Jeju Island Day 1

I know I'm a few weeks late in writing about my trip to Jeju, but I wanted to wait until I had enough time to sit down and relax and write about every detail, rather than rushing through a post.  Today seems like the perfect day!  It's a beautiful Thursday afternoon; I've finished class for today; I have no classes tomorrow; I submitted 2 big assignments last night; and now I'm just sitting in the Caribou Coffee shop in SK Global House ready to write!

My trip to Jeju Island was incredible, I went with my friend Andrew and we had such an amazing time!  Jeju is a small island off the southern coast of South Korea and it is considered the "vacation hot-spot" of Korea, it's where many honeymooners go and some even call it the "Hawaii of South Korea".  Andrew and I left on Thursday, September 23rd, which was still part of our fall break for Chuseok.  We took the subway express line to Gimpo Airport, which is a smaller airport than Incheon airport, it's similar to New York's Laguardia Airport.  We arrived and checked in without a problem.  I'm pretty sure Andrew and I were the only Caucasions on the plane, and we were both assigned to the exit seat aisle.  Of course we made plenty of jokes how they would put the white kids in charge of saving everybody, but the flight was smooth and quick, only about a 50 minute trip.

When we got off the plane we could feel it already, warm ocean air!  We grabbed our bags from baggage claim and then our next step was getting to our first guesthouse.  Andrew had his heart set on renting a car for the trip.  We looked into and it would've been extremely affordable, about $200 for the 4 days including insurance!  The only problem is neither of us had filed for an international license, so instead we headed towards the bus terminal.  Andrew was bummed and so was I,  it would've been nice to be able to travel by ourselves and not have to wait for the island buses.  I let it roll off my back, but Andrew procedded to sulk like a puppy dog everytime we passed a rental car.  It was funny at first, but by the third day I told him to GROW UP.

The bus system was slow, but easy.  We took a bus from Jeju airport, which is located at the northern coast of the island, to Insong-ri in the southeastern part of the island, which is where our first guesthouse, Island Guesthouse, is located.  It was about an 80 minute ride with one transfer, and many stops.  We got off the bus and followed the convenient directions sent to us by the guesthouse manager, Ilene.  We were greeted immediately by Ilene when we arrived.  From what I learned, she doesn't own the guesthouse, but she does run it and lives upstairs.

Ilene and me at the Island Guesthouse

The Island Guesthouse was beautiful.  It was eccentrically decorated and the house had this wonderful tropical feel to it.  We put our stuff down when we arrived and were anxious to head back out and explore!  We wanted to head to the beach before sunset and walk around the Jungmun Tourist Complex.  This area was located about 15 minutes away from the guesthouse and it is where the Jungmun beach is located, which is one of Jeju's most popular beaches; also it's where the big resorts are, like the Hyatt and the Lotte Hotels.  Ilene wrote out awesome directions for us.  She drew us a map how to get to the bus stop and wrote us a note for us to show the bus driver so that he knew where to drop us off.  After just two days Ilene felt like a mom to us!

We got to the complex just before sunset and we walked down to the water and along the beach.  After being in the city for a month already it felt great to walk with my feet in the sand and listen to the waves.  We were lucky enough to catch the sunset and then we headed down the beach towards the Hyatt.  The Jeju Hyatt is a beautifully architected resort that overlooks the beach on a hill and it was all lit up since the sun had already set.  We couldn't help but be a little bit curious so we decided to check it out.  The lobby was beautiful, there was a fish pond in the lobby and a cafe and bar with a nice jazz singer.  We sat outside on the terrace that overlooked the beach and ordered a couple of drinks and a small margharita pizza to share.  I had a pina colada, since it was the most "islandy" drink I could think of and perhaps the best part about it was that it was a non virgin!

Me and Andrew at the Jungmun Tourist Complex, before heading down to the beach.  The bridge in the background is  called the Seonimgyo Bridge, or the Seven Nymphs Bridge, because there are 7 nymphs carved into either side in white.

We made it to the beach in time for the sunset!  The building in the background on the right is the Jeju Hyatt.  

While we were sitting on the terrace at the Hyatt, we could see a bunch of children congregating inside at the cafe with some chefs.  We asked our waitress and she explained that every night there's an activity for the kids who are staying at the hotel and tonight they were learning how to make rice cake!  It was so very Disney-like.

We finished our drinks and decided to head back up to the bus stop because the last bus stopped running at 9:30 pm.  We caught the bus and headed back to the guesthouse, completely exhausted.  When we got there the other people who were staying at the guesthouse were there also!  It was so much fun meeting them.  It was a big group of girls and a few guys who were not much older than Andrew and I.  They were mostly Americans who were teaching at an international school in Incheon for the next few years.  It was so much fun talking with them before we went to bed, but it was a little strange sharing a big room with a bunch of people we had just met.  It felt kind of like the first few nights of sleep away camp, when we're all a little bit shy and nervous but we know we're going to have fun anyways.

The group of teachers had been in Jeju for the whole week so they offered a lot of good advice about what sights were worth seeing and which one's weren't so great.  I enjoyed talking to Bree the most.  Bree is from California and she's a bit of a tom-boy with this deep, raspy voice.  She was so enthusiastic about meeting Andrew and I and she wanted to hear all about our plans for Jeju and the other stuff we were planning on doing over the semester.  We expressed some hesitation about traveling all the way across the island to see a particular crater that we were thinking about and her response was "Just charge it!  Charge it!!".  Me and Andrew started laughing; she sounded so funny but we weren't sure if she was referring to charging a credit card or something like that.  The more she said it we realized she meant "charge like a rhino", in other words, just do everything and don't hold back.  So that became our philosophy for the trip, JUST CHARGE IT!