Jeju Island

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Our trip to Jeju: July 31-August 4
We were unable to access our live journal for so long there is some more catching up to do. Our school was generous enough to allot three entire days of summer vacation from August 2-4, so we decided to use that bountiful block of time to take some sort of trip. Our wise employers rightly decided to only give us about a month head start on planning-they were right in that because they knew about the vacation time long before we did and were able to book their trips without worrying about us taking up valuable tickets and hotels. So we were in a mad dash to book a flight on what turned out to be vacation time for every Korean and Japanese man, woman, and child. We considered Guam, Bora Bora, Hong Kong, and eventually every country in the Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, but everything was sold out. Finally, we went back to Jen’s first idea-a trip to a small island off the southern coast of Korea-Jeju Island, a supposedly Hawaii-esque resort island.

So we confidently set off to the domestic ferry terminal to buy an advance ticket. It involved a long subway ride and a nice little walk. The ferry was sold out. If we could speak Korean, we could have called, but more than that, if we had had more notice of our vacation, then we could have booked it when there were still seats available. I was very irritated but Jen remained confident and upbeat. We tried a series of travel agencies and web sites to no avail. Then, one morning Jen came in and said she had found a web site that had an open flight to Jeju. I sat down and madly attempted to book it. After filling out at least six hundred information fields, I clicked “confirm” and was sent instantly to an error page in Korean. There were no Koreans around so I called the number on the bottom of the page. They transferred me to another number where they gave me another number to call. I called that number and they transferred me back to the first people who put me on hold. Then they told me there were no flights. I messed around with some other web sights and found what appeared to be a flight on Yahoo. I entered all my information and clicked “confirm” and was promptly told that those flights were sold out, too. Finally, I saw on cheaptickets that you could actually see which flights were still open and which were not before you filled out all the information fields-a novel and appreciated idea.

I sat there, having nothing else to do, hitting refresh refresh refresh hoping the field of zeros would change to a mere 2 little tickets as someone canceled. Amazingly, it happened. I rushed to book it. They only took credit cards with US addresses. I dashed into the teacher’s room and called my credit card company and had them change my billing address to my parent’s house. I ran back and hit confirm and was informed someone had beat me to the punch. I was sick. I did the refresh thing a few more times and found a much less ideal but still available flight. I managed to speed through the process and get the tickets, only to find out that they would be shipped to my credit card’s billing address, which was now Alabama. I called cheaptickets and told them quite reasonably that since I was flying from Busan to Jeju I quite clearly needed the tickets here and not in Alabama. They were intractable. I called my long-suffering parents and told them what was up and they agreed to FedEx the tickets when they arrived. Thanks, guys. I could go on and on about how I then booked a hotel twenty miles away from the nearest beach, unbooked it, had a travel agent book one close to the beach then in a misunderstanding unbook it and book it again, but this is already running long and we haven’t even arrived in Jeju yet!

So, on July 31-a Saturday, we boarded an afternoon plane and headed to Jeju Island. Yay! We arrived after about 40 minutes and took a long bus ride to our hotel near the beach. The hotel was rather expensive, and we expected a resort type atmosphere. Instead, our room smelled quite awful, there were no restaurants and no swimming pools. We couldn’t figure out how to work the shower or turn on some of the lights (you had to turn on the TV to make some lights work and plug in a wall lamp to make the ceiling lamps work natch). To make the electricity run at all (that is, the air conditioner), we had to put an access card into the wall. The access card was attached to the key, thus there was no way to leave the air conditioning on when we left our room. It was pretty hot in Jeju, so we removed that access card from the key and beat the system for once. Or maybe that’s what it said you were supposed to do in the Korean writing on the back of the access card. It felt rather criminal, though.

Anyway, we were quite hungry and we found a seemingly lovely barbecue buffet at the Suites Hotel right down the road. It was about $55 a person. We expected a lot. We are going to stop doing that. I’ll say this: the rolls were good and the view was nice, but we would have done just as well eating $1 sliced bread down on the beach. After “dinner,” we made our way down the 200-some steps to the beach. Our expectations were finally met. It was a beautiful night and the wind was soft and the waves were whispering and the moon was like the Milky Way’s roundest, whitest button up there in the sky. The tide was rapidly coming in and there was only so much room to walk, so we soon took the long walk back up to our smelly hotel and went to sleep.

The next morning we woke up somewhat late-around 10. We had already missed the breakfast our hotel provided, but we figured, so what? The hotel is lousy, the food probably is, too. We went to the beach and spent the day there lounging and swimming and eating crackers and being attacked by tiny little fish. The beach was not too crowded and the water was perfect. The view back up the cliffs to the hotels was lush and jungly and remote-feeling. It was like our own deserted island. After such a nice day we were determined to have a nice dinner to match it. We looked for a Galbi place, which is our favorite Korean food, but we could not find one. We went to a building that said “Restaurant and Bar” that informed us they didn’t serve food. Makes sense to me. We settled on this place that served us bulgagi-not sure about the spelling, but the phonetic rendering about matches what we said after we tasted it. Especially the gagi part. It made us sick. But those rolls the night before sure were good.

After a fitful night’s sleep, we arose early because we had booked a bus tour of the island. We were up early enough to do the breakfast buffet. I’ll say this: the toast was good. The islanders know their bread products. The bus arrived and we hopped on again as the only two non-Asians and found that our tour guide didn’t speak much English and had a strange vocal affectation that made her sound as if she were hawking up spit on every other syllable. But it was really OK.

Our first stop was Mystery Road. Cars, water, bottles, etc, all seem to roll uphill. I was skeptical of it all, but the road really did seem to incline at an upwards angle and when our bus driver cut the engine, came to a complete stop, then let off the brake, we began to roll quite fast in a direction that appeared uphill. The driver parked the bus and we got out to test the phenomenon ourselves. It was really quite amazing. However, at this point I began to sweat a bit. It was hot, and Jen and I had decided to partake in the local custom of dressing alike. We had no shorts that were similar, so we wore jeans. Strike one. The only shirts we had that were similar were gray T-shirts. Strikes two and three for me, as I quickly came to look as if I had just stepped out from under a waterfall. Fortunately, there was a worse sweater-guy than me whose wife spoke English. We, referred to them as Lady Yellow Hat and Sir Sweats a Lot. We found out potentially important information from them that our tour guide could not communicate to us such as the tour’s itinerary had changed, and if we didn’t want to take the “optional” Romantic Cruise for extra money, we would have to sit on the bus by ourselves. Who would’ve guessed this would have been the correct option? But I get ahead of myself.

Our next stop was a nice atrium-like place. There were very old trees and plants and lots of coy fish and trickling water. Very lovely. They served a buffet lunch that was quite unappetizing. No bread at all.

The next stop was a bit surreal, and part of the mysterious itinerary change. The best I can say is that we stopped at some place where they grew some thing where some guy lectured to us for a long time about some thing. Lady Yellow Hat was no help, and the tour guide was only interested in getting us on the Romantic Cruise, not if we understood what the heck was going on.

OK, so Romantic Cruise. Sounds very nice. We would get to see a waterfall that falls directly into the ocean and maybe some other stuff, who knows? We paid the fee and hopped on the boat. The waterfall was very nice but also quite far away. Some Korean guy then jumped in the water in scuba gear and talked to us from the bottom of the channel via TV linkup. Amazing! Too bad we couldn’t understand what he was saying. That was the Romantic Cruise. If only Mike Myers had been there as his Saturday Night Live talk show host character he could have said, “Topic: the Romantic Cruise is neither Romantic nor a Cruise. Discuss amongst yourselves.”

So far I have written this in what could be construed in a negative manner, but please rest assured it was all quite fun. The cultural differences are part of what makes the experience unique, and Jen and I made the best of every situation. It is just that the negative events make such good stories. So to be more positive, I will say the next stop was truly nice. It was a huge waterfall that was roaring and soothing and epic and majestic. It made the trip for sure.

Our final stop was a Sea-World wannabe that could be called on a good day Creek Neighborhood maybe. Being used to what Florida offers, we were skeptical about their ability to amaze, so we told the tour guide we might bail early, as we were by this point back around to walking distance from our hotel. She didn’t understand. Lady Yellow Hat translated. The tour guide said, no, it is too dangerous to walk. We said, yes. She said, OK. We went inside and had a seat in back. Our skepticism was instantly rewarded as this Sea Show act promptly brought a monkey out on stage. The stage was soon filled with miserable looking monkeys so we plotted our escape. As I said, we were in back, and the arena was packed with people sitting in the aisles; there was no way out. I spotted a door and opened it, letting the brilliant sun spill into the darkened room and causing every head to swivel from the monkeys on stage to the two American monkeys trying to get out. I quickly shut the door but we were not going to be denied. We climbed over Koreans and Japanese alike and finally escaped.

We spent the few remaining hours of daylight in the lovely water down on the beach. We ended up at the Hyatt for a nice dinner and some of the best blueberry cheesecake we had ever eaten. It had been a bizarre day, but a nice one.

We woke up a little late the next morning but still made breakfast. I had five pieces of toast. Yum. Our plan was to see the lava tube caves and anything else we had time for. We took a cab to the airport then caught another cab to the bus station (it was the simplest way we knew how to do it). We hopped on the bus to the cave site and took off. On the way there, we saw an “Audrey Hepbum” store and resolved to come back after our tour and check that store out, as my sister is a big fan and of course, because they spelled her name wrong.
We rode for some time and finally arrived. We took a long, hot walk and on the way to the cave we came across Jeju’s hedge maze. Turns out, a British professor had brought some hedge seeds from home and had constructed a hedge maze right there in a small Korean island. It looked simple, but it wasn’t. We ran around in circles, split up, found one another again, and finally made it out. We rang the little victory bell and went on to the cave. This cave was formed when lava ran through an underground cavern and cooled and hardened, forming the longest lava tubes in the world. The temperature drop was stunning and we were quite cold on the long walk to the end of the cave and back. Not too much to report really. It was a cave. It had lava tubes. It was cold. It was fun!

We came back to the sunlight and decided to go to Sunrise Place, a rocky outcropping overlooking the ocean. We arrived on borrowed time as we were far closer to sunset than sunrise, so we jumped into a taxi, made it there, jumped out, and started up. Sunrise Place is very beautiful, with lush grass, horses, a nice trail up to the top of the mountain (maybe technically a hill), and a commanding view at the top. The ticket taker told us it would take 45 minutes to get to the top. We sighed deeply, took a deep breath, and made it in 15. It was tough but the view was worth it. We silently admired the vista then headed down. We caught a taxi back to the bus terminal and visited the Audrey store. It was amusing-three different spellings of her name in all, including the correct one. It was a very small clothing store that looked as if it had turned its back on international copyright law to sell women dresses from Audrey Hepbum. We got some nice pictures and Jen got some sunglasses.

We hopped yet another cab to visit our final destination-a national park on the way back to our hotel. Our driver was a nut; he took us about 15 minutes in the wrong direction, which we were not aware of until he busted a violent U-turn and sped like a maniac back the way we had just come. Sunset was approaching and we were worried about how we would get home. He dropped us off and through sign language let us know he would wait for us. We took off running for the trail when a ticket taker screamed at us in Korean: apparently the trail was closed. Our driver interceded on our behalf (we think) but the ticket taker was unmoved. The only picture we got was Jen getting back into the taxi. It’s a nice pic.

So speedy taxi man drove us home with our seatbelts securely fastened and our white knuckles gripping the seats. We were pretty tired but we went to the Hyatt for some more great cheesecake to go. We had been planning all day to get some pizza for dinner and just relax in our smelly room (by this point it didn’t smell so bad). We asked our hotel desk about delivering pizza but he said no one delivered there. We had seen a delivery scooter that very day near the hotel, however. We remembered the phone number, called the pizza place, they said no problem, and we were happy. Then, our friend at the front desk called and told us the pizza place and called him and said no. To this day, we have no idea why.

We reluctantly got dressed and got another taxi to the pizza place. As always, they misunderstood our order and brought Jen’s pizza but not mine. Finally, all things were straight and we ate some pretty bad pizza. Some crazy woman from Oklahoma accosted us like we were long lost relatives, but we were tired and just wanted to go home. So we did.

The blueberry cheesecake was again delicious. We went to sleep to the sound of falling rain. The next morning, we ate some toast and then headed back to Busan.

Despite how I framed my stories, it was a wonderful, wonderful trip and like a honeymoon of sorts for us. We never did really get to properly celebrate our engagement in the madness of moving. We laughed a lot, got some wonderful pictures, played with stingless jellyfish, and just enjoyed each other and everything Jeju had to offer. Except the food! But, ohm the blueberry cheesecake! Check back in a few days for details on our exciting trip to Seoul!

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