Day 3 - May 12, 2019 – Seoul, South Korea

We were surprised how fast we have adjusted to the Korean time.  Still having a bit of jet lag also helped us to wake up around 6a and beat the breakfast crowd.  We have almost a whole day of exploring Seoul before flying to Jeju Island at 6p.

Our three destinations in Korea: Seoul, Jeju Island, Busan

We went back to Gwanghwamun to see the square and the two statues (Gojeong and General Li) and this time by metro.  We found a huge underground exhibit hall by chance just under the statues detailing the story and achievements of both Gojeong and General Li.  Gojeong is the emperor who is responsible for the creation of the modern day Korean language and the decision to stop using Chinese due to its difficulty for commoners to learn.  The scholar class strenuously opposed this move as this threatened their power and the Emperor had to work in secret.  The Korean language is basically a phonetic sound based language.  Every character is made up of parts that produce certain sounds.  Although they don't look like Chinese characters, they actually sound similar to Cantonese if you match the Korean words and their Chinese counterparts!  This may be another proof that the original Mandarin language is not today's Beijing dialect but Cantonese!  But I'm digressing.

Quite a dramatic and grand exit from metro station onto the Gwanghwamun Square

Statue of Emperor Gojeong with several of important inventions under his watch

Gwanghwamun Square in front of Gyeongbokgun.  Can you see the "Blue House" to the left of the palace?  That's the South Korean president's residence and seat of government

General Li's statue - Li is a famous navy war hero defeating the Japanese fleets countless times

 Coincidentally, we came at the right time to watch another changing of the guard ceremony.  This time we stayed much closer to the gate and saw everything up close, including seeing some guards who kept yawning!  He must had a rough late night of clubbing!!

The guard on the rightmost side could not stop yawning!

Having another go at the Changing of Guard ceremony.  This time - up close and personal

Second stop is Dongdaemun Cultural Complex which looks like a gigantic UFO flying saucer. Dongdaemun is a disappointment for us.  Maybe we went to the wrong spot but many shops were closed on Sunday and there wasn’t much in terms of food stalls.  Most were hard goods store in huge mall complex, selling same stuff.  Something else we noticed in Korea is that businesses in certain segments tend to congregate in similar areas.  Take music instruments – we walked into a non-descriptive multi-story building much like a public market only to discover the whole place is dedicated to music instruments like piano, guitar, horn, flute, etc.  This specialization concept extends to restaurants in a much deeper sense as there are pockets of areas just specializing in pork belly BBQ only, or beef BBQ, or seafood, or just hotpot!  This could be good or bad depending on how hungry you are and how desperate you want to eat certain cuisine as we would soon found out wandering around the Busan neighborhoods looking for beef galbi!

The Gwangjang market next door to our hotel was full of people and there were rows upon rows of food stalls inside hawking different specialty foods ranging from dumplings, noodles, fried fish cakes, rice cake, pastries, etc.  They also sell many local specialties like dried squid, dried persimmon, tangerine, chocolate coated tangerine perfect for gifts back home.  We filled our boots with whatever looked tasty before going back to pick up our luggage from the hotel and headed out to Gimpo Airport to fly to Jeju Island.

Dongdaemun Cultural Complex shaped like a giant spacecraft

We found this dumpling place in Gwangjang market run by a Chinese couple

Koreans love to eat octopus - LIVE!!!

Food scene in Gwangjang market

Fish shaped pastry stuffed with red bean paste - YUM!

Social media power - Stalls would advertise themselves as famous by posting Youtube pictures or TV interviews

Freshly made Gimbap - Korean sushi rolls with pickled veggies

Finally had the courage to taste the spicy rice cake - tteokbokki.  Quite spicy!

Koreans just love their Jeju Island!  We want to visit Jeju because it was nominated as one of the New 7Wonders of Nature in 2011.  Did you know Seoul to Jeju Island is the world’s busiest air route by far for many years?  There are close to 80,000 flights in 2018 between these two destinations!  In contrast, the second busiest route is Melbourne to Sydney with only 55,000 flights last year.  This is an astounding number of flights since it translates to 220 flights per day or 12 flights per hour or 1 flight every 5 mins for an 18 hour day everyday!  These are not small planes either.  They are all 737 or A320 size planes.  From what we observed, most visitors to Jeju were locals and only a few foreigners were visible.  There were young students doing school field trips, young couples in love to honeymoon, and whole multi-generational families doing a family trip together.  We are particularly impressed with the Jeju operational efficiency – Our luggage was already waiting for us as we walked off the plane!!  This really puts YVR and YYZ to shame!  Despite all that crowds, most people disappeared into thin air after exiting the airport.  We found the meeting place to wait for the rental car shuttle was almost deserted.

Picking up our car was quite an experience.  Routinely, even if I prepay, the rental car company would still demand to have my credit card information for any local charges.  Not so in Jeju.  I got no receipt and off we go!  Our little Kia compact car was quite beat up with lots of scratches and dinks but hey that’s even better as any new damages would not be visible!  Can’t complain about the cost as it only costed CAD 112 for 3 day of rental, all inclusive (including mandatory insurance).  We started driving south to Seogweipo via Jeju City.  Honestly, we both did not expect Jeju City to be so developed.  From the guidebook description, it sounded like a small village city but were we wrong!  There were highrises and neon signs everywhere and their public buses were especially aggressive.  It is a good thing we got the smallest car available since people tended to create a new lane even when there is no room to turn right.  Jeju is not a super big island.  It’s only 60 km long by 40 km wide.  Roads were not super wide nor fast as most of it is volcano.  Only small stretches were four lane highways.  The road from Jeju City to Swogweipo goes pass the base of Hallasan which is the highest peak on this island at almost 2000m.  Although we couldn’t see a thing in the dark, I could definitely feel the steep incline to climb and descend.

Google Map for some legal reasons cannot operate in Korea so I downloaded several other alternatives just in case.  The MAPS.ME app is good enough for our road guidance.  We arrived at our hotel in Seogweipo without incident and checked in to a big family room with WASHING machine!