An early morning as our flight was scheduled for 8.35am. Breakfast and we packed up a bit before leaving home at 6.40am. On hindsight, we should have moved out earlier - reached the Gyeongbakgung SMRT ten minutes later and it was 7am before we caught our train as decided another route was more efficient (from Seoul Station where there was an Airport Rail heading both Gimpo and Incheon). Two changes of trains later at 7.35, we were in the Airport Rail line and at Gimpo in 15mins!
A quick checkin got us in with 20mins to spare. Flight was full, with many people carrying golf clubs. Turns out Jeju was a golf haven. The flight was supposed to be just over an hour but either due to air traffic or something, we circled round for a while before permission to land. It was foggy all the way down, and raining at Jeju when we landed. Short walk to luggage collection then headed out to find out how to get to our hotel. At the time, a lot of uncertainty but now we know better. One option was Airport Transfer Bus 600 which goes to a series of nearby hotels, then change to cab. These series of hotels are not that far, would have cost about 10,000won to our place. Instead when we reached there, we were told by the person there to take bus 100 to bus terminal and change to another bus which would get us to Sangmo-ri. It was a few stops for bus 100 (cost 1000won) and an hour trip by bus (costing 3000won) to Hamo-ri. We took all the way to the bus terminal as Jeju doesnt look like the kind of place you could drop off anywhere and just catch a cab - it was quite secluded even within the town areas. We ended up somewhere in a nearby town where is was drizzling and walked along the road before getting a cab about 10 mins later.
With that we were on our way to the Songak Resort where we had booked a room. We arrived near 12pm and forgot checkin is normally 2pm but managed to get rooms sorted out... except it smelled of very strong coffee. Went down and asked for change of room - fortunately the hotel manager speaks quite a bit of English - and went out for lunch as it would take a while to sort out room cleaning, etc. Downgraded from a 4th floor to 2nd floor but it was a nicer experience. We had planned to extend our stay here on the third day already except for that while watching tv that evening, we found out there was an impending typhoon coming Jeju's way so we planned to change our tickets back to 26 Aug (Sunday)!
Internet in hotel was provided via a network called iptime (I saw several wifi devices on the first floow) which we used because for some reason, 4G wasn't connecting in our room - it does almost everywhere else on Jeju where there's civilization... Except the hotel room.
My Canon S100 had developed the same lens error it did last year and I was rather pissed about it. Reading more, I found out that it affected a batch of S100 cameras and this was a seriously bad time for it to happen again. What's the point of having the best compact camera in the world if it doesn't work when one needs it?
Lunch was next door, wife quite happy to eat at the tonkatsu place so I was naturally happy about it but not before we spent more than half hour in the other direction searching for food and finding two coffee shops that did not serve food. Uncle speaks relatively good English too and quite happy to entertain us. In fact we probably spent about half hour more in the shop while wife and him exchanged Chinese/Korean/Japanese words (on paper, it seemed like the different languages shared more commonalities than the spoken language). Cutlet took 20mins to prepare, a fact that the owner will always warn his customers. It was good but similar to my experience in Japan, Tonkichi's katsu in Singapore has spoilt me :-p
It had been a long day of travel and the rain was getting to us. It was 2.30pm when we finished our food and we went back room to rest. That evening, we would walk along the coast enjoying the huge waves, but not reaching the other town. Instead we turned back after 15mins and headed towards one of the other shops beyond Uncle Tonkatsu (which was just next to our staying place). Most of the other shops sold fish and seafood as main ingredients - enough of that - and a Google Translate of Pork enabled us to communicate that we wanted to find a place to eat meat, sent us to the other end of town ( about 300metres, less than 10mins slow walk). Seriously, this is just a short road that can be covered by car in 30secs from one stretch till the other.
Dinner was a place that sold horse meat apparently, in addition to the usual fare of black pig which we chose instead. I added a Hite (local beer) and paid 34,000won total. It was worth it! The pork came in five large slices (which is to be cut up with the scissors) and owner helped show us cooking and how to eat it for the first 3 slices - together with two kinds of leaves, kimchi (I am beginning to eat everything with kimchi also, finding it weird if there's no kimchi on the table). Too full after that! And a slow walk back to hotel, where we watched a bit of tv and accidentally switched to a channel about preparations about an impending typhoon which led us to Google for it. Planning to cut short the trip.
After taking bus 100 at Jeju, arrived at intercity bus terminal.
Finally at the Hotel
Decided to have lunch at this place after walking around for half an hour and finding only coffee shops. This shop is just next to our hotel :-
(click for 
and good seats nearer the front too plus only two seats next to window and aisle. Crowded aircraft, full but we were together still, for another 3.5 hours travel to Seoul. Watched a movie which wife said was good but both of us falling asleep. Managed to get in an hour before touchdown.
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