Jeju, Korea

After not seeing family or friends for the first three months of my travels in New Zealand, being visited by some of them for nearly half of each subsequent month made me feel much less homesick. My former coworker and good friend Alli had some time off and we decided to travel around South Korea together for a while.

I had previously visited Iceland and other states in America with her, so I was ecstatic for another trip with Alli. We spent some time in both Seoul and Jeju Island, and the latter is what I’ll describe in this post.

Jeju Island can be found off the southern coast of South Korea, about an hour’s flight from Seoul, and is a popular honeymoon destination for Koreans, like Hawaii is to folks from the States. The island is full of museums, such as teddy bear, chocolate, tea, art, and erotic (which adds to the honeymoon appeal).

Not only museums, but there are parks with various naughty sculptures. I’m not going to include photographs, but we had a blast giggling through our strolls in these places (Google “Jeju Love land”).

On a more G-rated note, we paid a visit to a tea museum, which actually wasn’t much of a museum at all. There was one corridor explaining the history of tea in Korea, and then you promptly enter the tasting room cafe and gift shop. Outside, you can walk through rows of tea plants, if you aren’t too afraid of disturbing the spiders.

We traveled around Jeju Island in a rental car, and this was actually my first time in the past fourth months driving back the way I used to, on the right side of the road with the steering wheel on the left.

I had to go through a short adjustment period once again, explicitly reminding myself to stay to the right, to the right, and confusing my blinker lever with the windshield wipers. Our car came with a GPS that very helpfully warned us of speed cameras, which are are placed every kilometer or so.

Alli and I decided to immerse ourselves in the culture a bit more, so we watched some YouTube music videos of popular Korean pop, in particular by the bands BTS and BLACKPINK. I felt a bit ignorant not having heard this music before, it is pretty popular internationally! And not to mention, incredibly catchy; we continued to listen to K-pop during our drives, and the songs kept getting stuck in my head.

On one of the mornings, as we were eating breakfast in the dining area of our hostel, we met a couple of guys who were traveling together from Denmark, and were thinking of renting a car to move around the island in. We invited them to join us, and ended up having a fun day with them exploring some waterfalls on the island, and then heading to another small island off the coast of Jeju, called Udo.

On Udo island, Alli and I rented an electric tandem bike to explore the island. It was my first time on both an electric bike and a tandem. Getting stabilized on the tandem is the hardest part and luckily Alli sat in the front to control the bike. I was also very impressed with the E-bike doing most of the work for us; I understand the hype with those bikes now!

The last ferry leaving Udo Island was at 6 PM, and Alli and I found ourselves somewhat lost around 5:30 PM. I furiously navigated with my phone in the backseat while we peddled as fast as we could to make it back to the ferry landing, which luckily we did on time. We were so full of adrenaline when we arrived having pushed so hard!

Mount Hallasan

The primary reason we decided to fly out to Jeju was to climb the highest mountain (1,950 m or 6,398 ft) in South Korea, volcano Mount Hallasan, located in the center of Jeju Island. We woke up early on our last full day to drive to the start of the Seongpanak trail.

There were regulatory signs on the mountain noting the checkpoints you had to reach by certain times throughout the day, with the final checkpoint being the summit that you had to descend by 2 PM. It was not very difficult to meet these deadlines, and we walked at a leisurely pace.

Along the way, we were passed by a very large group of teenagers, likely visiting on a school trip. We both noted that this seemed like a bit of a strenuous hike for a school field trip, but the kids seemed to have no problem running up and down the trail.

The weather in Jeju that day was forecasted to be overcast and raining, but on Mt Hallasan, about two-thirds of the way to the top, we ended up being above the clouds. It was really quite mesmerizing at the peak of the mountain, looking down and being surrounded by a sea of feathery white clouds. On the mountain, we enjoyed warm sunshine and clear blue skies.

A tradition Alli and I have had from hiking trips in the past is eating fried chicken when we reach the summit, and boy, does it taste delicious after hiking for over four hours!

Up to the very top, rather than climbing uneven rocks, a series of steps and stairways were built to ease the hike, and protect the vegetation. This made the hike feel much less difficult than it could have been, although our calves were incredibly sore for days following the hike, having walked up and down thousands of steps.

In total, the hike took us over nine hours, with a total distance of about 18.4 km or 11.4 miles. We went up one trail, and down another, needing to take a taxi back to our car at the bottom of the mountain. This taxi ride was one of the most frightening of my life, and we were quite appalled at the aggression or driver displayed on the road.

Needless to say, we got home safe and sound that night, and relaxed with some Netflix and Beyonce before dozing off into a well-deserved sleep.

I’m glad we spontaneously decided to fly to Jeju from Seoul, on the recommendation of one of our AirBnb hosts; it was a cool place for nature, culture, and new experiences!

-Anastasia