Jeju

We also visited Jeju, an island off the southern coast of the Korean peninsula, during our brief freedom to travel. Jeju is a volcanic island (all volcanoes are dormant now) and because it's rather far south it has a bit of a tropical feel. It's very accessible by plane or ferry. This time we flew and it was a super easy trip. We drove an hour south to the closest airport, flew for 45 minutes, and we were there!

Although the people on Jeju are Koreans and speak Korean, they are somewhat separate from the rest of Korea so they have their own dialect of Korean (not very understandable to most Koreans) and many different customs. These statues are everywhere. They are stone guardians.

Our guide told us that Koreans like to stack stones for good luck. Simon enjoys stacking anything, so he joined in!

Volcanic rock coastline.

Jeju's aquarium is much bigger than Busan's. Here is the kids's touching pool. It was big enough for a whole school of some kind of fish! You could also purchase a packet of fish food for 500 Won (about 25 cents). 

The sandy beaches on Jeju are mostly created for the tourists. This is a rocky beach with some very interesting tide pools. We didn't swim, but Simon and I both slipped in and got wet feet.

Another beautiful view of the rocky coast and volcanic formations.

These are squid drying in the sun. These were hanging on a fence along a main road. I'm not sure how people know whose squid are whose, but stealing in Korean is very unusual, so they're pretty safe to just hang there.

This was a life-size maze. Simon had a lot of fun finding his way through (we think he cheated some.) The maze place was also a cat sanctuary and you could definitely smell them!

One of the three waterfalls on Jeju. This was the only one that was accessible to a four year old.

There's a type of hybrid fruit grown on Jeju called an apple mango. They were just out of season but we managed to find one in a grocery store. Our guide said she'd never had one because they were too expensive. I paid about 14,000 Won for this one, which comes to about $12. It was very tasty, but probably not worth the price for a single piece of fruit.