Friday, January 16, 2015

The Land Of The Morning Calm: Part II

Thursday, 25 December 2014

We were given a morning call at 6 am and were at the lobby before 7. We drove to a restaurant for a simple Korean breakfast (porridge for me) before continuing on to a small shop selling orange produce (sweets and bottled vitamin capsules in orange flavour). Jeju has a very fertile land and a balmy weather and the islanders take advantage of this by planting a lot of citrus fruits. Then we continued on to Seongsan Ilchulbong Peak (Sunrise Peak). After Mr Piao had paid for admission, we walked up, wait, struggled up the trail but the strong sea wind made it very challenging. The peak was once an island before it was connected to Jeju-do from the washed sand and gravel.

We didn’t go all the way to the top and turned back half-way. We followed the trail and went down to where the women sea divers were (I’m not sure if there’s any diving in winter! Surely not!) and spent about fifteen minutes before climbing up again and admiring the view from another area. Then we returned to the bus.

We drove on to Seongeup Folk Village for a close-up of the traditional Jeju life back then. Among the few that I recall is that Jeju is abundant with three things: rocks, wind and women. Back then, womenfolk did all the work while the menfolk did absolutely nothing. Outrageous huh. We also looked at the traditional gate (three bars and each bar can be removed to indicate if there was anyone at home, who were at home etc), traditional dwelling, the millstones pulled by horses... We were then given a brief info on the local produce: horse bone grains and honey. I didn’t care to be ripped off so left empty-handed.

We then had lunch at a restaurant and the four of us were given two plates of vegetarian rice and two bowls of seafood ramen. The rest had meat I suppose.

After lunch, we drove off to Seopjikoji, the filming location for the mini series All In (I believe I missed this drama). Anyway, the church in the drama had been destroyed by a typhoon and in its place is now a newly constructed colourful gingerbread house (admission applicable). We walked to the gingerbread house but didn’t enter. Then we turned back and hurried back to the bus. It was a blustery afternoon alright.

After that we drove to Jeju Glass Castle, a large art glass park with glass arts produced by professional glass artists/sculptors from the Czech Republic and Italy. We were first greeted with a large beanstalk of the Jack and the Beanstalk tale before walking along the outdoor glass corridor. We also entered the Magic Mirror Room where you can see images of yourself from the various mirrors. Then we continued our tour of the outdoor park with its glass Cinderella pumpkin coach, giant teddy bear, flower beds, bridge... it’s amazing how ingenious they are at attracting tourists. On my previous trip with Mummy, we visited more natural outdoor attractions.

We left after about 40 minutes and drove to The Teddy Bear Museum, passing Dokkaebi Road (mysterious road) en route. Vehicles passing this road can seemingly roll uphill when the engines are switched off when in reality this phenomenon is due to an optical illusion. We reached The Teddy Bear Museum barely half an hour later and as its name suggests, is home to hundreds of teddy bears and friends. There’s a safari area with tigers and rhinos, an overhead aquarium with floating teddy bears and friends (even a mer-teddy!), framed teddies, teddy bears in portraits... At the end of it, we emerged into the gift shop and yup, you guess it, the prices are eye-watering. Anyway, Mr Piao had already told us that seeing it was Christmas Day, we would be getting a complimentary gift from the museum. We left after almost an hour there.




The Jeju Ice Gallery, an indoor ice sculpture gallery with various ice sculptures, was our next stop. The most popular attraction there is the Ice Slide – even I took two turns there! After the tour, we also tried our hands at ice sculpting. The instructor showed us how to make a drinking glass with stem. He must have taken all of three minutes to knock the ice off the edges and smoothing the surface and moulding the ice to the shape. Ha, it always looked so much easier than doing it! After that, we washed our finished products and drank some orange juice from our self-made products. We left after an hour there.

The packed day continued with a stop at the Trick Art Museum with its optical illusion art. It reminds me of Penang 3D Trick Art Museum. We spent half an hour there before proceeding up to the 5D theatre at the next level for the Poseidon show. Well, it was Korean so I couldn’t understand head or tail of it.

We finished off the day with dinner before we returned to the hotel. Some in our group ventured out later with Yen to do some window shopping. The kids went; I stayed in.


To be continued