Korea Travelogue: Day 1 - Hallasan and Black Pork BBQ
Day 1 Itinerary (Part 2)
The Forest Hostel (Accommodation)
Mt Halla/Hallasan
Black Pork Street
Hi~ Omg it took uberly long for me to edit all the pictures and even then we are still on Day 1 only *instant mental breakdown* T.T Anyway you can refer back to this post for the first half of the day's journey.
Choice of our accommodation for 2 nights was The Forest Hostel which is located in Jeju-si. Jeju Island is separated into two halves - Jeju-si and Seogwipo. Seogwipo is in the southern part of Jeju Island and that is where all the major tourist attractions are which makes it the more popular choice for tourists to search for accommodation.
However, in consideration of my friend Hyunju's late evening flight from Seoul to Jeju that day, we decided to stay in the Jeju-si half of the island because of the close proximity to the airport and also because we were not planning to rent a car to drive on our own (We hired a driver the next day to take us to all the tourist attractions. This will be in the next entry :D) since I was the only one with a driving license and I was not confident on driving on the left hand side of the road :/ Better to be safe than sorry.
Anyway I am very ashamed to say that this is the only picture I have of my double room at The Forest Hostel HAHAHA! We had arrived there at around 1pm, checked-in, left our bags at their storage area and headed off to the tourist information centre to catch the free shuttle bus up to Mt Halla or Hallasan as part of a Winter Festival organized by the Jeju Tourism Organization (JTO). Obviously this will not be available anymore when my entry is published but okay, you can pray that it'll be organized again this winter perhaps? LOL #sorry
No matter how tired we are, there is always time for a wefie!
Kyyyyaaaaaa!~ Finally reached Mt Halla/Hallasan after 45 minutes on the bus and was greeted by this sea of white snow :D Our decision to come here instead of going to a ski resort back in Seoul was because 1. this is a free event and we thought we'd save money by using the sleds/toboggans provided 2. YOLO - none of us had visited Hallasan before.
But sadly, nothing is free here. You have to bring your own sleds/toboggans, food stalls only ran for a certain timing by the organizers and there was a small 'convenience store' run by the staff working at the park which had nothing but cup noodles/ramen and candy O.O
Omg it was so shocking for us because we had expected food tents to be set up (yeah it was... just that we arrived past their operational hours wtf) and obviously no sleds/toboggans were available for rental. Moral of the story? Don't be too kiam and just spend the money to go to a ski resort xD
Since we were already there we just decided to bear with the hunger and just milk the opportunity of having to take pictures in the snow. Free one, cannot hiam too much really lol.
These are all brought by the people who came. Apparently they sell those plastic toboggans at Lotte Mart too (I saw hahahah!). Could only look on enviously at them having fun playing in the snow. Here's the photo zone experience as advertised on the event page.
You can see how enthusiastic we were in taking photos non-stop that day lol. Partly also because it was only Day 1 of our trip.
There were a lot of cute cuddly kids around having fun in the snow. Look at this cutie of mixed ethnicity below! Everyone of us was stalking him and secretly taking pictures of him LOLOL!
We left after roaming and camwhoring for over an hour by walking down to the nearest bus stop... 20 mins away OTL Honestly it was hell walking down in that cold weather (still not accustomed yet) and knowing that the bus only came at a certain timing (FOL) left us super tired when we reached the bus stop at the foot of the hill.
Please check the bus timings if you can. Else you can head to the tourist centre there to ask them for timings - that's what we did! If you asked for my opinion whether Hallasan is worth going, I'd say no. Unless you're there specially to hike, I'd say spend your time elsewhere on the island really.
Made it back to Jeju-si after an hour or so on the squeezy bus. Changed buses to get back to Dongmun Rotary which is where our hostel is located and we all headed to the market in search of food. Super famished by then and it was still some time before Hyunju and her friend arrived in Jeju so we really needed to fill up our tummies.
I think the location of our hostel is really fantastic! Food is easily available everywhere wheeeeeee~
Ordered a portion of tang su yeok to share among us.
Very enthusiastic staff lol. He was posing for another tourist oops.
This humongous portion is only KRW5,000! The rest of them went to order other food such as eomuk and also hotteok! Yay to finding hotteok easily in Korea :D
Hotteok 호떡
There is also another market beside it so if you want to buy the Jeju oranges/fruits, you can get them here as well.
The street leading up to The Forest Hostel (green building). I will save my review for this guesthouse once I've concluded the Jeju portion of my travelogue so please stay tuned for that :)
After we had met up with Hyunju and her friend Sunmi, we headed out to what is literally dubbed 'Black Pork Street' as you can see in the sign above for dinner. You can just turn left upon exiting The Forest Hostel's guesthouse and walk straight ahead.
Hwaro Hyang 화로향
Address: 제주특별자치도 제주시 관덕로15길 27 or try this link
We let Hyunju decide what to order - black pork samgyupsal!! - and the food there was really yummy! I won't go into further details on the food but let the pictures do all the talking! :D
Everyone had a selfie stick incl my good friend here hahaha! It's mandatory to bring it out in Korea (just kidding! >_<) And here you see Stella totally judging Hyunju lolol.
Thanks to the selfie stick, we managed to take a wefie!
Our Korean friends cooked the meat for us hehe. Actually, it's also polite for the youngest to cook for the older people and since Sunmi is the youngest there.... hehehe!
Hyunju cooked for us too hahah. I basically sat there and stoned while the rest cooked the meat because I was too exhausted from the day's activities.
I'm sorry to say that I don't remember how much the bill was because it's been 3 months since I came back but it was one of the more reasonable places to have black pork BBQ along that row of stores. The store was filled with a ton of people and even when we exited the restaurant, there were people queuing outside to enter.
After that we headed to Ediya Coffee which was just round the corner of the main road for coffee because... it was damn sad to just head back to the guesthouse to sleep then xD The night was still young~
Coffee came courtesy of Hyunju because we had paid for hers and Sunmi's portion at dinner. Don't you find it funny how the Koreans like to add whipped cream to EVERY single drink? Lol.
I settled for a cup of cappuccino just to stay awake (barely). It feels really nice to have a warm drink during the cold winter.
We headed back to the guesthouse to rest for the day afterwards and.. I had a really fitful sleep. Guess I was pretty tired out too from the long day D:
Anyway, the next day was filled with a ton of activities in Jeju island so stay tuned for that! I'm going to edit the pictures now lol.
Annyeong~