Jeju Honeymoon, Part 2

Tuesday morning we got up and ate breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant, because in Korea a breakfast buffet is hard to find. Then we checked out, and hired a taxi to take us from Jeju City to Seogwipo. We went over Mt. Halla, which was neat, but because the taxi driver knew the road like the back of his hand, he decided that he was going to pretend like he was a race car and drove like a maniac. It didn’t help that it was POURING rain, and we were driving through clouds. Not just fog (which I know is clouds as well) but CLOUDS. We couldn’t see 5 feet in front of us. I was freaking out, and so was Ross, but there wasn’t much we could do. It’s not like we could tell him stop, we’re getting out here. So we just held on for dear life. We made it to Seogwipo and to our hotel, which as it turns out was even prettier then in the pictures on the Internet.

Yes, that is actually our hotel. It looks like something out of Hawaii, right? It was FANTASTIC! Here is the view from our room.

So beautiful! I couldn’t believe that we were getting to stay at such an awesome place. Anyways, after we had an early check-in, we decided that we were going to try to go kayaking. When we got to the place and saw that it was closed, we were sad, but we were even more disappointed that we had spent 10,000 won on cabs to get us to and from the hotel. That wasn’t gonna cut it, so we decided to try to rent scooters. BEST DECISION EVER. (Minus the medical mishap, but I’ll get to that later.) We found a number for Scooter and Free Zone, and got the concierge to call and see how much it was going to be. 70,000 won for two scooters for one day? I’ll take that! We went over and rented our scooters and took off for the waterfalls.

The first one we went to was Jeongbang, and it’s the only waterfall in Asia to fall directly into the sea.

There were so many more people there then just the one, but Ross in all his wonderful photography skills was able to magically take them all out. 😛 Here’s the pano of what the whole thing looks like.

The next one we went to was the Cheonjiyeon Waterfall.

They were both so beautiful! After that, we decided to find somewhere to eat, so we asked the tourist info centre where the best place to get sam gyup sal was. Turns out, the lady directed us to a black pork restaurant, and it was delicious. We ordered far too much food, and we had to leave some of it behind, but it was well worth what we paid for. Then we headed back to the hotel to rest a little, but quickly went back out again for a ride through the country side. We ended up back at the waterfall area, and came across a wonderful little pedestrian bridge to an islet.

We walked around the islet for a while, then headed back in the direction of our hotel, only to stop again so that Ross could try to go fishing. He kinda failed at it, casting his line out twice and getting his lure stuck on some rocks. Oh well.

The next day we decided that we were going to attempt to take the scooters down the road a ways, and check out Jungmun resort. This is the very touristy area of Jeju, with more museums and attractions in one area then anywhere else on the island. There’s Jungmun beach, an aquatic animal show place, the Teddy Bear museum, some other museums, and Ripley’s Believe it or Not. Now, what I forgot to say in the first post was that on the flight over to Jeju, I won tickets to Ripley’s in a raffle. I was sooo excited, I never win anything! The tickets only cost 8,000 won each, but still, I WON! So of course we had to use them. But first, we wanted to check out the beach. We tried to go swimming, but the waves were too strong.

Instead of swimming, we decided to get food seeing as how we hadn’t eaten anything for the day. We stopped by a little restaurant on the path to the beach, and ate some 전복죽 which in English is pronounced Junbok juk, and it’s a rice porridge made with abalone (sea snails). It’s really good, and very popular here in Jeju (and really all over Korea). Then we headed up to the Ripley’s museum.

After the museum, we went to a gorgeous waterfall that we saw from the road, and tried to go swimming in there, but the water was far too cold.It was still really beautiful.

So we tried to go to the beach again, in hopes of going swimming. We were able to this time, and the waves were SOOOOO powerful they left us weak in the legs! I took my underwater camera in, and I’m just waiting for the pics to get processed, so once they do I’ll add them to the blog.

After the beach, we decided to head back to the hotel. On our way there, we came across Oedolgae, which is a huge rock formation jutting out of the sea. We drove past it earlier, but didn’t wanna see it, but we had time to kill after swimming so we thought we would stop and look. We never got to see it, however, because it was at that point that I burnt my leg on the muffler of Ross’s scooter. I stepped back and didn’t judge properly how far back it actually was. 😦 Gave myself a 2nd degree burn and a trip to the hospital.

After that I wasn’t much in the mood for anything, couldn’t go swimming again, and my leg hurt, so we decided to try to order a pizza. Glad we didn’t, however, because we ended up going for seafood! We went to this restaurant on the ‘food street’ of Seogwipo, right by the port, and had mackerel and some other type of fish, and it was delicious. Then we went back to the Cheonjiyeon Waterfall, because the lady at the restaurant said it was beautiful at night. And it was!

The next day was our last in Jeju, and it was kinda sad because a) we had to return the scooters that we had so much fun on, b) I couldn’t swim, and c) I had to go back to the hospital to get my leg checked out again. So while Ross went fishing once more, I laid out by the pool. It was so relaxing!

We then returned the scooters, went to the hospital, and then we hung out at the hotel until our flight. The sunset was beautiful from the plane.

And that’s it! Our honeymoon. Here are some more pics for you to enjoy.

On the hotel grounds

While riding through the country side, we came across a path, which lead to a black sand beach… beautiful.

Found this port on our ride to Jungmun

xo nicole