Honestly before coming to Jeju, I wondered how were we going to travel as its public transportation is said to be less convenient. Most would recommend renting a car or booking a taxi. I have enquired several taxi rental and was quoted roughly 150,000won for 8 hour. The price wasn't unreasonable but it was still too expensive between both of us. In the end, we decided to appeal to out sense of adventure and challenge the public bus.
We re-arranged our itinerary after advise from our host as certain places are simply out of the way and inconvenient by public transportation. Maps can be rather deceiving as locations that looks no more 1/2 hour away could actually take more than an hour to commute by bus. Since we had two full days in Jeju, we decided to spend the first day exploring Eastern Jeju.
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Once of the reasons we choose Greenday Guesthouse was because they provide breakfast. This is important as not many shops actually opens early unless you consider the convenience store. We had a choice of korean (rice, soup & kimchi) or western (toast, cereal, eggs) breakfast daily. Today, I decided to go with the korean breakfast but since we were going to have a full day ahead at ate some toast and eggs on top of it. ^^ Everything is self-service here though
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| Breakfast~!! |
One of the benefits of a guesthouse was that we would get to meet different people. In our case we had the good fortune and got to know a pair of twenty-something siblings also from Malaysia
(~strike 1) who coincidentally had similar itinerary
(~strike 2) and most importantly were going to travel by bus
(~strike 3) and since there is safety in numbers we agreed to travel together :D
Our original itinerary was to visit Gimnyeong Beach which was along the way to Manjanggul Cave. According to our host, its a lovely place though not very well known. From there we would visit the Gimnyeong Maze Park and finally end the day at Seongsang Ilchubung. In order for us to travel we would have to take a local bus to the Jeju Intercity Bus Terminal and from there ride the Eastern bus no.700.
But alas things happen. Although the main stops were announced in Chinese, English and Japanese we still missed our stop and this happened rather often embarrassingly. :P The bus guide had only the area names so obviously when we entered Gimnyeong area there would be alot of announcements of Gimnyeong this and that. We didn't know when to get off and so we waited...
Besides you do not want to be walking in a moving bus. Bus driver in Jeju drives really really fast. I've lost count the number of times I've bashed my leg against the arm rest trying to get to my seat when the bus suddenly lurches. When we finally heard the correct bus stop we should have pressed the red button. However we assumed that the bus would stop which it did not and so we zoomed past.
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| O__O||| Save me please~ |
The next stop was Manjanggul Cave and we quickly stopped the bus!! We were the only people to get off. I suppose the rest of them would be headed to Seongsan Ilchubung. Once we got a look at our surroundings we were stunned silly. We did NOT realise that the bus would only take us to the main road and the cave was another 2km!!
Jeju people have amazing business sense. We met an enterprising taxi driver who seems to be waiting at that particular junction for bewildered tourists like us. A taxi ride in would cost 1000won per person explaining that it would take us an hour to get there on foot. Once in, he asked if we would like him to take us to the surrounding tourist sites for 50,000won.
It was a good deal to me. Only 12,500 won in exchange for a whole lot of convenience. He would take us to the cave and then he would take us to Maze Land instead which was said to be much larger. I haven't heard of it during my research but seemed that it was popularised by Running Man. From there we would go to Seopikoji and lastly he would drop us off at Seongsan Ilchubung where we would catch the bus back.
***
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| Exiting Manjang Cave |
Manjang Cave is a lava tunnel with a 1 km stretch is open to the public. Which means once we reached the end we would have to walk back. The cave was surprisingly chilly and wet considering that it was rather warm today. I couldn't imagine how cold this place would be during winter. O___O We had to watch our footing as the floor was uneven and and honestly I believe I could describe how the floor looked like more than the surroundings~ It took us approximately an hour to complete the tunnel. ^^
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| Paying $$ to get LOST!! ^^ |
Maze Land consist of three mazes actually and it is quite big. To make things more interesting, we decide to see which of us would make it to the end first. The first two maze was straightforward as we solve it pretty quickly but the third was challenging. At one point we ended up walking back where we came from!! We lost ^^ This place would be the best part of the entire day for me. =D
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| Darn it~ They've gotten there already! |
After that we actually wanted to have lunch but the driver suggested that we waited till we were at Seongsan Ilchubong as there were more choices there.
I believe Seopikoji is actually a famous for being a filming spot for a drama. I had high hopes for the place but was sorely disappointed when I saw how commercialised the place is. It was a dead end but there was an endless stream of tourist bus trying to enter the place causing some sort of traffic congestions.
There were much less people after bypassing the House as I believe most people just visited the area to see it. I've read that it is possible to enter the place for a fee but since I didn't watch the drama there wasn't any significance in visiting. Our visit wasn't very pleasant due to the immense number of tourist. The view was lovely but I wouldn't recommend this place at all.
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| Seopikoji |
Our last stop for the day was Seongsan Ilchubung or Sunrise Peak. It was only about 200m high but around the halfway point I gave up. I know I should have gave it my best but at that time I truly felt so tired like my legs could give out any minute. The fitness level of the ajjummas going uphill has really put me to shame. Unfortunately we did not come at the right timing or could have watched a hanyeo in action.
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| The view~ |
We bought some Jeju chocolates for souvenir and decided to return and have dinner near our hostel. It was a good thing too as it took us approximately 90 minutes to reach town. We chose a simple understated restaurant to try the famous Korean BBQ.
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| Dinner~ |
We must have looked strange as we ordered three kimchi jigae and only one portion of bbq pork. The ajjumma was really kind. She was obviously worried we wouldn't know the proper way to eat and tried her best to explain since there is actually a step by step method on how to eat korean bbq.
They'd even grilled the meat for us there and there because I believe we were actually supposed to do it ourselves. The best part was that we were given two bottles of coke as 'service' probably because we were tourists. She even kept asking us if we had enough, if the food was delicious. It was really one of the best I've had so far.
