Took a bus down to Jeju City for eMart. Tobsy couldn’t get over the wonderfully affordable meal we had ystday. Realising this was our last day in Korea and in Japan, cheap food is extinct, we decided to indulge ourselves abit by ordering a huge 2-person set meal plus another Tonkatsu set. Even the cashier was surprised and warned us tt is going to be mega huge portions. But we polished almost everything up, being the great eaters we are, and started shopping around.
Almost as if a consolation to his failed buy ystday, Tobsy quickly found a cool pair of denim berms and sleeveless top. What’s even better, their total cost is less than the 24,000W top he saw ystday. God rewards the patient! Got a bit more food before heading back to the airport to board our plane.
Jeju air’s propeller plane looked really flimsy. And it was really low, you only had to climb 5 steps to get on board. Since it was small, it was uber susceptible to turbulence and it was like one of the worst flights I’ve ever had. I kept feeling like my life was going to end before it even started properly. All the worrying on the turbulent flight made me quite tired so I was thankful for the comfortable airport limousine at Busan airport which brought us to the port.
Spent time chilling around on the top-most level of the port where bad Korean kids smoke and spat. We did some devotionals and talked before going down for a quick bite at the snack stop. They claim to serve “ramen” but it was actually just Korean maggi mee.
Boarded new Camellia around 1920. And realised tt I could only claim 3,500W from the tax refund cos one salesgirl screwed up the documents and did not give me what I needed. Sad. All the trouble for this little amount.
Our deluxe room kicks ass. Spacious, and it even comes with its own proper toilet. I guess he knows I cannot do a shared bathroom with everyone else. The lower category is also a private room but it comes with the double-decker bed and it only has a toilet in the room without showering facilities so I was really really glad we got this one. And the price is really quite affordable considering other modes of transportation would cost about the same and you would need to add one night’s accommodation in Hakata. On this cruise, we cover transport and accommodation together so overall savings! Yeah!
They started playing 200 pounds beauty around 2030 and we watched it all the way till late even though it was in Korean and there were no subtitles. Funny, nevertheless. Then we slept all the way till morning. The bed was unbelievably comfortably I really didn’t want to disembark the next morning.
DAY 9 – JEJU, WEST TOUR
Unfortunately for us, the toilet bowl in our room got stuck after we used it for big business. Tobsy tried to fix it but could not and that took quite some time so we only left around 10ish. 1st stop – O’Sulloc Tea Museum. Free admission! But it wasn’t a fantastic museum or anything really. And the green tea plantations were a little disappointing. I was expecting lush terraced fields tt seem endless (think the scene in Summer Scent). Oh well. But the weather was really really fine. Thank God for that!
Next we went to the beach enroute Halim Park. I will need to refer to the map for the name of the beach but its tt famous one where every Korean drama has a scene there. Da Chang Jin was filmed there too I think. And it should be the famous scene where Song Seung Hun carried Song Hye Gyo on his back as she died in Autumn of My Heart. It’s really a spectacular beach with pretty white sand and gorgeous emerald waters. And of course, the best part of all natural scenic spots is there is no admission fee!
Decided to make a spontaneous trip to eMart as we passed it. It was next to the World Cup Stadium so we took a look too. The main highlight was the cheap clothes at eMart and the wonderful food court. For 11,200W, we got 2 bowls of udon, 1 big bowl of Bibimbak, omelette rice, salad, Tonkatsu and hamburger steak. Totally mind-blowing! We were completely satisfied of our meat-cravings by the end of the meal. Tobsy almost got a cool top but they ran out of S size for white and only had grey. He was so disappointed but I was sure there will definitely be better buys out there.
Next stop Jeong Bang Waterfalls. 2nd trip here cos it was closed ystday. The ticketing lady immediately charged us the student price after seeing our ISIC cards without checking for our age. Other places that checked only allowed student price for me cos Tobsy is 25 already. So there was a little bit of savings here. Yeahness! Lots of kids at the waterfall. After climbing all the way down, I wondered if it was really worth the admission. Sure it was quite unique seeing a waterfall straight into the ocean but the one in Nikko is probably bigger and more spectacular.
Didn’t have time for the lava stones cos we had to return the car at 4pm. The staff at Lotte Hotel rock. It is truly a 5-star hotel. When I drove into the driveway to drop Tobsy off to call the car rental staff at Shila Hotel, the greeters at the entrance immediately came and opened the car door for him and bowed. Super VIP treatment man. Created quite abit of trouble for them cos they had to call Shila and help us process the return of the car. All this when we’re not even guests (I hope they don’t know that)! We didn’t even have to wait for the Shila car rental staff to arrive to check the car, we could leave upon passing the car keys to the Lotte front desk staff. Super!
Dinner at GS25 again. Got back super early but because of the stuck toilet bowl, I had to pee straight into the water drainage hole. Not very nice. Leaving Jeju tml for Busan then Hakata. Bye bye Korea!
DAY 8 – JEJU, EAST TOUR
Renting the car turned out to be much more tedious than we had expected. We went to the Hertz office at Lotte Hotel (where we made enquiries about the rates previously), it was open but there was NO ONE in there. The guys we saw the day before were nowhere in sight – probably just came to open the office and then off to their beds again since it was uber low season. The hotel front desk had no idea where they were, so we tried the rental company next door, where the only staff, a young lady, was happily chatting with her friend on the phone until we came in. Thank God she was conversant in English; but as it turned out, she only had the big SM5 cars available, which would cost us a whopping 120,000W. No way man. She was nice enough to help us call up the Hertz main office, but the Lotte branch had no small cars left either. At last, she rang up another company (Hansung) down at Shilla Hotel, and reserved a small car for us. We were immensely grateful to her, since she was really going the extra kilo-mile for us – she could have very well chased us out as we weren’t her clients.
The Hansung lady drove the car down to Lotte hotel. We opted for no insurance (which cost 29,000W) initially to save money, and made the payment via card (she used carbon paper to make duplication for the card number); but we realised that there was no GPS onboard. We would DIE trying to navigate by map alone. So she had to drive us back to Shilla hotel to get the GPS. Then we were on our own. After some nervous test drives around the area, and with Grace visibly pale from the encounters with fast and furious Korean drivers, we decided to go back to buy the insurance, JUST in case anything bad were to happen and to put Grace’s mind at ease. It was after the transaction that we realised that the insurance coverage is only up to 50% of the rental charge; and since we only paid about 60,000 W for the rental, the coverage would only be 30,000W – marginally more than the 29,000W insurance cost. That’s money wasted. Boo. Lesson learnt: do read the fine prints before buying anything.
After sufficient practice with the left drive system, we went back to White Scenery to fetch our baggage for postage. The traffic in the urban areas was crazy, with vehicles parked on BOTH sides of the road, leaving rather narrow space in the middle for cars to scrape through. But thank God the post office was easy to locate, and we sent our parcel (weighing 15.3 kg) out at around 30 SGD. Beats carrying them around at least. On the way back to the car park, Grace spotted a decent looking restaurant with a queue – the only restaurant in the area that seemed to be popular. While I rushed back to the car to get hand sanitizer (a must in view of H1N1), Grace queued and was ecstatic to find out that they had the veg-wrapped food that she had been looking for. The portions were generous and the dishes were delicious! But a major disappointment was the fact that the grilled pork had plenty of fats (which we discarded), leaving rather miserable amount of lean meat behind. Alas, it was a refreshing and unique experience, eating with hands and wrapping food up with veg leaves, quite similar to our popiah but with different ingredients. We even took a video of the process.
Long drive to the All In house. I had no idea why Grace was so excited about that place since I didn’t watch the drama. After making a few stops along the way (for beautiful beaches and nice scenic spots), we found the place. It was hidden behind some seaside apartment / golf resort, so it took us quite some time to locate it. I was not nearly as impressed by the “house” itself than the surrounding scenery – the former was a church-like building which actually house a souvenir shop and an “All In museum” that charged 3000W for admission, while the latter consisted of seaside cliffs, grasslands with free-roaming horses, and a pretty little lighthouse that sat atop a cliff. Major drawback – plenty of tourists, including a Korean / Tw / Chi uncle that peed openly beside a rock near the All In House, and walked away without looking the least bit ashamed of himself. Shudders.
Plenty of shots later, we moved on the Seung San Ilchulbong, the Sunrise Peak. We were initially quite taken aback by the path that led to the peak, as it seemed to be absurdly long and steep. We contemplated settling for just a photograph at the entrance, in view of Grace’s knee pain, but decided to proceed uphill eventually. The way up was indeed steep and long, with many Korean ladies backing out of the climb half-way up the mountain. At the top, the crater was not nearly as spectacular as the helicopter shots (duh); but the view of the surrounding harbour / coastal area was breathtaking. It was certainly worth the admission cost and the long climb.
After the descent we went on to the Manjangul limestone cave, but turned back 5 minutes later as we could not possibly make it there before sunset, and Grace hated driving at night. In retrospect that must be a God-inspired decision – we found out later that most Jeju attractions close at 6. Imagine driving for an hour only to find the attraction closed – something we experienced at Kushiro last year. We went to Jeongbang Waterfall on the way home, but it was closed for the day. Tried snapping some pictures from the bushes nearby, but couldn’t get a nice shot.
Caught an amazing sight on the way back – a vertical ray of light that formed a cross with a long stretch of cloud. We were both awed, comforted by the thought that God is always right here with us, and grateful for God’s blessing throughout the entire journey.
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