Lost on Jeju! No Seriously wheres my HAT!

Mock Volcano

The last few days I have been on an island in the Korean straight called Jeju. Its a volcano island like Hawaii but extinct. The island has only 1 main city "Jeju-do" but is massive in size. It has loads of small hills with are old volcano's and things that some with that.

I started off my trip in Jeju by taking what I can easily say is the scariest car ride I have ever had in my life to the guesthouse.

The airport to the guesthouse was about 45 min away, or 1 hour by bus. Being late in the afternoon and Korean cabs super cheap. I picked the cab, so got the tourist information desk to write down where I had to go in Korea for the cabby, and I was off.

Here’s the good part.. Red lights, one way streets, speed limits and intersection turn offs all seem to be irrelevant.

Old Lava Flow

The cabby was down 120 in a 80 zone, then a red light came up ahead so the "normal" thing to do would be to slow down and stop like the other cars did... but NO. He went into the lane to turn to the right on the side of the road, around all the other cars, and through the red light then continued on... The only thing he did do was put his hazard lights on. At 120 through a red light I don't think hazard lights are going to help... hmm...

Anyways as you can tell it all worked out just fiiiinee...

As Jeju is a "large island" and so far out of town, and there is no train system, its really impractical to go to the city at night. The busses are slow and not that easy to get around in.

B52 Shots

The guest house that I stayed at had a bar down in the basement, an awesome idea. So I spent the remainder of my evening chatting to the bartender and the other backpackers. One of the owners shouted us a few B52's as well.

The next day I started the touristy thing, I visited the famous lava tubes of Jeju. Some of the largest in the world and most detailed. There are some 6 or 7 systems around the island but only 1 is open to the tourists.

Lava Tube Walls

After spending 2 hours on the bus (wasn't game to try the cab 2 days in a row), I finally ended up at the

Lava Tube Walls

Lava tube. This one is 1 km long (well the part open to tourists) and has a number of large caverns and a lava stack at the end. It was very cold down there, outside it was 25 odd degrees, but inside it felt like 5 degrees, it was also extremely wet, and water running everywhere. It had apparently rained the days before so all the water was seeping through the ground into the tunnel.

The Tunnel showed several different aspects of the lava tubes, it also showed how the lava could pick up rocks and solidify them on the walls and things. Very cool.

Maze - Amazing

From there I walked to a maze, made out of ever green trees. It was made by a retired man who wanted to give something back to the community that had given him so much.

It was simple but fun. There was a lot of people running around and looking for the correct path. At the end there was a bell to ring. If you picked the incorrect path there was a surprise at the end.

Yay for waterproof camera

That night I met a few from the hostel in the pub in the basement again; I was invited by Jake to go to the beach with him and a few others the next day, which sounded fun. Only problem early start...

Im stuck...

The next morning struggled out of bed, into 2 cabs. (We were a group of 6 people) Crazy cab ride again... arrived at the beach and it was nice an emerald color sea.

It was a great typical day at the beach, the sand the surf, the line which you can not swim past... yeah in Korea they have a buoy line which is just in front of the surf break line, and you can not swim past it or you get whistled at and hassled by the life guards. Extremely frustrating for someone who is use to Australian beaches and body surfing? Never the less the water was nice and relaxing as always. I even managed to get berried in the sand by a few form the group. 

After lunch time it started to rain so we packed up our things and headed to see some sights. We went to a cliff face that you could again see the lava formations.

Wow caves!

We then finished up at another cliff further away with a few caves and board walk, which was nice. But it was bucketing down.

At this stage it had been a very long day, and was about 7pm now so we hoped on a long bus back to the hostel. Somewhere in the 5 bus changes I left my hat and sunnies on the bus chair. *Mega Sad face* 

The next day I went with Sofia and Jay from the guesthouse to climb Mt Hallasan, the highest mountain in Korea and an old volcano. It was an extremely nice hike, took us 8 hours round trip. The hike started out in a valley and a steep climb to the ridge of the mountain. Once we were above the tree line it became much easier to hike, and we reached the final huts without any major problems. The mountain itself is restricted to climb, but we walked around the base and took some very nice photos. Jay's SLR camera snapped up some magic moments. 

The climb down was easy until we hit the million stairs, then it got hard on the knees but we all managed it very well and reached the bottom finally.

From here it was about 3pm and none of us had had any lunch, we took a cab into the city and had a feed, I managed to find a pair of sunglasses to replace my lost ones.


Tanked up and happy again we tried to see a movie (final destination 5) but it is not released in Korea till next month, so we took the next option... We went to Jeju's famous "Loveland". A theme park for erotic sculptures. There was all manner of sculptures and things, ill let you Google them but it was a lot of fun to see and joke in the park. 

My final day in Jeju I took slowly, I visited the folk village on the island, and basically recreating the way of life people lived back in the olden days on Jeju. It was interesting but I could not find any English guides or books, so I missed out on a lot of the information.

I finished up my trip where I started in the basement pub chatting to the locals. 

I really enjoyed Jeju and its one of the places I would recommend visiting. You definitely need the time to see the sights and be lucky with the weather, or you miss a lot.

I’m now in Busan and having a blast.
Till the next post

Steffen.