Our Chuseok holiday is now wrapping up. We'd planned to go to Jeju-do (the 'Hawaii of Korea' simply because it's an island) but had trouble getting plane or boat or train tickets so my co-teacher found a Korean travel/tour package for us. All the itineraries and everything with the tour was in Korean (because it's a tour for Koreans) so we weren't really sure what to expect or what we would see.
We caught our plane to Jeju on Tuesday at around 4:40 pm after a flight delay due to rain and windy weather. We were kind of disappointed that the trip didn't have an earlier flight, but there was nothing we could do about it. We got on the tour bus and we were in a group of about 15 Koreans. There were families as well as old people, but we were the only 20-somethings I think. We were off to a late start because of the flight delay so we stopped at dinner first, at what my internet-assisted translation told me was called "overturned clay pot." I suspect the translation wasn't perfect. After dinner, the "evening city tour" began and we drove around Jeju city, the capital of the island and the most urban city. We saw some nice sites on the coast including "dragonhead rock" which is a rock unsurprisingly shaped like a dragon's head, although Ali had trouble seeing it. It was at this time that someone on our tour group approached us and said that he spoke some English and we could ask him questions if we needed help. This turned out being very valuable because no one else spoke a word so we wouldn't have known what time to meet people without him.
Dragonhead. Afterwards we went to our hotel. For some strange reason I still don't understand why, everyone on the tour was staying at different hotels. Our hotel was pretty nice. Korea does seem to do hotels well; often, the rooms are big and prices are usually no more than $80 a night. The night with the tour group was over, but we had read about a place called Jeju Love Land in our guide book, and it seemed like we wouldn't be going there on the tour. So we called a cab and made our way down there. It's a park filled with partially nude statues to very nude statutes, which was very surprising to see in Korea, given their conservative stance towards that kind of stuff. It was also a weird to see Korean families and their little kids posing for pictures with large penis statues.
One of the more family friendly statues. The next day we had to be outside by 8:10 am for the tour bus. Our first stop was "Psyche World" and the "Queens House," two places not mentioned in our tour book. The Queen's House was kind of a museum of jewels and other Queen-related items. Most of the jewels were clearly plastic replicas of the crown jewels and many were clearly unlike the Queen's like bejeweled Hello Kitty statues. Quite bizarre. "Psyche World" is a museum said to have the largest collection of butterflies in the world. It had some interesting sights such as large dead beetles re-enacting various events throughout history. Both places were okay, but weren't things we would have chosen if we'd planned the trip ourselves.
Just like the one the Queen rode in... right? 
Fooling people into thinking there's a swing there. Our next stop was "Jeju Circus World." I hadn't been to the circus in ages and it was actually pretty impressive. There were many acrobatic performances that defied physics as well as an unbelievable site of 5 motorcycles are riding around the inside of a sphere somehow not crashing into each other. Ali ended up falling asleep for part of it so clearly she wasn't as awestruck as me but it was pretty cool.
After a buffet Korean lunch, we went to what I translated earlier as "Mushroom Farm Experience". Now this has to be one of the most bizarre experiences on the trip. We drove up to a greenhouse and a person showed us around the tour house speaking Korean. Then we went into a room where and sat down for like 15 minutes while this guy talked about mushrooms, I think. He was holding one while he talked and this was a mushroom farm so that's what led me to that conclusion. And then we went to another room and sat in this room with all these boxes of mushroom powder. It was like a seminar or an infomercial that you would watch on TV with someone excitingly telling you the virtues of their product. After the speech, they went around with clipboards trying to get you to buy some. Luckily, that's one of the benefits of being a foreigner: salesperson immunity. No one ever bothers us trying to sell stuff like they do to other Koreans. Strangely, no one else seemed to find the situation odd. I wonder if this is normal in Korean tour vacations and sitting through seminars is as regular as going to the beach.
Afterwards, we went to the other side of the island to the 2nd biggest city called Seogwipo, and got on a ferry that showed around the part of the coast. It was a actually really good. I always enjoy ferries and seeing the more natural side of Jeju was nice. Once we docked, we walked over across a bridge to a small island called Saeseom and went on a nice walk around the perimeter of the island.
One of the sights on the cruise. 
These statues called "harabang" (I think) are located all over the island.They are very symbollic of Jeju. Then our bus stopped along a park where we followed this long walking path along the coastline. Jeju was created by an underwater volcanic eruption so the coastlines and beaches are filled with black hardened lava and protuding rocks, which gives it a unique flavor. This one giant rock in particular came with an interesting story. When the Mongols invaded centuries ago, the story goes that the Koreans dressed this large rock up to look like a war general. The Mongols thought it was a Korean general the size of a giant and decided to all kill themselves.
Yep... if that rock was wearing a shirt and had a face drawn on, I would definitely lose my will to live. The tour was over for the day but the group decided to go out for dinner at a Japanese restaurant. The dinner wasn't included in the price we paid so we declined because it was only 5pm and neither of us were hungry. The English speaking tourist told us the bus driver would take us to our hotel. The bus driver came out, spoke Korean, and then went back in the restaurant. After 5 minutes he came out with another guy and told us that he would take us to our hotel. Thinking it was a taxi at first, we were surprised to see it was just some guy with a car. He drove us back and we still have no idea what happened. We can just imagine our driver yelling inside the restaurant, "Does anyone want to drive these 2 waygooks to their hotel?" It was certainily bizarre to say the least. We just relaxed that night in our room. Other things we wanted to do on the island including a teddy bear museum and these lava tubes but both were closed by 6 so we didn't have time for them after the tour.
The next day, which was our third and last, we first went to a souvenir and crafts store. We wanted to get something souvenir-esque, but didn't want to spend too much money, so I settled for Jeju cactus chocolates, a curious name given the lack of cacti around here. Our next stop was elephant land, another circus-like show with elephants as the main performers. It was a good show as the elephants were cute and performed a number of tricks such as bowling, playing basketball, and taking bananas from the audience. Later, we stopped at a ranch where we could ride a pony. We didn't do it because they didn't let you 'ride' so much as let a guy walking pull the horse in a slow circle.
The elephants taking eating bananas, peels and all.
Then we went to a folk village where there was some nice relics of Korean folk homes but we had to sit in another seminar-type thing, albeit, a much shorter one. After lunch, we went to ilchulbong, which is in our tour book as one of the best things to see in the entire country and it was a beautiful sight. Ilchulbong, is an odd-looking mountain with a large crater on top, located on the eastern most tip on Jeju. It is supposed to be a fantastic place to watch the sunrise. However, we couldn't climb to the top because our tour bus was only there for 20 min.
The peak we should've climbed. Afterwards, we got on a ferry to go to Udo island, a much smaller island in the north east end, also called "Cow Island" due to it's shape from an arieal view. This provided some nice scenic views as the whole island is very rural with mostly farms and low stone walls dividing the land. We stopped at a peak and had time to climb to the top for a good view. Still on the island, we went to where the diving Grannies are located. In the 50's, there was a tax loophole where women weren't taxed on income but men were. So many wives in this village did the work of diving underwater, without breathing apparatuses, and collecting sea urchins and other fish. This became quite a big deal in a country that viewed women as inferior to men and the Government tried to ban the practice. It also didn't help that they wore loose white cotton which made the government make it illegal for men to watch them. 50 years later, now in their 70's, these women still work by diving into the water and swimming for shellfish. We just missed their actual work by minutes, and the area is now a tourist hotbed.
A view from Udo Island.
A statue of the famous diving grannies.The rest of the day, we just had 1 or 2 stops at different small beaches where we just soaked our feet.
We were on a plane by 8 o'clock and back home in a few hours.
Overall, we liked Jeju and thought it had plenty to do for a 3 day break, but we didn't do all of those things on our tour. Some things could have been skipped and replaced but it was good overall. There were 3 things we didn't get to do in Jeju, which we would've loved to: climb Ilchulbong for sunrise, tour the world's largest underground lava tubes, and go to the Teddy bear musuem where teddy bears reenact events from that last century and "even the most skeptical come away impressed," according to the guide book. Ali went back to work on Friday and I'm not back until Monday. Ali also went to a training course on Saturday and I just hung out. It's been a nice break though, and now our next big thing is in 2 weekends when we go to the Busan film festival.
Hope you are all well,
Ali and Jesse
