Yeah, you should go to Jeju if ever in South-Korea
Probably the worst headline I've had so far, but if you are fond of raw nature and you are in the area - check it out.
When searching for options and information on Jeju before leaving there wasn't much to find that really gave the answers I searched for, and the questions others had was how much time is needed, and how to get a driver.
How much time can be answered quite easily, you can do some in one day, but the island is too big to really get to more than one side in a day. We choose the east side and "stole" the intineary from a tour page, got this translated to korean and gave it to our driver. In other words, there's lots to see on the west (and partly north/south) side, and we could easily have spent much more time on the east as well, but time is limited when you're only away for a week.
Our driver was mr Soon Jo Yoon, we contacted global taxi some weeks before we left, got a phonenumber from them and called him. It was a bit difficult understanding what his mail was, but we got a reply that he'd pick us up at the airport at the requested time, and surely enough he was there. We asked for price, but never got any more replies from him. Seems to be the standard when reading other pages as well.
Price was 150.000 for an 8 hour day, and an additional 20.000 pr hour after this. I'm not 100% sure if we paid for his lunch or not, but he took us to a black pork BBQ as requested and ate with us. Our cost for either two or three people was still lower than two people in Seoul. This is also where we were shown how to eat korean-style, which really brought out the tastes in the food much better than when we'd just stuffed our faces with a random piece.
Labyrinth
Our first stop was a hedge maze, which probably was more for children than for adults and didn't take many minutes to get through. Had my GoPro attached to my chest to create a video of running through it and I even made some zombie-noises, but annoyingly enough there were some bad blocks on the memory card, and this ruined several movieclips I took with this camera, including this film. Thankfully I had my main cam as well and got some decent shots with that, but not of the maze. Supposedly "few people make it through in less than 15minutes", I am not really sure if I believe that to be true, as you even get a map of the whole labyrinth before you start.
Manjang Cave
Next stop was just a few minutes from the maze where a massive lava cave had been created some thousand years ago, about one kilometer in before we had to turn around. Thankfully we'd taken our jackets along and this was the sole place on our entire trip where they were actually needed.
Korean folk village
Well, to be honest this was not the most inspiring stop on the trip. It was very similar to every other cultures old villages, a few houses, a millstone and that was more or less it. If you've never sat foot in such a place, give it a go, if you have seen similar places other places in the world and have limited time, skip it.
Seopjikoji
Our next stop was much better, the cliffs on the far east of the island reminded a lot of Iceland. At the end of the pathway there was a viewpoint towards Seongsan Ilchulbong as well. On the way there they'd surpringly enough set up a massive gingerbread house where they sold soft-ice, which was more ice that what we're used to calling softice at home (or any other place in the world).
Seongsan Ilchulbong
Our main "must see" on the list was Seongsan Ilchulbong which is among "7 natural wonders of the world", a peninsula created by a vulcano about 5000yrs ago, with an excellent pathway up to the top at 180m which also offered a nice view inland. Again annoyingly enough my camera didn't record my movie at the top so I can't bring home either a surround view of the crater or the timelapse of the tourists flocking to the top. This was also an easy way to see that Jeju really is the tourist place for koreans. In about 30mins we spent at the top we saw one other non-asian up there, but with the close proximity and numerous flights from Seoul, Busan and probably all other korean cities with something resembling an airport it's an easy desitination for them. It also provides a different world where nature and not concrete is the dominant.
Sangumburi Crater
There was still some time left, and instead of driving us to one of the rather strange exhibitions that we'd written up as options, mr Yoon recommended another crater-park which was partly on the way to the airport. This is actually where I was able to get the best pictures of the day, but a nice sunset does of course help a lot. (Both the picture below and the first in this post)
Flights
The flight to/from Jeju/Seoul takes about one hour, the planes run all the time. My guess is that there's more than one plane every 15 minutes during peak hours from Seoul. If you go there and stay for a day or two it's probably easy to do without more than handluggage which makes it very smooth. Getting to Gimpo airport we used bus 3000 which cost 7000 KRW and ran every 40-50mins. The bus took about 45-60mins getting there, of course depending on where you get on. Our stop was Yeoksam, one stop away from the more familiar Gangnam. The airport in Jeju was however also something worth mentioning, everything went fine, but it was packed with people and the noise level was surprisingly high. Incheon is a nice, quiet place compared to this.
