Island living.

In my first week and a half in Korea I met many locals and asked them where the best place was to visit in the country. Almost all of them would say Jeju Island. So Brent and I went and got some plane tickets and flew down to the southern most part of South Korea to explore this much praised Island and it did not disappoint.

On our second morning on Jeju we rented bicycles and started our journey of going around the entire coast of the island. It was 250 kms with a decent amount of climbs and some real good downhills. We covered this distance in four days at a relaxed pace, stopping whenever we wanted to look at something or take a break to grab some fresh Christmas oranges right off of a tree. The first two days were wonderful weather and shorts were needed, however the last two days were pouring rain and we were drenched from head to toe and peddling so hard. This was one of the funnest moments of the ride as we made the best of a bad situation and had a good time being soaked.


Along the coast we seen some of the most beautiful places in the world (according to me). There was many incredible lava rock formations as the island was made from many volcanos. We also seen some amazing waterfalls and the worlds longest lava tube cave. One morning we were even so ambitious to wake up early enough to climb a volcano crater (see:Seongsan Ilchulbong) and watch the sun rise over it...but it was cloudy so all we got was a slight purple glow.


The day after our biking was done we got up real early again as we planned on hiking up Mount Hallasan, which is South Koreas tallest mountain. It was raining again, but this did not stop us as we made it to the top to see the famous volcanic crater of the dormant volcano mountain. The hike altogether was 20kms and that night we had some real sore muscles from 4 days straight of biking and then hiking for 7 hours.


We left the island early the next morning by ferry to the city of Mokpo, then onto the city of Gwanju for the night. The next day we seen some countryside around Gwanju and some of the most incredible fall colors were on display. We then took a bus to Jeonju to spend the night at a Hot Spring Spa...or so we thought. We took a taxi out of town to this 'highly recommended' spa as we had high hopes of relaxing in saunas and hot tubs all night. The taxi driver dropped us off, snaked us and overcharged us big time and then left real fast. There were three buildings around, two with lights on and one totally dark and abandoned...and of course the abandoned one was where the spa was supposed to be. We now realized we were way in the middle of nowhere, it was 9:30pm and totally dark. We had no way of getting back to the city but our own two feet. So we started walking back towards Jeonju, we tried hitching a ride for awhile but it turns out Koreans aren't very receptive to the outstretched thumbs of foreigners at night time. We ended up walking the entire 15 kms and getting a real dirty hotel room just after midnight.

Our first excursion to smaller towns and villages around the country was a huge success with it being some of the best 8 days of my life. Trying to communicate with people who know no english except for 'hello' and a couple words from a Justin Timberlake song is definitely interesting. Lots of school kids would yell and point at us and a middle aged male cab driver told me I was handsome and looked like Tom Cruise. There was also an elderly man who owned a hotel who hand fed us cooked potatoes, slapped my back real hard and rubbed Brents beard. He was one of the coolest old dudes and we were friends even though we could not understand a word from eachother. Travelling is great.