We arrived in the Jeju ferry terminal area and, with the help of a
Korean soldier, got Audre’s big Samsonite off of the ferry. The ramp had uneven
slats and steep stairs. Between the rocky ferry ride and the awful
ingress/egress to the ferry, we were not happy with the ferry ride (KRW 59,800/US$60 for the two of us on the Express Ferry from Wando).
We had not pre-booked our accommodation in Jeju-si (Jeju City) but we
had identified a hotel on booking.com that we thought that we would like and
had telephoned to make sure that they had availability. So off we went in a
taxi to see what we would find.
We were very pleasantly surprised by the Amber Hotel (12, Sammu-ro, Jeju,
Jeju Island, 690-726, South Korea, tel. 02-3480-0181). We ended up staying 8
nights. We paid KRW 107,525 per night (including breakfast) for 4 nights; our
last 4 days averaged out to KRW 120,544 per night (a Chinese holiday period
when the hotel was full and more expensive).
The building was nice and looked modern and newly renovated.
The halls were carpeted, as was our room. We like that. The hotel allows
smoking (there was an ashtray in our room) but we didn’t smell anything,
fortunately.
Our room (616) was functional and looked at if it had been
recently renovated. We saw another room on the back side of the hotel and it
was facing a wall. Our view was of the street, Sammu-ro, but the windows were
good and so was the air conditioning. We didn’t hear any noise and had an open
and private view. The room was large enough to be comfortable. It had a small
entry hall with a marble-style tile floor; the rest of the bedroom was
carpeted. There was a small closet with a drawer for storage. There was a round
table and two comfortable chairs. Audre used the round table as her desk. There
was a long, narrow table that we put the Cremesso Switzerland (single-cup)
espresso machine on (yes, an espresso machine) and our fruit and so on. We were
given actual coffee mugs too. Then there was a desk with some storage cubbies,
then the window that had a good window covering. The bathroom was small but the
shower had a partition which was okay (the floor still got wet) and a modern
gigantic showerhead. There wasn’t much space in the bathroom to put our stuff
so we brought the bench from the room and put a towel over it for our stuff.
The toilet had a heated seat, the usual sprays and drying. The drain in the
sink was dirty and so the water backed up in the sink but we asked for it to be
cleaned and it was. The internet was good in our room.
The room was comfortable and we were happy. We asked for and
got a water boiler. There was a water dispenser down the hall for all of our
drinking water needs. On the website we had seen a room with a small sofa. In
reality our room was more comfortable than the one with a sofa so we stayed where we were.
The breakfast was included and complete, even fried eggs and
porridge (juk) in a pleasant room. The chef was eager to please and even made
us scrambled eggs. That was very nice. The other staff members were also nice.
We think that this hotel is very good value for the money
and we highly recommend it. The location was in the new hot spot of hotels and
dining in Jeju and was very good. Transportation was easy. Audre says this matter-of-factly.
The real reason why transportation was easy was because Dimitri is very good
with logistics and with maps. There was no mapping service in English but (with
some help from the staff at the 5-star Lotte City Hotel) Dimitri learned to use the local mapping service called naver.com. We
traveled all over Jeju on buses that Dimitri had figured out.
For our first lunch, we went around the corner to the walk street (Yeondong
car-free street (Baozen Street)) and found a place. We have learned
over the years to wait when a restaurant, even a hole-in-the-wall, has a line
because it must be good. We waited about 25 minutes for the famous noodles with
pork belly (KRW 7,000) at 17 Jewon-gil, (261-16), Jeju-si, tel. 064-742-7355.
People spoke English and gave us advice. The mom and pop running the restaurant
must have been doing this for many years—they had a very good system. The soup
and the noodles were very good. We were happy.
Our first mission in Jeju was to find a laundry that would
do all of our laundry (in Jeonju the laundry we found would not do our
underpants and socks). We had tried to find a "wash, dry, fold" place in
Seoul but didn't. In our apartment we had a washer (no dryer) and didn't want
our underwear to feel like paper from line-drying. We finally used the washer
in our apartment with some softener that our friend, Holly, gave us. The
underwear really wasn't soft even using the softener. Dimitri did a google
search on laundromats in Jeju and found some. We walked and walked looking for
one and then took a taxi (KRW 6,200). We found a laundry that would do our
laundry (even our socks and underpants) for KRW 10,000. We decided to keep
looking for a laundromat. We remembered that the Lotte City Hotel (near our
Jeju Amber Hotel) had coin operated washers and dryers for long term guests.
We waltzed in, saw the directory, went to the 6th floor, found the laundry
room and did our laundry in luxurious splendor (KRW 4,000 for the wash and KRW
4,000 for the dryer). Fortunately the instructions for the machine were also in
English--we had heard disastrous stories of people adding detergent to machines
that automatically dispense it. After we had done our laundry, we felt
absolutely triumphant. Small things make a huge difference. As we walked our
neighborhood we found another coin
operated laundry nearby that was open to the public.
We were frankly disappointed with Jeju Island. First of all,
we went for hiking and perhaps also some biking. We did only two hikes in 8
days. Those hikes were good but not great. But more about that later. Had we stayed
at an expensive beach side resort, we would have had a much different island
experience. We didn’t want to do that because we had just had a two-month beach
vacation on Kauai and because the weather was getting cooler and we would not
use the beach. So we had the city experience on Jeju Island.
On our first night in Jeju-si we had a delicious fish
at Yuri Nea Famous Fish Restaurant (427-1 Yeon-dong, Jeju, Jeju-do, South
Korea, tel. 064-748-0890) which they called braised cutlassfish (KRW 30,000).
It was in a stone pot with onions and vegetables and a slightly spicy sauce.
The fish was tasty and tender—cooked just right! There were many banchan that
were different from the ones we have been having —a spinach-like vegetable that
was very tasty, squash, lettuce leaves (in case you wanted to wrap your fish
up), a delicious soy bean paste, kim chi (of course), kelp that with cucumber
that had been marinated and was good and crisp/crunchy, tiny fishes that were
caramelized (sounds better than they were). The absolute best banchan was pieces
of raw crab in a spicy red sauce—really yummy! On the menu Dimitri saw a sea
urchin soup (KRW 9,000). It actually had cooked sea urchin floating on the top
of lots of cooked kelp. We don’t like cooked sea urchin actually so the soup
was not a hit. We had a “sansachom” fruit wine (KRW 7,000) which (in English)
was described as a blend of sonsa and sansuju fruits and said it was “rice wine
for future generations.” We spent KRW 46,000 and were very happy.
One of the first things we did is take a bus tour (in
English) of the eastern section of Jeju with Leha Bus Tour (KRW 79,000 x 2/US$158),
including lunch. It was a pretty bad tour because of the guide and
because the majority of the 7 stops were a yawn. Jin, our guide, spoke very
fast. His enunciation was poor and his delivery was as if he were reading a
script with no feeling or personality. In addition, he repeated himself too
much. He really didn’t have the personality to be a good tour guide.
We hoped that the first stop would be the Sangumburi Crater
but it was not, allegedly because the pampas grass was not yet in bloom. It
was. In any event the first stop, after touring Jeju City to pick people up,
was the Trick Art Museum for one hour. It was awful and a total waste of time.
We tried to walk around the area but the main road was the only option and that
was pretty bad. The second stop (also 1 hour) was the Seongeup Folk Village.
After a little bit of explanation and couple of pictures, this too was a yawn.
At about noon we had lunch at Nammun, South Gate Restaurant (Seongeupjeonguihyeon-ro
22 beon-gil, Seongeup, Jeju, South Korea tel. 064-787-2432). The price of the
lunch was included in the tour cost. There was a choice of Jeju Black Pork or
Bibimbap. Both were equally atrocious—the worst Korean food we had had. The bibimbap
was just vegetables and a fried egg (cooked hours before and hardened) with
rice on the side. The banchan were standard. The black pig was tough and the
sauce was marginally flavorful. We found
a seller of Jeju tangerines and had some, as well as his (too sweet) Popsicle
tasting faintly of tangerine.
After lunch we went to the Woman Diver Show and Sunrise Peak
(about 1 ½ hours). The diving show was a non-event and the women didn’t seem to
find any shellfish. We climbed the zillions of stairs to get to the crater of
Sunrise Peak (180 m above sea level).
| Climbing Sunrise Peak with our 1,000 closest friends |
Sunrise Peak was voted one of the new 7
natural wonders (Amazon, Iguazu Falls, Halong Bay, Komodo Island, Table
Mountain, and an underground river in the Philippines). We were glad to get
some exercise and the views were nice. We would have gone there in any event so
having it on the tour was good. On the way to the last stop, the bus took the
Jongdairi Shore Road which was a lovely coast road. At Manjang Cave (part of
UNESCO World Heritage) we walked the slippery, uneven and poorly lit path 1.5
km to the 7 meter column. It was again good to do some walking and the cave was
interesting but how the cave was made was still a mystery after reading all of
the panels (Wikipedia said lava flows of differing temperatures). We had left
at 8:30 a.m. and returned at around 6 p.m. It was a very long day without much
interest.
Another evening in Jeju City we went to Raj Mahal, Youn-dong 272-13,
Jeju-si, Jeju-do, South Korea, tel. 064749-4924. The food was good. We had
one Aloo Jia appetizer of potatoes cooked in butter and cumin that were good
(KRW 4,000), one lassi (KRW 4,000), two glasses of wine (KRW 12,000), a lamb
vindaloo (KRW 12,000), a rice (KRW 2,000)
and a plain naan (KRW 2,000). We sat at a table in a booth alcove and
looked down on the street. We spent KRW 30,000/US $30 and were happy.
We were enjoying the Lotte City Hotel and its 5-star
services (83, Doryeong-ro, Jeju, Jeju-do 690-818, South Korea, 064-730-1000).
The concierge gave us restaurant recommendations and other kinds of help (like teaching Dimitri how to use the naver.com mapping service). We
decided to go to their Sunday brunch. The brunch was fantastic. There were three soups (all very
good), was a sushi and sashimi station, cheese section, fruit section, salad section,
cold noodle section, hot pasta made to order, a Chinese section, a dim sum
section, a meet and potato section, waffles with maple syrup and whipped
butter, a Danish pastry section, a bread section, a dessert section, a coffee
station, a carrot juice pitcher and more. We had a ball trying everything. The
staff went out of their way to make sure we had everything we wanted. We ate
enough for several meals and spent a reasonable KRW 80,000/US$80 for the two of us.
The Olle Trail around Jeju Island is famous and from our experience, it
was very good. The section we walked was #7 because it is the most famous and
supposed to be the most beautiful. There were beautiful views and good wooden
walkways in the well-traveled sections. Some sections, where buses could bring
people, were very crowded. When we were 3 miles away from the trailhead there
were few people, particularly when we got to the dirt path portion. We had
lovely views of Beomseom Island and the Oedolgae Rock. We saw the Saeyeongyo
Bridge which is a pedestrian overpass. The bridge, inspired by ‘Tewu’ (Jeju's
traditional log boat), was opened in September 2009. There were a few
concessions selling tangerines along the path and one enterprising old woman
cooking shellfish over a barbecue and serving it to a few tables that she had
set up in a clearing. There was one terrible section that took us up to the
main road and west on the main road past the girls’ high school. But we got
back to the sea and continued along the sea on the dirt path. We arrived (at
lunch time) at the halfway point on Section 7, about 4 miles. There was a pier
and boats in Beophwan Port with scuba divers on them. Of all things we found an Italian Restaurant on Maksukpro-ro Road (in Beophwan Port, tel. 064-739-7757) where we had a Brazier Seafood Carbonara (KRW 20,000)! It was served
in a stone pot and was made with 2 clams, 2 mussels, tiny shrimp and had a
cream sauce (not with a bacon and egg-rich sauce). It was a measly portion but
it was good. We also had a fruit salad (KRW 15,000) that was large and filled
with delicious grapes, as well as kiwi, banana and lots of tomatoes (both good
cherry tomatoes and not so good regular tomatoes). The restaurant was a “breath
of fresh air” for us because we had been yearning for some food other than
Korean. It was expensive but in the right place at the right time. We spent KRW
35,000/US $35 for lunch. After lunch we climbed up the hill and found our
#780 bus back to Jeju-si near the World Cup Stadium (914 Beophwan-dong,
Seogwipo-si, Jeju-do).
We went to the Dongmun Traditional Market and to the Jeju
fish market. We did some walking which was good but our lunch near the fish
market was not memorable. That night we had an excellent meal in a nice place:
Doraji (2112 Orasam-dong, Jeju-si, Jeju-do, South Korea tel. 064-722-3142, www.jejudoraji.com). We
had one sliced coral fish ice soup (KRW 10,000) and one seafood hot pot (KRW
15,000). The sliced coral fish ice soup was filled with coral fish and ice
cubes. The soup base had a slightly sweet taste and lots of sesame seeds. The
coral fish was a bit chewy and had bones which were annoying. The seafood hot
pot was better. It had 4 clams, crab, 2 crayfish, 2 abalone, enoki mushrooms
and a green vegetable. The broth was delicious and the seafood very good. The
abalone was surprisingly tender and tasty. The banchan were great: marinated
kelp, kim chi, delicious raw crab marinated in a spicy soy sauce, the
ubiquitous tough ginseng root in a red spicy sauce, marinated soy beans, and
small marinated fish that tasted like sardines. They also had self
serve hot tea! We were very happy and spent KRW 25,000/US$25.
| At the Dongmun Traditional Market, we snapped the crab marinated in spicy sauce, a favorite of Audre's |
Another day Dimitri figured out how we could take the Route 5.16 bus of the #780 from the
main bus terminal to a trailhead on Mt. Hallasan. It took about 40 minutes and
cost KRW 1300. We hiked the Seonpanak Trail, Mt. Hallasan 5.2 km (3.2 m) from
700 m to 900 m in elevation for 2 1/2 hours. The trail was “paved” with lava
rocks and so the hiking was difficult and slow. It was a nice forest but we’ve
had more enjoyable hikes.
Dimitri loves juk, the Korean rice porridge. For lunch one
day we went to Yeon Juk, next to Paris Baguette at the intersection of
Doryeong-ro and Samu-ro and across the small street from Lotte City Hotel, tel.
064-742-6288. For KRW 7,000/US $7 Dimitri had one mushroom and vegetable juk
porridge. The small space is cute and the owners are nice. The mushroom and
vegetable juk porridge was especially flavorful and delicious. The small dishes
of kimchi and pickled daikon were good too. We had a good lunch.
We had another very good meal at Neulbom (2343-3
Nohyeong-dong Jeju-si, Jeju-do, South Korea, Tel No : (064)744-9001,
http://www.jejuneulbom.co.kr/index.php (in Korean)). We had fun at this
restaurant too. It was recommended by the concierge at the Lotte City Hotel. We
had samgyopsal (grilled side cut of pork belly) with the sesame seed sauce
(180g x 2) for KRW 15,000 x 2. It was very delicious. On the grill with the
meat were thin slices of trumpet mushroom and a thick slice of onion. There
were 10 banchan that came with the meat. All were very good: the crab in a
spicy red sauce was Audre’s favorite. There was daikon sliced very thin to put
on lettuce with the pork belly and the soy bean paste sauce. There were slices
of onion, coleslaw, green onion salad, kimchi, pickled cabbage, garlic,
pickled spinach, an anchovy-based soup with tofu and clams. With our meal, we
had one black raspberry wine (Bok Bunja Joo), that cost KRW 12,000 and one beer
(KRW 4,000) and something else that cost KRW 1,000. Our meal cost KRW 47,000/US$47 and we recommend this restaurant.
With Dimitri’s logistics, we took a bus (#780) from the main
road near our hotel to Seogwipo. That’s the town on the south coast we
considered taking a bus tour to see. We’re
glad we didn’t. It was not much different from Jeju-si.
On next stop in Korea was Busan, Korea’s second-largest city
and its main port. We decided to fly from Jeju to Busan because the cost on Jeju Air was
about the same as a ferry and a bus. It was US$80 for each of us. We were delighted that the woman checking us in at the Jeju Air counter did not charge us over-weight for Audre's big Samsonite suitcase. It weighed 28 kg and the allowance was 15 kg! The other reason we wanted to fly was that it took less time. The ferry ride to Mokpo alone was more than
3 hours. Then there would have been a bus ride. The flight was 55 minutes.
Thanks to Dimitri’s logistics, we had no problems at either end. We took a taxi
from Amber Hotel to the airport and the Airport Limousine bus from the Busan
Airport to (within 1 block of) our hotel, Sunset Business Hotel (we got off at
the Seacloud Hotel stop). It cost KRW 14,000/US$14 for the two of us.
Coming into Busan was a glorious site. Like Naples, it is a
city of mountains. The top half to one-third are pristine; the large apartment
blocks climb up the sides only so far and then it is gorgeous green everywhere.
It was a long ride to Haeundae Beach (over an hour) to our hotel on the bus but
the highways were good and there was not much traffic. Haeundae was another
matter altogether. It was wall-to-wall people. We arrived at the beginning of
the Busan Film Festival—a very big deal.
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