Olle 1-1 on Udo

I didn’t take my camera with me on Friday so I’ll have to make do with these shots from my iPhone. This is Udo Island, a short ferry ride away from Jeju’s east coast. The name derives from the alleged resemblance of the island to a cow but it doesn’t look like any cow I’ve ever seen.

It’s a popular destination for people on a day out. Many visitors hire a quad bike, scooter or push bike to travel around but we walked the Olle trail. The trail does a clockwise loop, although the trail on the ground cuts out some parts of the trail as shown in the Olle Trail Guidebook. Peanuts are a local product and peanut ice cream is sold in many cafes.

Jeju fire festival

Jeju’s annual fire festival may have an origin in traditional culture but it’s a thoroughly modern event now. The event is timed to coincide with the first full moon of the lunar calender and traditionally local people would start fires in the fields at this time of year in order to burn off old grass and kill vermin. In the modern version, setting fire to the hillside of Saebyeol Oreum is accompanied by fireworks and a laser show and performances on stage. The event attracts huge crowds and quite rightly so – this is pyrotechnics on a grand scale.

A generation of Einsteins

What do you put on your cereal in the morning? More importantly, what do you put on your children’s cereal? If it’s not Einstein milk, perhaps your child is losing that competitive edge. Maybe you’re not going to the right supermarkets.

This is the milk shelf in Seogwipo’s Emart. Education is taken very seriously in South Korea and a high proportion of disposable income is spent on making sure children have the best start in life. That’s a value I can admire, within reason, but I would draw the line at milk with such dubious marketing.