[Part 2] 089. Jeju Day 1

Today was a day of mad rushing for me. I woke up at 10am and hurriedly packed my horribly messy room and my stuff for Jeju before running out of my hostel at 12.30pm, half an hour behind schedule. But thankfully, traffic wasn't bad and I actually reached Bucheon at 2.15pm, just 15 minutes late for my IPL treatment! I had thought that I would only arrive there at 2.30pm or later. The treatment was quite painful today and I'm really not sure if it's effective because even after doing my 3rd treatment, I still see hair growth! 

If I were to take a bus from Bucheon to Songnae Station and then the subway to Gimpo Airport, it would have taken me less than an hour to arrive at the airport. But I was really tired and lazy from the lack of sleep from the past few nights so I took the airport limousine bus no. 302 all the way to Incheon International Airport and slept through the 1.5hours ride. From Incheon International Airport, I had to take the AREX train to Gimpo Airport which took a good 30 minutes. On hindsight, I should have just taken the bus then subway to the airport but I chose the longer route because I was lazy. Lesson learnt. I was famished by the time I finally arrived at the airport at nearly 5pm with no proper breakfast or lunch (unless you count biscuits as proper food). With about an hour or so to kill before Jeannie, Yuya, Raus and Kenneth arrived at the airport, I went to Starbucks for a sandwich and chocolate drink and tried to read my Crisis Economics book, for which a book review is due on 29 November for my International Financial Management class. It was a bad idea bringing this book along because I never got past Chapter 1 and it couldn't fit into my bag or my luggage so I had to hold it everywhere I went. It was my 2nd time at Gimpo Airport and being there sure brought back memories of my Jeju trip last year! After awhile, I got quite bored at Starbucks so I went to withdraw money and stupidly left my book on top of the ATM machine, only remembering it after the rest had arrived and we had checked in our luggage. I suddenly realised that my hands were quite free and it was then that I remembered my book and rushed down to the ATM Machine. Needless to say, my book was still there because no one would want to steal the book but they sure helped themselves to 2 out of the 6 maps I placed on top of my book. 

Why don't the Starbucks stores in Singapore have such big tables which are good for project discussions? There are many such tables in cafes in Korea.

Upon arrival at Jeju International Airport, we headed to the information counter to gather as many maps and brochures about the attractions in Jeju before taking 2 cabs to our Beach Pension which Junho helped us to find just yesterday. Yes, we are so last minute for this trip! Our flight tickets were only purchased last week and we tried making a reservation for Ocean Grand Hotel where we stayed last year on Wednesday but the hotel was full and we were left with no accommodation. Junho came to the rescue after I emailed him about our homeless state and found this beach pension which charged us 250,000KRW for 3 nights. Unfortunately, he told the owner that there were 4 of us, when there were actually 5 of us. I'm not sure if he intentionally told her that or he didn't know that there were 5 of us but the owner wasn't happy that there were 5 of us. Jeannie, being the witty one as usual, quickly lied and said that originally, there were only supposed to be 4 of us but we met a friend here and he was only going to stay with us for 1 night. The owner kind of accepted it but she charged us an extra 10,000KRW.

Walking over to the newer building where our room was

Our room with a very warm floor and mosquitoes :(

After settling into our room, we walked out in search for sashimi at one of the eateries near our place. It was really cold because of the strong wind and it didn't help that we were rejected by 2 eateries because it was late and they were closing up at about 10pm+. Eventually, we walked into this eatery and the lady boss took us in because she didn't believe in turning away customers. Good boss. But she was drunk, as we soon discovered through her mannerism and words. She was so drunk that she cleared away my plate with my top shell before I could eat it. But I was glad that she did that...she saved me from having to eat that! I was grossed out. We had the 180,000KRW sashimi set with a lot of other dishes which freaked us out quite a bit. I was taking a picture of the abalone when I suddenly saw it move. Initially, no one believed me but when Raus and Jeannie also saw them move, we all screamed. Subsequently, every time the abalone moved, we screamed and that brought the lady boss running into our room to check out the situation. If she didn't cut up the abalone for us, I wouldn't have dared to eat it. Only Yuya, the Japanese, dared to eat the whole uncut abalone. I like cooked abalone but not the one I ate at this eatery. It was so tough!
The total bill came up to 192,000KRW, inclusive of the 2 bottles of beer we had...the most expensive dinner I had in Korea since I arrived on 2 August.

Live abalone

Cutting them up for the scaredy-cats

소라 topshell