Advertisement
Published: February 21st 2013
My last trip in Korea luckily turned out to be to Jeju Island. Around 2 1/2 years ago, as I was filling out my application for EPIK, I decided Jeju was my ideal placement in Korea. I ended up in Daegu instead. Most of the time I was in Korea, I wanted to visit, but I never ended up with free vacation days. When I went to Ulleungdo last fall, some other tourists said Ulleungdo was just as or more beautiful than Jeju. At that point, I decided I'd be okay not seeing Jeju. Plus, the weather was getting to be too cold.
However, one of my coteachers had been trying to get me to go to Jeju since I'd come. She and her husband go there about once a year because they love it so much. She and her husband offered to go to Jeju with me and show me around. Knowing that it was my last chance to go, and knowing I'd have some good, free tour guides, I took her up on the offer. However, I was a bit apprehensive about how it would be with her and her husband all weekend.
I knew a decent
amount about Jeju before landing. Here's the things I associated with Jeju:
-it's perhaps most famous for the women who traditionally free-dived for sea creatures, called haenyeo (“sea-women”); the men didn't have to do such a dangerous and difficult job
-Halla, a volcanic mountain, is the tallest mountain in Korea
-hareubang, statues of grandfathers carved from rocks that are scattered all over the island
-black pig
-wide variety of seafood
-delicious tangerines (like Mandarin oranges)
We arrived on a Friday around noon. The flight from Daegu was only about an hour. When the plane landed, it was lightly snowing. This is not what I expected from the “Hawaii of Korea”! Walking out of the airport, though, were groups of palm trees. It was strange to see palm trees in the snow. We first headed to a restaurant for some lunch, where we ate sea-urchin seaweed soup (seongge (miyeok) guk), just one of Jeju's trademark dishes. I've eaten it before, and I probably eat seaweed soup 2-3 times a month. It was alright but nothing special.
After lunch we headed southwest, to Hallim Park. It wasn't the ideal day to go to a
place full of gardens, but there were some greenhouses as well. It would be really nice in the spring or the fall. My favorite part was a big bonsai section. It was really well-landscaped and cool.
On the way to a waterfall, we stopped at this white, fairy-home-looking building, called Mayflower Cafe (Oh-Wol-Ui Ggot), an “unattended cafe”. It's a self-service place. There are dishes, ingredients for tea/coffee, and a hot water pot, so customers make their own beverages, hang out, then wash the dishes for the next person. There's a box by the door where you give money based on however much you want to give. My hippie-self thought it was amazing! I'm lucky we got to go to someplace so unique.
After that, we stopped at a waterfall called Cheonjeyeon. It was freezing and the wind was blowing, but we checked out the waterfall and the nearby unique-looking bridge, called Seonimgyo. The plants along the trail near the waterfall were really tropical-looking, and I was surprised to see them in Korea.
We went on to a dinner of hairtail (some kind of fish). Fish is kind of the final nemesis for my chopstick skills. I'll get
it eventually—it's hard enough with a knife/fork to get the flesh from the bone, but for me with chopsticks, I look a bit like a 4 year old. Oh well. It was tasty.
Finally, we got to our pension, where we had neighboring rooms. (“Pension” is usually a group room with a kitchen where people sleep on floor mats all together, but ours were actually more like “suites”.) We hung out a while, planning the next day, then quickly dozed off.
In the morning, we stopped at a waterfall close to our pension, called Cheonjiyeon (just one letter different from the name of the other waterfall). It's billed as the only waterfall in the world that pours water into the ocean. I don't know if that's true, but it was cool nonetheless. Overall, I was impressed with both waterfalls, which were better than the ones we saw in Oahu.
Next, we moved onto a photography gallery for a late artist who took lots of pictures of Jeju. His name was Kim Young Gap. The pictures were really pretty and made it seem like the island was uninhabited.
Jeju Traditional Village was next up. The tour guide
showed us a house where a man and his three wives lived about 100 years ago. Next door to the house was a black-pig pigsty made of the Jeju rocks. Something special with this pigsty was that it doubled as a toilet. People would do their business into a hole bordering the pigsty, and then the pigs would eat it. I guess that was pretty efficient . . .
Next, she told us about the Jeju pony. In contrast to mainland Korea, Jeju people traditionally used the horse and pony a lot in their everyday lives. She said the men got to eat the horse meat, and the women only got the bones. Maybe you're thinking, “How can people eat bones?”. Well, they had a machine that the pony walked around and ground down the bones. She made sure to emphasize that the women weren't getting the raw end of the deal because the bones are healthier. Sorry . . . I'm not buying that.
After the tour, she took us to a room with some special Jeju products that she was trying to sell. There was 5-flavor tea (omija cha), which she gave us a sample of,
Hareubang
Traditional Jeju grandfather statue at Hallim Parkand then OF COURSE there were pony bone pellets, which have many special health benefits. And she had to give us those to try as well. They looked like rabbit or gerbil food—hard little brown balls. They kind of tasted like what dog food probably tastes like--not that bad, at least not as bad as I expected. The worst part was finding bone shards in my mouth for the next 2 hours. That was definitely one of the strangest things I've eaten.
Because there's nothing like pony bones to whet your appetite, we then headed to lunch at Haenyeo-jip (Woman sea-diver's house (restaurant)). But . . . to our dismay, it was closed because it was Seollal (Lunar New Year) weekend. Instead, we settled for seafood stew (haemul ttukbaegi I think). It was probably my favorite meal of the trip. There was crab, clam, oyster, abalone, shrimp, plus vegetables in a slightly spicy hot pepper sauce, all served with rice and side dishes. Two years ago, I probably would have only eaten the vegetables and rice, and look at me now.
On to a lookout area called Seopjikoji! But along the way we stopped for a few photo
Cool Bonsai
at Hallim Park opps near Sunrise Peak (Seongsan Ilchulbong). The water was really bright shades of blue. We also passed yellow fields of rapeseed flowers, edged by volcanic rock walls. These rock walls are all over the island, constructed really well, despite how round the rocks are. I think they made the island's atmosphere interesting, because you don't often see so many rock walls nowadays. Although some haters told me that Jeju was “just Korea on an island”, I disagree—it's much more of an open, country kind of place, with much different scenery than Korea. Probably it helped that we had a rented car. Unexpectedly, for me, the sea views were overshadowed by the farms dotted all over the island. I guess I'm still a country girl at heart.
It was still pretty cold and windy when we got to Seopjikoji. Unfortunately, most landmarks had been pretty empty, but this one was busy. It had been featured in two different Korean soap operas (dramas), so fans had to stop there and get pictures taken. It was pretty, but there were prettier areas than this one.
Next, Sangumburi, a volcanic crater, was one of my favorite places of the trip. The actual
crater wasn't that extraordinary, but the surroundings were hilly and covered in reeds, which made a bright contrast to the blue skies.
For dinner we had the famous black pig, which only lives on Jeju. We ate ogyeopsal (five-layered pork). Usually in Korea, we eat samgyeopsal (three-layered pork), but because some restaurants were being sneaky and serving regular pork instead of black pork, the true restaurants began serving more layers closer to the skin so that you can actually see the black hair pores on your meat. (Couldn't taste it though!). It was good, but to me it didn't taste very different than regular pork. I had another leaving-Korea moment, feeling fond of cooking food at the table and the variety of small side dishes to eat with the main course.
Our last day (a warmer one!) began with tteokguk (rice cake soup) to celebrate the Lunar New Year. When you eat tteokguk on the New Year, you become another year older, so unfortunately by Korean age, I'm now 28! We returned to our rooms and played a game Koreans like to play, called Yut Nori. It's a game of luck where you throw four sticks and get
Inside the Mayflower Cafe
Supplies for making one's own beverage points depending on how many land face-up. It was my second time playing, so I knew the basics of it. I came in second place every time.
We left the pension, and drove to Oedolgae, a famous rock in the sea. The area nearby was one of my favorites on Jeju. We walked on a cliff along the coast, through a pine forest. There was another waterfall, which trickled water into the ocean (contesting Cheonjiyeon's claim!). We drove a bit further, and then walked around near an Olle Trail and the island's expensive hotels, which my coteacher was obsessed with. They were nice, but not as nice as I'd expect if Korea's celebs and rich people stay there. Our last seascape of the trip was at Jungmun Daepo, where there are crazy-looking geometric rocks formed from lava. There are at least three totally different types of rocks within maybe 10 yards of each other. Cool!
We ate lunch at a blue-carpeted restaurant which was reminiscent of where Ferris Bueller eats with his friends (super-classy). There was a salad bar with legit salad ingredients, nuts, and even curry-dressing=best salad I've had in probably a year. The main course was
a huge serving of abalone porridge (jeonbok juk). I don't really know the difference between a lot of shellfish. My coteacher said abalone is one of the most delicious/most expensive seafoods. I found it to be chewier than some other shellfish, which explains why Koreans like it. The porridge overall was good, but, like most juk, pretty bland.
From there, we went to Osullok Green Tea Farm, which was packed. They had amazing tea and ice cream, which I didn't buy because I was thinking about all the stuff in my apartment that needs to return to the US soon. We spent too long there and hit traffic on the way to the airport, but luckily we caught our plane back to Daegu. I'm really indebted to my coteacher and her husband for such a great trip!
Overall, I was impressed with Jeju—it had really diverse landscapes. There were flowers and trees and tangerines even though it was winter. The only reason I might prefer the mainland is that Jeju wasn't really mountainous. There was Hallasan and some hills, but it's not like Daegu, ringed by green mountains, which I love. I can't really decide if I like
Seonim Bridge
Near Cheonjeyeon Waterfalls Jejudo or Ulleungdo better. You should check them both out!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.133s; Tpl: 0.022s; cc: 9; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0851s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Kathy Oxenreiter
non-member comment
Loved this blog and photos
Hi there Laur, Just think this is almost 1 year since we were in Hawaii!! But I think even though the weather was too cold to much enjoy for someone like you who likes to be warm, it seems like Jeju was a beautiful trip and one I am so glad you were able to get to do. God bless Mrs. Eun (sp?) and her husband for hosting you on this!