Fifth day in Korea (1)

Today was the day the group split. While the rest headed on to Seoul by bus early in the morning, I stayed back in Gwangju to meet up with a friend.
Long story short, he was busy in Seoul and had arrived back to Gwangju by bus early in the morning. Allowing him ample time to snooze, I hung out at his friend's apartment.
By the time he woke up, it was time for lunch and the bunch of us decided to order delivery, taking advantage of having a local among our group.
The meal was around 5,000-8,000 Won per person, depending on what you ordered.
It was refreshing to see the delivery man arrive with a box filled up with containers of food that wasn't disposable items.

 

The delivery man chatted to me in  Korean while I gave him a blank look.

According to our Korean friend, he thought I was a Korean, which explains a lot on why random people on the streets kept on conversing with me in the language.

It was an interesting experience, which made me feel a wee bit part of the culture.

Even when it comes to delivery, the side dishes are not forgotten, which really impressed me as preparing multiple dishes and delivering them seem to be a great hassle.

I got even further impressed when I was told that after the meal, all we had to do was pack up the utensils, place them in a plastic bag provided with the meal and leave it outside the doorstep for the deliveryman to return and pick it up.

All I could think of was 'Wow! That's dedication for customer service."

Fourth day in Korea (1)

The fourth day in Korea was pretty uneventful as the whole day was spent travelling to Gwangju.
Much like the first day in Korea, an omelet and sausage breakfast was prepared by Pitto (and Ah Liang, I think), complete with a smiley face to start the day.

We took the 8am ferry from Jeju to Mokpo City, which was going to take us 5 hours to get there. I don't really remember the price of the tickets ( I vaguely remember it to be around 22,000 Won), but it was the cheapest class tickets, which isn't really that bad.
You basically just sit on the platforms provided in the ferries. There are also pillows provided if you wanna take a snooze, with ample space to lie down.

;

This was the moment when the weather turned from bad to worse in Korea (for those interested to visit Korea, keep in mind that this is mid-July).
The rain went from a light drizzle early in the morning to pouring profusely within an hour.
We were already drenched during our third day here and it was not the end of it.
The sky was dark and foggy:

 

And the waves were relentless hitting against the side of the ferry, rocking it more than usual despite its size:

The air was cold with the strong wind delivering the extra chill to the bone. 

Outside the ferry, it was an unforgiving world.

But inside, it was a different story. 

Warm and equipped, it made sure that its passengers are well taken care of with a cafeteria open for those who are hungry and water readily available in water coolers for those who are thirsty.

There was even a little boy who got pleasantly entertained with arcade games on the ferry.

By the time we reached Mokpo City, the rain was so heavy we could hardly see past a few metres ahead. Instead of keeping to the initial plan of taking our time to get to know the city, we decided to head on straight to Gwangju by bus, which took around an hour.

Through the drizzling rain, we headed to the nearest hotel with an English signboard in Gwangju called Classic Hotel (60,000 Won for four of us) and retired for the night, too drenched and exhausted to do anything else, waiting for the next day to arrive.

Third day in Korea (6)

I've always been skeptical when it comes to product or services that has strong marketing. Almost always, the product ends up short of what is expected of it.
So when I saw Yeha guesthouse splattered strongly at the Korea Tourism Organisation booth for Jeju during the Matta fair, I was determined that it did not remain on my 'places to stay' list.
I must say though, I was proven immediately wrong upon arriving at the guesthouse (Teresa made the booking, which means I didn't have a chance to snub it).

If you remove the messiness caused by us, it's a really nice and comfortable stay. For a guesthouse, this place is pretty top notch.
We had planned on heading to Jeju Love Land after settling in, but the gloomy day we spent got to us. And after setting sights on such a cozy place, we decided to stay put and just relax.
This was the last night we were spending in Jeju, and I had yet to taste abalone porridge, which is a must have food item here.
Lucky for us, Yeha was already prepared with what guests had in mind and the girl at the counter immediately produced a piece of paper complete with a map with directions to several restaurants that serves Jeju's specialties.
I don't remember the name of the restaurant we went to, but it was really good.

Here, we have the usual side dishes.

But the soup was something different. Usually, it's served with bean sprout in clear soup. This was slight different with cucumber in red soup. It had a tangy taste as opposed to the clear soup.
The owner of the restaurant was pretty proud of her abalone dishes, especially the abalone rice hotpot which was featured on Korean television before.

It may not look appetising, but trust me....this is goooooooddddd......
The abalone slices were thick and plentiful. The owner was not at all skimpy with their end product. Throw in a slab of butter and some heavy duty stirring....and it is ready to be consumed greedily.

Hot, flavourful, delish.....and pumped full of luxurious abalone.

From the looks of it, the porridge doesn't look like much. But much like the hotpot, this bowl is buried with plenty of treasure from the sea. And the flavour, also superb. Yummm.....the downside? I can never ever have this in Malaysia....
Oh, abalone dishes, I miss you so.....
After the meal, we went back to Yeha for an early nightcap as we had a full day of travelling the very next day.

Note: We spent around RM70 for one night in Yeha Guesthouse. It is a really fair price considering we were in Jeju and the environment of the place is really good. Yeha even provides tours and has probably every question you had in your mind about Jeju prepared.
The abalone hotpot was priced 15,000 won while the porridge was 10,000 won.

Third day in Korea (5)

By the time we arrived at Yongduam Rock, it was already 5.30pm.
Yongduam Rock, also known as the Dragon Head rock, is probably a popular place for visitors to sit at the nearby cafes and enjoy a hot, fragrant cup of coffee.

However, spotting the many tourists buses parked at the car park, we decided to beat the crowd and bag the best photo taking spot before every head of these tourists appear in our pictures.

 

After clicking the first picture, I took sometime looking at the rock, trying to figure out which part exactly was the head of the dragon. Maybe I'm an artistic moron, but after 10 minutes of staring without figuring out which part exactly was the head, I turned my attention to the sun setting behind me.

Not exactly a great picture, but I just like that the sea glitters from the sunlight.

Realising that there is a route along this direction, we headed to see what was on the other side of these rocks.

We spotted yet again, another Haenyo conducting business. Only this time, she had something that me and Teresa were dying to try since we stepped foot onto Korea.

It is a pretty gory experience watching the baby octopus being chopped up alive in front of us. First, its brain was completely scrapped away on the chopping board.

Then it was minced into a million wriggling pieces, which were screaming 'I'm still ALIVE!' with great agony.

And served up with many dashes of sesame oil accompanied with bean paste, chili and garlic, and wasabi with soy sauce on the side.

It was a difficult dish to savour considering the tentacles to be still wriggling and capable of sucking on to any surface it could get its squiddish hands on. I even had one stuck in my throat for a while before finally being able to swallow it.

It is hard to describe what it tasted like, as any fresh squid flavour was completely overshadowed by the sesame oil. 

It would have been great to have a bottle of soju on the side, but it's not worth risking it walking on the rocks half drunk.

At 6.30pm, we were ushered into the taxi by the driver, who promptly brought us back to the guesthouse right on the dot at 7pm.

Third day in Korea (4)

The saddest part of the rainy season is that the fog culminated from the cold air tend to block the most scenic views.
Thanks to the fog, I missed out on a supposedly great sunrise in India.
And in Korea, I missed out on a supposedly grand view of the volcano crater at Seongsang Ilchulbong.

What is supposed to be a view of the Seongsan Ilchulbong's 180m tall summit is all covered up by the fog. Nevertheless, as we were already here, there was no reason not to walk up the well-paved stairs up to the peak.
It looked like a long way up judging by the ant-sized people crawling up obediently in a line.

While Ah Liang and I decided to head up the summit, Teresa and Pitto pondered on whether to join us seeing as there is a big chance it would be a pointless walk up without a guaranteed view and the continuous rain had dampened most of our enthusiasm.

As expected, reaching the top didn't get us much of view besides a cloud of white. No amount of squinting or peering down at where the crater was supposed to be could get us a teensy weensy bit of a view. In the end, we had to make do with the view on the walk down as the fog gradually cleared as the temperature dropped by the metre. By then, Teresa and Pitto had decided to make the climb up as well.
The walk down was relaxing as we took the time to take in the view from the top.

There was even a cove down below which we were much too lazy and time constrained (the taxi driver had given us one and a half hour for this destination) to investigate.

To further amuse myself, I took a picture of this version of Wall-E who spends his lifetime looking at the ocean. I kind of envy him in a way.

 

Anyway, at 5pm, we loaded ourselves into the taxi and headed to our last destination of the day -Yongduam Rock.

Note: Ticket admissions to Seongsan Ilchulbong is 2,000 won. It's probably cooler to visit it for its sunrise as it is known in English as Seongsan Sunrise Peak.

Third day in Korea (3)

Walking through the rest of Ilchul Land was mostly a listless affair.
First, the heavy rain had really dampened our moods as we were wet and tired. Second, Ilchul Land was more an array of touch and go experiences where you don't really get a deep sense of anything culturally interesting.
There were a couple of things that caught my eye though.
For one, this model of the Haenyo where i thought was a really precise interpretation of what they represent.

Made out of wiring and filled with rocks and fishes swimming in between, she definitely is one with the sea. It's just a little sad that this particular haenyo has to be so far away from the ocean.
Besides being well known for the dol haruebang (statues of gods offering protection and fertility) which can be found all over the island looking like this:

Jeju is also well known for its delicacy of black skinned pork, which can only be found on these islands. The meat however, is not black, it is in fact named for the black skin of the animal. While we didn't have the chance to have a meal on this dish (or maybe we had but didn't know it because everything was in Korean),we did see the animal in Ilchul Land, and yes, it was black.

They had the blackest, sleekest, shiniest fur I have ever seen, and they were too busy eating to actually pay us any attention. At least they have proper feed now. According to the information board, these pigs were fed human excrement a very long time ago where the farmers just built their toilets above the pig pen.
Yuck....but that's the way it was when conditions were poor and people had to survive.
After a while, we got tired of the place with nothing more interesting to see and headed to the exit.
On the way, I walked through a cactus garden and took a picture.

All I can say is..ummm....the cactus were really huge.
We concluded that this was not really a necessary place to visit. If it wasn't for the fact that we were not able to visit the Manjanggul Lava tubes, I wouldn't have given Mi Cheon Caves a second thought.
At around 3pm, we moved on to Seongsan Ilchulbong, also known as Seongsan Sunrise Peak.

Note: Entrance fee for Ilchul Land costs 4,500 won.

Third day in Korea (2)

While the rain had already stopped falling, the air was still cold from the weather. What we didn't prepare for, was the freezing temperature outside of Mi Cheon Caves with the mist swirling all around us.

Despite its initial appearance, the cold seem to disappear into the air the moment we walked down the stairs and the temperature gradually became warmer.

The rest of the lava tube was pretty much, well, rocks. Most of its description were in Korean which was of course lost to us. So all we could do was to check out whatever was inside the cave.
There was a huge pool in the middle.

And one or two interesting rock formations.

And we of course had to be careful of our heads in certain areas as warned by the signboard.

The tube, which is 1.7km long, had only 365m opened to the public.
It was overall a really short walk and before we knew it, we were heading towards another part of the park.