Stitch travels to...: 06/07/11

Note: Part I can be found here.

After lunch, we took a 40 minute bus ride (time to sleep while Mr. Kim attempt to keep us awake by yelling into the mic) to visit the next attraction.

The Teddy Bear Museum!

It was one of the main attractions on Jeju. There were many displays of bears in various settings, including...

Goong | 궁 | Princess Hours

Disneyland! Feeling right at home, but surrounded by bears.

And of course, the famous LV bear.

And the largest teddy bear in the entire place...

The locals (and a few tourists) were laughing when I took this picture. I get that a lot whenever I pluck the little guy out to take photos.

After spending about an hour there, we proceeded to our next attraction, The Glass Museum.

It's basically a place where they display all things glass.

Near the entrance, we saw a display of the yellow submarine.

Made entirely of glass!

World Map!

Even some of the walkways are made of glass!

Comfy. Comfy.

There're a few pretty cool displays, such as...

City lights at night. Lovely.

Orange Tree made of glass! Even the leaves and fruits are glass!

Glass flowers!

Glass Guitar with real strings!

House of horrors. I mean, the Magic Mirror Room.

Even the toilets were made of glass!

It's a real toilet. Sorry peeping toms and thomases, no see through!

We then passed by this display where tourists can throw a coin to wish for either good health, love and/or success.

I wished for good health... and missed.

Then you have folks like Chuwen's brother tossing all the coins accumulated thus far, wishing for everything. Haha!

We spent about an hour here.

We next made another unscheduled pit stop at one of the many Green Tea fields.

It was a lovely sight.

The other 3 of 6 Grad Trippers!

Our next stop was the (in)famous mysterious road (鬼路）.

Dunno why they call it the 'ghost road' literally translated, when it is in reality, a magnetic hill.

The knowledgeable Mr. Kim explaining to the grad-trippers how the optical illusion was created.

Basically, water here flows "upwards" and cars and buses can travel "uphill" with their engines switched off. All but an optical illusion.

This looks more like someone pissed in the middle of the road then water flowing "upwards".

Oh, and THERE IS FREE WIFI in this seemingly desolate place! Hahaha. How cool is that!

We have finally reached the last destination of our packed day, Yongdaum Rock (Dragon Head Rock).

Visiting this attraction during sunset is perfect. I took some of the nicest photos here.

Mr. Kim orientating us to our present location.

It's called the 'Dragon's Head Rock' because there was one rock in particular that looks just like a dragon's head.

But I was too preoccupied with the sunset photo opportunities.

Warm in the sun (:

And I simply love the below three shots:

Yihui looking into the sunset.

Peck looking at the plane, and into the sunset.

Audry seated high atop a rock!

We walked past these Jeju diving obasan (okay, that's Japanese for aunties, there's a proper term for them, but I forgot liao.)

I call them the diving aunties because these folks can dive to the seabed to harvest seafood, and can remain submerged for 2-3 minutes each dive. I can't even keep my head submerged for 10 seconds! So I'm impressed.

Mr. Kim got us some (cooked!) fresh octopus for us to try.

It was damn nice and yummy!

We spent about 20-25 minutes around the area and headed to dinner. Not before I took one last photo...

Feeling safe being protected by the giant Jeju guardian deities.

Dinner was the last activity for the day.

It was supposed to be a mini-imperial dinner set.

The sunset outside the restaurant was lovely.

So were the puppies across the restaurant.

After dinner, we took a short walk around the shopping district to pick up some souvenirs as this will be the last night we'll be spending in Jeju.

Tomorrow will be back in Seoul and won't be as hectic!

Day 4 was packed with so many activities that I need two posts to talk about it! We covered up to 7 activities worth of mentioning!

Jeju was definitely one of the highlights of the trip for me. In fact, it is currently one of the 28 finalists to be selected as the New 7 Wonders of Nature, though I have not been to the any of the other 27 sites, Jeju is definitely a very lovely place to visit. It's little wonder why many dub it "The Honeymoon Island".

Okayy, I think I should stop sounding like the Jeju Ambassador.

Anyhoo, we got up bright and early to visit Seongsan Sunrise Peak.

Unfortunately, the weather was slightly overcast and it drizzled lightly, so no sunrise. In any case, we were too late to catch the sunrise. Haha! We arrived around 8:30AM local time.

All over the island, we saw this set of statues time and again...

They are the Jeju deities that watch over the island. Apparently, one of the things locals pray for are for more boys to be born. This is because during times of war, many of the males on Jeju Island were conscripted and sent to war, leaving many of the women behind.

Mr. Kim explaining the legend of the two deities.

Another thing we encountered often was these set of poles...

According to our guide, these poles were traditionally the doors to apartments. In ancient times, the folks on Jeju had no doors to mark entrances or doors. Instead, they use 3 poles to signify different things. I can't remember exactly how many poles signify what, but I do remember the three things it meant were:

1. Welcome to visit.

2. There are young kids or babies home, therefore not convenient for visiting.

3. Nobody's home (not very sure about this one).

Our guide then bought us to the side of the peak to show us the caved-in area. It was so pretty.

It was here that I realised I left Stitch on the bus! :( so all of the photos I took here was without Stitch in it, and it was one of the rare places where I actually appear in photos. Haha!

Mr. Kim gave us some time to take photos here before bringing us back to the base area of the peak.

3 of 6 Grad Trippers on the tour!

We were given approximately 40-45 minutes to walk about and a few of us (basically those who can and are able to climb) decided to scale the peak!

So the walk up begins...

After what seemed like 10 minutes, we got to this point...

and realised that we weren't even at the halfway point! Thus we quickened our pace! We went up so quickly that we reached the peak with 20 minutes to spare! Leaving us just enough time to head back down.

The view from the top didn't disappoint.

Top of the World (peak only)!

I was so darn breathless by the time I reached the peak I thought I was gonna pass out!

View from the top, crater of the now dormant volcano.

On our way back down, we went past this provision shop selling local souvenirs. Leo and Peck decided to grab something with 7 minutes to spare! The souvenirs can be customised to include a personal message, and thus require more time.

By the time the shop lady was done, we were already 3-4 minutes past the time we were supposed to gather back on the tour bus. We ran down the remaining half of the slope down, and were the last ones back on the bus. Haha.

We next head to take a short ferry (not the Penguin Ferries that ferry chao recruits to tekong) to take the Yellow Submarine ride.

The ferry terminal was pretty packed (no doubt with other tour groups, there was SA Tours too).

Queuing to board the ferry.

Boarding the ferry.

Upper deck of the ferry. It was pretty cold!

After a 10 minute ride, we saw the yellow submarine from a distance...

It's really yellow.

We then disembarked to a platform while waiting to board the submarine. The waves were pretty choppy and the entire platform was rather shaky, causing a few people to feel more seasick than ever. Even Leonard felt a little sea sick.

Boarding the submarine.

It was damn narrow...

Then I remember my elder sis saying that she felt a little claustrophobic when aboard. I didn't feel that way though. Not sure about the others but I'm sure there were a few folks that continue feeling seasick.

When we finally submerged, the view was a little disappointing as the waters were a little milky...

Milky. Milky.

"I can't see anything. Boo."

Then for the cheap thrill of the ride, a diver came circling the sub with food so all the fishes came for us to see and take photos...

Wah lau, like a ghost in a horror drowning movie sia.

Fish. Fish. Fish.

We also saw some corals and sea weeds.

Corals.

Seaweed. I think.

The ride was over in about 30-35 minutes. Then came the mother of all cheap thrills that top the above cheap thrill.

As the sub releases the pressure to emerge from the depths, bubbles were released.

And the announcer actually said, "Look for our last surprise, if you look out now, you'll see snow!!" in an uber excited tone. I nearly fainted, not from seasickness, but from the lameness.

After the ferry ride back, we proceeded to our next activity on the itinerary (and it was only 11AM in the morning) Horseback riding (how else can you ride a horse anyway?).

But before that, we made a short unscheduled pit stop to some random mandarin orange field, where half the oranges we saw were fake and for purely decorative purposes.

The real oranges we saw were rotten, thus in the photo above, you can't see any oranges, real or fake.

But the real purpose of this pit stop was so that we can bring business to the shops selling the famous Jeju orange flavoured chocolates.

The top half is orange flavored while the bottom half is chocolate.

Meanwhile, our guide was boasting how good he is in the local community that he could get us to visit the field free-of-charge, as opposed to us paying the usual 1,000 won entrance fee. Gee.

The horse yard was just a 3 minute bus ride away. When we got off the bus, you could smell the horses before you could see them.

We had to wear red vests so that the horses can recognise that we are humans and will not turn hostile unnecessarily.

Russell. The cutest boy on the trip. More on him to come!

Not sure what's the reason why they made us wear the ridiculously-looking cowboy hat though. The only reason I could think of is to shield our head from the sun, which itself is a lame reason.

It was a short slow ride up a path, and a gallop around a small track. We had to constantly keep our backs straighten when the horse was galloping so we won't hurt our back.

The horses were damn smart too! They moved off without cue once you were on their backs, and when they reached the track area, they started galloping without the minders hushing them to do so.

Finally, it's time for lunch!