Summer Vacation!

During our week long summer vacation Jay and I decided to go to Taiwan and Jeju Island! We wanted to pack in as much as we could before we had to leave! We started in Taiwan where we flew into Taipei. We got to our hotel and settled in. We had pre set up some tours while we were there. Our tour picked us up and took us out for dinner at a Mongolian Restaurant! The food was delicious! Hot pot and stir fry! They then took us to Snake Alley where you can actually eat snake venom, we opted out of that! We then went to Longshan Temple, it was very beautiful. We found it very interesting how different the temples were constructed! We stopped at Taipei 101, the 2nd tallest building in the world! We didn't get a chance to go up it, but we could tell it would be amazing!

On the second day, we travelled to Wulai! An amazing hot spring area. We took a city bus there and were extremely pleased we did. The entire way we were following a river and we were looking over into the gorge the entire time! Wulai was beautiful, full of temples, hiking and amazing scenery! We stayed in a hotel where there was hot spring water piped into our bath! We overlooked the town! We found a public hot spring where people from the town come to bathe. It was a very neat experience!

The next day we took the bus back to Taipei and explored the city. I had tea with a tea shop owner, went to the electronics market and went for reflexology! We had to get to bed early that night since we were getting up early to take another tour. This one was a flight up to Hualien. We were going to check out Taroko Gorge. It was breathtakingly beautiful. The gorge is all marble, however it was hard to see since a storm was coming and the water was all muddy. We had an aboriginal lunch the headed back.


On our last day we went to a taoism temple and Chang Kai Shek memorial. There we watched the changing of the guards. We really were impressed with the tours we took! We flew from Taipei (which was a Hello Kitty themed plane) back to Seoul, spent the night in Cheonan and busse to Busan where we took a plane from there to Jeju Island! Quite a wild couple of days!

If you ever go to Jeju, rent a car, it makes it so easy to get around! That night we went to Love Land. A very sexual and hilarious park filled of sexual sculptures and art! The next day we went to Hallim park. It was a great park that covered all of the natural aspects of Jeju Island. We went through subtropic gardens, went in underground caves and saw lava rocks. On the way back we went to Hyeopjae beach, very relaxing!

We stopped at Sanbangulsa and hiked up to the Buddha in the rocks. It was very spiritual! Went to Cheonjiyeon Falls then headed back. We had heard that black pork meat in shabu shabu was the meal to have in Jeju so we found a place. They were so nice, they kept bringing us more food! There was fresh veggies and clams, which were brought in while we were eating! We also visited the Manjangul caves. It is all under ground made from cooled lava. It got very cool down there!


The next day we went to Illchubong! A beautiful extinct volcano! It was really neat driving up to it! We hiked to the top! On our way back down we went to the black sand beach hoping to watch the Haenyeo Women dive. However, they never did... but swimming at the black sand beach was amazing!

On our last day we decided to hike Hallasan. It was a last minute decision so we had to get up super early so we could get to the top and down in time to get to our plane. It was pitch black while we started. We made great timing on the way up but somehow on the way down we slowed our pace. I was glad we did it! It was a jammed pack holiday but we loved every minute of it!