Chuseok on Jeju Island

My coworker/partner-in-deceit and I realized last minute that we would be fools to do nothing on the third longest vacation of our contracts, a five-day break (over a weekend) due the Korean harvest festival, Chuseok. As has been the case with every holiday, payday rolled around a little late for proper planning ahead, and James and I found ourselves "stuck" in Korea yet again. So we polled friends for suggestions and began to struggle through the internet-explorer biased, flash-formatted (read: google translate incompatible) world of Korean webspace. 

We completely planned out three or four different trips, first trying to go to the second-largest island of Goje, then to an inland city of Gyeongju, next a beach town called Pohang, and in between all of these we kept trying to finagle our way out to Korea's most popular vacation destination, Jeju Island. Feeling uncertain about all of these options and holding out for our Korean friend to come save the day, we agreed to wait one more day before booking anything. Later that evening, frustrated facebook wanderings led to a gem of a discovery: an expat tour group had a spot remaining on their Chuseok trip to Jeju. Long story long, James and I worried about spending that money for about 24 more hours and then jumped on board. 

I'm not writing this post to tell you about how wonderful Jeju was. Seeing as it's a hot travel spot in Asia, I'm certain there's enough of that on the internet. Instead I'm going to muse a bit about how we got to and got around the island. James and I had intended to go to Jeju when our contract is up mid-October, but ended up traveling down there with When in Korea (WinK), an organization that runs tours in and nearby Korea. So without anymore rambling on my part, I present pros and cons of traveling with a tour company.

Pros

• Jeju turned out to be much larger than we anticipated, so it was awesome to have a private bus to take us between points on our itinerary. Getting around the island via public transportation would have eaten up a decent chunk of our already limited vacation time. Take into account the size of your destination as well as the availability and accessibility (what language is it in??) of local transportation. 

• It's not easy to gauge, but you should try to get a sense for how well your organization knows the attractions. Be sure to do your own research, even if you've already joined a tour group. Know what you want to see, and see how it lines up with the provided itinerary. WinK goes to Jeju nearly every month, so they were spectacularly reliable with choosing what we did, and they were even prepared to explain why they didn't choose other places. Finally, see if there are ways to opt in (or opt out) of specific tours, and combine the guided group with the individual adventurer option. In my case, I did the first tour but opted to hike the volcano, Hallasan, on the second day.

• Along the same lines as the previous point, our tour guides were awesome to hang with and were well informed. They suggested restaurants and activities and assisted with taxi cabs and time management during all of our free time. They were truly wonderful, and also a blast to be with!
• Last, James and I were excited to travel with a large group of waygooks. Although we are often obnoxious, foreigners can't help but love traveling together as we are all in the same boat (figuratively and literally, at times). It's a near-instant camaraderie that makes the whole trip into a big family party.

Cons

• As awesome as it is to travel with a big group of foreigners, the group we were with was very big...nearly 120 people. That's a lot to coordinate, a lot to handle, and the probability of people being inconsiderate or rude or just annoying is higher. You also don't have to hang out with those people. Try to get an idea of how many people you are going with, and use the nature of your trip/destination to at least anticipate what other people will expect from the trip. 

• In another completely contradictory point to the list of pros, having a set itinerary led by trustworthy people is awesome, but it entails inflexibility. You should be polite and respect the established time constraints, even if you really could spend the rest of your life exploring that cave or laying on that beach.

• Finally, the big one for me: when I travel, I like to struggle with figuring out the place for myself. I am a sort of struggling wanderer masochist; I want to take public transportation and cringe at hilarious miscommunications and read the map wrong the first four times. When someone is your guide, there is another degree of separation between you and the place you're exploring. I've tried a few things to overcome this gap. I ask a lot of questions (I try to figure out the answers myself before asking them). I look at a map often and pay attention when we are traveling around somewhere. I don't just stay in one place, but use every free moment to explore my surroundings. Then it's like traveling with parents-they'll bail you out when you're lost and late for the bus. But you will really hate asking them to do it.

Enough about that. Jeju was amazing. Check out my pictures and be jealous!

Volcanoes are cool. Lava is hot.

Natural pool and the gang