Korea - 18th May 2011 Day 3

This day, we woke up very early (I think around 5am) as we were to catch an early flight to Jeju. We checked out of the hotel and left our luggage with the hotel as we planned to return to the same hotel when we got back from Jeju. Spent a bit of time trying to communicate with the staff on duty about the directions to Gimpo airport.

Took a short walk (around 5-10min) to Jonggak subway station. Our hotel is situated between 2 stations of different lines. Jonggak station from dark blue line and Anguk station from orange line.

We took one stop to Jongno 3(sam)-ga station to change to the purple line. From there, it's another 22 stops to Gimpo airport station. Convenient! The journey took around 1hour but it's much much cheaper and safer than taking cab as there's no need to worry about traffic jams. Lucky, the train was not crowded so we managed to get seats and slept most of the way there. Haha...

The funny thing is, we had to run for our plane... Again! Haha... This time, it wasn't our fault! Our flight was supposed to depart at 8.05am and we were supposed to check-in at least 40mins before departure time. We reached much earlier than the designated time and the manager at the check-in counter asked if we would like to take the earlier flight. We agreed and to our amusement, the manager came out of the counter and led us to the gate. Turned out the earlier flight was about to fly off in like, 10-15min! We part jogged, part ran to the gate, settled down and the plane took off. The plane was quite full so we did not get to sit together but it was ok as we promptly fell asleep shortly after take-off.

After the plane touched down at Jeju, we immediately went in search of breakfast. We went to a small cafeteria at a corner of the airport and had a very not satisfying breakfast. I think YL and I shared dumplings and Ivy ordered a sushi roll or something like that. The food was not nice.

When we had enough of the food, we walked back to the arrival gates to look for our guide. That's right, we decided to engage the service of a local guide to bring us around the island for one day. Gave the guide a bit of a shock when I approached him from the back instead of from the arrival gates. I had called him when we arrived to explain that we were early but I guessed he didn't really understand my call.


A glimpse of the Jeju airport.

First, he brought us to a quite famous tourist attraction, the Mang Jang Gul (aka Manjang Lava Cave). As the name suggests, it's a quite deep cave, very wet and dark. Couldn't find any quality photo so I did not post any taken inside the cave. Can't remember how much we paid for the entrance. In Korea, you need to pay admission fee at every tourist attraction, even those nature parks and hills.

Next, our guide drove us to a very beautiful place, known as the San-Gumburi Crater. Admission fee was 3,000won (around SGD3.50) each. The view of the place was breath-takingly beautiful with lots of greeneries and flowers. Nice!








We spent a bit of time there, took lots of photos and proceeded to the next stop.

Jeju Folk Village. The good thing about having a guide around is that he can help us to take group photos.


Our guide has a warp sense of humour. He likes to take photos of us unprepared.


Much better...


Ivy, trying her hand at an ancient Korean game. She needs to keep hitting the spinning thing with the whip so that it'll keep spinning.

The one sitting on the chair is our guide, JK. That was actually a torture chair and he wanted to show us how it worked. He couldn't do it on his own and a Korean tourist who was standing nearby, walked over and helped him with the torturing. Haha...


Oh yah oh yah, guess what this is?


It's a rubbish bin!!! I was flabbergasted when I saw JK throwing his rubbish into the urn. I looked at him with my open-mouth shocked face and was about to scold him for being inconsiderate when he told me it's a rubbish bin. And there really were quite a lot of the urn rubbish bin along the way in the Folk Village.


Oops... Missed...


Then, he brought us to a beach where there were people para-gliding.

JK managed to persuade us to do some jump shots. Failed...


Getting ready...


Failed again... We all gave up after this. Haha...


Better stick to normal and boring poses...


See the white tower at the top? That's our next stop.

Reached! A quite famous Korean drama, 'All In' by 宋慧乔and李丙宪 was filmed here.


JK made us take this photo.


We had to climb all those stairs to reach the top which is a quite popular tourist look-out.


Reminded me of Aussie's Twelve Apostles...


Can't understand but I think it must be informing us of the height and such about this place.

I have to say that the ajumas (aunties) in Korea are really healthy. Can always see them in pairs or groups and all geared up for hiking with their caps, jackets, pants and gloves. Every inch of their skin is protected from the sun.


And yes, we walked along that way to the top...


At our request, JK helped us to find a hotel near the Il-chul-bong (sunrise peak). It's very difficult to book a hotel in advance in that area as they do not have English websites. Lucky for us, we had JK who helped us to check-in and such. We got a room with double bed and JK helped us to arrange for an extra mattress so that the 3 of us could room together.


The extra mattress which was actually just a thick blanket. Sleeping on the floor there was not too bad. I knew because I volunteered for sleeping on the floor. Haha...


Our over-night bags... Also, the hotel might look old and a bit run-down but it is comfortable and has all the necessary amenities. The 'feel' of the hotel is quite alright too as I did not feel uneasy at all sleeping in front of the mirror. It helped that while sleeping on the floor, I couldn't really see the mirror. Haha...


The bathroom was quite clean.


After freshening up at the hotel room, we went out for dinner. On the way to the restaurant...

Passed by a police station...


The Korean BBQ restaurant we had dinner at. Before he left us, JK helped us to make reservations here and gave the staff our order in advance so that we wouldn't have any difficulties later. Really grateful to him as the staff there do not speak English.


As the picture indicates, this restaurant sells pork of black pigs.


The side dishes... The lettuce is for wrapping the BBQ meat.


More side dishes...


BBQ time! The locals do their own BBQ. However, we had help from the ajuma working there. She took one look at our clueless faces and hesitant moves and promptly took over the BBQ tongs. The ajuma looked quite stern but is really very helpful. If left to our own devices, we most likely would have burned most of the meat.

We couldn't remember how much the meal costed but we all agreed that it's really value for money as the meat was really a lot! We couldn't finish everything and there was a bit of wastage. However, it was really delicious! We returned to the hotel with bursting stomachs. Haha...

We turned in really early this night, at around 9-10pm as we planned to wake up early the next day to catch the sunrise. It wasn't difficult for us to fall asleep as we were really tired, with waking up early in the morning and travelling here and there. In fact, all 3 of us even dozed off in our guide, JK's car earlier in the afternoon. JK was really amused.


Oh right, I almost forgot to introduce our 4th travel mate.....




Ivy's Moo-min! Lucky Moo-min gets to travel free-of-charge! Hahaha...