I manage transport details with one guy at the hospitality desk at Korea's Jeju International Airport and my wife Pat strikes up a conversation with another:

"Where you from?," Pat's guy asks: typical tourist talk.

"USA, " she answers.

"I've been there," he replies.

She smiled, waiting for him to heap praise on one of America's wonders such as Yosemite.

"I got shot in the head," he says.

At a convenience store in Florida, it happens, where he had clerked. "My left side doesn't work so well. But I'm OK," he says, with no further commentary.

Somewhat rattled and grumbling about the"gun lobby" in the USA, we quickly changed our mood to happy as we entered the greenness of Jeju, South Korea, a volcanic island with many natural charms -- volcanic cones, waterfalls, strange rock formations -- plus a few unnatural ones like a Vegas-style volcano that erupts nightly at the behest of a fire snorting dragon and the Teddy Bear Museum featuring Teddies in tableaus ranging from The Last Supper to the tomb of the Terracotta Soldiers.

Koreans rank among the best drummers in the world. Have a look and listen:
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But Jeju is not for everyone. Great perhaps for Korean or Japanese newlyweds in a region with a dearth of good beaches, but for the rest of us there are equal, less expensive places that don't require a long flight. Jeju has good five star hotels, good hiking and some impressive rock formations but no alternatives to $5 hotel coffee and $20 breakfasts.

And please, someone help the two California Sea Lions in Jeju's tired aquarium. They are confined to a space about four times the size of our hotel bathtub. Not being able to stretch their bodies out fully, they swim in a cramped circle, their huge, sweet eyes longing for Monterey or San Diego..