Jeju Island

We had enough of smelly Busan and decided to leave for Jeju island for a short vacation.



For those of you who are not familiar with the term "Vacation from your vacation" - well, after travelling for one month, moving from one place to the other every two days, climbing up and down mountains, searching for presents for trivia winners, and on and on... you kinda get tired and want to sit back and do nothing for a while.



So, we took a ferry to a lovely island called Jeju (or HoneyMoon Island - how appropriate!)

Jeju is a rather small island, located south of Korea. It has an oval shape (for the more mathematical oriented guys, a=70km, b=40km).

There are regions with fancy hotels, where a parasol (Shimshia) rents for $20!!!



We first went to Jungmon beach, but found it to be terrible:



We did find some nice Korean youngsters who circle the island on their bicycles.
It can take several days, so they stop and make camp when the weather gets too terrible.


Many years ago, people found a weird staue on the island, and decided it to be their symbol (logo). So, you can find many replicas of it all across the island. It looks like an old man with a big nose who is holding his belly.



We left the terrible beach and found a better, nicer one on the eastern side of the island, which is less touristic. We stayed at a Minbak (sound like Minba), which is a room rented by a family (usually on another floor). Accomodation in Korea is much cheaper than Japan. The room cost us about $20 per night (this is actually the typical price of a guest house or a cheap hotel).
The Minbak was 30 meters from the beach, and the lady owner kept spoiling us by brining sweets, water mellon, canned soda, and other stuff to keep us there!
The view from the beach was beautiful!


But we found it hard to get along with the local food. That is - until we found a someone who sold roasted chicken from the back of his truck. So, we had a chicken dinner in front of the TV.
Chicken - GOOOOOD!!




Most of the time, the weather was hectic. For those of you who have never been in a place during Monsoon season, here is how it is like:

(and for the non-hebrew speakers, the dubbed version would say - Winter, Summer, Winter, Summer....)

The beach we were at has very impressive tides. In low tide, the beach strip is over 100 meters wider and small pools among the rocks are revealed. Though at first glace all you see is sand, black volcanic rock and seaweed, a closer look reveals that almost everything in these pools is alive and moving. Have a look: