Trip to Jeju Island - First installment

The last week of August I squeezed in a solo trip to the island of Jeju. It's a semi-tropical island a few hundred kilometres south of the Korean peninsula. It's a 45 minute flight from Busan, and though it's part of Korea it's quite unlike the mainland.

The first place I visited was a bonsai, or as they're known in Korea, bunjae garden. It was truly beautiful with lots and lots of miniature trees amongst spectacularly landscaped grounds. Most of the trees were over 50 years old, with plenty well over 100 years old. Though it's hard to tell, this tree is no taller than me. I particularly liked its expressive trunk.
There are a lot of pine trees in Korea and they play an important cultural and historical role since they are apparently associated with lordship. They are also very beautiful. This tree is not a miniature but has been carefully pruned to reveal this fine form.
Right up in the list of my favourite things is fish. So I was very delighted to find this koi pond where you could skip across stepping stones whilst gazing at the fish (ok maybe you can't really gaze and skip simultaneously). Still the fish were mesmerizing, and some of them quite large. I overheard a man say that fish of this size could go for up to $10000. That's some expensive fish!
When I finished at the garden I went back to town to catch the bus. First I wandered around for a bit. I walked out to the end of this ________ (What's it called? I haven't built up my coastal living vocabulary enough yet. It's a long, narrow, concrete 'spit' which extends out along one edge of the harbour, same as the one in the distance that's got a white lighthouse. Presumably to protect the harbour from big waves...?) and had a small lunch behind the red lighthouse.
On my way back down the ________ I saw this cheeky cat. Can you see what he's doing so brashly??