JEJU - The Wisconsin Dells of Asia

Fun fact: the Jeju-Seoul flight route is the most flown route in the world.

Jeju is a large island (2.5x the size of Singapore) off the south coast of S. Korea and is a favorite vacation destination of Koreans and others from the area. As a result, this island is full of crazy sights, bizarre museums, and strange landmarks.







The best way we can describe is that is like the Wisconsin Dells - on speed, and in Korean. And with a volcano and beaches.

Here's just a brief list of SOME of the actual attractions on Jeju:

• Teddy Bear Museum
• Peace Museum
• Museum of Sex & Health
• Psyche World
• O'sulloc Tea Museum
• Miracle Art Museum
• Locadio World
• Mysterious Road
• Paper Doll Museum
• Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum
• Alive Museum
• Jeju Pony Town

• Jeju Dinosaur Theme Park
• Chocolate Museum
• Jeju Glass Castle
• Yeomiji Botanical Gardens
• Africa Museum
• Swamp trail
• Dodu Submarine
• Jeoji Culture and Art Museum
• Seogwipo Citrus Museum
• Chocolate Land
• Maze Land

Not to mention tons of hiking trails, lava caves, and several surrounding islands with their own unique flair. And you read correctly: chocolate museum AND chocolate land, two different places on one island. So the difficulty about being a tourist in Jeju is that there is very little public transport and unless you hire a driver for a day (reasonable, but still expensive), you're stuck with taxis and - this is the exciting one - public buses. We had a bus route map but almost all the stops were labelled exclusively in Korean - and this turned out to be true on all the bus schedules at the actual stops as well!

The competition was being hosted at a rather remote boarding school - very swanky and nice, and in the middle of nowhere. On Thursday, Jacob practiced a bunch while I tried to plan an excursion for Friday, which was free. The best part of this was trying to type bus stop names into the computer in Korean and using Google translate to figure out what it meant. I was mildly successful, which felt great considering my lack of familiarity with Korean.


Friday morning we ate breakfast (rice, kimchee and cereal!), Jacob practiced a bit, and then we headed to the bus stop. Very hot day - we made great use of our umbrellas, the only thing standing between us and blistered, peeling skin!



We took the bus just 1 stop to O'sulloc Green Tea museum - very cute and packed with tourists. We learned a bit about tea, passed on the over-priced green tea ice cream (we got some later, fear not), and enjoyed the view.


We then visited a neighboring store/cafe that sells soaps, paper, perfumes and other products made from the bi-products of other industries, like the green tea industry or the palm oil industry. Interesting, and really pretty building. We had lunch there, then headed back out to jump on the bus


However, a taxi pulled up and practically begged for our business, and it turned out to be a good thing - it was a 30 minute taxi ride to our next destination - who knows how long the bus would have taken? - and only about $2 more.

We then arrived at: Love Land. 

Love Land is basically an erotic sculpture garden and museum - and it was pretty hilariously awesome. If you're ever in Jeju for some bizarre reason, you gotta go. Mostly, you just can't believe you're actually seeing what you're seeing!

My friends, let me tell you, I have some crazy pictures from this place. But I can't post most of them - keepin' it family-friendly here (for the most part). 

I believe that is a chair.

Need to wash your hands?

Along with the sculpture garden there were two indoor (air-conditioned, thank goodness!) exhibits. One chronicled the development of 'toys' over time and the other featured dozens of carved wooden, well, you can guess. And of course they were selling lots of ridiculous 'gifts.'
The only thing we purchased, however, was ice cream.

After Love Land, we checked out Mysterious Road - which turned out to be some sort of trail lined with cacti. We decided it wasn't worth the entry fee, so I guess we'll never really know what we missed!









Instead, we took a quick stroll through the Jeju Art Museum (which was right net to Love Land - let's guess which one gets more visitors!). There were some really nice pieces, including a small exhibit about candy! We didn't have much time though, as the buses were few and far between and we didn't want to miss our shot. Somewhere in the midst of all this, I think we forgot to eat lunch...odd occurrence for us!

We rode the bus to the Yeongsil entrance of the national park containing the volcano. After stocking up on water from a spring, we hiked up and up until we found Jonjaam Temple - neither of us realized we were hiking to a temple, so it was a nice surprise!

On the hike back down, we realized there was a far easier - if slower - way up:

Cheaters!

Convinced we were going to miss the last bus of the day, I basically dragged us down the hill - only to wait 10 minutes for the bus. Of course. (But - we didn't miss it!). We rode it (and napped) for about 45 minutes down to Jungmun, a small town on the south coast of the island. We then walked for 20 minutes trying to get to Chocolate Land and ended up taking a taxi for the last 5 minutes (should have grabbed one at the start!) - but we found it! Predictably, it was moderately disappointing but amusing in it own special way.

This case appealed deeply to both of us.

These dudes were cute.

Mostly, Chocolate Land featured display cases with chocolate in them - far from my Willy-Wonkan dreams of chocolate lakes and snozzberries that taste like snozzberries. Alas.

Chocolates of the world - including, basically, anything that
contains chocolate. Like biscuits. And Swiss Miss.

CHOCOLATE JESUS!
(What, surrounded with chocolate buttons?!)

While we didn't visit, we saw the outside of the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum. Bet it's pretty sweet! But we were really hungry, so we went here instead:

More Korean BBQ - sooooo good. I think we polished off
everything except the anchovies!

We then ended our night by returning to an attraction we passed earlier:

THE CIRCUS!

Somehow I always seem to forget how much I LOVE circuses.

Clearly not excited.

While waiting for the show to start, we decided we needed ice cream - again - because, hello, CIRCUS! I got orange soft serve, Jacob got chocolate Dip'n'Dots and, like a dream come true, we used the Dip'n'Dots as a topping for the orange ice cream.

I took a lot of video - which is a pain to upload, so here are some stills.

 I think my favorite part was either the acrobats who used a teeter-totter to launch each other into the air and onto each other's shoulder, or the act where performers climb those long silks and fly around. Yes, there was a motorcycle cage and they got 4 motorcycles running in there - for me, that part borders on 'no, stop, someone's going to crash, ahh!'
Another cool thing about the circus - it doesn't really matter if you understand what they're saying. Which is good, cuz we didn't!

WHAT?! AWESOME!

Exhausting day, but so worth it!