Arrive Jeju Airport, Rental Car, BBQ Black Pork, Lotte Hotel and the Seogwipo Mae-il Olle Market.
(ภาษาไทย)
This trip was over a holiday in South Korea ( Independence Day ), so there were so many tourists!
It’s a short flight (~35mins in the air) from Busan to Jeju island, and we booked the ticket a little late, so we flew in the afternoon and arrived Jeju airport around 3pm.
This is the first time that we traveled by domestic flight with Korean Air from Busan Airport. (The domestic terminal (Kook-Nae-San) is next to the International Terminal (Kook-Sey-San). But it was the first time that we got a chance to go to the Korean Lounge which is outside the check-in gate.
So we had just enough time for some drinks and then we had to walk and wait to board inside…
When we arrived at Jeju airport, we followed the Rental car sign and found the counters.
We rented car thru Hertz. This counter inside the airport they just checked your booking and then they will give you directions to get on the bus.
They provide a bus every 8 mins and it takes about 10-15 mins to the rental car building.
Once the bus stopped and the door opened, all the locals ran over to get the ticket nunber. As I mentioned, it’s a Korean Holiday – so it’s kind a busy line for everything.
Luckily for us, they separated the foreigner line from the local. So we don’t have to fight for it!
All they need from you are, a real driving license card and the international driving license. The car we got, it’s a very good car, full insurance, nice build-in GPS (English version!) and car camera, and it’s ~$80 (80,000won) per 3 days rental. For our 3 days trip, we filled up gasoline once at ~$67 (67,000 won)
So all we paid for the rental car for this trip was ~$147 (147,000won).
For Jeju island, it would be very hard to travel without a car – I’m glad we rented the car for this trip!
After we got the car, we stopped for our late lunch at Donsadon for black pork BBQ. This looks like a celebrities shop, we can see many celebrities picture inside. But I actually don’t know them!
This one is only about 10 mins away from the rental car building (nearby the airport).
This shop is normally crowded in the busy time but we got here after lunch, so not that busy. Jeju is famous for the black pig, some people traveled around the world just to try the black pork BBQ!
There is no English menu available, so we just showed 2 fingers to tell them for 2 people (54,000won)!
It is a smallish pig with a black skin and a smooth coat of hair. So the restaurant will leave the black hair on pork skin when they serve, just to show you this is really from the black pig!
They started the BBQ with a big thick fresh meat pork and one strip of the fat bacon and typical Korean side dishes, Kimchi!
But don’t worry, they will be at least one person at your table to cook, cut and serve once it’s ready.
The black pork BBQ is very chewy but it will amazingly melt in your mouth!
I don’t think I wanna work at the BBQ shop in Korea. They really work hard for customers. If you are wearing “white”, you can ask for the apron.
Today we had only Black pork BBQ for 2 and one bottle of Beer. All we paid today is about $57 or 57,000won.
If you can’t read Korean language and you want to look for this shop, please remember the sign with the owners picture in front. I saw the same shop in Jungmun Resort too.
There is another black pork BBQ which Michelin Star called “Dombedon” but we didn’t go there for this time.
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Hotel Check-in
We picked the Lotte Hotel for this trip, the hotel is in the area call Jungmun Resort (FYI: there is another Lotte Hotel nearby the airport , called Lotte City Hotel).
It’s a very big hotel and casino, duty free shop and they have a huge water park in the back.
Our room is nice and clean, high ceiling. I only laughed at the trash can in the bathroom, it looks like they got it from the Dollar shop!
Nearby the hotel, you can walk to Starbucks, convenient shop (7-11) and there are many restaurants around.
It’s quite a nice hotel, full but we felt like we’re the only foreigners in the hotel for our 3days trip.
The hotel is quite expensive, it’s more than $300 per night without breakfast.
By the way, the underground parking is not connected to the hotel, so you park the car and come up to the ground and walk into the hotel. It’s not quite a good idea to walk between the parking and hotel during the big rainy day!
This hotel may be a good idea to stay if you are traveling with the kids and pretty much stay at the hotel most of the time. But we didn’t we were out of most of the time, so I don’t think I will stay here again for the next visit to Jeju.
Well, we stayed in untill we’re ready for some dinner. We didn’t feel like we needed a real dinner after we had a late lunch at BBQ shop. So we decided to go to the night market called Seogwipo Mae-il Olle Marketplace, this is the only one we found that they open from 7am to 9pm!
This market is about 20 mins away from Lotte Hotel.
There is a parking building right in front of the market if you are coming to the right market. The parking is very cheap, we paid about $1 for 2 hrs parking.
We got here after 7pm, but the market is still very busy!
At this market, we got to try the sample of oranges.
In August, we saw many small oranges, it’s a very good flavor between sweet & sour. It’s even more flavor if it’s colder. We bought a lot of oranges, it’s about $8 (8000 won) per kg.
I feel like this market is the best market for oranges this trip.
We also tried the rice cake, the best one is the one with fresh oranges inside!
but you can find so many kinds of food at this market – and Tim bought a beer in the bag at 3000 won!
We went back to the hotel, I don’t think Jeju offers much about nightlife – or we missed out on something???
>>Jeju Day2
>>Jeju Day3
