growing number of have-nots decides that enough is enough and take control of the country. I’d be interested to know my mum’s -- a fervent Chinaphile and full-time apologist for Chinese behaviour – thoughts on this issue.

But back to Jango Island.

After reaching the village, I stumbled across a small shop and found a sun-withered old man (I later discovered he was the island chief’s father) who eagerly set up a night’s accommodation for me. A phone call later and his son, a grinning Mr Pyun Jr., the self-described “King of Jango,” pulled into town in a bright yellow Sogang University Language Program (SLP) mini-van (oh my hell, not SLP! Derek if you’re reading this, trust me brother, the irony was immense) and we set off along a winding scrub track for his mimbak (basic room which may or may not have its own bathroom and toilet facilities).

Planted right on the edge of the shore, Mr Pyun’s mimbak compound consists of several multi-room bungalows simple in design and construction, this was a genuine no-frills Korean accommodation adventure which every foreigner should experience at some point during a visit to the land of the morning calm.

No view, a few mats, pillows, a fan, a television and a bare-bones bathroom was all that was on offer, but at 35,000 won – including two gargantuan sized meals (served in a dining room with an unbeatable view of the ocean) and a pick-up and drop-off service to the ferry – it represents good value for money.

The afternoon was spent swimming and relaxing on a Korean low-table under a shady tree reading Rebecca West’s tome, “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.” Dinner – a simple but mouth wateringly delicious tuna and kimchi jigaye (stew) was served at around 6.00 p.m. in an oceanfront dining room with a crème de la crème view of the sunset.

Korea’s West Coast is renown for its sunsets and today was no different, illuminating Jango Island’s numerous rocky outcrops dotted along its coastline, superimposed against a fading orange sky. I finished my last mouthful as the pale blue twilight faded into darkness.

Dinner was followed by a slow stroll along 500m of beach (at low tide about a kilometre of Jango Island’s beach is exposed to the elements), stopping her and there to observe its teeming marine life, and an evening of chatting with the king and his female offsiders, all students at various non-Seoul universities around the country.

Even though our conversation took place pretty much in Korean, I understood that my host was very critical of Guus Hiddink, expressing an opinion that echoed by many of his countrymen that the Dutchman simply got lucky with the team and was no coaching genius. Mr Pyun also repeatedly expressed his amazement that I was visiting his island as hardly any foreigners have been here in the past.

We downed two bottles of soju, a plate of fresh sora (a large edible sea snail caught on the beach in front of the mimbak – chewy and bland but served with hot sauce) and slapped about a million moggies (mosquitoes) until it was time for bed.

Tomorrow: If at first you fail.