so far, everything had been going better than planned. or maybe better than non-planned. that was bound to catch up with me at some point… and that point was today.
the morning started off amazing. another sunny day in hyeopjae, so i decided to find a coffee bar with good wifi (shout out, cafe bene!) to watch the morning at the beach and upload some pictures. my sweet pension hostess was headed to the airport to pick up her sister and offered to drop my monster bag off at my hotel. so nice! i got a surprise call from my aunt, who needed to know what size jackson is for a snow suit next year… not what was top of mind for me, but thank you, aunt kathy! so far, another great day in korea!
everything i read and saw on google maps indicated it would be an easy hour bus ride into jeju city (with no monster bag!) and then a quick walk to where i was supposed to pick my bike up for a ride. i left around 10am thinking: 11am arrival, riding by noon, done by 3pm. boom! nope. this was my big wake up call that my amazing mass transit skills/apps i’d gotten so confident with in seoul weren’t going to cut it in jeju-si. the bus took more like two hours, the location of the bike shop was wrong, which led to an extra 30+ min of looking… by the time i got to the bike shop, the afternoon wind had picked up and i would hood-river-educated guess it was around 25mph+. i told the nice man (thank you, google translator) that i would try again tomorrow and started walking to the nearest bus stop (20 min walk away). i got there and there were no discernable time tables and neither of the apps were giving me an arrival eta for the bus i was looking for (which said it was going to take an hour to get to my hotel 2 miles away?). after about 20 min of waiting and feeling pretty frustrated by this whole last few hours, i decided to wave down a cab. korean cabs have a light on top and a red light on the dash if they’re available. tons of cabs, none available. then i had the bright idea to call my hotel and have them send me a cab (at this point, i didn’t care what it cost). unfortunately, the gal that was available to speak english didn’t know the bus stop i was at – or she couldn’t understand me. i was a little desperate at this point so i asked a delivery man that was close to me if he could tell the concierge the name of the bus stop so she could send a taxi (in a very humbling mix of korean and pantomime). after trying to tell her where the bus stop was (maybe it wasn’t just my bad korean) he offered to hail a cab for me himself. i almost kissed him. really. or at least hugged him. i would have if i didn’t think he’d be totally offended. instead i about broke myself in half bowing with gratitude. (how did i not take an “usie” with that angel??)
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”49″ gal_title=”jeju day two : jeju afternoon”]
back at the hotel, i recharged my phone (people, bring an extra charger to korea!) and tried to recharge my attitude. i’d had a lovely morning in hyeopjae but i was only here for three days and didn’t have time to call that “good enough” and sulk in my hotel room! so, i changed, had the front desk call a taxi and asked them to take me downtown. i walked along the warf, checked out the sashimi district and headed over to the black pig district for dinner. my friends ingi and sun have been to jeju before and this was their “must have” recommendation. so ridiculously good! the woman who ran the restaurant was super concerned i was not putting enough garlic on my wraps, but i think i convinced her i was just fine without eating multiple whole cloves of garlic.
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”51″ gal_title=”jeju day two : warf and dinner”]
having learned, i asked the restaurant to call me a taxi to the hotel. they told me taxis couldn’t come down that road and i’d have to walk up to where they were. ugh. this meant i was going to be competing with half of jeju city for the available cabs as everyone was out eating and shopping. i thought maybe i’d give the bus another try – or at least try to get a taxi at the bus stop – and stumbled on jeju’s night market. so fun! jeju is known for it’s black pork, oranges and, i discovered, peanuts! could you love a place more?? i walked around the market, picked up some fresh yaksik – forever and always my korean drug of choice – and headed back to the bus stop. i saw a few open cabs so took a chance and got one! after i pushed a grandma out of the way. kidding. kind of not kidding. lets just say she got pushy first.
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”52″ gal_title=”jeju day two : night market”]
back at the hotel i did a little investigation on this peanut thing and discovered the udo, an island off the island, is famous for it’s peanut ice cream. anyone that knows me well knows what i did at this point: cancelled all plans (not that i really had any) and penciled in udo for my final day in jeju! and korea (sniff, sniff).