Day 4: Seongsan Ilchubong (Sunrise Peak)

It's not easy to get around in Jeju island. Almost all the scenic places worth going to were spread out along the coastal areas, & the only way to get there was by car, which generally mean taxi. Meter starts at 2000 krw (RM6) and every jump is 200 krw (RM0.6).

Car rental is the next best as Jeju roads are comfortable to drive on and all vehicles have GPRS. Rental generally costs about RM300 per day and above but you'd need an international driver's license. We didn't have that so the only option for us was to hire a taxi driver for about the same rate. And boy, were we glad we did.

We were very, very, & very lucky to have met Mr Richard Kim, a taxi driver who took us from Sashimi St to another stretch to coastal road on Day 3. The best thing was that Mr Kim could speak Mandarin, after having worked (& studied, I think) in Taiwan for a many number of years. After his retirement, Mr Kim decided to drive taxis for a living, to start a new life, as it enabled him to meet different people from all over the world. Interestingly, he keeps a journal of everyone that steps into his taxi & plans to write a book about his experiences one day. We were simply awed by his passion, sincerity, commitment & drive (pun intended).

Ladies & Gentlemen, we have the honour of introducing our taxi driver friend to you -
Mr. Richard Kim Sang Ryul (email: skimsr@hanmail.net, mobile: 011-710-0065) You are welcome to contact him when you're planning a trip down to Jeju. He comes highly recommended from Greg & Nee.

What Mr Kim does every morning before he picks up passengers for a day tour is to check his tires, & apparently that morning, there was a bit of a puncture, but he got that fixed before picking us up at our hotel at 930 am. For 120,000 krw (RM360) for 10 hours or so, we get our wheels, our guide and our photographer.

We had a rough plan about where we wanted to go but it depended on time as well as logistics. There were only 3 requirements from us:
1) Beautiful scenic touristy places which we should not miss
2) Beautiful flowers which we kept seeing in the travel guides but didn't know where they were
3) Top secret food that only the locals know

This was obviously not food.

We kept seeing this in the travel guides & it looked like a place where all the other tourists would be at. This was Seongsan Ilchubong, a 182 metre high volcano crater at the end of the Seongsan peninsula, 48 km east of Jeju City.

This photo was taken by our friendly Mr Kim. We made a short stop for photographs on the way towards the Sunrise Peak.

The name Ilchulbong comes from its famous view of the sunrise but there was no way Greg & Nee would wake up early to watch the sun rise.

Jeju once had a lot of these short brown Mongolian horses which were bred to pay tribute to the Won Dynasty in China between 1073-1258. During those days, there were about 20,000. That morning, there were only two in front of us.

This was the main entrance to the Sunrise Peak. When we got there, we finally realised that this was where all the people in Jeju were .

Admission was about 2,200 won (Rm6.60) which was extremely cheap & you can see the long trail of people going up the peak like ants.

The place was crawling with noisy & sweaty Korean school teens who kept popping up in my photos.

The nice thing about this place was that half of the climb was a gentle slope that opens up like a field of grass into the vast blue ocean.

I almost wanted to do the Sound of Music twirl & run all the way to the edge of the cliff.

But Nee was watching so I didn't.

And then the other half was a steep mountain that drops down into the sea like a heavy wall of black lava rocks.

The view here was magnificent. I don't know how to tell you & I don't think these photos could convey the actual experience of being there.

Surrounding the crater are 99 of these strange rock formations which forms a crown along the circular perimeter of the crater's mouth.

The steep climb up the wooden staircase was as breathtaking as the scenery itself. However, there were platforms & stops to catch your breath.

But strangely, when you reach the apex, it felt a bit like a letdown. The real basin didn't feel like the gigantic crater photo in the travel guide.

Here's an explanation of the formation process for those who are more scientifically inclined.


Somehow, this gave me the same feeling as when I order a puffy Big Mac Value Meal but getting a deflated one instead.

Day 3: Another Insane Meal at Sashimi Street

The Jeju city promenade walk ended here with touristy mosaics depicting the popular places on the island just in case you missed out any.

We never saw any sabre-toothed walruses in Jeju throughout our stay there but there was one here for some reason.

Besides the black lava rocks, two other things that you'd always find in Jeju would be Women Divers & Lighthouses.

It was about then we started getting curious. No, it wasn't about the lighthouse, nor was it about the women divers.
We realised that we were about the only tourists there in the whole of Jeju city that whole day.

I was wondering if we were at the wrong place, & that all the other tourists were happily snapping away their I-was-there pictures in some other exotic locations & we were here looking at exciting wavebreakers.

We saw a few women divers coming up to this little shack. Apparently they sell their straight-from-the-sea goodies there, especially the seaweed, right away to the nearby restaurants.

This is the real definition of FRESH. You can't get any fresher than this. Anything fresher than this would see us eating seafood underwater.

This explains the whole stretch of seafood restaurants that lined the street there with buckets of swimming fishes, abalones and shellfishes. We didn't really know which one to go for but we knew we had to settle for one which had at least some basic English in the menu.

It was quite an unnerving experience to walk through that street. Business seemed to be slow that afternoon, and don't forget, we were the only two clueless tourists there in the whole of Jeju city. So it really felt like walking through a red light district in Bangkok. The restaurants owners were really coaxing us, & we were really afraid to make eye contact for fear that would mean consent cos we weren't sure of the social rules there. But in the end, we found one with a menu to our liking.

If I still remember correctly, it was about 4.30pm at that time and we wanted to head back towards Pyoseon Beach before it turns dark. But the journey is usually not over until we have one more meal.

And you would have thought we had learned our lesson with sashimi meals. I mean a real, big, hearty sashimi meal. So in Jeju that day, we had the earliest dinner ever in both our whole entire lives combined, including the ones to come. For 60000 KRW (MYR 180) we had the following:

Side dishes:
Seaweeds, kimchi, salads.

These are the more interesting ones. This may look like salted fish but it wasn't. It tasted more like fried/dried & it was on the sweet side.

Fish skin salad.

Octopus salad.

First course of shellfishes (again). Just in case you're wondering about the shell. It's probably there just for decoration, although I'm sure the contents must be somewhere on the platter, probably the ones next to it.

And the whole platter of sashimi again.

And ending the meal with this spicy fish soup, grilled mackerel, fried rice and tempura again.

I think Nee looks just like one of those primmed up Korean ladies here. Maybe it's the food. Maybe it's the air or the sea. Maybe it's everything combined.

And this looks like a half-drunk Korean man who's not even sure what he's reaching out for with his Korean chopsticks.

We didn't know it at that time, but this whole stretch of seafood place was called Sashimi Street & we only found out about it when we walked out after dinner. How lame was that?

Greg & Nee may be on the Go, but sometimes, they go around in circles & the other times they probably don't know where they are. So I don't think there's going to be a Greg & Nee Lonely Planet guidebook anytime soon. Maybe more like Greg & Nee Lost Planet.

Day 3: Greg & Nee in Jeju City

In case that made your jaw drop, NO, we did not go to Jeju island again. We don't have that much money.

We haven't been updating our blog for quite sometime now, and our posts on our Jeju holiday got left behind like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone.

We thought that was unfair & that it's best to finish up the unfinished business. My mom used to tell me if you start something, make sure you do it well, and finish it off.

There's not much to see in Jeju City itself as most breathtaking touristy spots are spread out along the other coastal areas of the island. Nevertheless, if you happen to be there, you should take a walk along the promenade which starts somewhere at the Ramada Plaza Hotel.

By the way, the abalone porridge place which we were at that morning was just behind this hotel.

The promenade was clearly done up for tourists, with designs & artwork that depict the beautiful sea creatures of the island.

But I could only see seafood.

And somewhere halfway through the promenade walkway, there's this set of stairs that went down into the deep blue waters.

And at a distance, we saw a strange army of orange bobbing things out at sea. That got Nee all excited. I seldom see her like that, except when she's near the vicinity of an LV store.

Holy North Korean spies! They've made it as far down south to Jeju! It looked like an invasion.

Then one of them casually climbed out of the waters & clambered onto the street. It wasn't Kim Jong Il, but an old lady instead, in a sexy black wet suit.

That was an amazing experience. We had just had an encounter with one of the legendary women divers of Jeju. And she was crossing the street to her house so casually like she was just returning from the fish market.


You really couldn't tell these divers were old ladies until they change into their everyday auntie gear.
And they're probably going home now to cook abalone porridge for their very healthy grandkids. Imagine growing up under these iron lung-ed ladies. You've just got to give them the respect cos they earned it.