Trip to Jeju Day 1: A Very Rainy Day

Korea! We have arrived.

The short flight from Shanghai to Jeju was almost uneventful - except at some point of the trip we got into some sort of an air pocket and got shaken to the core.  Upon arrival things developed reasonably well - bout 45 minute wait at the passport control, then picked up baggage, figured out, with the help of an information desk clerk, where to find the shuttle to the car rental place, and then, finally got into the car rental. All in all - took us about an hour and forty minutes - we arrived around noon local time, and by 1:45 were in the car.

Now, let's name some of the negatives.  The car we got (although we noticed it only later) is an old Kia K3. And by old, I mean, 141000 kilometers (somewhere around 88K miles). It has scratches and dents everywhere, and the idle goes from 500RPM to 1000RPM and back all the time.   That's number one. Also, the free GPS that they supposedly had - all in Korean, so not helpful.

Our somewhat beaten up Kia K3 ready for the trip to start.

Number two: navigation. Per instructions from the car rental place we installed Naver on our phones. It has issues. First, it does not understand street addresses entered in English. Second, it needs wi-fi access to actually set up the maps. There is a way to download maps for off-line use, but in an app that does have nice English UI, the list of maps is in Korean, and figuring out which map is Jeju requires pattern matching skills I, apparently, do not possess.  Olga got the rental place clerk to set the app for us on both phones. 

But these issues pale in comparison to the real problem: it is raining cats and dogs, and then more cats and more dogs.  We arrived in the pouring rain, and the pouring rain isn't going anywhere.  

What to do?

We ask ourselves this question as we sit in the car on the parking lot of the rental place, and go through our options. The listed negatives are all first world problems compared to what could have gone wrong, and - as we found out late - what HAD gone wrong for other people coming to RE'2019. So, we can go to the hotel, but it is just a bit early (check-in is at 3pm), and we feel like if we do check into the hotel, we will  collapse in our room, and there goes Saturday the same way our Friday went.  

So, we ask ourselves: where can we go, where rain is not a concern?  Museum sounds nice, but we don't know much about local museums.  But caves.... Surely, the rain does not affect one's enjoyments of a cave?

And so, we plot the course to Manjanggul Cave, Jeju's largest (and the one most accessible) lava  tube cave.  It takes us about 50 minutes to navigate the streets of Jeju (first, the city, then the island) in the abovementioned pouring rain, and to reach the cave.  Each time we arrive to a new country I am very tentative about driving for the first time - especially in more stressful condition of city driving in inclement weather.  At one point Olga was looking up for me whether Korea has a right turn on read - and gave me the answer to this inquiry ("yes") just as the car behind me started beeping.  

As we made it to the parking lot of the Cave park, the rain, which seemed to almost subside only a few minuted prior, has restarted with new vigor. We got out of the car, got dressed in warm clothes (remembering how quickly the temperature dropped in Iceland's lava tube cave we visited), got the rain jacket on, and grabbed our last snacks from Pudong's "family store". We ate them under the rain on our way (about 400 meters, I think) to the ticket booth. Bought the tickets, and immediately dropped into the mouth of the cave until it was no longer raining, at which point I finally stopped and unpacked the camera.

Manjanggul Cave: the conditions outside.

The cave did not disappoint. Where the cave in Iceland cost around $200 for the four of us to visit, Manjanggul Cave costs around $4 per adult.  Where in Iceland we were on a guided tour, here we get to walk the same distance (about a kilometer in both cases) at our own pace, picking and choosing where to stop and what to do.  Where in Iceland the case is strictly "do not touch", here there are no such prohibitions - even at locations where no one would be surprised if there were.  As a result, we had a very nice tactile experience with various surfaces of the cave.

Manjanggul Cave: a twisting passage.

In the middle of the passage, there is Turtle rock - a lava formation that resembles both a turtle, and the shape of the Jeju Island

Manjanggul Cave: the Turtle Rock.

Further, the cave gets wider and taller and turns into what looks like an underground metro station.

Manjanggul Cave: I am jumping in the air at the "underground station" part of the cave, right before the very last leg.

The terminal end of the passage is capped by a lava column - a hole got punched in the ceiling for the lava tube, and molten lava dripped from the second lava tube located above to form an impressive post.

Manjanggul Cave: the lava column at the end of the passage.

As we walk through along the tube, the walls change from rock, to something covered in stalactites, to the lava layers, like on the picture below.

Manjanggul Cave: layers of lava.

The lighting in the cave is sparse, with some locations getting more light, while others being almost completely dark.

Manjanggul Cave: a passage in the middle of the cave.

The small stalactites forming on the walls and the low ceiling can be touched - there are no restrictions against it in this particular cave, which is very much counter to every other cave we have ever been to.

Manjunggul Cave: the stalactites on the ceiling.

It takes us about an hour to walk the kilometer into the cave and return back. By the time we are out, the rain is catching up, and it is already past 4pm (closer to 5pm, in fact) - the park is starting to get empty.

While the Chinese pastries we ate while rushing to the ticket book did give us strength, we realize that once we reach the hotel, we will crash, and there will not be any dinner after. So, we stop by the restaurant in the park. As any place located inside an attraction, it is probably of questionable quality - too much oriented towards tourists. But we have no options at this point - looking for food on the way home under pouring rain seems quite daunting.  So, we sit at the table, the only customers in a rapidly emptying park, and study the menu that features scant English. Eventually, we settle on sharing a single order of bibambap with an extra bowl of rice, that comes in handy, because our food comes with a bowl of clear broth for each of us (we dunk some of the rice into the broth).

Our first meal in Korea: Bibambap (left) with the sides of broth, and four different types of kim chee.

We start the tradition of taking pictures of our food - which, unlike many other place, we actually successfully continue throughout our entire stay on Jeju.  The first meal comes with four types of kim chi (from right to left): the traditional Napa cabbage one, tiny dried fish (the only time we had this type in a restaurant),  femented/pickled green onion, and a spicy version of daikon kim chi. There is a balance of two chili-based and two non-spicy kim chi offerings.   The food is good - we make quick work of both the kim chi and the bibambap (which turns out to be vegetarian, but it is fine).

Once we are done with the food, we head out to the parking lot, where our car is starting to get really lonely. We carefully drive back into Jeju City, with Naver fortunately working and showing us the way to our hotel.  One concern is hotel parking - this turns out to be a non-issue when we arrive. First, the parking around the hotel is pretty much empty - its raining, an no one is taking advantage of the public plaza behind the hotel, and the  mini amusement park in front of it. Second, as we descend into the basement of the hotel, we get stopped by an attendant, and our car is valet-parked. We get out bags out, ascend the elevator, check in, get a 10th floor room overlooking the harbor (it is in the wing that is orthogonal to the coast - we see a bit of water, the harbor, the fish market underneath the hotel, and the hills behind the harbor), unpack backs, and fall asleep.

We are in South Korea, and the weather aside, so far, so good.