Odd seafood and islands

This weekend a bunch of people from the Korean class I used to go to, the Korean friend and neighbor of one of said Korean class attendees, some of my coworkers, and I went to the South coast, a little East of where I was last weekend. On Saturday morning I biked at least 10k to meet up with the rest of the group. Along the way I saw a lot of cranes in the river:
We rented a van and Chris--the Korean among us--drove us three hours down to Tong-Yeong, a city on the tip of a mini peninsula on the Korean peninsula (there are a ton of these). In Tong-Yeong we saw a reconstruction of the famous turtle ships of the 1590s war (see last weekend's post). Inside there were a few displays period naval costumes:
We wandered through a fascinating fish market where all the fish were alive in tiny baskets. It stretched like this for quite some ways. We proceeded to enter a restaurant directly to left of the pictured fish. This was by far one of the strangest meals I've ever had. The most normal element was the huge plate of raw fish, which we dipped in soy sauce and wasabi, so it tasted like sushi without the rice. More interesting was this plate:The orange stuff looked like this moments before we ate it:
The pink stuff was so fresh that it was still moving, and looked like this before being carved up:
I have no clue about the gray stuff. It was the weirdest of the three. It was slimy on the outside and crunchy on the inside. The pink stuff was pretty bland in both flavor and texture. The orange stuff tasted like a mouthful of seawater, only stronger. The next odd dish was live octopus. Really, I don't think it was alive, or at least if it was it was dying, because it was all cut up. They still squirmed around quite a bit, though.

They also still had functioning suction cups, which made them difficult to pry from the plate and each other. One suctioned to my tongue, and I lack the vocabulary and creativity to describe the sensation. Lindsay's reaction is my favorite:From Tang-Yeong we drove onto Yeonhwa Island, a massive island, where we would be staying. On the way Chris asked for directions literally dozens of times. I honestly think he asked for directions almost as many times during this trip as I have over my entire life (seriously; a conservative estimate would be thirty times in the two days). This was especially odd since we had maps and a gps live map in the van. I think he was trying to get a lot of local advice on the best places to go (it is hard to say since the conversations were all in Korean). Also, the tone of voice that Koreans use seems bizarre to Westerners. When asking for directions or restaurant suggestions he shouted in a manner that sounded angry and impatient. Imagine the following conversation:

A: "Excuse me, could you please tell me where the Tang-Yeong fish market is?"
B: "Why yes. You see, my grandfather was a fisherman here, and my grandmother sold fish in the market-"
A: "Right, but where-"
B: [more rambling]
A: "umm... that's a nice story, but could you give me directions please?"
B: [more rambling]
A: "Just tell me where the damn fish market is already!"

On the basis of tone, it sounded like Chris started with "Just tell me where the damn fish market is already!" It was the tone of voice you would use with someone who was being incompetent at doing something that they clearly owed you; it dripped with entitlement and impatience. I've experienced this a lot in Korea with various Koreans. I think it is that there is a clear hierarchy, so a well off man in his thirties really is entitled to make demands in situations where I would think of myself as humbly asking a favor. Also, the tonality of English and Korean is just different. Many Korean conversations sound very angry to Westerners when they are really not angry at all. Jeff gave the example of his coworkers having a conversation where it sounded like one of them had been caught with the other's husband, but they were really just asking how their weekends were. Also, Korean sounds whiny. Normal Korean speech has the same tone of the most petulant Western child you will ever meet.

Anyway, we eventually made it to our condo after Chris called three times and had them come meet us to direct us there. [Note: generally Chris was great: he organized the trip, drove for us, acted as interpreter, got us discounts by virtue of being Korean, and is a friendly and generous person. The seemingly angrily asking for directions all the time thing got annoying though.] The condo was a two story cement house that was minimally decorated (bare cement stairs with rebar handrails, etc), but it was right on the ocean.
We dropped off our stuff and took a drive to a scenic point (I thought we were hanging out at the condo, so I didn't bring my camera. Sorry.). Chris took us to a museum of Korean history, European history, Jim Carrey and god knows what else. It had statues of Greek mythological beasts, a pirate ship and transformer rip offs outside. However, none of the rest of us wanted to be inside on such a gorgeous afternoon so we went down to some great rock formations on the ocean just below the museum. After an hour of lazing about and looking at tide pools we went to Windy Hill to watch the sunset. WoW enthusiasts be warned, Windy Hill has some odd rules:
We had dinner at The Meat Rack, which is possibly the best buffet I've ever been to. It had rows of uncooked marinated meat, which we piled on plates and took back to our tables to grill. Meat good.Back at the condo we went down to the beach and made a fire. We sang songs to guitar music and the lapping of the waves 'til about 1am.
In the morning we went back to Windy Hill to get ferry tickets. While we waited for our ferry we went back to the rocks near the museum. There was a cave with cliffs and deep water, so naturally Jeff and I jumped in. Jeff did backflips from where he is standing on the right, and I simply jumped in from the ledge where Colin is standing on the left.

The water was surprisingly warm (i.e. not freezing) and we dried off by about halfway through the ferry ride. The islands in this area were breathtaking, especially when the boat is driven through narrow gaps between them (almost hitting another boat in the process):The ferry took us to Oedo, an island covered in botanical gardens. My favorite part was the Dr. Seuss-esque bushes:(Actually, these last trees look like they come out of Mario rather than Dr. Seuss.)

There was also an odd fixation on ancient Greece. At least the columns were actual columns, both in the sense of actually being support beams and in that they were Corinthian, not some bastard hybrid of Corinthian, Doric, and Ionic.I think the natural island was far more impressive than any of the things planted or sculpted on it:The ferry and drive back were fairly uneventful. I of course had to bike back home across the city. Along the way I finally remembered to document one of the many driving ranges on top of buildings:

Update: The larger newly added photos are courtesy of Scott