Jeju Island! I’ve been there once with my family before but i can’t really recall much besides a lot of oranges. So the BF came over and for a few days we decided to head over to Jeju island! I’m not going to share my itinerary in full detail honestly because it rained on the first day till about 4pm, but I’ll share what I remember and recommend what i think is good.
Car Rental
First of all, I’ll recommend renting a car. We rented a small car (Morning) from KT Rental and we realized how necessary it was. Buses are few and you would have to take taxi to a lot of places. Having is important if you can drive! The car itself cost about 85,000 won plus insurance for 2 days, and petrol cost us about 30,000 won. So altogether almost 120,000 won which is 60,000 won for each of us for 2 days. Rate of 30k/day is not cheap, but mostly that’s because the car was split between two of us. If you go in a group of 5 for example, you’d only be paying 12,000won per person per day which is very cheap!
Oh yes you need an international license so remember to apply for one 🙂
There is a shuttle bus from Jeju Airport to KT Rental at gate 5, when you walk out you would see a KT car rental booth nearby around gate 3 if my memory doesn’t fail me, you can ask them and they’ll direct you to where the shuttle is. They don’t ask for much, they just asked me what car I rented and drove off to the rental place haha.
Accommodation i will talk along the way as it’s related to my itinerary haha. I will post both intial and actual itinerary because if it didn’t rain we would have followed that plan 😦
Day 1 Planned Itinerary (City Area aka North -> East): Airport -> KT Rental -> Love Land -> Manjanggul Cave -> Gimnyeong Maze Park -> Udo Island -> Seopjikoji -> Hotel
Day 2 Planned Itinerary (East -> South -> City Area aka North): Seongsan Ilchulbong (Sunrise) -> Jeongbang Falls -> Cheonjiyeon Falls -> Oedolgae Falls -> Jungmon Resort (Teddy Bear Museum inside the resort) -> Hallasan National Park (Hiking) -> Hotel
Day 1 Actual Itinerary ( -> East Area): Airport -> Mystery Road -> Hotel -> Seongsan Sansu (Seafood) -> Seongsan Ilchulbong -> Hotel
Day 2 Actual Itinerary (East -> South -> City Area aka North): Seongsan Ilchulbong (Sunrise) -> Udo Island -> Jeongbang Falls -> Hallasan National Park (Hiking) -> Hotel
So as you can see, we had to slash a lot of things on our itinerary because it rained until 4pm on the first day. In fact the fog/drizzle only faded out away about 6pm leaving us just enough time to just climb Seongsan Ilchubong.
Anyways, I’ll start on our modified and slashed itinerary!
Mystery Road
This is well on the way to the east area so you shouldn’t have to purposely detour to get there. It’s on the highway. We stumbled upon it by accident and was curious as to whether it’s really true, but it really is! The roads look like they are upward sloping but it’s an illusion. We really did look like we were going up the slope!
Seongsan Sansu
This is a rather famous restaurant recommended to us by the hotel staff. Not sure how the BF knew about it, I think online? It was our anniversary so we decided to splurge a bit. The restaurant was really pricey haha. We went straight to the hotel to rest a bit and then straight to this place because we couldn’t climb up seongsan ilchulbong due to the heavy fog. It was looking like this:
Nope not going up there. It was freezing and raining and too foggy :c
Snapped a picture of it the day after because i forgot to do so previously!
We had a bit of a struggle ordering from the dude because it was seafood and i have trouble using serving terms like weight size etc and also i didn’t know what each seafood was called. It took a while but we figured that we had to order one kg of filefish sashimi (50,000won) because they need it to be able to serve us soup, and we also ordered two pieces of raw abalone (about 15,000 won maybe).
Food without the soup
The very expensive sashimi and abalone!
The very expensive filefish soup which was super duper delicious!!!!!
Pricey anniversary meal but we figured we would have spent more in Singapore~
After the nice meal we looked out the window and saw that the fog was clearing at Seongsan Ilchulbong! So we quickly headed there before the sun sets.
On the way up!
Halfway up!
View from the top 🙂
The crater
The crater was disappointing because from the top it looked like a normal field of grass lol, but we were saying that perhaps it would look much more magnificent in other seasons. I can kinda imagine how it’d be filled with snow or flowers~
Just in time to catch the sun setting 🙂
Love this picture ❤ the path down.
D1 Accommodation – Suhari
We stayed at a rather pricey hotel for the first day and if you ask me, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re willing to pay $40 per person per night. There are many cheaper alternatives that were nearer to the sea, but the BF wanted a smaller and nicer place.
If you’re willing to pay a little more for somewhere more comfy, this is definitely a yes. It was a beautiful building at first sight and the interior was beautiful too 🙂
Foggy picture :<
They have their own Suhari Cafe, perfect for grabbing a cup of hot latte on a cold day, or in the morning 🙂
the cafe
perfect for chilling, except we were always in a huge rush to get to places
A kind lady and her daughter run this place and I had a nice chat with them too. Lady was super happy to see that I spoke some Korean and was very kind with all her praises, like how I speak like a Korean and look like a Korean because I’m pretty (subjective lmao), and I think because my reaction was similar to a Korean she was even more happy. FYI Koreans usually act very shy and polite with praises and I acted that way not on purpose but more like my limited proficiency didn’t really allow me to say a lot, so i just bowed and thanked her. Haha.
She also helped us call Seongsan Sansu earlier when we checked in and luckily she did because they only opened in the evening.
Even the room key was so adorable ❤
That concluded Day 1. Nothing much accomplished but it can’t be helped! We just went to rest early because we wanted to catch the sunrise tomorrow and also go to many places.
Sunrise at Seongsan Ilchulbong
Perhaps a bit misleading because we didn’t actually go to the sunrise peak haha. Reason being we woke up a little late and the sun seemed to have risen earlier than expected. When we left the hotel it was already kinda bright so we rushed down to the area. We also realized that we have to climb Ilchulbong again and decided there’s no point. So we were driving back and somehow the BF went to a random route and we ended up on this nice spot near the sea, beside Ilchulbong. We could see the sunrise in perfect view from here, and there were also a lot of hostels/hotels in that area where people were walking out to the balcony to take a look. It turned out for the better because it was empty with only a few cars who stopped by~
Favorite picture!! Loving the hipster feel of this picture and the unintentional ‘romantic’ phrase on the cap xD
U Island (because ‘do’ means island so Udo Island is U Island Island #irrelevant)
We spared only a few minutes grabbing breakfast before we were off to Udo Island.
shagged faces~
The plan was to take the first ferry at 7am to the island, but when we reached the harbor it was strange because it seemed like the ticket counter was closed even near 7am and there were a lot of ahjummas haha.
We lingered around and the ticket counter opened a little after and we paid for a round trip. There was tax so the cost will be higher than what the visitkorea website said.
People waiting around for the counter to open feat. very unglam me
says here 7am departure from Udo 
Turned out we weren’t really supposed to trust the timetable timing lol in the end i think we departed at about 730-740am. And the ferry isn’t obvious, you gotta ask around and show people your ticket and they’ll redirect you. We were wondering why so many ahjummas here but we found out later on they’re workers, I’m assuming fishermen or a field related to the port, and that the boat we took were mostly for them and not tourists. We found this out because the bus tour hadn’t started when we reached Udo. So don’t go too early to Udo if you’re planning to do so!
You could drive into the boat as well, but i think you need a different ticket (?) there wasn’t much info on this so i have no idea :< but i know it’s possible.
PDA alert inside the resting area amongst ahjummas
boyfriend-style sweater because it was FREEZING i look normal here but trust me a part of me died from the cold
Reaching Udo~~
Lovely view from Udo Island port!
Loving this picture and unintentional perfect color combination! ft. awkward pose
#smlj #nostrils #tongue #dyinginthecold
As mentioned, it was too early for us to be there so we found ourselves not sure what to do. We tried to rent the scooters so we can begin our exploration immediately but we made the mistake of leaving the international driving license behind :X
This was where the tour bus would depart from but service starts only around 820am. The red buses labelled 개인 are the buses for tourists like us. They have group buses too but we ca’t get on those.
There are various ways to get around Udo as I’ve mentioned before, you could rent scooters etc but only with an international license. You can also rent bikes if you don’t have a license, but it would take too long to bike around Udo and we were pressed for time. Would recommend it if you put aside a lot of time for Udo~ They will give you a map when you buy tickets to Udo.
But if you’re pressed for time, a bus tour is really good because you pay only 4000won (if i remember correclty) and the bus will stop by four major stops where the attractions are. You can choose to pass and stay on the bus, or you can go down to look around. The frequency of the buses are pretty regular, I’m not sure I can recall correctly but definitely not more than 20 min, in fact probably less than that. So don’t worry and go down to look around, you can catch the next bus easily 🙂
Udo Island – 지두청사 (Jidocheongsa)
Our first stop was 지두청사 (Jidocheongsa) which was a little like Ilchulbong. We went down and grabbed some food first because what’s a trip without food
Me in my most natural setting with a bowl of ramyun
Ponies were the first thing we saw!!
OTW up!
View from the top!
i thought it was a good panorama but turns out it was gross now that i look at it close up LOL.
Random bed of flowers to compensate for us not being able to see the elusive ‘yellow flowers’ you see when you google Jeju
Udo Island – 동안경굴 (Dongangyeongul)
The next stop we went to was 동안경굴 (Dongangyeongul). This was a cave that you could ride a ferry to, but we skipped it as we felt it wasn’t necessary. We just went down to take a look~
Beautiful panorama shot by the BF!
Posting this pic because of the BF forcing his eyes open against the sunlight when he had sunglasses
Stacked stones as a mark to say “I was here”. We left our pile there too.
The water was so clear!
From inside the cave~
selfie #1 inside the cave aka black background
selfie #2 in the cave
After we were done we went back up to grab snacks and try this hallabong ice cream!! Seems to be a famous store with lots of celebrites’ autographs? Haha.
Hallabong ice cream not visible BUT IT WAS DELICIOUS it tasted a little like Froyo~ expensive though, 4000 won.
Udo Island – 서빈백사 (Seobinbaeksa)
The next stop was 서빈백사 (Seobinbaeksa) which was a beach! Famous for its clear waters and white sand.
Didn’t take fabulous pictures like the ones you see when you google it HAHA. But it was a beautiful beach 🙂
We left pretty quickly because beaches are beaches and if we are not gonna stay and bask in the sun, it’s kinda the same as all the other beaches we’ve been to?? Hahahaha flawed way of thinking but oh wells, we’ve been to a lot of pretty beaches so we decided to abandon this pretty quickly.
We hopped on the bus and it brought us back to the harbor. Well actually it brought us to a different harbor. I don’t want to say for sure that the harbor to take the shuttle bus from, and the harbor where the shuttle bus will drop you off, are different harbors… because we took a very early ferry it’s possible it dropped us at a different harbor. I’m speculating that if you go at regular timings, it wouldn’t be a different harbor or anything, so don’t worry~
Beautiful udo~
goodbye 😦
Jeonbang Falls
As soon as we were done, we returned to the seafood area near Ilchulbong and grabbed a nice abalone porridge lunch. The shops there sell almost the same kinds of food so it’s safe to walk in to any one of them!
We then dropped by one of the waterfalls, more specifically Jeonbang Falls!
Um sorry to say it wasn’t anything impressive. The falls itself was tiny and we had to pay to go in too. It was just nice to get close and feel the mist spray that’s all…
Hallasan
We left really quick and it was time to go to the central area to hike up Hallasan, before going up north to the city area. However we failed to consider the time and didn’t realize that Hallasan hiking trails were already closed by the time we reached, around 3pm. They wanted to give people sufficient time to trek down. But the guard told us that we can go further up the road to a trail that’s open until pretty late, it’s not really a hiking trail and more of a sightseeing trail.
We headed there and kinda understood what he meant. It was only an hour walk up and down and the site said that it’s more for tourists to stroll LOL.
the easiest and shortest trail LOL
We were secretly thankful the trails closed actually, because i don’t think either of us were fit enough to walk the 5 hours trail LOL.
At the top!
the trail
It was pretty worth it because it was just a short hike up~ the other trails had different peaks so i’m not too sure about the view from other trails.
After Hallasan we finally returned to the city area, to check into our hostel called Yellow Guesthouse. It wasn’t brilliant and i didn’t like the toilet, but it was affordable. while we were out looking for food to eat, we accidentally stumbled upon Black Pork Street!! I saw it online but didn’t really think of googling and finding out where it really was because our itinerary was packed as it is, but just our luck that our hostel was right around the corner 🙂
happy faces at the thought of food
We were contemplating between eating cheap and trying the black pork. Earlier on we had been calculating our expenses, well more like me calculating both our expenses, and I had been panicking and wanting to be budget for the rest of his stay in Korea. But we decided aiya heck black pork street then eat black pork lor. It wasn’t super expensive, 16,000 won per person which is less than $20, so we just decided to give it a go at the most crowded restaurant.
It was the first restaurant on the left upon entering the street!
we had free dwenjang jjigae and steamed egg too!
Sigh…
It tasted really good! Lots of people ask me if it tastes the same as normal pork, i’d have to say yes there wasn’t anything particularly outstanding, it’s basically like good quality pork to me. Not sure about the difference between black and normal pork…
We wrapped up the night after that and rested for our flight the next day!
Thank you Jeju!!
darmawanders 