Touring Jeju Island in a bus your grandma pimped out

The next day I opted to stray from my usual solo touring and take a day trip of the western side of Jeju with a tour group run by my guesthouse. As I was looking into getting around Jeju-do before, it seemed difficult for foreigners without a car to get around to a lot of places by themselves due to limited public transit and directions and schedules in only Korean. I'd rather see some awesome things sprinkled with a few so-so things, than to get a headache trying to see 1-2 awesome things on my own.

The bus pulled up for me to get on early that morning, as it was stopping at a few other guesthouses and hotels to get other tour members. This is a classic Korean chartered bus experience, which is always decorated in similar fashion - that is, the fashion of your grandma. They ALWAYS have frilly curtains (check out the pearl drop lined velvet curtain up front by the driver!) and head rest has lacy doily edging. I've been on a few of these buses last year, and I've seen many on Korean variety shows, so I feel comfortable making this generalization.

Bus curtains in all their purple glory

These are lights that line the ceiling. Party bus!

On the way, we saw a big group of these little figures, which I think are smaller models of famous older statues found throughout Jeju Island, which was once it's own kingdom like Hawaii.

Supposedly this opening at the top of the cave is the shape of a dragon, who lived here in local legend. I can't really see it.

Another part of the natural park, a cultural village.

Bird land: albino peacock? Not sure.

Peacocks just chill with ostriches, yes?

The water garden was my favorite part of this park.

The next place on the tour was maybe one of my favorites. There are several trails around Jeju-do, ranging in length, that you can walk/hike and they interconnect at various points. They're called Olle trails (like "ol-ay"), and we walked a short one along the coast with a view of a few small uninhabited islands.

I forget the official name of this, but it's shaped like a body lying face-up in the water - head on the left, body in the middle, feet on the right.

The shore was really rocky - more volcanic rocks.

I loved this view.

And this one.

After that, we drove to a bonsai garden where we also had a buffet lunch. Korean buffets are waaay better than Golden Corral. All the food there was really nice, and I could try a few traditional Jeju dishes all at once. No pics because I was too hungry and forgot.

I don't know who put the hat on him, but I like it.

Tornado of koi: Koi-nado?

Jeju version of "The Thinker"

I'm a sucker for a waterfall

Then we went to Mount Sanbang, where you climb over 700 steps to get to a Buddhist shrine and a temple. There were some steps, then a stretch of flat walking, then more steps, so it didn't feel as hard as that would seem.

Almost to the top, but already quite the view

There is water you can drink, which is supposed to be the tears of some god/goddess, and your wish will be granted, but it looked kind of brown, so I politely declined.

Huuuuuge golden Buddha at the temple on the way down. I don't know if you can see in this picture, but the statue has a very thin, curly mustache.

Mount Sanbang rising from behind the temple buildings.

Not sure who this goddess is, but I liked the roof of the building behind her with the stone pagoda to the left.

Our final destination was the one I was most looking forward to, Cheonjeyeon Waterfall. There are three levels, one of which we could only see from a distance. The spectacular one was the second part we went to:

I love this so much.

The best part was that they were filming for what I believe was an Indian variety show there, so 3-5 feet from where I stood to take the above picture was this:

I really hope I got into at least one take of this.

I was excited for the 3rd level of the waterfall because I had seen it in one of my favorite Korean variety shows, 1 Night 2 Days. It only appears when there has been a heavy rain, and they were showing pictures of it while they were traveling to the place and it was amazing. But first, a warning:

It's a killer.

In both the variety show and in my trip, we were prepared to turn the corner to see the waterfall in all it's glory...

...but there had been no heavy rain. However, the blue/green color comes from a special algae, so it was still really beautiful.

It took a while to drive back to the city where I was staying, since Jeju is a pretty big island, so I just found a restaurant near my hostel and got some dumpling soup, then walked around a few streets, since Jeju is more country than bustling Seoul. I found something interesting:

So many rip-offs of brands in Korea, and you choose K-Mart?

I had to catch a plane the next morning, so I didn't have time to go anywhere else before I went to the airport, so I had a chill morning before I had to go.

Lunch in the airport - handmade rice ball filled with seasoned beef.

Bye Jeju! I'll be back.