Seoul searching through Asia.: Jeju Island

My parents and I boarded a plane for Jeju Island, which has been given the term the “Hawaii of Korea.” I’ve never been to Hawaii, so I can’t prove this theory, but it was a very pretty island. The flight was less than an hour from Seoul to Jeju and the weather was beautiful. Which was a pleasant surprise from the weather Korea had been having. It was sunny and blue skies, but it was so incredibly hot. The first day we saw the two main waterfalls in Seogwipo, the province in the southern part of the island. We also took a balloon up to get a good view of the area around.

View from our hotel roof

Jeongbang Falls

view from the balloon

the balloon

Korea's longest pedestrian walking bridge

Cheonjiyeon Waterfall

The next day we climbed Jeju’s famous volcano, Hallasan. It is the highest peak in South Korea. Unfortunately it was a foggy day so we couldn’t see much of a view. As we got higher and higher it just seemed to get foggier and foggier then….rain. Again. We walked the rest of the way to the top in the rain. I luckily had an umbrella with me, since that’s what Korean’s use - sunshine or rain. So, it wasn’t terrible, but certainly not pleasant. When we got to the top we had some raymyeon (aka cup ‘o soup) and then braved the rain for the way down. I guess you can’t expect too much mother nature during Korea’s monsoon season.

Luckily our trip wasn’t a wash out and the next day was another scorcher. I guess it didn’t make much of a difference since we were wet most of the trip between the sweat and the rain! We figured we would cool off on a submarine ride between Jeju island and a small island off the coast, Udo island.