Jeju part 1

I'm back from vacation! It was wonderful. I felt like I was in a tropical paradise, not Korea. 

This was our ferry. It was much nicer than I was expecting. I thought I was going to be on a little tug boat or something. Unfortunately we left Saturday night, the same night a typhoon was blowing through Korea. A boat is not the best place to be in that situation. At one point we couldn't even walk straight - we had to hold on to the wall to keep from falling over. I woke up a few times from all the rocking back and forth. But, we made it.

 Wind-blown hair

 This was the room we slept in. When we checked in they offered us a smaller room, so we ended up sleeping with only 20 other people instead of 200. We literally slept on the floor with squares that were supposed to be pillows. The funniest thing was all the other people slept in a line on one side of the room, and the 3 of us pretty much had the other half to ourselves. They were all lined up like sardines and we were spread out, taking up all kinds of space.

 

Dutch Blitz! Our entertainment. I won :)

Day 1: We got off the boat around 7 AM, got in a taxi, and fell asleep on the way to our hotel. Then we met Slyvia. She's the owner/receptionist/mom of the hotel. Every day we told her what we wanted to do and she helped us figure out the best way to do it and get there, got us buses and taxis, and she even took our picture on her camera every day before we left. So sweet. She let us check in early so we could shower and eat breakfast. It was raining, so we decided to take a submarine tour first.

 The sub

 So excited!

 Underwater

 Pretty coral

 

A scuba diver fed the fish right outside our window so we could see lots of them.

There was a man narrating everything, but he didn't speak English. He threw in a few words every now and then to make us feel included. He passed out suckers to the children, and to us. And he told us that he was a "single, handsome guy." I love that he wasn't able to tell us about the ocean, but he could tell us his relationship status.

 Nothing says island like palm trees and boats

 After the submarine we visited this waterfall. I forget the name, but it's famous.

These guys are all over the island. It used to be mostly women that lived on Jeju island, and they would dive and spear fish. I'm not sure why, but there weren't really any men. So they built a bunch of these statues to protect them.

Delicious lunch

Day 2: Beach day! This was my favorite. We literally laid on the beach for 7 hours. There was a sign that said no swimming because there weren't any lifeguards. We ignored it. The beach was pretty empty, which was nice. The sand was pretty and the water was really clear. It was so beautiful and relaxing.

 I spent the day reading a book and listening to the waves.

 We wanted to be on this sailboat.

 Lunchtime! We ate at a buffet. They had Korean, Chinese, and some American food. We got our money's worth :)

 We heart Jeju

 After lunch we went for a little stroll and saw these guys. I have no idea why there are penguins and seals living outside a restaurant in Korea, but there are...

Stay tuned for Jeju part 2 :)