Day 2 in Jeju ~ Manjanggul Cave, SeongSan, 어락게스트하우스

Although sleeping at 3 am the night before, I was still able to wake up at 7 am. I took a shower and start to pack my backpack for check out. It was still super early after I was done so I just lying on the bed, googling about where to go next. Manjanggul Cave was the place we chose the night earlier. We had also decided to stay in one of the guesthouse we found through Airbnb. (https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/20918399?location=Jeju%20si%2C%20South%20Korea&adults=1&children=0&infants=0&s=qkYTOBDs)

After all my chinggu woke up, we had our breakfast at the 5th floor. For breakfast, Yellow Guesthouse prepared bread, jams, Jeju Orange Juice and cream soup. It was more like a self-service style where you make your own toast and stuff. It was good enough to fill our stomach before we head out for the day. My chinggu also bought a cute looking fruit that we did not know what it was until we ate it. Can you guess?

It's a melon!!!

It was as small as my fist but tasted sweet like a melon, kinda special fruit to try. We headed out when we were finally done packing and cleaning up after breakfast. By the time we headed out it was nearly 11am. We decided to take a taxi to Manjanggul Cafe which costed us around 20,000 won. When we reached Manjanggul Cave, the weather was nice, not super chilly but better than the day before, more like "shopping mall temperature". 

At the entrance, there was an information centre explaining about the formation of Manjanggul Cave and also other UNESCO location in Jeju. Besides the information centre was a restaurant and a mart at the both sides of it. We went to the mart to ask about the locker location for our backpack. She offered to let us keep our backpack there while we go into the cave. We left our backpack there and went to the ticketing counter. The cost of the ticket is only 2000 won per adult. In the cave, it was cold, wet and slippery. It felt like walking in a refrigerator. However, it was amazing to see how the cave was created by the lava flow.

It took us around an hour in the cave. There were signage explaining the formation of the interior of the cave due to the lava flow. We took some pictures at the entrance where we found some nice background for photos.

Then we went back to the mart for light lunch. We ordered a mandu and gimbap for 5,500 won. The mandu was delicious as it was served hot, a nice contrast to the super low temperature we had experienced in the cave. Then, we took our backpack and waited for the bus to our guesthouse. The bus service on google was not updated and due to the miscommunication between us and the bus driver, we ended up at places that we did not recognised. We walked ourselves for almost 2 hours from places to places and eventually arrived at our guesthouse exhausted. It was a great experienced as we were able to walk the olle trail unintentionally. We also took a lot of photos by the roadside. It was so pretty as there were a lot of flowers by the roadside.

 

When we finally reached our guesthouse, we dropped our backpack, get changed and head to the nearest restaurant for dinner as we were starving after the long walk. We ordered 600g of black pork and a kimchi jiggae and we were able to clear it all up within an hour. It cost us around 61,000 won for the dinner but it worth the price as it was super delicious and the kimchi was one of the best I'd ever tasted. We head to the nearest mart (GS 25) after our dinner as we planned to visit SeongSanIlChulBong in the early morning for the sunrise. We figured that we need to buy some breakfast or light snack before we start our climb. When we then arrived at our guesthouse, we met another two guests. They were with us in the same mart earlier. They both bought one fried chicken and invited us to join them. We politely rejected them as we just had our dinner, however, they insisted so, we joined them after our shower and met another guest. We got to know each other and played games like Jenga and Pirate Uncle Barrrels. We had a lot of fun. After a small talk, we realised that one of them (ChangHyeok) planned to go to SeongSanIlChulBong for sunrise too. We ended up going with him the next morning to hike the mountain and watch the sunrise together. 

Before we head to bed, the host (Lukas) offered to bring us for night sightseeing as he was planning to go fishing. We hopped onto his car and head to an unknown place with him. When we arrived, the view was spectacular. We are able to see a nice reflection of the moon with the shadow of SeongSanIlChulBong. We were so near that it looked huge in front of us.

We then headed back after half an hour there and head straight to bed as we need to wake up early to go to SeongSanIlChulBong for the sunrise.

Day 1 in Jeju ~~ Jeju city - DungMunShiJang (DungMunMarket)

I took the flight from Kuala Lumpur straight to Jeju Island on the first day. It's a good thing that AirAsia now have this route. However, the flight is at 6.50am. I'm too excited to sleep the night before even though I forced myself to but I ended up waking up at 3am. The flight was on time since it was the first flight, we took off at 6.50am sharp and arrived at Jeju 2pm local time (1 hour ahead of Malaysia). The airport is small and most of the flight there are domestic flight so passing the immigration is as fast as a snap.

As this trip is more like a free and easy plus super random backpacking trip, we did not plan anything ahead. My Chingu, Maggie and Sharon arrived a day earlier than me and they'd decided to stay in Yellow Guesthouse which is just opposite the DungMun Market. (https://www.facebook.com/yellowjeju/)

Since it was a unplanned trip, every decision were made a day before it happened. On the day of my arrival, Maggie and Sharon went to hike Hallasan Mountain with a guy friend they made in the guesthouse, a European guy who speaks fluent Korean.

To get to the Yellow Guesthouse is actually a piece of cake, you just have to get out from Gate 2, take the bus 365 to Jungang-ro and look for Standard Chartered Bank and you will see the small alley right opposite the entrance to JungMun Market. You will find Yellow guesthouse there in the alley. But because I am super lack of sensitivity on direction, it look me about an hour to actually find out I'm walking the wrong direction all the time. By the time I checked in, it's 3.30pm. It has 5 floors in total, rooms are located on 2nd, 3rd and 4th floor and 5th floor is a common area equipped with kitchen utensils, microwave, refrigerator, toaster and all other stuff so that you can cook there. They also have washing machine and dryer if you want to wash your clothes.

The weather was chilly but not super cold. After one hour of walking, finding the guesthouse, I am all sweaty so I decided to take a shower then head to JungMun Market for food. JungMun Market has multiple entrances leading to different alley selling different stuff.

I just walked randomly and ended myself in one of the alley selling street food and restaurant. For dinner, I bought myself my all time favourite tteokbokki^^. Unlike the one in Malaysia they are more of the sweet and spicy type rather than the salty spicy type I usually had in Malaysia. They had other street food I'd like to try but I couldn't fit everything in my stomach.

 I went for a walk along the river, eating my tteokbokki and found out that there is a music fountain that plays twice every day at noon and 8pm. After watching the musical fountain show, I head back to the guesthouse to get a nap.

I was waken up by my chingu after they came back around 11pm. We had a long talk, catching up with each other about our work and life and head to bed at 3am. Nothing much happened that day but it was fun finally meeting my chingu after a long time.

Good night^^.