Gabriel’s Musings

Jeju Island – Korea Day 4

Jeju Island – the country’s largest island, has an inactive volcano at its centre and it’s hosts scenes of many Korean shows! We spent two days here where we stayed at Hotel Milano Crown; at the heart of Jeju City

As Jeju Island is a rather large island, we hired a non-English speaking cab driver to drive us around Jeju for 100,000 won a day. An English speaking cab driver would cost us 150,000 instead. But since we already know exactly where we wanted to go, we took the less costly alternative. Turns out, our driver speaks a lil’ bit of English. He’s quite cute actually.. He ended up being our driver and photographer.. Ok, back to that later..

We split our exploration of Jeju Island into two parts – East and West. Problem with going around Jeju is that all the attractions are very far away from the city; approx 1-2 hours drive. So on this day, we explored the West Part of Jeju Island first.

So, our first stop is to Love Land. A sex recreation theme park. We had a quick lunch there first as we were starving from our travel!

The biggest saba fish I’ve ever seen…. (maybe because the SG ones are smaller)

 

We took lots of pictures in the Love Land as some of the concepts/figurines are quite funny…

Such as the mermaid and the merman

The dog and his host..

And some legs upside down..

 

Inside, there is a shop selling all the ‘sex-toys’..

 

I didn’t know Korea is so open in all these..

After that, we went to the Mysterious Road just next to the Love Land where it’s an optical illusion where you think that you’re going downhill, but when you stop the car, the car actually slides backwards…

Then, we journeyed to the 1100m above sea level at Mount Halla, the volcanic mountain of Jeju.

The actual peak of Mount Halla requires a 7-hour hiking trip which unfortunately, we do not have the time to do so… Apparently, the scenic at the peak of Mount Halla is beautiful, with the volcanic crater and all..

Too bad, we only managed to walk around the boardwalk of the natural surroundings around a volcanic mountain.

 

The weather was very cooling at the top… We were lucky cause it seemed like it’s going to rain but it didn’t..

We then headed to Jusangjeollidae, a cliff with Basalt Columns. The rock formation is breathtakingly beautiful

 

 

The area has a park also for people to well, linger around..

Nex stop, is the Oedolgae, aka the Lonely Rock

This is the place where they screened the show “大长今” or (dai cheong kam) in canto.

So, they have a place to put our faces inside to act as the pretty doctor..

 

Again, the area has a big park as well, with ponds, trees, etc.

 

Next stop, is the Cheongjiyeon, to see the waterfall. It’s a very commercialized place where it’s filled with tourists and it is designed nicely with trails towards the waterfall.

They even have koi fishes and ducks living at the stream..

 

Along the way, it has many mini-waterfalls…

 

leading towards the main waterfall..

It’s quite a long walk leading to that waterfall.. And worst of all, it’s very crowded with people…

Next, we went to another less-crowded waterfall, the JeongBang Waterfall.. In fact, I prefer this waterfall cause

(1) it’s less crowded
(2) we can get a very close to the waterfall
(3) this waterfall flows directly to the ocean

We can fill the water splashing right into our faces; together with the strong sea breeze…

We spent a lot of time in this area enjoying the wind, the water and the sight…

 

 

 

And our final sight-seeing stop for the day, a view of the Sanbangsan.

The coast has many black rocks…

And we just gladly take more pictures there…

We had seafood dinner nearby where we tried ‘live seafood’. Not exactly eating them alive, but when it was served to us, it was still living.. We had to boil/cook it alive.. *ouch*

Outside the restaurant is where it faces China.. Albeit it’s geographically physically not visible, but the next land in that direction is China..

Turns out, the place is also where they acted the scene from Dai Cheong Kam. By the time we’re done in this place, it’s almost night time.. We headed back to Jeju City for some light snack shopping before hitting back to the hotel.
It was around 9pm when we reached and I wanted to go out a bit more while the rest were watching how Portugal trashed North Korea in World Cup. So, I explored the surroundings alone and I managed to find a pork bbq place! I quickly went back to the hotel and ask yee weng if he wanted to eat… He gladly joined me and luckily, they screened World Cup in that shop too.

So, we had Pork Belly BBQ!

Even the sight of it makes me drool… It only costs us about 14000 won for this meal…

That is all for the first day in Jeju… Coming up next, the other half of Jeju!