16 Oct 2012 - Seogwipo

We were in airport on Monday night. Our flight is midnight flight and will arrived at Seoul Incheon Airport at 8.30am the next morning. :)

I slept most of the time during the flight and Joshua played football on his ipad. We watched sunrise in the plane and got really excited that we're getting nearer to our destination! :)

Finally we touched down! It was 13 degrees when we arrived, but indoor is quite warm as they have the heater on.

We had to take the Airport Express Train to their domestic airport- Gimpo Airport to check in to our flight to Jeju Island.

Excited excited.. I was wearing my new dress as I'm in the celebration mood. Purchased this dress more than 6 months ago and have been saving it for this trip! :P

After check in, we have our brunch, Lotteria. Looks so much like Mc-Donalds but it is not.

 This simple meal costs us close to RM30. We initially wanted to have some local delicacies but after we saw the price tags we made an immediate U-turn. Haha.. it's triple the price of what we ordered at Lotteria! The korean restaurant was right behind me in the below picture.

Anyway, flight to Jeju got delayed for half hour... unhappy because we only have back to back 24 hours in Jeju!

Finally in the bus to the air plane that has arrived.

When we touched down, we really prayed that this trip will still be greattttt.... it's not a nice thing to have flight delay on 1st day in Korea, agree? :)

We have to take a cab to our hotel which is located in Seogwipo, we saw the Jeju map online etc.. but we didn't know that this island is that HUGE. Maybe the size of Singapore... With the Hotel Sun Beach address, we asked how long to get there and how much, we were quoted approx RM150! and it take almost an hour to reach! It was already close to 3pm when we arrived, that's like only few hours before the sky turn dark! @.@

The cab driver knows only a little bit of english... he said he will speed and get us to the hotel in 45 minutes. He did. Along the way we try to talk to him to understand the island, all we got was.. there are a lot of orange farms in the island... and he showed us the world cup stadium, Joshua mentioned korean footballer names and he agreed with passion. We used the dictionary to ask him whether he do any local tour, as we immediately need one, he said he charges 40000 won for half day.. we thought this guy doesn't know much English and charges so high, maybe we just forget about it. We decided to ask the hotel receptionist to recommend.

Arrived at hotel, the receptionist spoke to us instantly in JAPANESE! We were puzzled, I couldn't even figure out what language it was because it was so sudden! We gave him the blank look and said "Malaysian" then only the English channel was switched on. Phew! I went to the room, a very simple room... diagonally facing the sea, nothing fancy.... I washed my hair while Joshua went down to arrange for our urgent tour around the Seogwipo town!

Joshua came up at almost 4pm and said we need to hurry, we have a cab driver downstairs waiting for us, he can bring us to 3 waterfalls and jusangjeolli cliff but we must hurry because it gets dark by 6pm! The driver is charging us 50000 won, it's expensive but we had no choice. RUN!

In my head, I kept trying to recall how should we address the cab drivers? There's a polite word in Korean for uncle.. but what is it called? It's not in our dictionary... so I kept on thinking and this word came to my head "Ajoshi" but I wasn't 100% sure. I asked Joshua to try calling him "Ajoshi" and see what's his response. Haha.. ya I am not risk taker, I made Joshua take the risk of embarassment. :P Joshua called "Ajoshi" in a hesitant tone, and the cab driver turned back, smile, nodded while pointing to himself "yes yes, ajoshi, ajoshi." AWESOME! My memory is not thaaat bad! :D

1st waterfall is just 5 minutes from our hotel - Chenjiyeon waterfall. If you remember, we only had breakfast... we were starving.. Joshua asked the cab driver if we have time for food, he said "no"... but we can't help it but stop at entrance to waterfall to get food!

This sausage coated with fried potato costed us 3000won each, about RM8.60. -_- Couldn't be bothered at all. While munching, we took big steps to march towards the waterfall. It's quite far in.. like walking in a park trying to search for the source of water splashing sound... and finally we saw it.

It's crowded. But thank God it's Korean crowd so it's still part of the Korean experience, hehehe.

There're just too many people lining up to snap pictures, or have a good look of the waterfall.... we lined up too and finally could get someone to help us take some good photos. :)

Oh, the weather is not cold at all, it is just nice cooling, I only needed a cardigan. :D My new cardigan, haha.. yes bought just for this trip. :P

After we decided we took enough photos, we ran out to meet the cab driver, went to the other waterfall called the Jeong Bang Fall, this place is more beautiful!

Before we reach the waterfall we already could see it's majestic sight.. this is much bigger and more grand than the previous one!

 Attempted to take cool candid shots but not very successful...... :P

 Half way, we saw people selling fresh sea food.

 These ajumas must've just caught these seafood and on the spot selling already.

 We asked for permission to take photo of the locals enjoying the raw seafood with some chili sauce... yeee.... how can they find these deliciou.. blek..

Anyway, here we are in front of the jeong bang fall..

 the fall was so strong it was splashing water at us even at this distance! I was wearing my new flats too. My brown flats burst just 2 days before the trip so I had to buy a new one. Tried to get a comfortable pair to avoid shoe bite, this is quite good but walking downwards on rocks, still caused some pain..

 The playful korean boys went nearer to the waterfall and got themselves very wet. Hahaha.. we really love this place.. :) :) Strong wind, strong water fall, nice rocks, perfect weather..

 This place is quite crowded too. I stood here waiting to take a good photo of Joshua, but this boy was always in the way! We waited and waited... and waited..

 Finally he left. Hahaha... If I moved my hand a bit, we would've captured another human being in this photo. It is thattttt crowded. :D

After visiting 2 waterfalls, we decided to drop the 3rd one. So we used the dictionary to ask the cab driver, to bring us to chul nong jang i.e. orange farm. He said ok and no entrance fees required. He suddenly stopped at roadside, told us "this is my nong jang".

 Took us a while to understand that this farm belongs to him! Haha.... it's not what we expected, it's small and no basket for us to pick the oranges.. but he took us take some photos in which Joshua didn't look good in... and encouraged us to take the oranges.

 He plucked some for us so that we understand we can take and eat. He said "mogo mogo". Haha... then we had to rushed back to the cab because he stopped at roadside and the sun is setting!

Last stop, the jusang jeolli cliff. This is quite far.. but worth the travelling... this place is breath taking.

 The attraction here is the shape of the rocks. Notice them in blocks? It's 100% natural. Apparently it's been like this since hundreds of years ago, caused by the extremely cold weather.

We saw the sun set here.. took photos after photos. We're glad this place was not as crowded as the previous 2 waterfalls. Just some quiet locals and us.

 We found a bench and eat the oranges from the farm while basking in the evening sun. Seedless! :)

Then we saw the bunch of korean boys coming in, the same ones from the previous water falls. It's like a class trip so there're about 30 to 40 of them. Joshua doesn't like them because they are noisy.. but I told him it's still better than having a Malaysian or Chinese tour group with us, right? :P

We left at 6pm plus, the sun has set and it's starting to get dark. We asked the driver to stop us at the world cup stadium for some pictures, because Joshua is a football fan. :D

Back to hotel, after we changed, we went out searching for food. We didn't have proper lunch so we're ready to spend on dinner. We read online that there's a night market behind our hotel... but we could not locate it at all. We guess the market's rest day should be Tuesday.. haha.. anyway there's a food street, with the map of the restaurants. We saw a few restaurant selling pork BBQ and so we went straight to it.

First restaurant we stopped by, there're nobody eating there. Only the shop owner. Knows zero english as well. BBQ is 12000 won per pax which is about RM35. We find it too expensive and walked away. Further down there were other shops, we realised the price is 12000 and above... then we saw this restaurant, there's 1 table eating BBQ, shop owner is mother & son. Looks more convincing so we sat down and ordered porkkkkk.

It's yummy.. there're a lot of pork served and the very handsome waiter boy is quite funny when he described to us how to cook and how to eat the BBQ pork. They served chili as side dish, we asked how to eat, he just demonstrate putting into his mouth and fanning his mouth because it can be very spicy. I appreciate international "sign language". :D

We enjoyed this meal a lot. :)

 Taken outside the restaurant. :)

After dinner we just walked around the town, admired some street art.

Ate an ice cream..

 Saw a public phone booth.... We hardly see any of these in Malaysia anymore! :)

 I miss making calls at public phone booth, in school asking parents to pick us up, or outside my parents' office trying to chat with friends under the hot sun... memories. :)

That's our Day 1 in Korea. :)  Kamsahamnida!