Purplelake: Day 6 - May 15, 2019 – Jeju Island

This is our last day on Jeju Island and we have the morning to mop up some key sights before flying out to Busan. Most of the sights are near Seogwipo itself. Among them is Jeongbang, a waterfall that’s famous as the only waterfall on the island falling directly into the ocean. We arrived at 8:30a and were totally shocked to see dozen of tour buses with their high school students patrons already jamming up the small attraction. After a quick photo, we headed to Oedolgae Rock which is a very scenic sea stack used as backdrop for the Dae Jang Geum drama. Again, there were tons of tour buses and Korean students already but this park is big enough to accommodate us all. Hiking around the cliff offers different views of this beautiful sea stack.

Walking down to see Jeongbang Fall

Seogwipo harbour front. Notice another makeshift seafood eatery on the beach at the lower bottom

This small place is just swamped with high school kids.

Oedolgae Rock

This is another filming location for Dae Jang Geum

Wow! Dae Jang Geum in person!

Korean style rest spot

Very scenic spot

The disappointment came when we drove to our next destination – the Mysterious Road, near Jeju City. Mysterious Road is famous for making cars moving uphill against gravity. We gave it a try but did not see the effect as claimed.

Our flight to Busan took less than 1 hr gate to gate. Going from Busan Airport to the city again is easy using the metro. We found many of Busan’s (and later Seoul’s) metro stations have an extensive underground shopping street and connecting network with different exits. Many of these underground networks resemble a mini-city stretching both directions for kms! Some even connect two metro stations together underground! This knowledge would come in extremely handy when it starts to rain hard during our last two days in Korea.

We got a big surprise when we checked into our hotel. We were upgraded to a suite which has two big TVs with a jet tub. The hotel managers were also very friendly and explained to us all the nearby attractions and shopping districts. The hotel is equipped with laundry machines free for us to use. Apparently, our hotel is in the Nampo area which is next to several major shopping districts and food streets. We explored around the neighborhood and were impressed by the amount of commercial activities. There is an market just for second hand goods, an market for fresh produce, for fresh meat, for seafood, and household goods, etc., not to mention areas for specialized cuisines like pork belly BBQ, seafood, hot pots, beef BBQ, etc. It seems every single square inch of space is jammed with commerce! We settled on beef BBQ for dinner after all the searches. We also had the chance to try one of Busan’s specialty street food, pan fried flat donut stuffed with nuts and seeds as seen on youtube.

Seafood restaurant with live seafood tanks

Busan shopping streets

Busan is famous for its fish cake

Our bedroom in the upgraded suite

It came with a fancy hot tub

With two TVs - once facing the sitting area and one facing our bed

After dinner, we went up to the Observation Deck at the Lotte Department Store. The top 3 floors of this building is built into a garden format with the top floor having a panoramic view of Busan night scenes. Busan is beautiful in the evening with all the bridges lighted up in changing colors.