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Leaving Seoul to go to Jeju Island for the weekend, we lined up to wait for the airport limousine (a bus). A family ahead of us with a lot of luggage were poached away by a couple of taxi drivers but as the taxis started to drive away, the bus pulled up... the family got out the taxis and started to unload all of their luggage, Russ jokingly said "Well we are first in line now" but the Momma bear did not like that, she started yelling at Russ, "NO, we are first in line, we have been waiting for a long time. We are FIRST!" We all got on the bus and waited for it to leave but there was a problem with another passenger. She wouldn't be honest about the age of her children with the bus driver (trying to get a discount) and the bus driver was not having it, he kicked the family off the bus and took all their luggage out from underneath and was about to leave when she finally fessed up and paid the full fare and he let her and her children back on the bus.
The weather forecast called for rain
all weekend and it wasn't long after we arrived at our guesthouse that it started to pour. When our guesthouse owner met up with us to check us in he took us on a quick tour, he referred to the building as a dragon and as we walked up the stairs, we were entering the belly of the dragon. There was a rooftop area with a look out point, the head of the dragon. We all claimed our bunks again while Yeon figured out where we could rent a car for the weekend. She really worked our entire trip- organizing/researching, ordering all of our meals, etc - I don't think we could have possibly had the same fun experiences without her! The original plan was to rent a bunch of scooters and scooter around the island but with the rain, getting a car seemed like a better idea. After Tim and Yeon picked it up, we drove down to a waterfront area in search for dinner and of course second dinner followed afterwards. First stop was for a mackerel dish where after a couple of beers, Russ and Tim decided to have a spicy pepper showdown that they regretted immediately,
nothing could cool their mouths down. With watering eyes (man tears), they resorted to eating big lettuce stacks. Second dinner was a quick stop for fried chicken before driving to the beach at midnight to take some pictures.
The next day we headed to the Manjanggul Lava Tube, this giant cave is one of the 10 longest lava tubes in the world. I was really glad to learn AFTER we had visited about the cave spiders and bats that call this tube home. After the cave, we drove to Seongsan Ilchulbong and walked into town for lunch. We settled in for a spicy seafood soup but the waitress was worried that the 2 white people (she literally pointed to Tim and I) would not be able to handle spicy food. When the soup came, it was not spicy at all.... they had toned it down big time for the foreigners even though we said we could take it. At some point Russ jokingly asked the waitress for a fork and she scolded him and told him that he should be able to use chopsticks, Russ then pointed at Tim and she left and brought 2 forks over right away,
Tim played dumb with a chopstick in each hand and took a fork when she came back....*sigh*Russ!
As we walked back to start our mini hike up Seongsan Ilchulbong, Binnson swore that earlier he saw a sign for a "Women driver demonstration". I argued with him that it couldn't have been what the sign said, how ridiculous and insulting, like what does that even mean! But he stuck with it. We walked up the stairs into a giant fog cloud, unable to see anything more than the staircase and people ahead of us. It was no surprise when we got to the top to see the giant cone formed by hydrovolcanic eruptions that we could not see a damn thing. We headed over to a water front area after walking back down from the top where a bunch of women in diving suits were grabbing their daily catches and selling it. That's when it finally clicked, women DIVERS not DRIVERS.
We set out to see a couple of waterfalls next but when we got to the Jeongbang waterfall it was closed due to the weather making it too slippery to visit. Binnson took a picture of a poster
showing the waterfall on a beautiful day on his cell phone at the entrance and as we were leaving he held up the picture over a bush (where the waterfall was actually behind) and joked about how it was sooo beautiful. We all laughed but as a couple of other tourists walked by they also stopped to look at his phone thinking we could actually see it despite it being closed. It took a couple seconds to clue in that the bright blue sky in the background of his photo was obviously not a representation of the actual fog covered sky that existed that day. Luckily not far away was the Cheonjiyeon waterfall and it was open for us to go and see.
A local dish to Jeju is the Black Pig and when first described to me by Tim, I was dreading the night we would go out for it imagining all of the skin and hair still on. So when we pulled up outside of a restaurant that night that had a statue of a big black pig, I was a little bit worried. Thankfully, it was not full of hair as I had feared and was
actually pretty delicious. The meal came out on a giant skewer filled with squash, mushrooms, peppers, and of course pig, and then was chopped up and barbequed on charcoal at our table. One of the best meals we had in Korea.
Our final day in Jeju started off at the Osulloc Green Tea Museum which was not so much a museum but more so a giant cafe on the edge of big green tea fields. We ordered a bunch of green tea goods but there was one item that was sold out -the green tea roll cakes, which are only served twice a day. For some reason, we decided that we must have these cakes and wandered around in the green tea fields until their next serving time. The line for them was huge and honestly, they tasted like any other green tea roll cake I've ever had. Afterwards, we headed to the lava columnar joints on the Jungmun Daepo coast. The rock formations were pretty cool, there were wooden platforms built to view them from but Russ could remember actually climbing around on them the last time he was there and so we sent out to figure out
how we could do that. Sure enough, along the side of the main entrance and requiring no entrance fee, there was a pathway that lead out to the water and to the lava. There was also a no entry sign that we ignored as we went to play on the lava to take some fun pictures. Not far from there was the beautiful Yakcheonsa Temple, one of the biggest temples in the East. It was huge and best of all, we had it all to ourselves. We walked around the grounds surrounded by orange trees as it started to rain, exploring a couple different pathways that lead us to smaller areas containing more Buddhas.
It was getting dark by the time we left the temple and we drove to a fancy hotel that had a large outdoor garden area. We walked around taking pictures when suddenly a big ball of fire rose into the air. We walked over to the pool to see that there was a dragon/volcano/fire show going on and stayed to check it out. On our way home, we pulled over to use the washrooms at a strip mall when we saw the sign for Love
Land. I had read about Love Land before we had left and we joked about going but we never really put it in our plans as a place to go but since we parked in the lot unknowingly it seemed as if fate had brought us there. Love Land is exactly what you might imagine, a sex themed park. We got to the entrance and realized that it was $10/p to get in.... that $50 could buy us a lot of chicken... we pondered whether we wanted to pay to be outside in the dark while it's raining at a theme park that we had only joked about visiting. Russ went to check out a map of the place to see if there was anything interesting to see and I followed behind a couple minutes later. It wasn't until I reached the map that I realized that we had just walked into the park through the exit. Binnson and Yeon trailed in behind us knowing that we had just gotten in for free.... we stood and waited to see if Tim's good conscious would kick in and pay for entry but a minute later he was entering through the exit
as well. The park was certainly interesting, giant statues of penis's, boobs, vaginas, sexual positions, and an exhibition hall of sex toys complete with a store. There were these metal cranks situated randomly throughout the park, when you turned them the little man and women pieces would start having sex. Russ of course turned the crank and someone joked "harder!", an older Korean couple under an umbrella were walking by at that same time and thought this was hilarious, the old man repeated "harder, harder!" and burst out laughing as they walked away. I definitely would not say that it was would be worth paying to see but for free it was totally worth it.
The next morning, we returned to Seoul. After checking in to our hostel we headed straight for the main palace only to find out that it was closed on Tuesdays! Why did this palace not want us to visit?! Strike 2. We carried on to Insadong to a Korean traditional tea house for delicious 5 flavour tea, omija cha, made from a popular Chinese herb - wu wei zi. Being our last day in Seoul, we really spent the majority of the day eating
and drinking, next we went to a cute dumpling shop before walking around an interesting outdoor mall that sloped upwards in a square for 4 floors. Walking around Insadong, there was a small crowd gathered outside of a Dragon hair candy place and we joined in to watch the performance as they made the candy and recited a song, "8, double 16, double 32, double 64...... 16,000! - unnnbelievable, oooohhh mmmyyy gooooodddd, OH EM GEE!" Youtube it - it's really cute. After eating some dragon hair treats, we walked along a river to a building that Yeon used to work in that contained a place for us to get some makgeolli (rice wine) before heading to the infamous Gangnam district. Greeted by plastic surgery advertisements and clinics as we left the train station, it was the sight of medical tourism that we really hadn't seen since we arrived. We walked around getting lost in the side streets before settling on more chicken, deciding to compare a couple of chicken places to each other, we walked back towards the main area for 2nd dinner. When we got to the second chicken place, I noticed the menu looked awfully familiar- it was
literally the exact same place that we were just at. They were branching out to become their own place but were still using the same recipes and menu, so much for a comparison!
Our flight the next day wasn't until 6pm so we made one final attempt that morning to go to the main palace. It was open and it was busy. We arrived just as the changing of the guard was taking place and then spent our morning touring around the palace grounds before heading back to Insadong for more dumplings and one last dragon hair song. From there it was time to go home, so we said our good byes and made our way to the airport. Another trip complete, thanks for reading!
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taracloud
Tara Cloud
Excellent trip!
Turkey, Greece and Korea--you certainly covered a lot of ground. This island trip was fun--love the lava tube, lava/basalt columns, cheesy sex museum and food adventures (I read that the legs on octopus can be active quite a long time after they are dead). How great that Yeon was with you--trickier for a lone traveler. I look forward to seeing next year's adventures!