Yeah, you should go to Jeju

Probably the worst headline I've had so far, but if you are fond of raw nature and you are in the area - check it out.

When searching for options and information on Jeju before leaving there wasn't much to find that really gave the answers I searched for, and the questions others had was how much time is needed, and how to get a driver. 

How much time can be answered quite easily, you can do some in one day, but the island is too big to really get to more than one side in a day. We choose the east side and "stole" the intineary from a tour page, got this translated to korean and gave it to our driver. In other words, there's lots to see on the west (and partly north/south) side, and we could easily have spent much more time on the east as well, but time is limited when you're only away for a week. 

Our driver was mr Soon Jo Yoon, we contacted global taxi some weeks before we left, got a phonenumber from them and called him. It was a bit difficult understanding what his mail was, but we got a reply that he'd pick us up at the airport at the requested time, and surely enough he was there. We asked for price, but never got any more replies from him. Seems to be the standard when reading other pages as well. 

Price was 150.000 for an 8 hour day, and an additional 20.000 pr hour after this. I'm not 100% sure if we paid for his lunch or not, but he took us to a black pork BBQ as requested and ate with us. Our cost for either two or three people was still lower than two people in Seoul. This is also where we were shown how to eat korean-style, which really brought out the tastes in the food much better than when we'd just stuffed our faces with a random piece. 

Labyrinth 

Our first stop was a hedge maze, which probably was more for children than for adults and didn't take many minutes to get through. Had my GoPro attached to my chest to create a video of running through it, but annoyingly enough there were some bad blocks on the memory card, and this ruined several movieclips I took with this camera. Thankfully I had my main cam as well and got some decent shots with that, but not of the maze. Supposedly "few people make it through in less than 15minutes", I am not really sure if I believe that to be true, as you even get a map of the whole labyrinth before you start.

Manjang Cave with ghots

Manjang Cave 

Next stop was just a few minutes from the maze where a massive lava cave had been created some thousand years ago, about one kilometer in before we had to turn around. Thankfully we'd taken our jackets along and this was the sole place on our entire trip where they were actually needed. 

Korean folk village 

Well, to be honest this was not the most inspiring stop on the trip. It was very similar to every other cultures old villages, a few houses, a millstone and that was more or less it. If you've never sat foot in such a place, give it a go, if you have seen similar places other places in the world and have limited time, skip it.

If your name is Hansel or Grethel, better stay away

Seopjikoji

Our next stop was much better, the cliffs on the far east of the island reminded a lot of Iceland. At the end of the pathway there was a viewpoint towards Seongsan Ilchulbong as well. On the way there they'd surpringly enough set up a massive gingerbread house where they sold soft-ice, which was more ice that what we're used to calling softice at home (or any other place in the world). 

Seongsan Ilchulbong

Our main "must see" on the list was Seongsan Ilchulbong which is among "7 natural wonders of the world", a peninsula created by a vulcano about 5000yrs ago, with an excellent pathway up to the top at 180m which also offered a nice view inland. Again annoyingly enough my camera didn't record my movie at the top so I can't bring home either a surround view of the crater or the timelapse of the tourists flocking to the top. This was also an easy way to see that Jeju really is the tourist place for koreans. In about 30mins we spent at the top we saw one other non-asian up there, but with the close proximity and numerous flights from Seoul, Busan and probably all other korean cities with something resembling an airport it's an easy desitination for them. It also provides a different world where nature and not concrete is the dominant. 

Sangumburi Crater

There was still some time left, and instead of driving us to one of the rather strange exhibitions that we'd written up as options, mr Yoon recommended another crater-park which was partly on the way to the airport. This is actually where I was able to get the best pictures of the day, but a nice sunset does of course help a lot. (Both the picture to the right and the first in this post)

Flights 

The flight to/from Jeju/Seoul takes about one hour, the planes runs all the time. My guess is that there's more than one plane every 15 minutes during peak hours from Seoul. If you go there and stay for a day or two it's probably easy to do without more than handluggage which makes it very smooth. Getting to Gimpo airport we used bus 3000 which cost 7000 KRW and ran every 40-50mins. The bus took about 45-60mins getting there, of course depending on where you get on. Our stop was Yeoksam, one stop away from the more familiar Gangnam. The airport in Jeju was however also something worth mentioning, everything went fine, but it was packed with people and the noise level was surprisingly high. Incheon is a nice, quiet place compared to this.

S(e)oul of Korea

Intro to Seoul / South Korea
There's always something unexpected

Every city offers some surprises that you never really see coming. They may not be big, but they're still there and usually keeps you wondering why they do a certain thing that way.
In Seoul it was the complete lack of trash cans. During the week I spent there I hardly saw a single trash can, my guess was that there was some heavy taxation on it, and surely enough there was a very strickt recycling regime in Korea. In addition to that they buy the garbagebags from the garbagemen. Anyway, if you're there and have an empty bottle of water or something you want to get rid of, just hand it to someone in a kiosk and they'll usually take care of it. And this isn't a problem of a size that should keep you from visiting the country. 

Exchange rates and subway 

For exchange rates it's quite easy, 1000 KRW is about 1 USD, most prices are fixed, but there may be some markets where you should haggle a bit. They are however not as fierce hagglers as some other asian countries or not to say arabics - which i found quite pleasant. The general knowledge of english is not very high, there are programs in place to help them learn, but I wouldn't be surprised if it takes at least a generation before they are at a level where most are comfortable with english. On the positive side of the language barrier you can see that all signs and tons of commercials are highly influenced by america. 

The map is huge, but it doesn't take
too long time to have it figured out

The subway is excellent and eventhough many travel guides recommend buying a single fare ticket if you stay in Seoul for a shorter time, I'm stil happy we choose to buy the travel card. The card itself costs 3000 KRW and can be filled up with whatever amount you choose. When you leave you can get everything except 500 back from what you have on your card. That means unless you actually finish your card completely on the last day you end up paying 3500 ($3,5 / €3) for the convenience of just swiping your card whenever you use public transport. It was also possible to use this on our way to Suwon, so it's not solely restricted to Seoul. 

Very handy and saved us a lot of time. 

The people are friendly and most will try to help you if you ask them, there are however as written above a lot who are not amazing in english. I'd read they would rather give an incorrect reply rather than admitting they did not know the answer some times, but we never experienced this, mostly when asking for directions which would be an easy thing to just point somewhere without really knowing or understanding what we asked about. 

Day 1 

Tailored shirts 

On our first day we were, as expected a bit troubled by the jetlag. About 13 flight time from Oslo including a short stop in Helsinki meant that we arrived in at the hotel at about 11 in the morning Korea-time, but with very little sleep on the plane and our heads still connected to Oslo-time which is then in the middle of the night (4am). 

Our first goal was to get to the shirt store at Itaewon, my research had recommended Hamilton Shirts and with a printed map from the subway to the store it was easy to find it. The store itself was very narrow, but with fabrics lined up on all walls it was still all that was needed. Shirts are about 35.000 - 53.000 based on the quality of the fabric. We made our choices, got measured and ordered a fair share of tailored shirts. We were able to get them done by friday night after a short conversation. This was a good thing as they were a bit wide when we got there to pick them up, but they had quarrel sewing them in and deliver them to our hotel the next night. The shirts arrived as they promised the next day, with a much better fit. When we first were in the area we did walk a bit around Itaewon and sat down for some food at a random place. Our choice was some chicken resturant which was dissapointing and expensive (for Korea), we were however dropped off in the same area after an excursion on friday, at a resturant the guide recommended and got a much better culinary experience. Not really surprising, but there is as always much to gain from knowing where to go. 

Gyeongbokgung palace 

Moving on from Itaewon we went to the largest palace in Korea, Gyeoungbokgung which is a fairly short ride with the subway. Many of Seouls attractions are closed on mondays, but this palace has tuesday closed istead. All subways has multiple exits, and all are marked in english with what you should expect to find which usually is very helpfull. We were thus able to exit directly to the palace. The complex is in many ways similar to the forbidden city in Beijing, but at a much smaller, but more colorful scale. After spending some time there our sleepdeprevation really started to make a number on us, so we got back to the subway and just barely made it home without falling asleep on the subway. Another thing about the subway is that I'd read that there were wifi available on them, this is probably true, but it is not free. However EVERY korean has a smartphone, and all of them are using it on the subway. It was a strange sight the first days where everyone just stares at their phone and noone notices anything going on around them. Most scandinavians are also stuck in their phone most of the day, but I think the koreans were actually just a little more in love with their phones than us.

Day 2 

Sk T'um and Myeondong shopping district

There is a lot to see and do in Seoul, but there are also several attractions that would need a pre-booking T'um (Telecom Museum) is one of them, booking can be done online at their site and the tour is free. T'um shows mostly how they see telecom being developed in the future, how it can affect different aspects of peoples lifes like daily work, driving, shopping (online), health etc. There is also an excibition of their newest gadgets which is already for sale, but many may be unaware of. Worth a look if this is something that you are interested in.

T'um is located very close to Myeongdong area, where we also dropped by the trickart museum.. Myeondong is what I would call the very city center, a nice shopping area with lots of stores and nearby there were also a "cultural cuisine walkway for tourists" or something like that. This actually just meant that there were flags strapped over the streets to show where there could be genuine korean food, but still a good thing and we did find a place to have our first korean barbeque. Not knowing how to eat the korean way we did however miss out on some of the experience, but we were shown this the next day by or driver at Jeju. Below is a short timelapse from the shoppingstreet in Myeondong.

Nanta 

I'd also booked tickets for Nanta which is a food show that they have ran since 1997 in Seoul and now performs at 3 special Nanta-theatres that all have 2-3 viewings every day. It is supposedly listed as one of the top 10 tourist attractions in Asia, and I would have no problem recommending it to anyone traveling there myself. Tickets should be bought online in advance and I think we paid about 50.000 for very good tickets. The show is (mostly) non-verbal, and the very few words that are actually spoken are just as often in english as in korean, and you don't really need the words to understand the story either. There is a chance of being pulled up on the scene, and there is a chance you may get a slice of rogue lettuce or other vegetable thrown your way. The show lasted for about 1,5 hours and after this we were ready to go home. The next day we had to get up early for the bus to Gimpo Airport for our flight to Jeju Island. No cameras allowed during the show, but if you are intrigued you can easily search for it on youtube and find plenty there.

A full sircle of all the characters that gives their names to the years was found in Gyeongbokgung palace

They really did love their cupcakes in Seoul, and with Halloween coming up they even made cupcakes for that