Oedo Botanical Gardens & Haegeumgang Rocks

Okay - just to preface this post - my title implies that we visited the beautiful Oedo Botanical Gardens and somewhere named Haegeumgang "rocks" or in non-street lingo, is pretty fabulous. So just to clear up any misconceptions before we continue, I mean rocks in the literal, geographical sense. We're talking some big freakin' rocks. Okay - on with the post.....

On Children's Day we took a day trip down to the south end of Geoje Island with a bunch of foreigners. Our mission - to see Oedo Botanical Gardens. The Oedo Botanical Gardens are located on a small island just south of Geoje, and the entire island is devoted to these gardens. So we hopped on a ferry with about 20 other foreigners, 50 Koreans and headed out to sea.

On the ferry we got to see many "igneous" rocks as our resident geological expert Jimmy put it. We also got the experience of being completely ignored by the snack cart -however being as the "snack cart" consisted of dried squid the length of your arm we were okay with that.

Before docking on the island, we took a side trip to the famous Haegeumgang Rocks - the pride of Geoje Island. They're pretty cool - for big rocks sticking out of the ocean. Everyone on the ferry climbed out onto the sides of the boat (which were about 1.5 feet wide) to look at the rocks. We were excited because we were close enough to touch them with our hands. That was before we realized that we were about to attempt a three point turn using a cave that was narrower than the boat. Our excitement of touching the rocks quickly turned to a combination of wonder and fear as we watched our ferry driver pretty much ram the side of the ferry into the rocks. Thanks be for the yellow foam balls that line the side of the ferry. Something we have learned from Korea - you can feel safe ramming any kind of transport into something as long as you have some kind of foam bumper pad protecting it.

Here you can see part of our adventure attempting to enter the cave.



After our dramatic run in with the rocks the rest of the ferry ride was pretty anti-climactic. We arrived at Oedo Island and had 1.5 hours to explore before we were due back to the boat.

The island really is beautiful, with over 3,000 different species of plants, all weeded, trimmed and shaped within an inch of their life. The only way I can describe this island is if someone middle class all of a sudden became a billionaire, bought an island, went on a shopping spree for random Greco-Roman statues, put together a hodge-podge of architecture features from various time periods and combined it with a bunch of gorgeous flowers to make their island look "classy". That being said, it was certainly beautiful and I enjoyed standing on my make-believe terrace overlooking the ocean and imagining that I was some sort of Disney princess.

Here are some of our favourite pics of the island.




















Along the way we came across a statue garden titled "Hope of the World". Our eyes were then met with a variety of statues in a variety of compromising positions - not to dissimilar from the more graphic scenes of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Apparently mass orgies are the hope of the world.






After our day on the island we climbed back onto the ferry. This time we got seperated from our group and spent the ride back to Geoje in the company of many drunken Korean men singing and dancing along with the Korean pop blasting through the speakers. Apparently we missed the bar on the botanical island, or someone forgot to inform us that this was BYOB.

Next weekend we are heading to Gyeongju. This is a city about 3 hours north of us on the mainland and it is where the capital of Korea was during the Silla kingdom for over 1,000 years. A lot of history. Get your learnin' caps on.