Silver Linings: The Story of a Jeju Adventure

One year and 8 months in and I've finally visited one of Korea's most famous destinations, both for tourists and Koreans alike. Located off the southern coast of the mainland, Jeju is a volcanic (dormant- don't worry) island home to nearly 600,000 people. If you ask any Korean, they will tell you to visit this incredible place at least once before you leave. Have I convinced you to book a ticket yet? For those of you who are seriously thinking about going, I'll be leaving little tips throughout this blog post. If you aren't going, then you can let your eyes glaze over for those parts).

Now, due to the lack of an endless supply of vacation days, this trip was planned for the past weekend, despite the knowledge that we would need much more than 2 days to fully experience it all. Making due with the time we had, my friend Dan and I headed off early Saturday morning from Gimpo to take the hour flight down into Jeju City. With about 10 million passengers traveling to and from Jeju each year, this airport is one of the busiest I've seen with regards to how many airplanes we saw throughout our trip. At one point you could see one flying mere miles ahead of another coming right behind! Upon arrival, we went straight for the car rental booths. Get ready eye-glazers--TIP: Those of you who are planning a trip to Jeju, you should definitely find a way to rent a car! Bring a friend (or it doesn't even have to be a friend, could be someone willing to drive you around for a few days with food as payment) who has an international drivers license and get on your way. If we didn't have a car this trip, we definitely wouldn't have been able to see and do everything we did. It was also great that Dan enjoys driving. Leaving me in charge of DJing the trip as well as navigating.

Lunchbox Car

Jeju is the place for wind-power, the wind never stops!

The first stop on our adventure was Udo (or "Cow Island"), named as such because apparently it looks like a cow lying down...not sure how this worked, but hey, Kudos to you very imaginative Koreans. We drive from the city about 45 minutes to the port leading to Udo. (Tip: When you get to the ticket area, you have to fill out a paper with your names, ages, and phone numbers. Fill out two of these. Give one to the ferry guys on your way out and then the second one to them on the way back! They didn't make this very clear and we had to run to fill one out nearly missing the ferry back!)

Once we reached the island, we grabbed a bus ticket that would stop at 4 major areas around the island. The first stop was "Ji-Du-Cheong-Sa" where you can walk up to the top of the peak on the island and get an incredible view of endless green fields and small country homes.

After taking in this breathtaking spot we wandered back down the hill to grab some lunch, seeing as we hadn't eaten since before the flight that morning. Enjoying a huge bowl of bibimbap and some delicious dumplings, we talked about how nice it was to not have any pressing plans. This whole weekend was going to be a lot of playing things by ear and seeing what happened.

 

 

 

The next stop on the tour was the black sand beach (Dong-An-Gyeong-Gul). Because Jeju was created by volcanoes, it comes with no surprise that a lot of the beaches have this dark, porous sand. This particular beach was in an alcove from the sea, surrounded by towering cliffs which were covered in a living, breathing blanket of plantlife. A cave inside one of the cliff-sides was full of prayer towers (small rocks piled on eachother) made by visitors over the years.

 

 

 Made my own prayer tower

We also saw these ice-cream stores around the island. The top sign reads;

"When some man & woman are taking some, 

Just looking for Jimmys & trying to have Jimmys

It's the only answer & hilling for"

I felt like I was correcting some of my students writing trying to work out exactly what this ice-cream store was trying to say, but overall, I'd say their tactics worked, as the shop seemed full of ice-cream-loving-tourists.

Stop number three on our Udo tour was another beach on the north side of the island. On the beach are three large statues to commemorate the women divers of Jeju. The story behind these divers is an intriguing one. Typically in many cultures, the desire for parents is to have a boy to carry on the family name and take over as the head of the household. Jeju is different however, in that the women tended to do the majority of the work and bring in money and food to support the families. One of these jobs included being a diver. The women divers, or haenyeo, wore no special diving equipment or oxygen tanks but simply grew up diving and developed the ability to hold their breath for long periods of time underwater while collecting clams, seaweed, and other sea life. These women had a lot of power not only in the family, but in the government as well. While there are not many of these "mermaids" anymore, the women are still respected and recognized all over the island.

The fourth and final destination on this bus tour was the white sand beach (Seo-Bin-Baek-Sa). The sand here is made up of gazillions of tiny broken pieces of shells, creating an overall look of "white sand" but looking up close it is made up of all kinds of colors and shapes.

 

 

Udo island is not only known for the beaches, but also for its peanuts...even more specifically, its peanut ice-cream. We had to try some, obviously.

What we didn't try were these creatures...

Want a kiss?

After grabbing the ferry back, we hopped back into our car to head to a famous World Heritage Site nearby called Seongsan Sunrise Peak. The views from the top of this old volcano were some of the best I've ever experienced. It definitely did not look like Korea anymore. The green mountain side, paired with the view of the ocean could be a set for a movie.

 

As we climbed up and down this incredible peak, I heard languages from all over the world. Dan and I tried to work out where we thought they were from. There were definitely a lot of Thai travelers, some Filipinos, a ton of Chinese tourists, as well as Koreans and Westerners. Sometimes the language would come as a surprise as we asked people to take a picture of us who we thought might be Korean turned out to speak perfect English in an Australian accent. A bit of a fun game actually. There were also these strange creatures from mars, mainly females, who decided to wear their highest, most painful heels on their trip to climb this peak. Not only did it look excruciating, but I was ready to catch them as they wobbled on each step above us. (TIP: DON'T BE FROM MARS, wear comfortable shoes)

At the bottom of this World Heritage site is a small temple area. The beauty of Korean temples never ceases to amaze me. I'm sorry for more pictures of the roofs of temples. I know they seem to be included in a lot of these posts. If you could see them in real life, you would do the same!

 

 

Hopping back in our lunchbox car we drove back to check into our Hostel back in Jeju City. I found this hostel through research on a random assortment of booking sites. Hostels cover the city, and honestly it is just the click of a button to choose one to stay in. "The Forest Hostel" was in a great location, right by a ton of under- and above-ground markets, as well as a short walk from the national museum and other site-seeing opportunities. The staff is super helpful and the rooms cozy. We dropped our stuff off and headed across the street to the fish market to find some hwe (sashimi). Walking into the market area we were greeted by booth upon booths of oranges. Seriously though. the stalls had one tiny section for other fruits and Jeju chocolate, but the rest of the display was covered with mountains of Jeju oranges.

The Forest Hostel Website

The thing about these fish markets that I love is that you know the fish is fresh. It was most likely the one looking at you funny when you walked in. The table gets covered in side dishes and we dig in. Dan found his favorite grilled fish (eyeballs attached) and I ate my weight in raw fish. Such a good meal that we actually ended up going there twice this trip! Not ashamed at all.

Exhausted from a day of traveling and walking, we slept hard and slept well, getting ready for the next day's adventures. The next morning we grabbed some fruit from a nice little old lady in the fruit market and decided to navigate our way as far up Halla Mountain as possible. Following all the brown street signs (marking some sort of touristy spot) we drove further and further up this giant mountain. As we got higher, the fog thickened and the wind blew harder. At some points we couldn't see 10 feet in front of the car. While it was a bit scary, it was incredible to see the clouds speeding by us like they were late for something. I was also very happy to not be driving. While we were deterred from hiking up due to this weather, I cannot say the same for a very rowdy bus-load of Koreans, fully decked out with their poles, hats, and brightly colored gear.

Driving down the other side, the weather continued to get even worse. At each corner I prayed that one of those very confident bus drivers wasn't heading towards us through the fog. Finally making it out the other side we found ourselves on the other side of the island. This area is full of museums of every shape and size. Some we drove past include the chocolate museum (yes- we walked past this one), Ripley's Believe it or not museum, Green Tea museum, Love Land, Glass Museum, and on and on and on. If you stay on this side of the island you could spend the whole weekend just going to every museum, now wouldn't that be fun?

We opted to walk through a park area instead, headed to see some waterfalls I had read and heard about. One of the things that struck me about this area is just how GREEN everything is! It's incredible how much you miss green when you live in a city. I wanted to roll around in the grass and stay forever. Solomon Teacher might not approve of that decision, though.

 

 

 

This area is so peaceful and quiet. It was not super busy, so at some points we were the only two near the falls. The water was so clear and the forest made for such a relaxing place to sit and think. If we had all day I would have loved to bring my book and just soak in nature for a while.

With about 6 hours before our flight, we decided to drive along the shore roads on the west coast of the island and stopping if we saw something we wanted to check out on the way. As we drove along, jamming to some road-trip music we saw a peak jutting out over the ocean, as well as a giant golden Buddha statue. If that's not a reason to stop, I don't know what is. climbing up a rickety old stone structure to get the best view of the coast, we took in the stunning scenery around us.

 

 Obviously, the next thing to do is to get a closer look at that statue. This temple seemed to be built right into the side of the mountain. Surrounded by nature, this temple transports you to that time in history- minus a few modern additions (an old telephone booth and a small snack store). As we climb up the mountain to get a better view we stumble upon one of my favorite spots on our trip. Built into a cavern of the mountain is a small prayer area with a Buddha statue nestled in the rocks and lit candles flickering in the breeze. I was going to try and take a picture, but 1. My camera just couldn't capture it and 2. I did not want to make the monks sitting near the entrance uncomfortable. From my temple stays, I remember seeing a lot of the monks turn their heads if we ever had our cameras out in their direction. Take my word for the beauty here, though!

 

 

From then it was time to head back to the airport! After dropping the car off to the rental area, I get an ominous message from Alex Teacher back home. She asked if our flight was still leaving...as my heart starts beating a bit faster we walk into the airport to see a giant board of departing flights all with a bright red "CANCELED" next to them...heart beating still faster we go up to the Asiana desk where a sweet Korean woman tells us that our flight out that evening is indeed cancelled. This is when my heart dropped to my feet. I actually think I scared her a bit as I probably looked like she just said the world was ending tomorrow. My mind starts racing and I immediately start to think about how I was going to make it to work that next morning. Unable to provide us with any accommodation, or secure flight the next day she gave us the advice to come back the next day to see what we could get. Calling Alex for guidance she tells us to find a place to stay, relax, and she would help figure things out at work. She is a godsend. While I was still internally freaking out about missing work (the over achiever in me) I called back to Forest Hostel to book another room for the night, luckily for us they had one! My question now, looking back at things, is why didn't the car rental place warn us about this? They must have known that all the flights were cancelled, wouldn't we use the car for one more day? Odd, but maybe there was a language barrier that kept them from informing us, or maybe they didn't want to be the ones to tell us. Taxiing back to Forest, we made a plan of action. After trying to call Asiana to book something (unsuccessfully) and waiting on hold for 30 minutes, we decided just to get to the airport at 0-dark-hundred and see what would await us.

The next morning, walking into the airport, we are welcomed by the site of this...

Finding the Asiana desk, we walk past an endless line of people until we reach the end...One positive thing about this experience is that Koreans love lining up and they aren't ones to cause any scenes in these situations. Everyone waits, sometimes asking the airport staff questions, but voices never rise, and no punches are thrown. If we were in America I have a feeling the people watching would have been much more entertaining. For now, however, I would have to pass the time watching cute kids run around. 3 hours later, yes THREE HOURS, we reach the front desk where the poor man there tells us that our options are to wait on standby, returning to the desk every so often to check our number, or to book a new flight. We decided to cut our losses and get a flight for Tuesday morning (One more day of vacation for us!) We caught a cab back to Forest (for the 3rd time), wishing we still had our car, and thankfully got a room for a third night there (I wanted to hug all of them, they were life savers this trip!!)

The game plan for this day was to find a beach. The weather was windy but sunny and beautiful, compared to the cloudy and windy weather during the weekend. We stopped by our cute fruit lady once again to grab some sustenance for the day and hopped on the bus towards a black sand beach close by.

 

garlic anyone?

From there we walked...a lot...grabbed a bus at some point to try and find a park nearby on one of our maps and actually managed to find it eventually! Who needs technology anymore to find thing around an unknown town. What we came up upon was yet another gorgeously green area with monuments and statues as well as a temple on the hill surrounded by palm trees. Not only was it strange to see a Korean temple with this tropical foliage but the colors used on the temple were different as well. Instead of the usual bright teal, green, and red colors, this temple focused on using golden hues to decorate it's roofs. The effect was magical.

 

And that, my friends, is when my camera died. From then on, we continued our walk through the city, we passed by streets of shops, restaurants, and schools, even stopping to watch some young students at soccer practice. The city has such a small town feel, with no tall buildings or apartments like there are in Seoul. The majority of the people who walked by smiled or said hello to us, and it seems like all of the taxi drivers know each other, based on the number of times ours waved to others.

That night we grabbed hwe again, because we can never have enough raw fish (am I right?) and headed in for the night. Another early wake up that morning to head to the airport once again (I'm pretty done with airports for a while now) for the short hop back to Seoul. Overall, Jeju was an incredible experience. I'm actually super glad our flight got canceled on Sunday, because 2 days is not enough to experience everything. I'm sure that even with our extra day, there is so much more to see and do. I don't think I'll get the chance to go back during my last 4 months here, but I know that someday I will return, and maybe even soak up some sun on a beach there! I'm so thankful for my amazing coteachers and boss at Little America for understanding my situation and not thinking I faked our flight being cancelled to get another day off (or did I....) You all are amazing!!

Until next time xoxo

Korean of the post:
돌 하르방
(dol hareubang)
 This is actually the name of the stone statues that are all over the island of Jeju. They are considered to give protection and fertility to the people of Jeju. The cartoon versions of them are almost as cute as the real ones.