In the Rough Guide to Korea, my guru Norbert calls Yakcheonsa one of Jeju’s most magical experiences.  The best time to arrive, he writes, is 7 pm on a summer evening, when “worshipping locals chant under the interior glow with their backs to the sunset.”  So I hiked a staircase at the end of Jungmun Beach, grabbed a cab from the Hyatt hotel, and missione ...

The winter I was 21 I backpacked through Southeast Asia for two months with three other girls, my old Pentax K1000, and a second-hand guitar.  We landed in Malaysia, wove north through Thailand, and after boating down the Mekong River to a town called Champasak, parted ways in Southern Laos, from which I ventured to Vietnam alone.  Two weeks later we m ...

 This isn’t the time travel part.  This is the heading to Sangumburi part…the second crazy-green volcanic crater I peered into on the sweet isle of Jeju.  Same day, even.  It was a Sunday.  I had risen before dawn.  Suddenly the day was so much longer!  So I decided to take in a few sites post-Seongsan country stroll.  After ...