Our trip to Jeju Island. It was wonderful. Jeju Island is to South Korea as Hawaii is to the United States. We left for our adventure early Friday (June 1) morning. We grabbed a bagel with lots of peanut butter and walked to the inter-city bus terminal and hopped on the bus to Gwangju. It was about a 3 1/2 hour trip by bus. I spent most of the bus ride sleeping. For some reason or another, it is extremely difficult for me to stay awake anytime I'm in any carrier that has the slightest rocking movement- bus, car, train, taxi, ferry- I can't stay awake. After we arrived in Gwangju we decided to just continue on to Mokpo rather than spend some time in Gwangju. Mokpo was just an hour and a half bus ride, during which I think I again fell asleep. I'll blame it on the cloudy day.
We arrived in Mokpo and set out in the direction of the ferry terminal. With our trusty Lonely Planet guide at our side we set off for the ocean short to eat our lunch of kimbap (veggies and rice rolled in seaweed that we'd made the night before) and hard boiled eggs. Then we decided to check out the Mokpo Maritime Museum where we saw the remnants of two shipwreck excavations. One ship nicknamed the "Wando" ship was from the 11th century and the second ship, the "Shinhan" ship was from later part of the 14th century. The Wando ship was carrying over 30,00 pieces of ceramics to some unknown destination. An incredible number of the ceramics were in excellent condition even despite it's rocky travels. The pottery was beautiful. The Shinhan ship was on route from China to Japan before it met it's final destination on the ocean floor. There was an attempted and partial reconstruction of the Shinhan ship. Amazing that the wood from the ship was so well preserved on the ocean floor.
After the museum we set out for the ferry terminal. We stayed in a minbak (homestay- think renting a room in someone's house). We found one near the ferry terminal that was very cheap ($14/night) but a smidge bit on the dirty side. It was a traditional Korean style room. The bed (ondol style- bed is on the floor) consisted of a few thin mattress pads and a few blankets. Our bathroom was only minimally scary and -bonus for me- it had a Western style toilet and not a squatty one. Good. We decided to leave our "cheery" room and head to the beach to enjoy some more kimbap and other other tasty treats for supper on the beach. We enjoyed the beautiful evening, the scenery, and just enjoyed the company of the other. We returned to our minbak and did our best to sleep. Mosquitos had apparently decided to welcome us to Mokpo by sharing our room. I hate mosquitos. The next day, we counted 20 bites on my legs.
Saturday, June 2
We woke up the next morning, enjoyed some tasty bagels, and headed for the ferry terminal. In the ferry we were assigned to a room with about 25 other people. I of course slept and Seth studied Korean, or at least I think that's what he did. During the part of the 4 hours on the ferry that I actually was awake for I enjoyed smiling at the old woman sitting next to us, and gawking at the adorable small Korean children that were also in our room. One part of my experience that was not enjoyable was going to the bathroom. Of course there was a line for the women's restroom (some things never change no matter where you are) and as dictated by the norms of Korean culture, any woman that was older than me could budge in front of me in line. Definitely bothersome. When I finally got to the restroom- yep- the evil squatty toilet. One plus was that there was a handle that you could hold onto while you squatted to help steady yourself as the boat rocked. Anyways. Survived.
We arrived in a very cloudy and rainy Jeju City about 2 PM. We found our way to the Tourist Information Center and greatly appreciated the help of the woman there. We said we'd like to rent bikes and she called such a location, negotiated a price for us, and arranged for them to come and pick us up at the tourist center. Nice. So great. The guys at the bike shop set us up with some bikes, helmets, gloves, and wrapped our bags in plastic bags and bungeed them onto the carrying racks on our bikes. Wow. And we got a sweet deal 2 bikes/3 days/$40. Excellent. They sent us in the right direction and we were on our way. We stopped in downtown Jeju City to enjoy some lupper. After satisfying our palates with some BBQed pork and kimchi chigae we were off, destined for Hamdeok beach, about 2 hours from Jeju City. It was rainy and cloudy but the ride was beautiful. We finally arrived in Hamdeok Beach about 8PM. We found a small minbak that was right on the beach. The elderly woman who owned the minbak was incredibly sweet. She showed us to our room and the location of the bathroom (squatty) and shower. Our room was beautiful and she was very proud to show us that our window looked out onto the ocean. No complaints here. And, the room was clean, very clean. It was really like we had a room in her house as we used the same toilet as the rest of the family. Awesome way to experience the culture.
Sunday, June 3
Our one year anniversary. Woopow! Woke up and enjoyed a small breakfast on the beach. The beach was lined with white sand and framed by black lava rocks. The ocean was a blue blue (I know, very descriptive). We returned to our minbak and took some cold showers (no hot water) and set out on our four hour bike ride to Udo (a small island accessible by a 30 minute ferry ride on the eastern coast of Korea). There are many truly genius things about Jeju Island, but one that was of great importance for us on this trip was the bike trails. Nice, wide, paved bike paths making it very convenient to travel by bike. And the path we were on ran right along the coast. Wow. The wide trails were of special importance to me as I seem to have a magnetic force that pulls me to any stationary/non-stationary object that I try to avoid. Anyways. Only had one minor collision with the curb. On our way to Udo we stopped to enjoy beautiful Gimnyeong Beach. Yep, white sand, blue water, beauty, and ice cream treats. Yeah, rough way to celebrate your one year wedding anniversary. After our stop in Gimnyeong we continued on our way to Udo. We arrived in Seongsan and were planning to climb Seongsan Illucheoban, sunrise mountain, but decided to eat some food first. We stopped in this local restaurant and ordered the traditional Korean spread of food (rice, soup, and side dishes). The locals were so excited to have us visiting that the owner brought us more food than even Seth can eat (I didn't think it was possible either) we enjoyed fresh crab, raw crab, fresh fish, veggies, soup, a type of rice porridge, kimchi, and many other dishes. The awesome part was that it only cost $4/person. I know, incredible. We also got to have some good conversations with the locals. So funny. Then we enjoyed another ferry ride (15 min) to Udo (Cow) Island. Udo, was our favorite part of our trip. We first biked to a coral beach and enjoyed the beauty of all that surrounded us. It was so quiet, peaceful, and the coral shore massaged our weary feet. We decided to find a minbak on the other side of the island so that we could watch the sunrise the next morning (we hadn't seen a sunrise/sunset since we'd come to Korea-thank you mountains). We found an amazing minbak that was on a small pier/peninsula. We couldn't have gotten any closer to the ocean. This minbak was more like a bed & breakfast style of lodging. The owner was an incredibly kind man who gave us a beautiful room (ocean view on two sides of the room) for only $40 since it was the off-season (best to travel in the off-season, I can't even imagine how crowded it is in July/August). He even drove us to the grocery store in his car. At the store we picked up something for breakfast, pear juice, Korean plum wine, cake to celebrate our anniversary, and of course, ice cream. We headed back to our gorgeous room, sat on the deck, listened to the ocean, drank wine, ate ice cream, and fed each other cake (actually cupcakes). Yeah, rough. It was amazing. We were blessed with a wonderful wedding day, one year ago. We were blessed with another wonderful day, one year later, clear across the world in Udo. God is good.
Monday, June 4
The next morning we biked and caught the ferry just in time back to Jeju Island. We then biked about 5/6 hours back to Jeju City, but we stopped on the way to enjoy a section of the world's longest lava cave (I think), and inside we saw one of the world's tallest lava "towers" (wait for the pics). We also did a hedge Maze created by an American who served in the Korean War. I followed Seth the whole time because I was afraid I'd get really lost and wouldn't be able to get out. It was smart because he did a very good job of winding our way through. I made a good choice when I married him. We then hiked back on our bikes and set off towards Jeju City. We stopped in Jocheon for lunch and enjoyed some tteok-po-gi with a little elementary-aged fan club. They were quite fascinated with our white faces. We arrived in Jeju just as it was starting to rain. We found a minbak that was near the ferry terminal and moved our stuff in. It was another wonderful minbak with a wonderfully interesting (and very friendly) owner. He asked us where we were from , we replied "the US" and he proceed, in a mix of Korean and English, to thank us repeatedly for the US' help in the Korean war. It was slightly comical. He also insisted on doing our laundry for us and before we'd set off to return our bikes, made us sit down and drink soju (Korean alcohol), eat some type of meat from the pig's head and kimchi. It was gross but we tried to be polite. Then we headed off to return our bikes. Sad. The bike company gave us a ride back downtown and we looked for a place to eat supper. We chose a seafood restaurant and enjoyed some wei bibimbap (raw fish, rice, veggies, hot pepper sauce) and me-ung tang (a type of fish stew/soup). The kicker was that we saw the cook take the live fish from the aquarium before chopping it up to put in our bibimbap. At first I felt bad, but it tasted really good so I quickly got over it. The food was great. Then we walked back to our minbak. Enjoy some HOT showers, cleaned ourselves up, and rested before our big climb the next day.
Tuesday, June 5
Hallasan!!! Today, because we figured we had been pretty lazy during the previous part of our vacation (just joking by the way), we sought to climb Hallasan, South Korea's tallest mountain/volcano. We took a taxi to the bus terminal, bought some snacks, and rode the bus to the hiking trail. It was pretty cloudy (the weather changed at the drop of a hat) but we wanted to go. So we started hiking at about 7:50AM. It was a very gradual incline, so at the beginning it was a fairly easy hike. The forest surrounding was beautiful. Just breathtaking. The guidebook estimated that it would take around 7-8 hours (round trip) to climb and conquer but we were minimally limited by time so we took it at a quicker pace. Seth was good about this, I was not. I married an amazing man. After we'd been hiking about 2 hours, the gradual incline was starting to wear on me. The weather was turning sour and I was getting tired. The last hour before the top the climb became more difficult and I began to turn a little sour. I am blessed with a man who was very willing to stop and rest whenever I needed to. We got close to the top and the weather became cold and windy. We were both wearing short and t-shirts and ponchos, but it was slightly miserable. When we finally reached the top, usually gorgeous view was completely clouded. We took a picture and headed back down. We stopped about 1/3 of the way down at a stopping point, bought some ramyeon and coffee to warm up our cold bodies and eat. While we were eating one woman approached us and said that she was talking with her friend about us and had a question to ask. The woman had thought that we (Seth and I) were just friends but her friend thought we were brother and sister, which were we? We laughed and said that we were married. Then we all laughed. We continued our trek back down and by the time we reached the bottom of the volcano the weather was beautiful. Geez. We hopped on the bus back to Jeju City and enjoyed resting our weary legs. After reaching Jeju City, we walked back to our minbak, but on our way stopped to eat some rameyeon and mandu (dumplings) at a small restaurant. We were refreshed and ready. We stopped at our minbak, showered, and packed up and headed for the ferry terminal. This time we were taking an overnight ferry from Jeju City to Busan. We decided to pay a little more for our tickets and stay in a room with only 8 other people rather than share a room with 123 other people. We got to our room and staked out our spot. We waited for our roommates to arrive, but they never did. So we got the room to ourselves, it had an ocean view, and a bathroom (Western style toilet, and shower). It was a great. For those that are keeping track, we were on a boat at some point for four days in a row. We are officially pirates.
Wednesday, June 6
We woke up the next morning about 6AM in Busan. I love overnight ferries. Busan is Korea's second largest city so we decided to utilize the benefits of the subway system. We hopped on the subway and headed for Haeundae Beach (one of the most popular beaches in Korea). Bought some kimbap and spent our morning on the not-crowded beach, relaxing, eating, and playing. By 10 AM it started to become a little crowded so we decided to walk around and see some of the sights. We walked along the beach, enjoyed watching a sandbuilding/sculpting competition transpire, and walked along coast. Note to anyone traveling in this area, there are three old women who will try to sell you rice cakes, do not buy from them, they're dishonest.
Later on we walked around in one of the street markets and enjoyed looking around. We headed off to find a restaurant that we'd heard about that was operated by a North Korean. Unfortunately, the restaurant went out of business, so instead we filled our hungry stomachs with some incredible Korean street vendor food. It's just great. Then we ventured on to the train terminal and took the train back to Gumi. We arrived about 6PM, it was a wonderful
vacation. We'll have lots of pictures up soon- check our photobucket site.