Friday, September 5, 2014

Ivy's travel: Korea Trip part 6


Previous post: Ivy's Travel: Korea trip part 5

Day 7 (Ripley's, Cheonjeyeon Waterfalls, Love Land, Hwaro Hyang, Junggang Underground Shopping, Dongmun Wet Market) 

Jeju is just beautiful. The scenery is amazing. We fell in love with the view and the serenity. I won't post much pictures of Jeju's view in this post as I have did in the previous one. If you do go to Korea, Jeju is really worth the visit. Another great thing of staying at Lotte hotel & resort is the location. It close to almost all main attractions in Jungmun; Teddy bear museum, Ripley's, Alive museum, Cheojeyeon falls. All in walking distance.  

Ripley's Believe it Or Not Museum
Address: 32, Jungmungwangwang-ro110beon-gil, Seogwipo-si, Jeju-do (Jungmun Resort)

Ripley’s "Believe It or Not!" Museum (originally created by Robert Ripley) is the largest museum franchise business in the world, with 31 locations worldwide. The Jeju branch of the museum consists of 12 galleries, an outdoor park, souvenir shop, and a coffee house. The museum feature as many as 700 astounding, one-of-a-kind items collected by explorer Robert Ripley (1893∼1949), during his travels of over 35 years to 198 different countries. 

It was quite an experience to see all these unbelievable portrait of humans and things. Some of the portraits I took, here's Believe it or Not...

James Bond's 007 Aston. The car is made entirely from cardboard, a perfect replica of James Bond's famous Aston Martin as seen in the movies "Goldfinger" and "Thunderball".
Lu Hao from China is only 3 years old yet he weights 60kg (132 pounds). He has three bowls of rice on an average per meal, not per day, per meal.
These people with longest nails on earth has grown their nails for over 18 years without having it cut. Gross!
This 50 years old Thai street cook can drop his hand into 480 degrees hot oil. he holds the Guinness records for picking 20 pcs of fried chicken from 480 degrees oil in just one minute, with bare hands!
Martin Joe Laurello could turn his head 180 degrees so that he could see behind his back!
Women in Burma, Myanmar wear heavy brass rings around their necks. Starting at an early age, women gradually stretch their necks by adding a ring every year until they reach 25 rings. 

The tallest man on earth.
Believe it or Not!

Opening hours: 9am - 8pm (Open until 10pm on July - Aug)
Entrance ticket: 8000 won (88k rupiah) per person
Directions: Take bus No. 600 and get off at Jungmun Resort
 
Cheojeyeon Falls
Jeju Special Self-Governing Province Seogwipo-si Saekdal-dong (Jungmun Resort)

Cheojeyeon falls located at the same complex around Jungmun resort. It can be reached by foot just few meters away behind Ripley's Museum.The entrance ticket is relatively cheap, 2500 won (27,5k rupiah) per person.


 
The effort to get to the waterfalls was not easy breezy. Though it was autumn and the weather was simply chillin, but the sun was blazing and we have to walk down like again billion stairs to reach the waterfalls. It was beautiful but not that amazing. Turns out, they have three waterfalls, the one in picture we managed to go was only the second waterfalls. We did pass the first one and it was a very small one, so we skipped going further down and went to the second one instead. The Cheojeyeon falls being the 3rd waterfalls is located 200 meters further, and being a softie, we didn't have enough stamina to go through especially since we just did those stairs climbing back at the hotel earlier morning. After all, we pretty much satisfied to just see the second one.


Beware of the stairs! I hate Korea! The subway and sightseeing places mostly comes with billion stairs trap.


Opening Hours: 
March - October 08pm - 6.30pm
November - February 9am - 5.30pm

Jeju Love Land 
Address: 2894-72, Cheonbaengi-ro, Jeju-si, Jeju-do

Jeju Love Land is a theme sculpture park based on sensuality and eroticism. It was opened in November 2004 and was the first such museum in Korea at that time. The spacious park (39,667m²) is home to over 100 sculptures. As the park with erotic sculptures, there is age barrier. Visitors must be minimum twenty years old to be able to enter the park. 


I am not going to post more pictures on the sculptures on my blog, but if you are interested to know, you can click their website for further details. Personally, I would say it was not really fun place to be, only full of erotic sculptures though some of them were funny. It's located 10 minutes from Jeju airport, so for us who stay at Jungmun, the journey there took around 50 minutes, not worth the time.

Opening hours: Daily 9am - 11pm
Entrance fee: 9000 won (99k rupiah) per person
Hwaro Hyang - The Best Black Pork BBQ

Okay, this is the best Korean BBQ we had in entire trip. You would think that all grilled bbq in Korea is great, the truth it's not. But Hwaro Hyang is sooooooo gooood!! We are so going to definitely go back if we had the chance to visit Jeju again.

Jeju is famous for black pork. It's a must eat food there and you will rarely find black pork in other cities in Korea. The streets packed with restaurant specialized in black pork. The reason we chose Hwaro hyang was because I saw a good article about them during my Google browsing session. The restaurant next to them is quite popular too, I think as they put a lot of media coverage articles on the walls. But, we were very much satisfied with Hwaro Hyang.


As I mentioned before on my previous post, the server in Korea will not help you to grill the meat though they will come to check and help if we need to. We got plenty of banchan including a delicious tofu soup and steamed egg.
Oh yes, the way they eat rice at BBQ restaurant in Korea is to have the rice at the end of your meal. Unlike us who use rice to eat with the meat, they will not serve the rice until we finished all our main courses. So, after you finish, they will bring the rice and pan fried it on the grilling pan in front you while mixing it with the sauce and several banchan like kimchi and beansprouts.
Grilled black pork belly 15,000 won (165k rupiah) per 200gr
Unfrozen black pork neck meat 14,000 won (154k rupiah) per 200 gr

I don't have the exact address, I just give this picture to the taxi driver and they pretty much know as the street is famous for it's jeju black pork. As soon as you see this sign below, you're in the right street.


Jungang Underground Market 
Address: B1F 60 Jungang-ro, Jeju-si, Jeju-do

Jungang underground shopping center is located in Jeju city only 10 mins from airport. It holds over 250 stores selling clothes, skin care, shoes, accessories, etc. The place is huge and located underground. Personally, I don't really see any interesting things here, but the place does sell a lot of things and it's tax free. It's the only underground shopping in Jeju so if you are planning to shop, this is the place.

Opening hours: 10am - 10pm

Dongmun Wet Market
Address: Jeju, Jeju-si, Leedo-1-dong, 1349

Dongmun Market is the biggest fish market on Jeju. Located close to the airport and not far from Jungang underground shopping. We actually walk there. The market is known to be a great place to swing by for last minute purchases before leaving the island. It's not only about fish, they also sell all those popular snack most people buy as souvenirs, such as hallabong chocolate and tangerines. Do buy here as we bought the chocolate at the local family mart and it cost triple. =(

Continue to Ivy's Travel: Korea trip part 7...

1 comment:

irene said...

Can't wait to plan my own Korea itinerary after reading your post! And that museum sure is interesting.