Grad trip - Day 5

The jellyfish is back! This post is about my Day 5 out of the 12 days grad trip in South Korea! ^^

It is a long post, but if you are interested to read about my experience, please do so. :)

Day 6: http://jellyunderthesea.blogspot.sg/2017/05/grad-trip-day-6.html
Day 4: http://jellyunderthesea.blogspot.sg/2017/06/grad-trip-day-4.html

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Day 5: Jeju Island - Jeju

The laundry problem leads to a thirst of finding out what the hell the controls really do. On a bright and beautiful 7am in Jeju Island, I took my dictionary, phone and a chair from the building’s main entrance and started to lookup the words on the washing machine. I think I wasted a lot of time there (45 mins?) as I was also listening to some random maple BGMs / Korean songs while finding. One does not always resort to translators to find out what they want. Apparently there exist websites which have a more themed translation, so all the washing machine terms can be easily found in one area. XD I found most of the terms (with some decision needed in thinking which website translated more correctly) online, and guessed a small number of them eventually. So the washing machines in Korea will have the temperatures, the type of clothing by a round knob, option of extra functionalities, timers, etc. My own home washing machine isn’t that complicated, and so it is safe to say I understood something more about these front load washers! =D To do the others a favour, I wrote down the English translations on a piece of foolscap, took a photo for future reference, and pasted that paper on the wall. =P Soojung is nice enough to provide the washer, Jeff shall do the favour of translation then! Who knows, that paper may come in handy for a few months / years if no one tears it down! XD

SY woke up at 9+ due to tire from the previous day, and we decided to chill a bit in the morning. Before walking out of the building, we saw a kind-looking ahjuma carrying basket of towels, and she said hello to us. Is that Soo-jung? Wow that’s very nice of her. We got a new basket of towels, mini packets of soaps and conditionals every single day. SY suggested we had a good brunch after a few days of eating sandwiches and kimbaps for consecutive breakfasts. We strolled along the streets of Topdong (some of them have artworks near kindergardens), shops are not really opened yet, especially the furniture ones. The fruit stall which we looked at the previous day is open though! Since SH asked me to try some Jeju oranges, why not? The oranges all have a weird shape, and the prices are not exactly cheap. The shopkeeper lady was friendly, and she started to describe the oranges in Korean, inviting a totally lost look from me. So she asked if I am from Korea and I said no. She tried to speak Chinese to me and honestly it was quite a bad attempt, as all I understood was that she pointed to the 10k won tag and said “yi wan” to me, which was trivial. =P I thanked her and told her it was alright, and pointed out my interest in the 4 for 5k won oranges in a plastic bag. Paid for the oranges with a smile, and we moved on to finding our brunch. We took a few turns and came to a narrow road leading to more shop houses inside. Just when we were to walk deeper, SY saw a family restaurant which he was interested in near the cross junction. Unlike other restaurants, this one does not provide chairs for most of the tables, but rather it is more of a traditional sit on the floor kind of dining, like the ones you see on TV. Probably not as high class as the ones shown in executive dining, but the ambience is definitely nice and has a family feel. The ahjuma was initially watching TV, but she was keen in serving us. =) There seemed to be no English menu, and so I ordered a kimchi stew as I recognised the Korean characters. SY was quite lost, and wanted something to do with meat / beef. The ahjuma did not understand any bit of English / Chinese, and so asked for her husband for help. The elderly guy was very helpful, although he still talked a lot in Korean. He asked us where we were from, and SY replied that we were from Singapore. They kind of misunderstood that we were from China, until SY told them that we were not from China, and the confused face from them just tell us that it’s ok to stop explaining. Whatever the answer is, their hospitality was awesome! The elderly recommended a dish, and gave a positive sign when SY asked for the existence of beef in that order.

Our meal came shortly after, and mine looks perfectly normal. A hot stone bowl of kimchi stew, along with a bowl of rice. It tasted quite spicy, to the point where I was spamming quite a lot of water to go along with the meal. Nevertheless the serving of meat chunks and kimchi is generous. I gave the beancurd to SY as I didn’t like it. SY’s order is AMAZING. When the elderly man served SY the food, we were looking at something like 10 small plates of food. For a moment I thought those were all side dishes, until I see the fish and chicken in two separate plates. SY was kind of shocked too, and had no idea on how to finish that large amount of food! XD SY’s dishes were kind of interesting, I think it is basically rice, 2 meat dishes and an exaggerated amount of side dishes. I like the seaweed pieces the best, as I could make my own seaweed rice rolls with the sticky white rice given. For the fun of it, I asked for extra seaweed, rice and water. The ahjuma was smart and understood the extra serving of seaweed and water immediately. I used Korean to try my luck for asking rice, and it worked! Yay Jeff people in Jeju understand your order for rice! =P The whole meal totalled up to be 14k wons (WOW), and we felt it was extremely great meal and therefore gave an extra 1k tip. The elderly couple looks very happy, and thanked us. Come to think of it, it is my first proper meal to have authentic Korean food. The previous 4 days were nice, but it was more of cutlets, chicken and kimbaps. This kimchi stew is a proper dish from Korea. =) Sitting on the floor can make your legs numb, especially if you sit for near an hour with your legs crossed. How do the Koreans survive this kind of sitting for long hours? So with a bloated (lots of soup and water) but satisfied feeling, we walked along the streets more and proceeded back to our accommodation facility.

After going back (~1230hrs), SY played with his phone on the bed while I started to dry the clothes using the hairdryer as the clothes feel like they would never in the cold weather / room. >.< An hour later, I decided to set off to an attraction for walking. SY doesn’t feel like being alone in the room even though the resting is very comfortable. =P After drying his stuff, we set off to the Jeju Mini Land at 2pm. It’s half a day wasted, but that should give SY enough rest to continue the exploration. XD My guide originally said to take bus 30 near the accommodation facility, but after camping for 5 minutes, it felt that the bus service doesn’t exist even though the bus stop is still there and all, how strange. So it’s the Jeju tourist bus once more, and back to the intercity bus terminal. My guide said to take bus 730, but I requested for a confirmation as I was unsure about the directions. The info counter guide wrote down on a piece of paper to take bus 710-1 / 720-1, and we felt thankful for confirming instead of following my directions. XD That did not last long though, as the bus terminal pre-ride lady struck off one of the numbers, and the bus captain of the other told us to get down from the bus as that other option was wrong too. -_- After some confusion, we were told to take bus 730. Conclusion? Either nobody understood us, or they also had no idea of the directions of specific places. 730 is another long distance ride, but this time there is no need to travel from one end of Jeju island to the other. Nearing to the stop, SY was getting anxious of missing the stop and proceeded to ask the driver if we had missed the stop. The bus driver (elderly) was very cute when he shouted “aniya!”. XD When you see Korean dramas, it will usually be a young guy informally saying that phrase when a girl says something ridiculous, and so that real life scene of an elderly saying that was simply assuming to me. =P Eventually we reached the correct stop which was in the middle of an open countryside, with horses roaming the fields nearby! :D

The planning of the grad trip timetable was mostly done by me, and that includes the attractions for most of the days. This is a backup attraction (to hiking) and was suggested by SY as a nice place to visit. With that element of surprise and recommendation, we walked to the Jeju Mini Land attraction. This attraction is a really quiet place in the middle of Jeju Island, showcasing international identities and iconic symbols in the form of mini figures / figurines all in one place. We bought our tickets for 9kW each and entered the place. Unlike other tourist attractions (such as the palace and botanic gardens), we did not see any ticket collector. What greeted us was an outdoor stretch of figures, including Gulliver from the Gulliver’s Travel folktale and the Tintin statue. Every exhibit will have a brief description beside it, such as the name and the origin. We then walked into the indoor area, and saw some Marvel figures such as the Batman car, spiderman web on the wall, etc. Not exactly too interesting, until we realised that the indoor area was actually the last stop of the Jeju Mini Land and had a souvenir booth. Ah whatever, the ordering does not really matter ya? =P I had a go at the claw machine too! Well claw machines are usually very sly as they had a pre-programmed structure of making sure you fail in your attempt even if your skills were superb. Nevertheless, 500W for a try at the Jigglypuff (which SH likes), why not? =) So Jeff positioned the claw correctly, grabbed the jigglypuff FULLY (it didn’t even drop after a second in the air), and then the claw just OPENED (dropping the jigglypuff) and moved openly to the exit. -_- Walao, like that of course cannot win la. Continuing the walk, we saw some optical illusions and traditional paintings, with a twist of substituting real life faces for the cartoon ones. Incredibly strange.

The Jeju Mini Land outdoor area is divided into different sectors, each portraying a different class of International attractions. The first sector consists of different mini figures and sculptures of traditional architectures. Some of the Korea’s figures looks familiar such as the Blue House, while others are just an unfamiliar sight to me. One can view this whole attraction as a quiz arena, except that this time the question is standard (name and country) and the questions are all real life figures instead of being in pictorial form. XD The second sector is dedicated to the world’s famous men such as rulers and inventors. Most of them have their faces engraved on the walls, with the exception of a few statues which have a 3D space on their own. The third sector is a fairytale land where cartoon characters from the past and present are featured (E.g. Smurfs / Teletubbies / Spongebob). The area is quite small as I don’t think it is a very prominent feature in this attraction. There is a fenced area with a large number of Doraemons! It isn’t available for tourists’ interaction as those figures are meant for a past event, oh well. The fourth sector showcases modern international architectures. So there are stuff like the Seattle Tower, Sydney Opera House, Colosseum (which I called out wrongly as Colossus XD), etc. SY claimed he knew at least 40% of the items. I swear I didn’t even touch 20%. I don’t even know the names of some ulu temples / religious worship places! >.< We also saw the stone faces (representing presidents) and a rather large waterfall, which SY said that’s the Nigeria Falls. It’s kind of interesting to include a kinetic attraction that stands out from all the static attractions. =P For the entire visit duration, almost nobody else could be seen other than the both of us, and the surroundings are super quiet. What is a good analogy? Ah, imagine it to be a Pokemon Safari zone! =D Wild grass, attractions and random sheltered areas scattered over the place, but the freedom to walk.

At about 5pm, we visited the Magic Mirror House near the boundary of the Mini Land facility. This house hold some of the illusion exhibits, such as optical illusions and items that messes with the human brain perspective of things. The place isn’t as interesting as Trick Eye, but still it is alright for a short visit. There are two mirror mazes in the facility, which I was quite excited to try. The first maze is quite short, and there is still a bit of light to go around. The mirrors in the maze are no joke as they can really confuse you very much. It is quite obvious that if you do not see yourself right ahead of you, then you are not walking into the mirror, otherwise you are. But the problem is that all the walls around you are filled with mirrors, and thus you can see yourself literally everywhere. When you really come close to a mirror, your reflection will grow exponentially. =P So, what I did was that before I make a turn or was unsure about the space in front, I used my hand to feel for a solid object. XD SY was like laughing and deemed it as an act of cheating. He played a similar version in other countries, and thus dedicated his time to simply follow me / laughing / ensure my safety. =P I made out of the first one quite decently. For the second and longer one, SY advised me to just walk normally (but slowly) in order to experience the mirror maze with more fun. Alright, so I went in and omg the maze is significantly darker! I cannot even see what is in front of me. >.< I passed my phone to SY to capture a video of me surviving the maze. A couple of wrong turns here and there, some almost bang-wall situations, but yay I survived! =D SY was laughing at my noob level in going through such stuff. Aiya whatever, it is a good try for a first attempt ok? =P There was also someone else in the maze, but I am not sure who that is. There was a part where all the directions looked like they are long dark passageways (due to the reflection property), quite scary if someone were to be lost there in the middle of the night. Hmm.

At about 5.15pm, we finished the mirror house, and proceeded for a nice snack before leaving the place. We wanted some churros / waffles, but it turns out that the hot snacks are not available, and what’s left are pre-packed snacks, corn, noodles or ice-cream. Oh well, I got myself a vanilla soft cone and a small pre-packed Jeju Orange pie. The ice-cream is nice! It has a more milky taste to it (like Magnum kind of milk flavour as compared to the Mac counterpart), with some cookie dough bits. Was it nicer than Ben and Jerry’s Cookie Dough bits? I forgot. SY had a matcha ice-cream which he said had a very strong milky taste too. I am guessing that the milky taste is the base flavour of the ice-cream, any other flavour would just be additives. The counter was manned by a young lady, and she was washing / cleaning up the place after a day’s work. With the satisfaction of a small treat, we left the Jeju Mini Land. Oh wait, which direction would lead us back to Jeju? Ah, so were quite lost and lazy to search for the bus stops iteratively? Thus, SY asked one of the lady staff who was busy keeping umbrella shelters back into the attraction. After the help, we proceeded to the direction. SY seemed to be really confused about the direction and just settled down to the bus stop which showed the existence of bus 730. Thankfully, there was a sign / map near the bus stop that suggested a different direction, and we quickly proceeded to an alternative one that heads back to Jeju. The countryside view is so nice! In SG, all we see are buildings, dense roads and elevated heights everywhere. That quiet intersection allowed us to see the plain view of just the grass and the sky, with some farm houses. The people here are living a quieter life, is that really better than staying in an urbanised area? That varies for different people bah.

So that’s goodbye to Jeju countryside and the more ulu streets. After reaching the Intercity bus terminal, we started to walk and find a nice dinner location. Not many choices as SY seemed to be skipping quite a lot of BBQ and family restaurants as he did not have any cuisine in mind. That area is supposedly a busier part of Jeju due to the shopping facilities, and that is quite evident due to the larger number of cars as compared to the Topdong counterpart. Jeju seems to have a lot of shops relating to seafood, regardless whether it is for wholesales or restaurants. Quite a number of shops are selling Chinese cuisine too, probably catering to the China tourists. Jeju also has some rivers, but unfortunately they are all dried up (E.g. Byungmuncheon). We passed by some residential buildings along the way, and wow their carpark structure is amazing! There isn’t much of multi-storey carparks in SG, but there are re-fuelling facilities in the carpark! I am not sure whether those are catered strictly for residents or for public usage, but that level of convenience is awesome! In SG, petrol kiosks are separated from carparks or are situated in industrial parks. Interesting. =P The random walk continues all the way until about 7.30pm, where we settled down at a Korean restaurant.

The restaurant doesn’t have an English menu, and thus we are left go guess the Korean words on our own. Instead of blind guessing again like our first evening, we decided to check out the menu items one by one. It isn’t a lot of items as the menu is literally on a big board of the shop. The waiter seems to be surprised that we were checking out the items on the Internet, and asked us where we were form. After realizing we were from Singapore, he smiled and allowed us more time to decide on our food items. So apparently almost all the items on the main menu are soup-based, such as meat soups or stews. Since I had kimchi stew earlier in the morning, it would be wise to have a non-stew item. So I chose pork rib soup as my dinner. SY wanted something to do with beef, but was told that the order was not possible, and thus SY chose a spicy soup dish. I guessed that it had something to do with the guideline that the beef can only be ordered as an add-on to a big shared stew dish. The side dishes were served shortly after, and wow the items in this combination is really different from the other Korean restaurants! So usually there will be kimchi, pickles, etc. This one has more of the boiled options such as beansprouts, raw sliced onions, green chilli, and some small condiments to go along with the dishes. We were not sure what the boiled onions do, and started with the radishes and beansprouts first. A less-flavourful vegetable, a healthier choice for us. XD Soon after our dinner came, and our soup were served in hot stone bowls, accompanied by some brown rice in a separate bowl. The soup is simply delicious! It is quite plain at the start, but once the meat and mushrooms kick in, the soup becomes pleasantly saltier / sweeter. The rice is great too! We ordered an extra bowl of rice for sharing too. That is when I tried throwing in the boiled onions into the soup, and surprisingly the onion does not taste as sharp as expected! :D The soup dish costs 9k wons, which the serving size and taste is much more worth it than soups served in SG restaurants. Behind us, there was another pair of tourists which the same waiter served too. I think the waiter got their order wrong somewhere because when their food was served, the tourists were extremely confused about the food and said that was not correct, but thankfully they were nice enough to let it pass when the waiter volunteered to change the items. Such nice service! :D

We wanted to say goodbye to the waiter after we were done, but he was busy in another separate room mixing some rice for a group of customers. We slowly walked back to the accommodation facility, which I predicted that it will take about 45 minutes or something. To our surprise, we reached the correct area in just 20 minutes (^^). A very cooling night it was, and we talked about the fun parts we enjoyed in Jeju. The Jeju part of the grad trip is more fun than the Seoul one, probably due to me being accustomed to the culture in Korea. After going back, we rested, dried our clothes and finished up the unfinished kimbap from the previous day. I also ate my cold Jeju orange, a bland treat for the night, bringing an end to day 5 of the trip. =D

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If you would like to read more about my experiences, you may click on the links below. :)

Day 6: http://jellyunderthesea.blogspot.sg/2017/05/grad-trip-day-6.html
Day 4: http://jellyunderthesea.blogspot.sg/2017/06/grad-trip-day-4.html