Jeju

I've recently taken a couple of small trips. A few weeks ago I finally visited Jeju-do, a large island off the southern coast, which is commonly referred to as South Koreas "Hawaii".

Jeju has a long history which you can read about here.

The weather wasn't very cooperative, between bouts of rain and fog, I saw some sunshine, and experienced some awesome things. There was so much to see and the tour only covered so much. I can't wait to go back and visit some other things I didn't get to. Tickets are relatively cheap, you can get them for as little as $20 sometimes. Our package was booked late, and we ended up paying almost $300 per person including flight/hotel/tour for 2 days.

You can find your own way for much cheaper in the off season, I'm sure.

The trip was a tour package - all in Korean, so I can't tell you too much about it. I'll let the photos do most of the work:

First stop: A horse show. The performers did riding tricks, and acted out a battle with Mongolia.

 

 

 

 

Next we stopped at a garden and buffet restaurant (which was amazingly good), and had a little time to tour the garden as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also stopped at O'Sulloc, a tea company that specializes in greent tea. We had a brief moment to take a photo of the tea fields and sample some green tea.

 

Jeju is famous for it's oranges (hallabongs) We visited an orange grove where they explained how to tell if an orange is ripe and sweet. Hint: if it feels hard around the diameter of the stem, it's not sweet.

 

 Next we visited the southern coast of the island, and walked along the edge of the ocean and took a short cruise that toured it as well. Too bad it was a little foggy, off the coast, but still beautiful.

 

For dinner, we ate some fish stew(I can't recall the name) but apparently it's pretty famous in Jeju. I thought it was decent.

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The following day, we took a tour to Eco-Land (I wouldn't recommend this, especially on Parents Day). There were throngs of pushy elderly people, and Eco-Land was boring in general...I think they all just wanted to ride the train around the park.

 

 

After a Chinese cultural performance at Sam Guk Ji land, we headed to a traditional village  (I won't post photos of Sam Guj Ji Land because it was really corny and boring) - besides their mask changing act...which was kind of cool.

The village still has people living there. They survive by selling products like honey, berry juice, and ground horse bone pellets that are supposedly good for your bones and fights osteoporosis. I tried some, but my bones feel the same. ^^

 

 

The highlight of the trip by far was the horseback riding experience. I haven't been on a horse in ages, so this was rather enjoyable. Plus, they are so darn cute.

 

 

 

We had a foal following us around .. she was cute.

 

We were only alloted about one hour to visit Ilchul Land next, which is not enough time. Ilchul Land has a cool cave created from old lava flows, and some beautiful gardens - and even a cool cactus house.

 

 

 

 

Towards the end of the tour we visited Yongduam Rock (Dragons Head Rock), which becomes less and less dragon-esque the longer you stare at it. We stayed at the rock for a while in order to see it at night, which was said to be the best time. Unfortunately the area was overcome by dense fog, and you couldn't see much. But it did look eerie and cool that way.

 

 

 

 Too much fog...

 

 Our last day on Jeju wasn't a happy one. It started off like this near our hotel:

 

yay!

Then we traveled back to the central southern area of the island to see Jungmun Beach, supposedly one of the nicer sights on the island.

We ended up seeing this before having to head back to the airport:

 

Jeju is totally worth going to if you have time to travel around. Again, we do plan to go back in the late summer or early fall. Hopefully we can see a lot more and take our time to enjoy ourselves rather than be hustled around by a tour group.