After doing the east side of Jeju yesterday, we visit the south side today. We headed downstairs to meet Angie right at 9 and she wasted no time heading southbound. We confirmed the itinerary with her and asked if we could add the Seogwipo Olle Market in, which she said is fine.
The first thing to do was to was to drive over/around Mount Hallasan, which is the volcano in Jeju situated right in the center of the island. The drive was nice enough, but it wasn’t as scenic as we thought it may have been. Additionally, Caitlyn’s ears began hurting some due to the altitude change, and David felt a little nauseous but didn’t want to use too many of his nausea meds so early into the trip. We soon get to the first spot to get out of the car. The itinerary called it “government horse farm”, but we weren’t able to find it when searching online. There wasn’t much to see, essentially Angie pulled off the side of the road next to a fenced in area with a few dozen small horses. It was nice to get put of the car for a few minutes and look at the horses pretty closely, but it wasn’t the most exciting or memorable experience.
Known for being the only waterfall in Korea depositing directly into the ocean, Jeongbang waterfall was our next stop. We paid a small entrance fee and headed down some stairs with directions leading towards the waterfall.
We finally see the enormous waterfall in the distance.
We finish walking down and saw that to get a closer view, we would have to carefully climb on a bunch of boulders and large rocks. Like two majestic mountain goats, we nimbly pranced from rock to rock towards the waterfall.
After soaking in the views we headed back up the stairs and off to our next spot.
We get dropped off and follow the signs, through a park, towards the Oedolgae overlook and sea stack. Basically, it was a big rock in the water. It didn’t wow either of us much, but we enjoyed walking around the park some.
We hop back in the car and Angie tells us we can go to the Olle Market now. We let her know that we will probably find food to eat here, and she drops us off near the front of the market. We walk towards the entrance and see that it is a covered arcade style Market.
At first, there were mostly fish and pork knuckle vendors, but eventually we saw some fruit vendors and souvenirs shops.
We started to wonder if we would have to go elsewhere for food, when we finally spotted an area with food shops. We got the lay of the land before deciding we would grab some dumplings. We shared the set of 4: one black pork, one octopus, one kimchi, and one abalone. They were all delicious, but David’s favorite was the octopus and Caitlyn’s was the black pork.
We needed more food than just 2 dumplings a person, so Caitlyn decided she would actually get something sweet. She found a stall selling peanut icecream and ordered one. The vendor spoke great English, and we discovered he actually lived in California for a period of time!
He asked us to give him 5 minutes to cook up a fresh waffle wrapping, so we walked into a nearby grocery store. We were impressed with such a broad selection, doing our shopping almost exclusively at convenience stores. We noticed a broad soju selection, and were excited to see bottles of the “real soju”. We grabbed a bottle for later and also found a tangerine flavored soju and grabbed a bottle of that to take back for later. We checked out and went to see about Caitlyn’s ice cream. It was good timing, as we got to see him make it! He first made a fresh waffle and rolled it slightly to fit it in a cup. Then he grabbed a large scoop of ice cream and placed it in the waffle. Next he added a bunch of whipped cream, then used a tool to shave down a block of peanuts into smaller crumbs and topped the ice cream with it. Some chocolate sauce went on next followed by sprinkles and topped with an oreo. It was very tasty, but challenging to eat as the ice cream kind of fell down into the bottom of the waffle into the cup.
David chose a small order of soy sauce chicken pieces for his meal. David didn’t love it, but Caitlyn was happy with it. Neither of us completely finished our meal, and it wasn’t until we were back outside trying to meet back up with Angie that we realized there were NO trash cans anywhere. We walked for a while before finally finding one belonging to a person selling things in a stall. We sneakily put our trash in it, unsure if they would be upset, but not knowing what else to do.
We eventually find Angie and we head off to yet another park with some overlooks called the jusangjeolli cliffs.
The views were nice enough, and we met a few cool people. First was a couple probably in their early 60s that asked us where we were from. It turns out they live in Fairfax! We chatted for a little while about our trips before splitting up.
At the next overlook, a young woman asked if we wanted a picture so she took one for us and we got one for her. It turns out she is a solo traveller from the Netherlands exploring Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and maybe a few other places. We asked about her time in Korea and she tells us she was spending about 5 weeks in total here! Usually when we tell people we meet about our trip, they are a little shocked that we’re spending ~4 months, but this woman blew us out of the water with current plans for 7 months.
We talked for a while, said our goodbyes, and headed back to the car. Angie then asks us if we want to go to another waterfall. We say sure and she drives us out to Cheonjeyeon falls. A sign showed the path and described three waterfalls. We walk along a path along the side of a mountain downwards and eventually see a waterfall. It wasn’t really “full” spilling out less water than you’d expect. A sign nearby said that this waterfall only flows after heavy rain, though, so we were glad we caught it after a rainy day.
We kept walking to the second one, which appeared to be fairly close. Pretty soon we found it. It was much more impressive than the first.
We decided to stop here and turn around without seeing the third as it was quite a distance as compared to the first two waterfalls. We texted Angie and got picked back up where we were dropped off. She said “did you like?” and David said “they were beautiful! We actually saw 2 waterfalls” and she replied “but there are 3?!” We found this funny as Angie (technically a tour guide and not just a driver) has been dropping us off with almost no explanation of where we are.
The last place to see today is the O’Sulloc tea museum. This was surprisingly far west as compared to the other stops, but was chosen to be on the south day. We drive a good distance and finally get there. Angie tells us to text her when were done , as always, and we hop off and head into the museum.
We’re not sure why they call it a tea museum, as there is one small like 10×10 foot area with a few tools used to make tea and some tea leaves to smell, while the rest of the space is a giftshop and a massive cafe. It was the equivalent of a large Starbucks with one corner having a few cups of coffee beans and a coffee grinder.
We walked through anyways and decided to order something from the cafe. Caitlyn got a mixed tea with grapefruit juice, and we shared a slice of matcha cheesecake. The drink was good, and the cheesecake was very good.
We walked the grounds some, looking at the fields and eventually finding a second building on the property. It turns out this was a showroom type thing for a soap company, so we headed back out to find Angie, but first took a stroll through the tea fields.
It was about 3:30, which would get us home close to 4:30, but having taken an extra half hour yesterday we were okay ending early. Back at the hotel, we went upstairs to our room. David was running dangerously low on clothing, especially as one of his shorts got a bad stain in a weird place that we couldn’t seem to wash out. David grabbed the travel tide detergent strips, filled the sink with warm water, and washed 2 days worth of clothes to get us through until our next hotel which does advertise having a laundry room
Our evening plan is going to see a live cooking-themed comedy show called the Nanta show, starting at 8:00pm. Angie had told us that to get to this slightly out of the way area, the bus is tricky as it comes very infrequently and if you miss it you may have to wait at least an hour. She told us that we should get a taxi which should be less than $10 for a 30 minute ride. She told us that our hotel could call it for us (foreigners can’t really download any ride apps), and offered to call one back home for us if we text her after the show. We didn’t have a ton of time before the show started, so we headed out to grab some food. We had loved the coffees at the place next to our hotel, so we stopped by there quickly to get two of the cherry bloods.
We drank these quickly and decided that in the interest of time, we would just go back to the market with all of the street food and bring it home to eat.
We got black pork noodles, a piece of barbecue chicken, a grilled chicken skewer, and a pork-wrapped vegetable roll. We got back home and asked the front desk if they could order us a taxi to pick us up between 7:00-7:15. The man told us that the taxi company won’t let you reserve a ride, so we would have to come back later and he could call. He told us that it usually takes 30 minutes for a taxi to come. We thought he meant the ride is 30 minutes, as we had already known, but he confirmed the cab takes 30 to come. This only gave us about 15 minutes to eat, so we scarfed down as much as we could. The black pork noodles were both of our favorites, with the grilled chicken skewer being the least favorite by far (it was barely grilled) It hadn’t felt like a crazy amount of food when we ordered it, but we didn’t even finish half and put the rest in our fridge for another meal. At 7:00, our room telephone starts ringing. It is the man at the front desk asking if we wanted him to order a taxi now. We told him to go ahead, and he said to please come downstairs first and he will order. We get downstairs and he calls the taxi. Within 2 minutes they arrive, and we go outside and hop in (not 30 minutes?!). The cab driver already knew where we wanted to head, which was nice as Korean addresses are notoriously confusing and often do not translate well between English and Korean.
We arrive at the theater 20 or 25 minutes early and decide to go ahead and get in our seats.
We were in third row, front and center. One small group sat to David’s right, but the 5 or 6 seats to Caitlyn’s left were all empty.
A screen informed everyone that cellphones are not tolerated and explained the show in a few languages (including English). It is a mostly non-verbal show, relying on body language and movement. It did describe the premise briefly: a restaurant is preparing food for a wedding that must be ready by 6:00, which is in 90 minutes. The snag is that the restaurant owner’s nephew wants to work at the restaurant, “but can he cook”? The performers were 3 cooks, one younger guy, one younger woman, and an older man, as well as the owner of the restaurant and his nephew.
The show was mostly percussion and some acrobatics. They would make interesting drum beats with all kinds of kitchen tools while either interacting with eachother to further the plot or while actually preparing food for the wedding. There was some audience participation as well, with a few people getting called up. Additionally, they would occasionally throw things into the audience as part of the show. There were some impressive acrobatics as well as things like throwing plates like a frisbee and one of the performers catching them in one hand at a high speed.
Suddenly, towards the end of the show, they split the crowd between red team and blue team and began to go to the audience and get audience members to come up for an interactive aspect of the show. As fate would have it, one of the performers was walking down the aisle picking his participants, and walked over to Caitlyn. Caitlyn was ushered on stage to take part in a competition where she filled sheets of raw dough with vegetables, pinched them shut like a dumpling, place four on a plate, ring a bell, and crank them down a conveyer belt for her partner to pick up and stack. The first team to stack all of the dishes full of dumplings would be the winner. Caitlyn worked at breakneck speed, but her partner spent more time trying to get the crowd riled up as opposed to actually stacking, and they lost by a hair. The participants were sent back to their seats, all given a coupon for a gift from the cafe/shop in the theater lobby.
The show ended, and mouths hurting from smiling and laughing, we exit to the lobby. Caitlyn hands over her coupon and is given a photograph of her on stage in a nice pop-up picture holder.
We text Angie and she lets us know there is a cab on the way and gives us their license plate. The cab arrives and instantly starts driving. We offer the address but she already seemed to know where we were going (thanks Angie!). Back home we start winding down from our big day and head to bed for a good night sleep.
David’s thoughts of the day: it’s strange that Korea is so different than other countries in regards to things like the apps they use. Most places use Google, but Korea uses Naver or Kakao. Korea has its own taxi service apps, ride service apps, food delivery, and most are exceptionally difficult for foreigners to use. For example, you need a Korean phone number to access some apps, while others require you to verify your ID by uploading pictures, and it is difficult to get a foreign ID to be accepted.
Caitlyn’s thoughts of the day: People go to coffee shops at ungodly late hours, like 10:30 at night. Restaurants aren’t even open at this time. Bars aren’t open.
Steps walked: 18,203
Miles walked: 8.69
Bluming Travelers 