Jeju: April 2015

 Hel-lo, hel-lo, hel-lo Kit-tay!

we’ve never seen these local airlines.

We arrived in Jeju bright and early! The weather was beautiful, we were tired, but ready for our adventure. Our coming to Jeju was at my prompting. I had heard that it was beautiful, the “Hawaii of Korea” was how it was explained to me. When I looked it up, there were waterfalls, a volcano you could hike, lava tubes, beaches, and a trail that goes around the perimeter of the island, it sounded perfect for us. We had a bit of a rough start. After reading several reviews, we opted to rent a car. It not only gave us more flexibility in our touring, but allowed us to stay in a great hotel, which was slightly off the beaten path. When coming out of the airport, we followed the signs to the car rental. It was only a 5 minute walk, but when we arrived and looked around, we didn’t see our rental company. As a matter of fact, we didn’t recognize any of the rental companies. Javier asked someone and they told him that we had to walk back to the terminal and take a bus. So, back we went, waited about 10 minutes for our company shuttle to arrive and hopped on. Our shuttle bus was full, so when we arrived, Javier jumped out to try and beat the crowd. The attendant didn’t speak English, so it was a little difficult doing business. After about 15 minutes, and watching a few other groups already driving away in their cars, we were still standing there. We were just about finished when we told him that we would need to return our car earlier than they had written down.

Our car rental. KIA. 🙂

Originally, we had booked the car for the wrong day. When we called to make the change, we asked if we would be able to return the car earlier if necessary. The Expedia guy put us on hold while he supposedly called the rental company. He told us that we would be able to return the car anytime we wanted, 24hrs. Well, isn’t that just dandy. Unfortunately, this was not true. The guy said we could return the car early, at 0730. Our flight was at 0810. We told him that wasn’t going to work. We thought he was understanding us, but he wrote the time on a piece of paper and kept saying, “okay??” We kept saying “not okay.” He brought over a colleague to try and explain to us the situation. We told the colleague we understood perfectly what he was telling us, but that we didn’t want to drop our car 40 minutes before the flight. After another 10 minutes of back and fourth, none of us really communicating effectively with each other, we finally looked at the guys, pointed to the time they had written and said, very definitively, “NO.” Javier and I started looking for other car rental places on our phones. After about 5 minutes, the attendant told us there was another rental place just down the road and they open at 0530 every morning, and they have a car available.

Jeju. World cup sign!

They offered to drive us to the other place, and when we arrived, our driver (who was actually the attendant helping us) walked to the counter and starting talk to a girl. We were successfully able to book a car, and the only drawback was that they were sold out of English GPS, all they had was Korean. We decided against it, but when she told us it was free and how it worked, we decided to give it a try. For the record, Korean GPS is amazing, and apparently much better than the English version- so we found out. By the time we were shown our car, it had been about 2.5 hours since we landed. Our frustration had almost completely dissipated, and we were on the move! 

Korean BBQ. first of the trip.

When we arrived at our hotel, there was a note on the cafe door that said the boss was at the market. We poked around and rang some bells, but it was clear no one was home. We siphoned the cafe wifi, and found a lunch place. It was a very local place, and thank goodness there were pictures. Lunch was delicious, and we were both really excited to be eating Korean food!

We had planned to actually do something on the day we arrived, but between the lack of sleep the night before, the car rental debacle, and the hour-long car ride to the hotel, we were tired. When we awoke three hours later, we were hungry. We asked the hotel owner, Mr. Kim for a Korean barbecue recommendation. This is where we learned the superiority of the Korean GPS. At least in Jeju, every establishment and tourist attraction (even the waterfalls) have a phone number attached to it. All you do is input the phone number into the GPS and voila! there you are. It must be different with the English GPS, because Mr. Kim asked us if we had English or Korean, and when we told him we had Korean, he said, “Oh good, the English GPS has a really difficult time finding this place.” When we arrived at our destination, we discovered that, while it was indeed a barbecue place, they only serve the famed “black pork.” We didn’t really know how famous this black pork was, until we were driving around and saw that every single restaurant on the island serves some variation of black pork. The experience was great and the food was delicious. Our waiter spoke fairly decent english, and we chatted while he cooked our dinner in front of us. He laughed at me when he saw the pile of pork fat on my plate. He said it was the best part. He already knew I was a nurse, so when I whispered, “But it’s really bad for you,” he just laughed at me again.

Jeju.

We visited Jungman Resort, which is a little village full of big hotels, shops, and tourist attractions. We were looking for the Olle trail. Our waiter told us that we could park for free at the Hyatt, and find the trail that runs along the beach side. We strolled along the trail for a while, and tried to burn off some of the pork. It was a very pleasant walk, there were few people on the trail with us, and we were able to walk up some stairs to the tops of the cliffs. As it started getting dark, we decided to turn back, get home, and try to plan the next leg of our trip.

Manjanggul Lava Tube.

We set an alarm for early the next morning, but still didn’t manage to get out of the hotel until almost noon. How did that happen? Oh yes, FaceTime with the family. Since we had already lost half the day, we decided on the lava tubes. The pictures online looked really cool, and it was one of the draws to Jeju. When we arrived, we found out that out of the 13km of lava tubes, only 1km is open to the public, and it’s one of the more plain areas. It was still really neat to walk through, as well as informative and quite cold. You could see where the walls had melted from the heat, and the levels of lava could be clearly seen. I was a little bummed that we couldn’t get to see areas with large stalactites and stalagmites. But, for what it’s worth, this area of the lava tube does boast the highest lava tower.

Jackie and Lava

We saw lava rafts, toes and shelves. All terms we didn’t know existed until our visit.

The lava tubes were on the complete opposite side from where we lived. To get there, we drove up the middle of the island to the north side and headed east. I wanted to continue the drive, so we drove along the east side towards the south. There’s a big rock on the east side that is a Unesco site. Side note, the entire island of Jeju is a Unesco site, a fact that continued to elude us. We opted against driving up to the top of the rock, but it kind of resembled Gibraltar, just smaller. We stopped at another local restaurant that had a picture of bi bim bap in the window and both thought that sounded great for dinner. When we sat down and told the lady that’s what we wanted, she shook her head, “no bi bim bap” and pointed to another table. Apparently, she only serves one thing, yet advertises several. No worries though, dinner was again delicious, and yes, consisted of, you guessed it, black pork.

Lava Tunnel

After dinner, we walked next door to an orange shop. The two foods Jeju is famous for- black pork, and oranges. These are no ordinary oranges, they are special Jeju oranges, and 3kg with run you $20-25. These orange shops are everywhere! You can’t drive more than 5 minutes without passing one. They are free-standing buildings that sell oranges, mandarines, and everything orange and mandarine, including chocolate or mochi covered. We felt we needed to at least try the oranges.don’t 

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Yummy. Black Pork.

When we entered there was a little old lady who greeted us, and when we greeted her back, she quickly correct us. She kept repeating her greeting ann-yeong-ha-se-o, and didn’t stop until I was able to pronounce it to her satisfaction. Ha! She let us sample an orange and we were sold! We couldn’t spend $20 on oranges, but we bought 4 for 5,000 won (still really expensive!). I said thank you, and was corrected about my choice of Seoul lingo vs Jeju lingo. Apparently people in Jeju say, kamansahamnida instead of kamsahamnida, turning an already difficult “thank-you” into a nearly impossible one. She walked us outside and played charades. We gathered she was asking about our car, and pointed in its direction. She then said something and gestured with her hands. We guessed she was telling us that while we slept that night, it was going to rain. 

Local tourists

The little old lady was right! We had planned to hike to the crater the next day, and woke up to rain. We ate a delicious Korean breakfast sandwich, and slowly got ready for the day. During our days in Jeju, much of our free time was dedicated to planning the next leg of our trip. So, we seemed to have a difficult time getting out of the hotel every morning because we were busy planning. This day was no exception. We didn’t leave until it was time for lunch. We looked up a place that was close to the Cheonjeyeon waterfall and had a delicious western-style lunch. It was still raining when we left, so we geared up in out rain jackets and headed for the waterfall. Javier and I were quite disappointed in the experience. There are three waterfalls in this area, and they charge an entrance fee. Okay, fine. But for some reason we thought we would have to walk a bit or maybe even hike a bit to get to them.

waterfalls

The entire place has wooden walkways that connect the waterfalls, and wooden platforms for viewing. You can’t leave the platform to maybe hop over a couple rocks and get a better picture, or step anywhere outside of the wood. We walked to all three waterfalls, which were honestly not that impressive, and were so disappointed in the lack of natural beauty. These waterfalls, like everything else on the island, are supposedly a unesco natural site. Well, there’s a huge iron bridge right in the middle of everything, and other man-made walkways that lead you through and spit you out at the end. I don’t really see what is so natural about the whole thing, but I’ll stop complaining now.

Oedolgae Rock

Javier started dubbing these types of places, “amusement parks,” because yes, there were more experiences like this one. There’s a big rock called Oedolgae that stands alone in the ocean that is shaped like a penis. We decided to check is out. Yup, there it was. A big ol’ penis-shaped rock. Juju is full of penises. They actually have an entire park with different penis sculptures. Seems a bit strange to me. It was still raining at this point, and I was tired of being wet.

Hello Kitty!!

Javier suggested going to an indoor place, maybe…Hello Kitty Island??? Yes, please!!! When we arrived, there was a plague of children. There were so many people that we had to use the adjacent parking. I simply did not have the energy for all those children, so we decided against Hello Kitty and went to dinner instead. 

Yeongsil Trail (Hallasan National Park). view

We finally made it to the volcano! Javier spent part of the morning with the hotel owner going over possible routes for our hike. He also made us wraps for lunch to take with us. What a nice guy! It was really gloomy, but not raining, so we were excited. As we drove higher, the fog cleared and it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. As soon as we started hiking we were frustrated. Again, wooden walkways everywhere! We read that you hike the volcano, not walk on man-made walkways with blue and yellow painted stairs!!!

Steps. very safe to hike.

I had to laugh because there were areas where they have placed stones in such a way to create a staircase, but they have filled in the gaps between the stones with some sort of grout, so the stones make a perfect step. Such a disappointment. We weren’t expecting to trek through the wilderness, but a dirt path and some rocks would be just fine. Even though the hike was not at all what we had planned, it turned out to be a nice experience. It was much further than either of us anticipated, and we were rained on for most of it. I have to admit, in the beginning we were really irritated by of all the ropes, walkways and steps, but then I started noticing the people who were coming and going. There were families with little kids and many older people. Then I realized that if it weren’t for all of the man-made structures, these people wouldn’t be able to enjoy walking up this volcano, so how can I be mad at that? 

Funny.

We finished the hike by early afternoon and since we had some time, we decided to give Hello Kitty Island one more try. It was still fairly crowded, so we wandered the gift shop for a while, and I decided that I wanted to pay the entry to go inside. We, yes we, are so glad we did!!! It was really neat. Definitely great for kids, but also very entertaining for adults. The whole place was so clean and pristine, and the decoration detail could rival Disney. The place is three floors, and we didn’t get tired or bored. We stopped at the Hello Kitty cafe for some tea, and it was honestly really delicious. I always assume food and drink in these types of places are going to be subpar, but if I didn’t have to pay the entry fee, I would definitely return for a green tea latte!

Hello Kitty delights. yes!

On the second floor, there is an area made to look like Hello Kitty’s school. They have an exercise area where you can watch Kitty on the screen and copy her moves. There is this truly annoying song that plays in the background. So for the next few hours after we left we were both singing, “Hel-lo, hel-lo, hel-lo, Kit-tay!” I later asked Javier, “Is it a bad thing that the highlight of Jeju was Hello Kitty Island?” Let’s just say, he didn’t disagree. 

To see more pictures of Jeju, click HERE.

: ) Here’s a video of Jackie at the Hello Kitty Museum: