Jeju Island

We recently celebrated Chuseok, Korea's most important holiday which is similar to our Thanksgiving. Due to this we only worked on Monday and had the rest of the week off. Fred, Josh and I headed to Jeju island on Tuesday. Jeju island is the southern most part of Korea. It is regarded as Korea's verision of Hawaii. Seoul ended up getting a massive rain storm, at one point we got 8.5 inches an hour! Our original flight was cancelled. The plane was stuck somewhere so we were told to leave the airport and go back to check-in. After talking with the airline, they refunded our departure flight. We then had to go to another airline, stand in line and hope to get put on a later flight. After what felt like 3 hours we were booked on another flight at 6pm. The rains kept up so we got delayed 3 more times. We ended up leaving Seoul around 8:30pm. After a quick 55 minute flight we landed in Jeju and took a cab to our hotel in the southern part of the island. On Wednesday we woke up at went to Jeongbang Waterfall. We explored the area and went into a museum. We then tried to rent scooters but there were already rented out for the week.

Jeongbang Waterfall

On Thursday we went to Jeju World Cup Stadium, a hedge maze and to a go-kart track. We then headed to Yeomiji Botanical Gardens. We were able to see tons of plant life and climb to an observation tower which overlooked the ocean. From there we went to Cheonjeyeon Waterfall. We were able to see the ocean and two waterfalls.



On Friday morning Fred and I woke up early and went to a green tea plantation. Once we arrived we were able to tour the grounds and drink an unlimited supply of green tea. The plantation was on the side of a hill overlooking the ocean. Within the plantation there was a green tea hedge maze. We enjoyed the wonderful views and the delicious tea! We even had green tea cookies and green tea ice cream.

View from the tasting room

We then headed back to the hotel and changed for the beach. We spent the entire day relaxing at Jungmun Beach. The water was clear and very warm! For dinner we met up with our co-teacher Nathan and some of his friends. Friday ended up being my favorite day of the trip. It was relaxing and beautiful, a true vacation day!


On Saturday morning we checked out of our hotel and took a bus along the eastern side of the island. After about 90 minutes we reached our destination, Manjanggul Lava Tubes. This is longest system of lava tubes in the world. The tubes were dimly lit as we walked around. We were only able to walk about 1 kilometer into the tubes. From there we took a taxi to Jeju City, the main city in the north. We found a nice hotel and had dinner.

On Sunday we woke up and explored the area before catching our flight back to Seoul. Overall our vacation to Jeju was fantastic!