Jeju Island: Day 1

Going to Jeju Island has always been on the first priority on my bucket list, and so on a freeish weekend, me and my friend decided to hop on a plane for a weekend getaway. And a couple hours later (with delay added in), we finally arrived at Jeju Island!! 

To be honest, it wasn't the best weekend to have traveled as it was very windy with chances of showers. But even with the not-so-ideal weather, we were determined to make the best out of our trip.

The first thing we did after dropping our things off at the hostel was to find a place to eat. Because of the flight delay, we were forced to have late lunch, which we decided to try jjajjangmyeon for the first time. After that, we just walked around the area as we were only left with half of a day.

We walked along the shoreline of the North part of Jeju Island and the first sight we visited was called Yongduam. It was filled with Chinese tourists but personally we didn't find it very interesting. I guess it wasn't really my type of thing.

Yongyeon Cloud Bridge

Dol hareubang (Stone Grandfather) - a symbol of Jeju, they are considered as gods offering both protection and fertility

On our way back to the hostel, we discovered Jejumok Gwana, which is the place where major public office buildings were located until the Joseon Dynasty. This is also the place where we realized that a lot of paid sites on Jeju Island have discounted entry fees for youth/students. The discount ranges from 100-1,000 won, which was a delight to have.

The first time I've ever been on the second floor of any historical building in Korea!!

For someone who is scared of heights, the stairs were quite steep. I had to hold onto the rails the whole time.

Jungang Underground shopping mall - the only underground one in the whole of Jeju

Our hostel was right across from the Dongmun Market, where boxes and boxes of their specialty, tangerines, were placed. They also had stores that sell tangerine chocolates lined up next to each other. It was the perfect place to get souvenirs as a tourist but also your daily groceries as a local.

When it was finally time for dinner, we decided to go taste the famous black pork BBQ that Jeju is known for. To be honest, even though it was sold at a higher price, we didn't taste much difference from the normal pork that's usually served. But maybe we're just really insensitive to tastes and too hungry to care.

After our meal, we were too tired from all the plane riding and walking, so we just went back to our hostel. Since we hadn't figured out a plan of where we wanted to go before we came, we did the planning when we got back to the hostel. The person who was working there, who happened to also be a Canadian, was nice enough to help us figure out a couple of places to go the next day and even wrote out all the instructions out for us!!

And that's it for day 1! Day 2, which is much more interesting, coming soon!!!