We've Got The Answers But There's No Explanation

I've mentioned before about how the days when I'm travelling between one country and another are perhaps my least favourite - but domestic travels also come with their problems.

There's no need to worry about currency or concern myself over visas, but as previously discussed I feel a lot safer once I get to my hotel and start to get my bearings a little.
Most of my trips from the airport or bus station have come via taxis, but the beauty of places like Bangkok and Busan is that I was able to use public transport and then follow some instructions to make the short walk from the metro station to my hotel.

I definitely prefer getting there under my own steam, although realistically that isn't always possible. The network of transportation options in many of the countries I have visited previously isn't quite as sophisticated (and in some cases doesn't exist) as in the last few countries in my tour, so hopefully from here on out I will be able to navigate my own way to hotels knowing that there's always a back-up in case I get lost of using taxis or asking for directions.

Perhaps that's one of the biggest issues about being abroad when it comes to getting lost - it's very hard (not that I've personally experienced it looking for directions, but just generally) to find anyone who speaks English, and I'm always pretty reluctant to have to ask unless I get really stuck. Only having access to wifi causes problems also as it's not quite as easy as it would be in England to open up Google Maps and navigate to the correct place.
I've been lucky enough most of the time to have a map of the city I have been staying in, and quite a few of the places I've visited have had signpost or there's always the option of following other people who you hope are heading in the right direction.

Although there's always that initial hesitation, I feel like once I get settled then I don't have any further issues. There have been certain countries where it's been more difficult to navigate to places than others, and so far I'd point to Kuala Lumpur as doing the best job of assisting tourists as there are huge waypoint sights all over the place and also maps on the back of every bus stop which come in massively useful.
So far I've used a combination of luck and map reading skills to get to where I've needed to be on every occasion...

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This morning it was time for a new destination as my time in Busan was completed yesterday in the damp miserable weather conditions. I woke up this morning to discover, thankfully, that everything was dry and I spent quite a bit of time repacking my bag in between breakfast and checking out.

I'm staying in Korea itself a little longer, though my next destination is a small island just off the main peninsular known as Jeju. People (perhaps Koreans) like to refer to Jeju-do as the "Korean Hawaii" and it shares several characteristics with the popular North American destination.
To start with it is also a volcanic island, and is often descended on by honeymooners. It is supposed to have a unique weather system, but temperatures seemed to fall pretty closely in line with that I experienced in Busan over the last couple of days, except for without the massive sea breeze.

Jeju was another place that I had wanted to explore when living in these parts, but despite being quite close the fastest way to get here is in the air, and from Seoul (my closest airport) to Jeju itself takes a couple of hours.

I was sad to wave goodbye to Busan this morning; as I wrote yesterday it was a really active city and there was plenty to do. I stayed there for the joint longest of any city I have stayed in on my journey, and I think that represents what a fantastic place it was. I didn't ever feel like I was just doing things to fill time, and I reckon I probably could have stayed there for an extra couple of days and still not got bored.
Much of it is down to the hotel I stayed in which was fantastically located, and also a superb base to use whilst staying in Busan.
It's really strange because when searching online not many hotels come up in Busan - this despite the fact I saw at least fifty whilst I was there. To say that it was quite a well equipped hotel, it cost me less than £30 a night, and was probably the best value for money considering it was close to the metro, right at the centre of the city and also served breakfast. I can't say enough positive things about it, and I feel like if I get the opportunity to return to Busan in the near future I will definitely make an attempt to stay there again.

For once I was exiting the city a different way to the one I arrived in it as there was no need for me to go back up to Seoul to catch a flight to Jeju as Busan itself has an airport. The only reason I didn't fly into Gimbae International is because one of the few places that flights from Vientiane actually went to was Korea, but they only flew into Seoul, and it was cheaper to pay for a train ticket to get me south rather than an internal flight.

It took me about a hour or so to get to the airport, and it was very easy to access although I don't know if I went the most efficient way. Just down the road from there I was staying I saw a bus stop the last couple of days which advertised an 'Airport Limousine Bus' which when looking online takes approximately 45 minutes. I had no idea of the bus schedule so I figured it'd be better off for me to take the metro as they run more frequently than a bus service probably would.

I had to go in an enterely different direction to the one I had been in throughout the duration of my stay in Busan, and then when I got to a station called Sasang, I had to leave the metro, and go onto the Light Rail Service which transports you the rest of the way to the airport. Thankfully there were a couple of other people on the train making the journey so everything went pretty smoothly.
Gimbae Airport has both a domestic and an international terminal, and pretty much every single flight in the domestic airport goes one of two places; Jeju or Gimhae (Incheon's other airport). I checked in and managed to find the right gate, and it filled up pretty quickly with what I can only imagine was some form of school trip. I'd say that these teenagers formed 95% of the passengers on the journey, but I still managed to get a window seat, although it was at the front where they clearly put the mums, and old people (I could well fall into just one of those categories....)

The flight itself took 40 minutes which is hilarious when you think about it. We must have been flying at altitude for about fifteen minutes in between ascending and descending, and although it was nice and bright above the clouds, once we started to come back down through them, it was clear that I'd brought the rubbish Busan weather with me as it was miserable and grey. At that point it wasn't raining, and it wasn't cold, but it was foggy and misty, and just generally not what you'd expect from a 'tropical' island.

The hotel had been kind enough to send me some instructions (in English as well with pictures) on how to reach them once I got to the airport, and I had been attempting to make sure I'd saved enough battery to be able to view them once I arrived.
My first task was to find the correct bus which would do the majority of the work for me, and as I walked out of the exit I had to head towards the international arrivals to make sure I was in the right place.
The number 600 is the airport bus which goes in a loop around the island and pretty much stops at every major point on the map.
A bit like Busan, it was hard to find hotels in Jeju, although one of the places we stopped at on the way looked to be a very fancy complex of high-end hotels, so I can see why they didn't show up on my search!

It took about an hour and ten minutes to eventually reach the stop I needed to get off at, and there were a few other people exiting there too so I figured it was definitely the right area.
Jeju itself is made up of two major areas - Jeju City and Seogwipo; I'm staying in the latter which is to the south of the island, although the size of the island dictates that it didn't really matter because most of the major attractions are in the middle meaning that they could be accessed from either place.

I followed the directions for the hotel as closely as I could, but it's always a bad sign when you can't do what it tells you to because there's a building in the way. I thought I'd looked at the pictures carefully enough, but obviously not so I retraced my steps and eventually found that I'd ignored an instruction to turn left somewhere a long the line so everything then became a lot clearer and five or ten minutes later I was walking through the door of the Feliz Telcon.

Leaving out Vientiane I have to compliment my recent hotels for doing a fantastic job of providing maps and information on arrival at the hotel. I'm always a little reluctant to ask for help, and usually have a good idea of what to do, but there's nothing like a little re-assurance from a map. The man at the front desk who spoke fantastic English provided me with the details of things which were close by, including shops and places to eat before giving me the key to my room.

It was 5pm by this point and the mist was starting to roll in terribly and create the effect that it was raining, but I felt like it was an opportunity to get to know my surroundings before heading into the wide world for the whole day tomorrow so I followed the maps directions back to near the bus stop where I'd seen the brief sight of the coastline whilst trying to make sure I was walking down the right road.
With plenty of volcanic structure to it, Jeju has some beautiful coastlines which I saw in the brochure I looked through on the bus, and the guy at reception said that there was a bit of a beach that way (not beach weather yet again, but who cares).

I walked along the path towards the coast before following some signs towards the large bridge that I could see from a distance. The path led me past some shops and a bit of a harbour, although I took a detour up some stairs so that I could get a good overview of the whole thing from upon high:

A bit like the pictures I took yesterday, you can see how this place would have the potential to be amazing in the sunlight, just unfortunately the weather wasn't doing its bit today.
I headed down towards the bridge which from reading the signs I discovered had only been built in 2009, and provides a link to Saeyeon which only used to be accessible at low tide. The bridge itself is pretty impressive....

.....and provides a good spot to view the mainland from:

Saeyeon is only very small but I believe it is reserved as some sort of eco-diverse area in Jeju so it has a walking trail around the outside which I decided to follow. It was only half an hour or so, but had some excellent points where you could stop and take pictures, before eventually leading back in a loop to the bridge:

It was fun walking around, and it made me forget about how miserable the weather was despite the poor visibility.

Darkness was rapidly setting in at this point so I decided to find a restaurant to eat in on the way back to the hotel. Although I've managed to eat a lot of local food, I've done it in what you'd describe as 'non-local restaurants' so I thought I'd actually go to one of the places on the street today rather than finding somewhere in a shopping centre or somewhere which caters to foreigners.
Thankfully my pigeon Korean managed to get me far enough to order some dinner (a very enjoyable mix of fried chicken and hot and spicy wings) before I navigated my way through what I have to say are very quiet streets on the way back to my hotel.

There is plenty of potential for exploration on Jeju from what I can tell, and I think that a lot of my experiences (if the weather holds up) will be outdoor ones, and I certainly intend to explore some of the facets of this volcanic isle which has a number of intriguing visitor attractions which I intend to take advantage of throughout the week.

Natural
S-Club 7 (2000)