I look back on my past summer vacations with some fondness. Nothing beats 2 1/2 months of no school. Sadly, if you teach at an English hagwon (or maybe it’s just MY English hagwon), you don’t get 2 1/2 months. You get 3 days. And a weekend, but I don’t think that really counts. Still, 3 days is better than nothing, so some friends and I made plans to check out Jeju Island, Korea’s equivalent of Hawaii.
My friend Chris and I were supposed to be joined by a co-worker of his and his co-worker’s Korean wife. The two of them decided to cancel and stay in Seoul for the vacation. This put us in a bit of an awkward situation, as neither of us is fluent in Korean. Luckily, we were able to make our needs understood, but as neither of us has a Korean driver’s license, we couldn’t rent a car. We spent a good bit of the time lost, looking for bus stations and hotels. But when we did get to where we wanted to go… awesomeness!
Our hotel was small and at first didn’t seem to be anything special. The helpful staff changed our minds. The owner (at least I THINK he was the owner) went so far as to give us a ride to the bus stop in his own car. Such kind people.
Our first stop was Jungmun Beach. We’re in the rainy season right now in Korea, but we lucked out on getting a good beach day our first full day in Jeju. We took the Airport Limousine Bus, which took us to the Hyatt. The hotel is right on the beach. The staff was super helpful in directing us and showing us where we can buy sunscreen so we wouldn’t fry on the beach. Too bad it was so expensive to stay there, because the interior was truly something to see.
The days that followed were overcast, but we found other things to do besides soaking up rays on gorgeous beaches. We checked out Cheonjiyeon Waterfall and Jungbang Waterfall, both gorgeous. Close to Cheonjiyeon was a submarine tour. We went down as far as 40 m. Sadly, my camera was not up to the task of taking decent photos while in the submarine. We did see more things than I documented. Lots of pretty fish, some divers. It was cool.
On our last day, we checked out of the hotel and lugged our baggage around. Oh, if only we’d had a rental car! We were going to check out a folk village, but we decided against it upon seeing it’s mountaintop location. My legs refused to try. They did agree to a walk around a natural history museum though. It was a good ending to our trip.
Jeju Island is certainly worth the time and money. My only suggestion would be to go at a less rainy time to take better advantage of the beautiful outdoors.
Victoria Teacher's Adventures in ESL 