Jeju-do that?

Hellooo!! So I'm back from Jeju. I'm hanging out at school writing this instead of teaching because for some unknown reason I only had half of a class all day. Easing back into the daily swing is always best after some time off. So let's talk about Jeju.

Last Wednesday was a national holiday, Children's Day. I don't really get the significance of it, but I also don't care because my school also gave me off Thursday and Friday. Only Sara and I went because Anna made a temporary continent switch and jetted off to Prague for the week to visit her sister who is studying abroad there; and Rebecca had her brother and a friend in town so they were visiting family.

Tuesday after school I headed to Gimpo airport to meet Sara. I nearly had a heart attack on the bus because it was within an hour of our flight and I was STILL sitting in traffic. Luckily, I made it in plenty of time, and we grabbed some food at the airport and boarded the plane. The flight was only about an hour, and we arrived on Jeju Island around 9:30, got on a bus to the other side of the island, and checked into our hotel. We stayed at a hostel that was super cheap, only $10 per person per night. The workers spoke English and we had free internet so it wasn't a bad deal. We woke up Wednesday morning to see lots of cloudy skies. We spent the day taking a little boat tour, and visiting some of the island's waterfalls. They were really beautiful, but I wish we could've seen them in the sunlight, I'm sure they would've been even better.

Cheonjiyeon Waterfall

Jeongbang Waterfall

Near our hotel

That night, we decided to go check out some of the nearby resorts. We went to the Lotte Hotel which looks like a giant castle. We treated ourselves to a nice dinner at the restaurant there and shared a bottle of wine. We also took a disgusting amount of pictures of a random volcano show from the balcony of the restaurant...

Lotte Hotel

Volcano show that we were obsessed with

Following dinner we headed to the hotel casino where we each blew about $20 on the slot machines. We cut ourselves off after that, but believe me that temptation to "win our money back" was there. Funny thing about gambling in Korea: its illegal for Koreans! In America, we get carded to make sure we're old enough to be gambling, but in Korea, they asked to see our passports to make sure we weren't Korean. I'm not sure what the legal age for gambling here is, but I would guess about 18 or 19. It doesn't really make sense to me, but I guess for tourism purposes casinos bring it a lot of revenue. Seems discriminatory to not allow Koreans in on all the fun but I don't know much else about how it works. I'll look into it.

Thursday morning we woke up with intentions to hike Halla Mountain, which is the central volcano on the island. Its inactive so its safe for hiking, and its one of the main attractions of the island. However, it was gloomy and rain threatened the entire day, so we made alternative plans. We took a bus to Manjangul (Manjang Cave). Its basically a big old lava tube, and the lava created this really crazy looking cave. Of course, it was really dark in there so my pictures are really dark. Sara probably has some better ones (in fact she has better pictures overall of the trip so once I can steal some from her I'll repost a few of them so you can all see better).

Sara in Manjang Cave

After the cave, we went to Seongsan, better known as Sunrise Peak. Its on the east side of the island, and we weren't about to wake up for sunrise, but we made a point to stop there anyway because it really is beautiful. We hiked up to the top, which was made fairly easy by paved trails and stairs. The top of the peak is sort of a crater that was formed in some complicated geological way that is beyond anything I can explain or understand, but it looks cool :)

Near the top of Sunrise Peak

The landscape of Jeju is sort of a strange combination of Hawaii meets Ireland. There is so much green, along with black sand beaches, rocky cliffs, and some beautiful ocean views.

Friday was our first sunny day, and we took advantage of it by going to the beach. Jungmun beach was near our hotel so we went there. It was a beautiful day and the beach was relatively empty thanks to the Koreans because afraid of the sun. Sara and I let ourselves fry all afternoon.

Jungmun Beach

Beach babes

Made me laugh so hard...just read it.

After the beach we decided to hotel crash some more, and walked to the Hyatt which has some of the best views of all the hotels on the island. After that, we headed to the Shilla hotel, which was by far our favorite. We had a beer as the sun set, and sat next to a group of Chinese ladies. It never gets old watching people who don't speak the same first language to try to communicate in English.

Saturday was our last day, and we really did want to spend 8 hours hiking up Halla Mountain, but naturally it was another beautiful day, and we wanted to fry even more. We went to the Shilla and snuck in to use their amazing pool. We probably could've asked someone to use the facilities for a fee, but no one said a word to us the entire day so why mess with a good thing? The hotel pool area looked like Marissa Cooper's house (yeah OC fans, you remember that?!).

Shilla Hotel Pool

The pool was a great place to relax and people watch. It turned out to be such a nice day, and while it would've been great to hike that mountain and see the view, I think we were both pretty content to just lounge by the pool all day. That's what vacations are for.

View from our hotel

Our flight left early Sunday morning so we laid low Saturday night. Plus we were both so sunburned we could barely walk, so any crazy last nights were strictly off limits. Overall though, it was a great vacation, and I was glad for the getaway. Jeju is supposed to be really touristy, so it was a little different than I expected. It pretty much just looked like the rest of Korea. That's the thing here, every place looks almost identical to the next place, even in touristy locations. Its definitely the most accommodating for Koreans, since very few people even in the tourism industry can speak English. Luckily Sara and I are proficient enough in Korean to understand the basic phrases and communicate a general idea of what we what. And when all else fails...we use sign language. It was actually really nice that Jeju wasn't super touristy, because I think uber-tourism tends to ruin cultures. And its not that I was expecting it to look like America, I just somehow thought it would look different. In America, you would never second-guess which city you were in. You would never confuse Miami with New York. But a few places in Jeju could've easily been Seoul. Such is the life here.

Even in our small city of Seogwipo on the island, you would never guess upon closer inspection of the town that its an island who's main income is tourism. There are dilapidated and abandoned buildings, school kids running around, and traditional restaurants everywhere you look. Korea isn't big on aesthetics and as a result, even nice places are hard to distinguish from the outside.

This coming weekend, we have plans to check out a baseball game with Sara's family since they are coming for a visit. And the following weekend is Buddha's Birthday which is a national holiday and we'll be going down to Busan for some festivals, temples, and beaches! The weather is soooo nice so I'm really excited for all of this!

Naturally, coming out of a vacation, I have another article on travel. I really really hope you take the time to read it, as well as the last one I posted. They're lengthy but insightful and explain how I feel in a way that I'm not really able to with words. I don't know what else to say about it, except that its important to me and its important that the people I know understand this about me. SO READ IT :)

Here's your K-Pop Song...Its called "Oh" by Girls Generation (better known in Korea as SNSD).

I'll post some more pics of Jeju after I steal them from Sara! Ciao.

"Never more than on the road are we shown how proportional our blessings are to the difficulty that precedes them." -- Pico Iyer