Jeju Island - Day 1

Over Lunar New Year, I took the opportunity to spend my four days off on Jeju Island. Jeju Island is an island off the southern part of Korea, said to be like Hawaii in the summer. I had originally wanted to fly down, but flights were expensive due to it being the holiday. Instead, I found a group that was going down for cheaper so signed up with them. Laura and Cam joined in as well.

We left Wednesday at 11:45pm. The pick up spot was crowded with people as several other groups going and doing various things were also leaving at the same time. Our bus came and we tried to get comfy for the 6 hour drive down to Wando Island where we would then take a ferry over to Jeju. We quickly made friends with those sitting around us - Kellianne, Ben, and Andrew. Kellianne came on her own, but is teaching in Korea. Ben and Andrew are friends from home in New York, Andrew is teaching in Korea, Ben just finished teaching in China and came to Korea to visit before heading to Taiwan to teach and study. The people you meet on these trips are super interesting and they are not always English teachers which is fun. We were all given travel pillows which was awesome! I didn't sleep well on the bus, more realistically I had a few naps. During one of them I dreamt that we couldn't get on the ferry for some reason and had to turn around and make the long drive back to Seoul. Luckily that didn't happen.

We arrived at the ferry terminal between 6-7am. We loaded off the bus, gathered our bags and carried boxes inside to wait for the ferry that wouldn't depart until 9am. Everything is based on first come first serve so we had to get there early. We hung out, ate breakfast and waited. Breakfast was apples, bananas, white bread, sliced cheese and peanut butter (there were no utensils so I finally went and found chopsticks to scoop out the peanut butter cause I really wanted it!)

Finally we made it onto the ferry! The ride was only about an hour and unlike ferries in BC, there were assigned seats.

Andrew, Ben and Kellianne in the back. Laura, myself and Cam up front on the ferry.

Leaving Wando Island.

It was super exciting to finally get onto Jeju Island around 11am, after travelling since the night before! As we exited the terminal we were given free Jeju water and Jeju chocolate. 

First we headed to Yongduam to check out the lava rock, the ocean and the dragon head shaped rock. We were given free time here to explore and have lunch. 

I couldn't get over how blue the water was here!

This was a rock explaining the dragon head shaped rock. Initially we thought that this rock was supposed to look like a dragon head and felt very confused because as you can see it's just a rock. Later we discovered that it's actually a lava rock in the ocean and you need to be something like 30ft away and looking at it from the southeast at a certain time of tide in order to actually see it.

These statues were everywhere around the island! I was curious about them and learned that they are called dolhareubang or "stone grandfather". From what I have read and heard, they are a symbol of health and are supposed to help fertility or ensure the sex of your child. Some have their hands the opposite way, so if you want a girl you are supposed to touch a certain one, if you want a boy you touch the other. 

Being by the ocean, we were only able to find seafood restaurants. This is a baby octopus dish and we also had mackerel. I tried both (!!) but ate rice mostly. 

Here is the video of me eating baby octopus for the first time. It was rubbery and squishy and hard to chew. 

After lunch, we headed to a place for optional horse back riding which sounded cool at first, but after getting more details about it, no one wanted to do it and yet they brought us there anyways. It was around $10 to ride a horse for two laps around a track. So sad. We show up, it looks pretty sad, the horses look sad, they lower the price so that people will ride, some do, I don't. Laura and I did feed the horses some carrots though. In the second picture, I am standing with Warren Kim, the organizer of the trip. 

After our short, strange visit we left to see the Bijarim Forest which was beautiful and it was so nice to be amongst the trees. There were figs trees too which reminded me of home. 

What was strange though was that the trees all had cement inside of them?

So pretty!

Our last stop for the day was at the Manjang Cave which is said to be the longest lava tube in the world. It was very cool but the pictures didn't turn out super well cause it was so dark but here is one of a lava pillar at the end.

At this point in the day it had to be about 5 or 6pm. We were all pretty exhausted since we travelled all night and did all of these awesome things during the day. We headed to our pension which had such a beautiful view of the ocean. That night, Andrew, Ben, Cam and Kellianne had a siesta while Laura and I had a siesta strike. Once they woke up we went to look for food and ended up eating at the restaurant in our pension. I was so hangry at this point but food did me well. That night we hung out in our room and went to bed early as we would be up early to hike Hallasan. In the process of the night, I managed to slam my finger in our door which cause sooo much pain!

Annddd our view (each room had this balcony view):

<3