Last Friday was a national holiday so we had no school. Three of my friends and I had planned a trip to Jeju Island, this small island off the Southwest coast of Korea. It is pretty tropical down there; they have palm trees and mountains. We were planning on taking the train to the harbor and a ferry from the harbor to Jeju-do.
So, we left Friday morning to catch our train to the ferry port. We took the subway from Sinchon to the train station and caught our train. We took a slower train because the fast train was sold out - it took about five hours to get down the the ferry port. It was pretty fun, but we mostly slept.
We got in at 1 o'clock and our boat was supposed to leave at 1:30. We didn't know where the actual harbor was, so we asked these Europeans and kind of pointed us in the right direction. We had to walk there and we finally got to the building and found out that there were TWO buildings! and we of course, were at the wrong one. So, we ran over to the other building. When we got there, the people working there were waving at us telling us to go away. We missed our boat by two minutes... We went and asked the ticket lady what we should do and she was
not nice. We called our travel agent and she talked to the ticket lady, who then got really ticked off. She told us the next boat was the next morning at 9 am.
a book vending machine
We didn't know what to do so we sat there at the port for a long while.... just dinging around. Then we got hungry and decided to find something to eat. We started walking around with all our luggage trying to find a restaurant. We found one and almost everything had seafood; eew! I ordered bibimbap which is just rice, veggies, and beef. Pretty safe - I've eaten it millions of times. The waitress asked me if it was okay because there of the beef - Koreans are all hyped up about mad cow disease. I was like yeah its fine. When it arrive at our table I looked down and I saw a big pile of raw beef. My friends said my eyes popped out of my head and I looked really upset. haha. The lady kindly took the meat back and cooked it for me; it still tasted weird though.
hanging out at the ferry terminal...
We wandered around the city for a gazillion hours, dragging our luggage. Finally, we were so exhausted we gave in and got a taxi to drop us off at the movie theater so we could sit and not do anything. However once we got there we decided maybe it would be smarter to just spend our money on a motel instead. So, two went out looking for one and my friend Caroline and I stayed back with the luggage. We went into a Popeyes (yes, they have Popeyes) and we actually fell asleep waiting there. Our friends took forever looking; finally they came back and told us little kids were showing them around! haha.
We decided to watch a movie, Kungfu Panda, and then go find our motel. Yes, thats right. we hauled all our luggage into the movie theater with us. Vianey was so tired (she had pulled an all nighter the night before shopping at Dongdaemun) that she curled up in her seat and fell asleep. Afterwards, we walked around until we found a motel. Just to make sure we weren't getting ripped off Vianey and I ran around to three other motel checking prices; everything was pretty comparable. We checked into the
Silk Road Motel (aka love motel) which had a vending machiene that included condoms on the way up the stairs. There was one perfectly round bed in the room; we all decided it was safer to sleep on the floor. After we got situated, around 11 pm we went out for dinner and ended up eating hobak pizza (pumpkin pizza) which was probably the most delicous pizza I've had here! Even better than koguma (sweet potato) because it had koguma on it as well! The next day we got up and headed off to Jeju!!! Our ferry left at 9 am and we made sure we were there with plenty of time. Our ferry was AWESOME!! We kind of think they upgraded us because of the mixup, but it had a noraebang, snack/restaurant area, a sauna, giftshop etc. It was like a mini cruise boat. We had fun exploring, eating and sleeping. We got to Jejudo about five hours later and were hounded by taxi drivers the second we stepped out of the station. one talked us into taking a taxi to our hotel, which was on the other side of the island!!! We thought that the boat terminal and the ferry terminal were near each other... oops! We checked into our hotel and sat for a while. Finally we dragged our sorry butts out to do some sight seeing. we were really tired. We wandered around and were too stingy to pay 1,000 won to see a waterfall... Vianey tried to sneak in - she was successful, but the rest of us were too chicken, so she had to come back out. haha. We ended up finding a really cool beach with lots of neat rocks (and sea cockroaches... ) and we played around there for a few hours. That was lots of fun! Afterwards we got hungry and went in search of dinner. We found orange flavored Jeju steambuns which were good, and then we went and ate Korean later. The next day we decided we should get up really early to see the sunrise at this famous mountain on the east coast of the island. By using her fingers, Vianey estimated that it would take us aprox. 2 and a half hours to get there by bus or taxi. We we woke up at 1:30 am (after going to bed at 11:30) and caught a cab at 2 am. The hotel concierge told us that we could take a bus, but he was wrong. There were def. no buses running at that time of night. we got in the taxi and told the drive where we wanted to go and he told us it would take 40 min!!! oops. He dropped us off at a 24 hour convenient store (GS25) which was the only thing open there. We were sitting on the curb looking really pathetic when the police drove up and dropped off another foreigner there to wait until the sun rose. haha. So we hung out in the store for a few hours until it was time to climb the mountain. We climbed the mountain-man was that a work out. Vianey and I silently climbed while Caroline and Emily followed us laughing their butts off the entire way up! We got to the top and sat down amongst the crowd of native Koreans and foreigners and waited. And waited. And waited... Too bad it was CLOUDY!!! so, we never got to see the sunrise. It was supposed to be up around 5 am, and we hopefully waited until 6 or so. On the way down it started to rain and we took a bunch of cool pics. By the time we got to the bottom it started to pour! We wandered around the town trying to find a taxi, but there were none! we called our previous taxi driver but he was long gone and couldn't make it back for an hour or so. Finally we found the one existing taxi in the area. The driver was so awesome! We told him to take us some place fun. So he took us to the northern coast. On the way there, as a service, he stopped at a rock statue garden and let us get out and take pics. There was also Mystery Road which is an optical illusion. If you put your car in neutral it looks like it is going up hill by itself, even though the road is actually slanting down. At 8 am he dropped us off at Hallim Park which was a botanical garden/bird park. Its kind of like Butterfly World in FL without the butterflies... That was actually really fun. we stayed there for four hours! Afterwards we walked down the road to the beach. But we were all really hungry for lunch so we walked around trying to find a restaurant that served normal, non-seafood food. Very hard to find. We walked and walked til we found one and man was it good! Em and I had kimchee bokumbap (kimchee fried rice) and Vianey and Caroline had bulgogi topbap (bulgogi and rice). YUM!!!! Then we went to the beach and played around. We took a gazillion pics and a gazillion and one jump shots! Afterwards, as we were leaving Vianey realized she lost her camera. Sad! We went back to look for it but couldn't find it. We have our suspicions about this large family, but who knows. It started raining again. We caught a taxi to the chocolate museum on the west coast of the island. It was VERY weird, but we just needed someplace out of the rain. Plus we were all slap happy so it was quite entertaining. Finally, we decided to go back to our hotel. We caught a cab and went back. We made it around the entire perimeter of the island in one day. The next day we had to leave. We got up and packed up our stuff and made it to the airport on time. Yay! oddly, a few of us made it through security with bottles or water and other liquids, some of them in plain view! We got back around 11 am. We all had class at 1, but I didn't go. The End.
So, we left Friday morning to catch our train to the ferry port. We took the subway from Sinchon to the train station and caught our train. We took a slower train because the fast train was sold out - it took about five hours to get down the the ferry port. It was pretty fun, but we mostly slept. 
We got in at 1 o'clock and our boat was supposed to leave at 1:30. We didn't know where the actual harbor was, so we asked these Europeans and kind of pointed us in the right direction. We had to walk there and we finally got to the building and found out that there were TWO buildings! and we of course, were at the wrong one. So, we ran over to the other building. When we got there, the people working there were waving at us telling us to go away. We missed our boat by two minutes... We went and asked the ticket lady what we should do and she was not nice. We called our travel agent and she talked to the ticket lady, who then got really ticked off. She told us the next boat was the next morning at 9 am. 
a book vending machine 
hanging out at the ferry terminal... 
We decided to watch a movie, Kungfu Panda, and then go find our motel. Yes, thats right. we hauled all our luggage into the movie theater with us. Vianey was so tired (she had pulled an all nighter the night before shopping at Dongdaemun) that she curled up in her seat and fell asleep. Afterwards, we walked around until we found a motel. Just to make sure we weren't getting ripped off Vianey and I ran around to three other motel checking prices; everything was pretty comparable. We checked into the Silk Road Motel (aka love motel) which had a vending machiene that included condoms on the way up the stairs. There was one perfectly round bed in the room; we all decided it was safer to sleep on the floor. After we got situated, around 11 pm we went out for dinner and ended up eating hobak pizza (pumpkin pizza) which was probably the most delicous pizza I've had here! Even better than koguma (sweet potato) because it had koguma on it as well! The next day we got up and headed off to Jeju!!! Our ferry left at 9 am and we made sure we were there with plenty of time. Our ferry was AWESOME!! We kind of think they upgraded us because of the mixup, but it had a noraebang, snack/restaurant area, a sauna, giftshop etc. It was like a mini cruise boat. We had fun exploring, eating and sleeping. We got to Jejudo about five hours later and were hounded by taxi drivers the second we stepped out of the station. one talked us into taking a taxi to our hotel, which was on the other side of the island!!! We thought that the boat terminal and the ferry terminal were near each other... oops! We checked into our hotel and sat for a while. Finally we dragged our sorry butts out to do some sight seeing. we were really tired. We wandered around and were too stingy to pay 1,000 won to see a waterfall... Vianey tried to sneak in - she was successful, but the rest of us were too chicken, so she had to come back out. haha. We ended up finding a really cool beach with lots of neat rocks (and sea cockroaches... ) and we played around there for a few hours. That was lots of fun! Afterwards we got hungry and went in search of dinner. We found orange flavored Jeju steambuns which were good, and then we went and ate Korean later. The next day we decided we should get up really early to see the sunrise at this famous mountain on the east coast of the island. By using her fingers, Vianey estimated that it would take us aprox. 2 and a half hours to get there by bus or taxi. We we woke up at 1:30 am (after going to bed at 11:30) and caught a cab at 2 am. The hotel concierge told us that we could take a bus, but he was wrong. There were def. no buses running at that time of night. we got in the taxi and told the drive where we wanted to go and he told us it would take 40 min!!! oops. He dropped us off at a 24 hour convenient store (GS25) which was the only thing open there. We were sitting on the curb looking really pathetic when the police drove up and dropped off another foreigner there to wait until the sun rose. haha. So we hung out in the store for a few hours until it was time to climb the mountain. We climbed the mountain-man was that a work out. Vianey and I silently climbed while Caroline and Emily followed us laughing their butts off the entire way up! We got to the top and sat down amongst the crowd of native Koreans and foreigners and waited. And waited. And waited... Too bad it was CLOUDY!!! so, we never got to see the sunrise. It was supposed to be up around 5 am, and we hopefully waited until 6 or so. On the way down it started to rain and we took a bunch of cool pics. By the time we got to the bottom it started to pour! We wandered around the town trying to find a taxi, but there were none! we called our previous taxi driver but he was long gone and couldn't make it back for an hour or so. Finally we found the one existing taxi in the area. The driver was so awesome! We told him to take us some place fun. So he took us to the northern coast. On the way there, as a service, he stopped at a rock statue garden and let us get out and take pics. There was also Mystery Road which is an optical illusion. If you put your car in neutral it looks like it is going up hill by itself, even though the road is actually slanting down. At 8 am he dropped us off at Hallim Park which was a botanical garden/bird park. Its kind of like Butterfly World in FL without the butterflies... That was actually really fun. we stayed there for four hours! Afterwards we walked down the road to the beach. But we were all really hungry for lunch so we walked around trying to find a restaurant that served normal, non-seafood food. Very hard to find. We walked and walked til we found one and man was it good! Em and I had kimchee bokumbap (kimchee fried rice) and Vianey and Caroline had bulgogi topbap (bulgogi and rice). YUM!!!! Then we went to the beach and played around. We took a gazillion pics and a gazillion and one jump shots! Afterwards, as we were leaving Vianey realized she lost her camera. Sad! We went back to look for it but couldn't find it. We have our suspicions about this large family, but who knows. It started raining again. We caught a taxi to the chocolate museum on the west coast of the island. It was VERY weird, but we just needed someplace out of the rain. Plus we were all slap happy so it was quite entertaining. Finally, we decided to go back to our hotel. We caught a cab and went back. We made it around the entire perimeter of the island in one day. The next day we had to leave. We got up and packed up our stuff and made it to the airport on time. Yay! oddly, a few of us made it through security with bottles or water and other liquids, some of them in plain view! We got back around 11 am. We all had class at 1, but I didn't go. The End.
No comments:
Post a Comment