Deokjeokdo

“Do” (pronounced like ‘doe’) meaning island in Korean. Deokjeokdo is one of the many islands off the western coast of Incheon. Fourteen of us met at Incheon’s Port station to take a ferry for about an hour. (*Incheon residents got 50% off the ferry cost!) The island is almost deserted with the exception of a few restaurants, a handful of pensions and one Family Mart (convenience store). We brought snacks, drinks and things to grill.

When we arrived on the island we were quickly approached by two competing pensions for our business. They both gladly offered us rides to their respective pensions so we could decide where we wanted to stay. These pensions were virtually the same, but we chose one for it’s slightly better location to the beach and dropped off our things. We immediately walked over to the beach and set up our things and began grilling some lunch. We hung out on the beach all day and into the night when we started a fire right on the beach.

The next day we enjoyed a little more beach time before getting some amazing Chinese food at this great little restaurant. It was a small place where the owner/cook/waiter/delivery man made us all a feast literally as fast as he possibly could! The name of the restaurant is
바다 반점 (Bada Banjeon) meaning Sea Spot, I believe.

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.

Sunrise Peak on the far east tip of Jeju

fishies

fast little guys

soft coral!

really pretty soft coral

some "white snow" that the captain left us before we returned to the surface.

Sunrise Peak again

Seonyudo

Lack of sleep and too many jam-packed weekends were starting to catch up to me, but I spent a relaxing weekend on Seonyudo island. I met a group and we took a bus down to Jeollabuk-do provice on the western coast of Korea. We then took a ferry boat across to Seonyu-do. 

Fog on the ocean delayed us a few hours, but when we got to the island we rented bikes to explore the island.

I spent some time relaxing on the beach before we had dinner. After dinner we had a bonfire on the beach and some people decided to cook up some sea creatures they caught earlier in the day. It was a relaxing night before we went to sleep.

When we woke up in the morning we explored the island some more and had lunch before packing up and taking the ferry back to the mainland.