Exploring Jeju Island, South Korea

We flew to the beautiful Jeju Island from Busan where we left our rental car number one in a parking hall for the days we intended to spend in Jeju. My korean language teachers told me that it is not very convenient to go around Jeju without a car so we rent a second car for the few days. We used Lotte Rental again for the car, and we started our trip by driving to our lovely airbnb close to Geumneung (금능) and Hyeopjae (협재) beaches and many great korean BBQ restaurants.

On the first day we took it easy and strolled at Halla Arboretum (한라수목원) looking at plants and turtles. As we are visiting during autumn, all the beautiful flowers are already gone, but it was a nice short walk nevertheless.

After that we headed to the digital art museum called Nohyeong Super Market. Prepare for another amazing bunch of photos. Loved the place!

We made a day trip to see many of the amazing waterfalls of Jeju, but I'll write more about those on a later post.

On the last day in Jeju we went to Jeju city just for a stroll and a look. The town was quiet as everyone was most likely at home celebrating Chuseok (추석), a mid-autumn harvest festival. We tried a local cold dish - green mandarin soba noodles. It was delicious!

I learned from my language exchange partner that on chuseok you are meant to eat songpyeon (송편). It is a rice cake that gets its name and apparently also its flavour from being steamed on top of pine needles. Unfortunately, even after searching for a long time, we didn't find any to try. I think it is something you make at home with family, and therefore is not sold in stores. A waiter in a restaurant told us to try a local market but there weren't any either.

This year because of chuseok, people also got Friday and Monday off work and celebrated a long weekend.

There were not enough days for us to have time to do and see everything we wanted to. One of the things I would've wanted to do if I had one day more, was take a day trip to the complete opposite side of the island. There are the amazing woman free divers, haenyeo, some already above the age of 80, who dive to collect seafood. Their diving practice is on the list of UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Definitely go see them and learn more about their history, if you travel to Jeju, and tell me how it was!