Jeju itself was easy enough to get through, a quick collection of bags then onto grabbing a taxi to get us to our hotel. This part was interesting as the driver didn’t know of our hotel or speak any English so after a bit of play we managed to get the GPS in his taxi pointing to what we thought was the hotel (it was thankfully). For the point the hotel is known to the locals as Noon Hotel whilst its sold on all the English hotel sites as Luxury and Boutique Hotel at Noon and the sign on the building only says Hotel at Noon… quite confusing.

The area we were staying in is known as Yeon-dong and seems to be the more night clubs and… other establishments area which means there’s plenty of good food and drinks around but also a few seedier places. We picked here though as the price was far better then staying in Jeju city itself and the city was only about 5 to 10 minutes by cab away.

As for the island of Jeju itself its rather small and pretty easy to traverse if you have your own form of transportation. If you aren’t hiring a car (I suggest to do so if you can its a heck of a lot easier to get around) Taxi’s are quite cheap and will happily drive to all the major attractions (they can also be rented for a full day as a private driver, quite the good idea too). Public Transport on the other hand is a struggle unless you can speak or read Korean. Basically the whole island is nicely connected by buses but the buses most of the time will only announce stops in Korean or have signage in Korean (if at all). Whilst there is English bus sheets they aren’t easy to follow. Also of note Google Maps navigation system doesn’t work for either cars, public transport or walking on the entire island so whilst it has the entire island fully mapped there is little English translation and there is no navigation unlike most other cities around the world now a days (coming from Taiwan this was quite the shock). So best point of advice on travelling around Jeju, hire a car or a driver for yourself, know Korean or plan the public transport beforehand.

So in terms of things to do? There is quite a bit but Jeju to my friends and I was a relax and unwind destination. We checked out the Lava Tube caves which are world heritage listed and a few of the main places in town and the black sand beaches. Are there other things to do? Most definitely but since its also Summer it was the wrong time of the year to attempt the hiking trails or a few of the outdoor places. The southern side of the island is covered in amusement parks which would be nice to check out but again middle of Summer it’s not the best place to be.

Overall its a lovely and very beautiful island. I wouldn’t mind coming back for a bit more then two days at some point and if I ever were to do so I would go the hire car route and explore the island in my own time, and preferably in Spring when the weather is nicer. All in all its a nice place to visit and worth the venture if you can afford the extra bit of time.

As always some photos below. Next up is Seoul. We’ve been here a bit over a day now but mostly just relaxed (yesterday was Liberation Day for South Korea) and explored the city a bit. I’ll do a post tomorrow probably covering the first two or three days.

So what have we gotten up to? Well we’ve hit up the famous Din Tai Fung dumplings restaurant (and now we want to go to the others dotted around Taiwan) for an incredibly affordable meal of some of the best dumplings we’ve ever had. Following the best lunch we moved onto The National Palace Museum, one of the must see attractions in Taipei and boy are are we glad we didn’t go on a weekend, the crowds were insane and that was on a Thursday. After wandering around the exhibit halls and looking at a lot of jade (we didn’t see much else besides jade) we headed outside and into the gardens for a bit of piece and relaxation before heading back to the hotel to cool down and get ready for the night markets.

The night markets we went to are the ones near by to our hotel called Shilin Night Markets. The place was absolutely packed with a vast array of foods and stalls (photos attached of the various foods on offer) all for very low prices. It was great fun just to browse around and do some quick shopping.

As for yesterday our plan was simple, head out to Jiufen (a town built onto the side of a hill over looking the pacific) to wander around. Our original plan was to tackle the Taroko Gorge but with the heat and the humidity none of us felt like the very early start required or proceeding to do the hiking trails through the area (we wanted to avoid the tour buses if possible) so we decided on Jiufen instead. To get to Jiufen we headed out from Taipei main station and took the train line out to the near by Ruifang. From here it was meant to be a simple hop on a bus and proceed out to Jiufen. Of course though we jumped on the right bus number but heading the wrong direction and ended up in Keelung, a port side town that was rather lovely but not quite our destination.

Eventually though we headed in the right direction and made it to Jiufen and proceeded to check out the old streets filled with their various stalls of food and other goods. We ate well and enjoyed tea with a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean whilst the sun set and then grabbed some more food in the form of rice pancakes with grounded peanuts and ice cream inside (absolutely delicious). Eventually we headed back into Taipei where we dined on a lobster and Peking Duck for less then $30 Australian Dollars a head. All in all a pretty good day.

As usual images beneath. I’ve also fixed up the headers on these posts so they should now show up properly.

As I mentioned yesterday the general plan was to check out of the hotel today and head up the coast following the water. While it was a very nice drive there wasn’t too much along it in regards to being photo worthy or really visiting worthy besides some fantastic beaches. It would have been nice to go far enough north to the Pinnacles but I would rather do that long of a drive back and forth with someone else and not in a rental car.

So in terms of what I checked out, I dropped into the town of Yanchep and Two Rocks and then northwards to the Gingin Observatory facility (not planned but drove pas the sign and remembered it so figured why not? After that it was a squeeze north to see if I could make it to the Pinnacles or not but decided to play it safe and not go that far and dropped into the town of Lancelin instead to take a break on the beach. Good decision in the end as it was a beautifully warm day and the sun was shining.

And that’s probably it for my trip to Perth in terms of updates and news. If I ever remember I’ll write up a post review of Perth when I get back to Sydney sometime on Friday night. Pictures below as always but not very many this time.