I have just finished an AMAZING vacation, right here in South Korea. I planned on spending 4 nights in Seoul with my friends Erin and Howard, and then 2 nights in Jeju Island with Howard. There were a few things we had planned to do, but mostly knew we would find things to get into once we arrived. I also planned on taking a ferry from In'chon (next to Seoul) to Jeju, and then a ferry to Busan (hour bus ride from Ulsan).
Well a few things changed, but the trip as a whole went even better than expected! Howard, Erin and I took a bus up to Seoul on Saturday, January 21st like we had planned, which took about 5 hours. We had reserved 4 nights in the hostel I had stayed at before called BibimHouse, which has the best hostel owner ever, Conda! Panda is the other worker, and he is awesome too! We arrived there and met people from all over the world like last time, and of course everyone was really nice. We ended up buddying around with a girl named Christina from San Fransisco for a few days. She has more energy than anyone I've ever met, and we had a blast on the dancefloor! She does some serious Hip Hop dancing, while I love to breakdance, so it was entertaining to say the least!
There were 2 awesome people from Hong Kong who we spent a lot of time with, Kelvin and Maggie who are co-workers for Procter & Gamble. Kelvin was really nice and spoke pretty good English, and Maggie spoke.. like 6 languages! She is an absolute insperation to me, as she travels once a month, and tries to speak the language where ever she goes. Some times they are business trips, for example her next trip will be to Beijing for work and others are just to travel, like this trip. She actually moved to Canada (Vancouver) when she was 8, and now lives back in Hong Kong. Because of her I am really picking up my Korean (Hongul-mai), and in just the last few days my ability to read it has improved 10-fold! She also inspired me make the decision to go down to Jeju Island alone.. which I will get to soon!
Also in our hostel were 2 awesome Latinos, who we nicknamed after their countries of origin. Louis, who became Spanish (Spain) and Natalie, who became Bolivia. I didn't spend as much time with them, but they were really nice, and they helped me practice some of my Espanol when we were hanging out in the hostel. They also spoke Chinese quite well.
Mama was a really nice girl from France, who is studying in China. She went out with us the first night to go dancing, and then chatted with us here and there at the hostel. She also speaks some Chinese (are you starting to see a trend here?)
Another girl in our Hostel from Hong Kong was Rain, who since I forgot her name once, I like to call Snow, or Hail. She was nice, but didn't ever go out with us.
We also met a really cool Australian mate named Anthony, who had been living/studying/working/traveling in China for the past few years. He spoke Chinese pretty well with our new friends from Hong Kong, and with our new Latino friends, and with Mama!! I did my best to teach him some Korean, which I am now very motivated to learn. He did pretty good for only being here for about a week! He ended up being my sidekick down in Jeju.
BTW you will notice these bunny ears in many of the pictures.. and there is a story here. Anthony told me (in a 'dare' tone) if I buy you the "girliest" hat or earmuffs I can find, would you wear it? I said, you know I will. He said, I'll only pay for it if you send me a picture of you teaching your students while wearing it. I said... eh, why not. So this was his choice, and that picture will be surfacing soon too..
So we had made all of these new friends, And did lots of interesting stuff in Seoul. We went to the Korean War Museum which was amazing! We also went to the National Museum of History, which was fantastic. On Monday, January 23rd we went to Gyeongbok Palace to watch a traditional drum and dance show to celebrate the Chinese New Year. We went to the DMZ (De-Militarized Zone) which was probably the coolest part of the trip. We actually went down into the 1 of the 4 tunnels that have been found going into (or should I say coming from) North Korea! We could also look into North Korea through binoculars at an observation post. It was COOL!
Slideshow of National Museum of History, the Korean War Museum and the DMZ:
These were all awesome things to do, and I will probably have to go back since I didn't make it to Seoul Tower, or walk the "Great Wall of Korea" like I had planned. We also met a number of random interesting characters, including an American Soldier named Steve from Texas who helped us find Taco Bell. Some of the people we were with, including Anthony, had never had it before. We told them all they HAD to try it, since it is the best, of the worst, food. They agreed.
Maggie had met 3 French fellows on her flight, so we met up with them and had a great time at an old indigenous village, followed by a great Korean BBQ. They were really cool guys, and everyone spoke English. That is the amazing thing to me.
So we were nearing the end of our trip in Seoul, and Howard decided not to go to Jeju due to some severe back pain. He needed to go back and see a doctor/chiropractor, and Erin had already planned on going back to Ulsan at this point. I decided, in part because Maggie had inspired me (on language acquisition AND traveling) that I would continue the trip solo. I had planned to take the ferry down to Jeju, however it was more expensive than I thought it would be, so Panda suggested I just fly down. Since I was only going to be there 2 nights, and it wasn't much more money than the ferry, I decided to do that. On Wednesday I flew down to Jeju with the name of a hostel, and a backpack :)
When I arrived on Wednesday around 3 pm, I was greeted by an enormous Australian fellow who was protesting some kind of scandal that had taken him. He was there to work an English camp, and after a month they didn't pay him. He was talking for about 20 minutes about tons of different things that had happened to him over the years, and how everything is corrupt, and yada yada yada. I think that some of what he was saying was true, and some of it was, well, embellished. I told him hey man, I support ya, but I gotta get going, and on to the bus stop I went.
I had directions to the hostel, which were to take the 500 bus to City Hall (si chong), but I took the bus the wrong direction. Like I haven't done THAT before. So in this case it was actually pretty nice, since I didn't have any real plans (only thing I really wanted to do was hike Mount Halla [Halla San] at some point), and I got to get a tour of Jeju City for 1,000 won (<$1). I got to the end, told the driver "Si Chong?" He told me to change busses, and we went back to the airport, and then on to the other side of the city. I found my hostel just fine and got some dinner.
The hostel owner's name was Cheung Hee, and he was very helpful. He took me to a bar that had some local foreign teachers, and introduced me to them. I hung out and chatted with them for a few hours then went home. The next morning I got a text from my Australian friend Anthony, and it turned out he wanted to come down and visit Jeju while he was here! So now I had a traveling buddy again, and we had some awesome times.
The day he was flying down, which was Thursday, I went to an attraction called Hallim Park. Cheung Hee suggested it, and he gave me a free ride since he was heading that way to his Hogwan (private English school) anyways. I spent a few hours there, and it was amazing! I will let the slideshow speak for itself, but it was very enjoyable.
When Anthony and I met up, we had looked through the brocures and attractions, so we discussed what things we wanted to do. I was only staying until Saturday, and he was staying until Monday. The main thing we both wanted to do was hike Halla San, the tallest mountain in South Korea (1,800 meters). We decided to get up early and hit it on Friday, which was really the only day that fit the schedule. We arrived, and were easily the least prepared hikers on the mountain. Every Korean we saw had about 1 million won worth of hiking gear including poles and spiked hiking boots. I showed up to this snow covered mountain with 4 year old hiking boots that Anthony had loaned me, jeans and a leather jacket. This is when we knew it was going to be a fun/interesting hike.
We actually made it to the top in pretty good time! It was difficult, but we were passing almost everyone! You'll see Anthony in nothing but a tee-shirt in some pictures, because we were getting too worked up to keep the layers on! We had started from the base at 9:30 am, and we reached the summit at about 1:30 pm. Now for the fun part... going down. Not only was this difficult because it was covered in snow, we didn't have proper boots or poles, but we also chose to go up a moderate level trail, and down an expert level trail. It was hilarious. We both fell at least 15 times, and just slid on our butts for 100 meter stretches at a time! A little less glorious than the underdog story that we realized on the way up, but still made it down in good time! When we had about 2.3 kilometers left we decided to just run the rest of the way. We were really moving at this point, and some how didn't fall. I think we wanted to finish strong, and for the end to get there faster, haha. Either way, we finished at 4:30, making it 7 hours round trip.
Anthony and I at the summit with the Bibim Survival Snack that Conda gave us!
That night I found out that the ferry that runs from Jeju to Busan on Saturdays doesn't run anymore due to a fire that had occurred. It was now time to decide, should I fly back, or just extend my vacation? That was a pretty easy decision, there was so much to do on Jeju!
To make a longer story shorter, we saw more caves, went through a shrub maze, visited another island where we rode ATVs for an hour and hiked 1 of 19 "Olle" trails that go along the perimeter of the island. We also ate at a Vietnamese restaurant, an all you can eat Korean BBQ twice, met some nice Koreans, and some nice foreign teachers. It was an amazing portion of my trip, that I almost skipped out on after Seoul. I have to thank Maggie 1 more time for giving me that fearless travel mentality!
I feel that Anthony and several of the other great people I met on this trip will stay in touch, and I sure hope I cross paths with them again!
I did take the overnight ferry Monday evening to Busan, and actually visited the Busan Museum of Art before heading home. After about 10 days of traveling around South Korea, I sure was happy to see my apartment.. but can't wait for the next trip!
