Jeju Getaway *enormous post... clear an hour or so to read*

So, I was actually working on another post last week i kinda ran out of time.... so to speak. So that post will be up sooner or later... then i'll start reverse blogging til i'm up to date and have posted like SOO SOO many posts that you all just get sick of me k?

alrighty so i'll get started on this one.

Friday:
I get up early and begin packing on Friday morning and head to work for another boring day.
I finish up early when my friend Jin arrives at my classroom and rescues me. So i meet up with Shir downstairs and start jogging away to find a cab to take us to the station.

We finally get a cab and get driven to the station, albeit a bit slowly due to the traffic (peak hour and all) and we alight (yes, alight) at the station and start jogging down to the station "race around the world" style just in case we "JUST" miss the train, so naturally we DID just miss the train but thankfully, they arrive every couple of minutes so we got the next one.

SO we finally get on the train and after about 9 stops we get a seat (we had 23 stops in total) and we get psyched for the need to run to the check-in counter once the doors open. Jin, bless her rings the counter and tells the lady that we're coming and to hold it however possible. She rings me to tell me of this as we pull up to Gimpo Int'l Airport station and start running.
I have to say at this point that i was doing pretty well, i wasn't like trying to sprint, just loping along... which was no mean feat as i had my laptop backpack on as well as a shoulder bag bouncing against my front. Overall i was quite impressed with my endurance seeing as anybody who knows me could testify that i'm not great at long runs, but of all the long runs to be good at... this was certainly a good time to be good.

Anyway all works out well and we check in, because we were late we separated on the plane but seeing as it was only a short flight, and the fact that we'd actually managed to get on the damn plane we were very relieved.

Time i left work: 540pm,
Time we arrived at the plane: 7pm
Time of Scheduled departure: 710pm

The booking makes good on its promise and we reach Jeju Int'l airport at 815 and we clear the gates about 20 mins after that (no check in luggage). We head over to the car hire section and check with Hertz
"any reservation?"
"no"
"sorry... car *makes "no deal" sign"

Move over to Avis which had quite a line at that point
"booking?"
"no"
"sorry, *crosses finger to form an X"

So I move to the 3rd counter but Shir says we should go with the end one (5th) cos it says "Jeju car hire" and has a snazzy lil symbol.
So we go there (incidentally we later find out that this counter is the only counter that doesn't have real english speaking people working there (-. -)" )
and we hire a car with GPS (total cost here was.... 212,000 won for Friday night - Monday arvo)
explanations were funny but the point was gotten across (in both directions) but that's the whole point of communication right?

So we get to the car and i go over the white Hyundai Sonata with a fine tooth comb..... or the lights from the 2 attendants' mobile phones as it was in reality and finally have the guy try to explain to me about the GPS (which is excellent... more later) and the insurance thing (which we had to call Jin for... poor girl was in a movie at the time... but she left it so she could bail us out of trouble..... which turned out to be nothing i hadn't expected or heard before having hired a car last time.
So we program the GPS for our hotel (which, thanks to my lack of real research into Jeju's accommodation is naturally on the other side of the Island)

*Aside*
The GPS system in Korea is absolutely amazing. For those who don't know, Korean writing is made up of a series of symbols each representing a character and they're written in combination to form a 'syllable' so ㅂ (pieup b,p)ㅏ(vowel, a) ㅁ (mieum = m) combine together to form the 'syllable' 빔 or "pam"
Anyway so the name of a place would have a whole series of these syllables, so our "Shineville Resort" had the Korean name "Shy I IN Pil Le Sor Tu" (or something like that) and in order to find it on the GPS , you could enter the actual characters in its entirety OR you could put the first 'letters' into the gps and it'll narrow it down for you. So to find our place we put in "S I N P L S T" and we found our resort. All directions in the GPS are in Korean naturally but it's fairly easy to read just watch the screen from time to time. It is an EXCEPTIONAL system with the added bonus of warnings NOT to turn down the wrong street (generally before the one you're supposed to turn at) AND .........





Warnings roughly 6-700m before any speed trap :P and because your speed is also calculated it'll flash the screen white to catch your attention.

SO my advice to any people who plan on going to Jeju and plan to drive there...... Learn to read basic Korean, even if you have to get a pen and paper out to work out what it says, and DEFINITELY get a GPS if you hire a car, it is an INVALUABLE tool. I honestly don't know how we would've navigated the rabbit's warren of streets sometimes without it, no vagaries if you're going off track the GPS will beep (read; scold) you for missing a turn and then automatically calculate how to get to that road via another route (U-turns i think are the last choice for the GPS), i missed a turn 3 times cos i was *cough* going too fast and it recalculated another route within 10secs of each time.

*End Aside*

So we head off into the night with our GPS blazing on the centre of the dash facing LEFT (yes ... left..... Korea follows the Yank system of driving on the right and sitting on the left of the car)
and after 1 hr of fairly careful driving (on the RHS of the street *shakes head*) we reach our place

Distance from Gimpo International to Shineville Resort: 43.3 KM

We get to the resort and this is our room



So that video saves me typing stuff thankfully.

Soon after (.... kinda) we went to bed.

DAY 1

So today we got up at a relatively decent hour.... 9am i think it was... and headed off down to breakfast (which i must say... was probably one of the shabbier hotel buffet breakfasts I've ever had. we get our stuff sorted and begin our sortie into Jeju-do

1st stop:
O'Sulloc Tea Museum:
This entire area reminds me of Hunter Valley, desired entirely to produce one thing; Green Tea.
I admit it's not quite as nice as HV but still it was pretty cool :)

MOVIE HERE



Happy Me here in front of the hedge sculpture thing at the Tea Fields


and us at the top of the building


Some of their super creamy greent tea ice cream... it was pretty damn nice... but i gotta say i prefer the passionflower type better.



Their Green Tea Tiramisu



and their Green Tea "Fredo" and their Cold water green tea



This is their front gate, this is typical of Jeju, they don't do the typical gate thing, but instead they have 3 log bars and a simple gate in order to 'leave a message'

From Lonely Planet Guide:
Jejudo has traditionally described itself as having lots of rocks and wind, but no beggars or thieves. In Jejudo's folk villages, instead of locked gates in front of homes you'll often see two stone pillars with a column of three holes carved through each. Three wooden poles straight across means 'We're not home, please keep out'. However if one end of the poles is in their holes but the other ends are on the ground it means 'We're home, please enter'.





So that was our short stay there before we moved on to Mt Songaksan which is one of the old volcano sites of Jeju Island and has a series of caves at the beach at the bottom of the area both natural and man-made (created during the invasion by the Japanese)..... which is of course not the reason why we actually visited it ...


it's because there was a K-drama filmed there called Dae Jeum Gum (or Dai Cheung Gum for the canto speakers out there) where one of the scenes was filmed at the caves.








After this area it was time to visit the much anticipated (on Shir's part) Teddy Bear Museum...



I must admit it was pretty cool inside this place... the sheer number of the furry things in such a variety of positions was just.... phenomenal..... many many cute arrangements as well as cool ones too... there was a series of 'snapshot' dioramas featuring many bears in different times during history i'll post some of the ones i like here the rest you can check out in my FB link
here, here and here
(there are 3 albums btw)

so this pretty much sums it up... a very large place with bears.......lots and lots of bears...




"BANGALORES!!!"



"when i'm 64..."



AIIIIIIIRRRRR JORDANNNNNNN!!!!!


there was even an outside garden with bears there too.... and of course this provided me with the opportunity to ..... play around :P

and play around i did.....




So after chillin' with my new found bear friends .....




We headed off for another location, this time a scenic place

Cheonjeyeon Falls,
a beautiful location which was quite close to where we were staying on the southern coast of the island........ security was limited and what little there was was lacklustre, relying more on honesty and guilty consciences than any real need for force.... it's a waterfall after all.
I'll write a little here from one of the signboards:

"Cheonjeyeon, the pond of the heaven's emperor, is on of the "Tamna Sipgyeong". ten most scenic sites in Jeju. A U-shaped valley made through sedimentation and upheaval of te earth and lava, Cheonjeyeon has evergreen subtropical forest within its gorge of 3 tiers waterfalls. This valley is also a habitat of 460 kinds of vascular bundle (i thought vascular bundles were all found within the body.. but ah well) inclding 112 families, 317 genuses, 40 varieties and 6 grades. ....
Legend has it that 7 nymphs who served the emperor in heaven (SEVEN?! energetic bugger ain't he?) would descend and go back up there after taking abath in the first tier of CHeonjeeon waterfall everynight (and why doesn't the emperor come??? his 7 nymphs are all naked at the same time right??... i'm sure that horny bugger could turn the freshwater there salty in one night *MUAHAHAHAHA*) And its name came from this legend.

I have to admit that this place was one of the most beautiful i've ever see, and while I'm no artist or naturalist, I can still appreciate beauty in my own limited sense.

So i'll leave it to the pictures to speak for the location.






So like i said that place was beautiful......

also, native to Jeju-do are atone statues called Harubang the significance of which I am not too sure, but because of their phallic aspect i took to calling them.......


Dickmen....



So near this waterfall is the bridge that crosses the gorge, desinged in a similar fashion to Gladesville Bridge cept using steel as structural supports and with the 7 nymphs on each side of the bridge:



Naturally you can see down into the gorge to the waterfalls...




From Cheonjeyeon Falls it was a short drive over to Jusangjeolli Cliffs... move lave rocks.... by the sea this time. Not sure what this place was about.. though the rocks lookined intereseting i must admit....








There was also a very large signpost telling me how far it was to places i really couldn't give a shit about....


and unfortunately..... it also told me how far it was to where i want to be........where i should be....




Then it was down to the "Lonely Rock" aka Oedolgae



and THAT ladies and gentlemen was the first day down at Jeju Island........


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DAY 2.....