April 21, 2010

Honeymoon Trip to Korea: Day 3

Posted in Travel tagged day tour, eastern part, jeju, sunrise peak at 2:57 pm by reffine

On the second day in Jeju island, we went for a day tour trip with the local travel agent, Yehatour. It’s the same travel agent services who helped us book the return ticket for the domestic flight Seoul – Jeju – Seoul and also arranged our accommodation at Yeha guesthouse.   

Their services are not bad, the room was nice and clean, I would recommend to all of you and wanted to use them again in my future visit to Jeju, hopefully there will be a chance for me to visit Jeju again in future    

Back to the topic, so the itinerary for the day was:   

• Visit Seongeup folk village to see their daily living activities
• Visit Seopjikoji with the beautiful beach scenery and also a shooting location for a Korean drama, “All In”.
• Visit Seongsan Ilchubong (Sunrise Peak), which is one of the UNESCO World Heritage in Jeju.
• Visit Manjang-gul Cave, it is the largest lava tube in the world and also become the UNESCO World heritage in Jeju.
• Visit the Folklore National History Museum and Mysterious Road

These are the places at Eastern of Jeju island, we didn’t go to the Western course of Jeju island as most of the famous places are in Eastern Jeju.   

Seongeup Folk Village   

We started the day tour at Yeha guesthouse on 9am. After eaten our breakfast we proceed to the bus. The breakfast which was bread and egg, provided by the guest house but we need to make it by ourselves and cleaned the plates after we used it, not bad hehe    

The journey to the destination took us about 45 mins, there was a tour leader on the bus who explained roughly about the places we visit, and also helped us to order our lunch of the day.   

Apparently in one of the houses there, got some villagers who were in the process of making Korean rice cakes. The owner kindly offered us to taste the rice cake. I found it a bit tasteless, it’s like springroll but the content was filled with a lot of onions and veggies.    

The village was surrounded with few of hundred years-old trees, there was a story behind these trees which we couldn’t really understand as we’re too eager to take pictures instead.. oops    

Seopjikoji   

It was the second place we went. It’s a beautiful place which located just beside the ocean. Lucky that time we went, the weather was so nice.. the ocean so blue and the sky was bright.. what a wonderful scenery ^^   

There was a church located there and it had been a shooting place for a Korean drama, “All In”. The title quite familiar, but I couldn’t remember if I already watched it or not hehe    

We only had a short time there after that we continued the journey to Seongsan Ilchubong (sunrise peak).   

Seongsan Ilchubong   

This place is a volcanic crater with vertical cliffs rises up from the shore. It’s known as a sunrise peak, as this is the first area to get the sunrise every day.   

It took us around 50 mins to climb up and back, so tiring.. on top of it we can see a panoramic view around the area.. it’s so amazing.. ^^   

After that we went to have our lunch at the nearby place. We can see the sunrise peak view outside of our restaurant.   

The tour guide already arranged our meal order, I ordered bibimbap while my hubby ordered mackerel fish for the lunch set.   

Jeju is well-known for the mackerel fish and other marine life like seaweeds, shellfish, or abalone. According to the history they have women divers (Haenyo divers) to go diving instead of men as the population for men was lesser because of the war.  

After finished our lunch, we went outside to continue our photo taking hehe   

Manjang-gul Lava Caves   

From the restaurant, we continued our journey to Manjang-gul cave. The cave was built naturally from the hot lava flows a very long time ago. Not much things to see inside the cave, as it was quite dark. They just install some minimum lights along the way inside the cave to maintain the natural ecosystem. This is very different with the one that we had seen in China, whereby the cave was decorated with colourful lights. It’s more beautiful inside but I dunno whether will spoil the ecosystem inside.   

We walked quite a distance from the entrance of the cave to the lava column area. It’s the end of tourist walkway, as we can’t proceed further so we walk back again to the entrance for exit.   

It’s quite an interesting experience as we saw so many unique formations at the walls and along the walkways. According to the information I got from internet:   

“it stretches over 8 km, with widths reaching 5.15 meters and heights up to 10 meters. The temperature inside the tube ranges between 11-21 degrees (Celsius) year-round.” [1] 

Folklore National History Museum & Mysterious Road   

From the caves, we then continued the journey to the last 2-places in our day tour itinerary. The museum mostly contains about the history from the living traditions, people, how their connection to China, and many others Korean history. We just browsed thoroughly as at that time, there were another tour groups which mainly students coming so the place quite crowded.   

We could find a lot of cherry blossom trees around, took some pictures and continued to Mysterious road.   

Mysterious road was originally founded by the newlyweds on 1981 during their visit to Jeju island. It’s the phenomenon whereby when they put their car gear in neutral and switched-off the engine, slowly the car began to roll like going uphill.  Actually it is a downhill road, but the surrounding scenery perspective made it look like uphill hehe ^^   

That day, was crowded with tour buses and cars that went to try out the experience too, so we need to queue up and waited for a while. Actually it just like that, an optical illusion experience haha    

After finished our day tour itinerary, the tour guide offered us whether we wanted to continue to the Love Museum for adult only or going to the duty free shopping. Initially we wanted to go back to the guesthouse to join the free night tour, but not enough time so on the way back to guesthouse, hubby asked the tour guide for the night market for us to buy some souvenirs. The tour guide recommended us Dongmun Market as it opened till quite late.   

Dongmun Market   

So our last destination of the day was Dongmun Market. The bus driver dropped us at the nearby place and from there we took a cab for a short distance. I got asked the tour guide to write the Dongmun market place in Korean to show the taxi driver hehe.   

When we just alighted from the cab, hubby realized that his mobile phone was not with him -_-“ He was quite panic, I just noticed the last time he used it at the bus couch. But hubby couldn’t remember, he scared he left it on the taxi. So he tried to call using my mobile phone, but no answered.. finally we decided to go back to the guesthouse and asked for their help.   

Took another cab to go back, asked the receptionist gal to call the tour guide and asked about the mobile phone left on board. Luckily it was on the bus, so the tour guide kindly brought it back to the guesthouse.. fiuhh… hubby so relieved haha.. thank God ^^   

We decided to rest and take bath at the guesthouse first before went out to Dongmun market again by cab.   

Walked around the place and looked around for dinner, but we couldn’t decide which restaurant to enter.. after wandering sometime around the food places, there was a nice “ajumma” (aunty) who offered us a help even though her English was not so fluent. She’s very nice until we felt paiseh..   

She willingly helped us to ask around the food places, and recommended a comfy place to eat and talked to the waiter some more to order for us >,< we’re so speechless and so thankful for her…  I think she is a nearby resident there, she looks like a nice lady who just going home after work.   

We had a Korean BBQ dinner again but this time was not as nice as the first day we tried at the restaurant nearby our guesthouse. Not bad at least got something to eat hehe…    

Took cab again to go back to the guesthouse and had rest after a full day trip hehe  

~.~

Permalink