Photo Diary: 9 Days on Jeju Island
Beaches, bike rides, & birthdays
We took the whole entourage to Jeju Island over the October holiday. To be honest, I was a little bit anxious because I was in charge of planning everything from start to finish. For so many years now, since the start of the pandemic which overlapped with the birth of our kids, we’ve traveled as a family only within China, and oftentimes my husband handles a lot of the logistics: getting around, looking things up, communicating with staff at hotels and tourist attractions. Of course this is because he is Chinese and speaks and reads better and faster Chinese than I do. But this time, for our trip to Korea, I was up at bat. My spoken Korean is fine, but my reading is slow, as I never really learned to read and write. Also, we were not going to rent a car because none of us have an international license. Anyway, ahead of the vacation, I did a lot of research to prepare for the trip.
In the end, things went quite smoothly, and everyone had a blast. Jeju Island is beautiful. We were also blessed with incredible weather. (September/October is really a great time to go to the Korean island. Still warm enough for the beach and pool, but cool enough for hiking.) We spent a total of eight nights there, in three different areas of the island. Before a few photos, I’ll share our overall itinerary, attractions bolded.
Day 1 - Jeju City: fly in; check-in at city-center hotel; visit to Dongmun Market for late afternoon street food and browsing; visit to black pork street for barbecue (we used local buses and Kakao Map)
Day 2 - Jeju City: bike, e-bike, & Thule baby carrier rental from Bike Trip (reservation was made in advance via WhatsApp); bike from rental place counter-clockwise along Fantasy Bike Path to beach; beach play until evening - Bike Trip picked up our equipment and we cabbed home (Kakao Taxi)
Day 3 - Seogwipo: after a casual local lunch in Jeju City, we made our way via cab to a resort in Seogwipo, in the south of the island; play at resort, room service food, then kids passed out early; grandma watched the kids so HD & I could go out for dinner
Day 4 - Seogwipo: buffet breakfast at hotel; cab to Seongaksan for cliffside hiking (easy enough 2+ hour hike for our 4-year-old; 2-year-old was carried most of the way); return to resort and swimming at the hotel’s heated outdoor pool
Day 5 - Seogwipo: cab to hiking in the Forest of Healing (easy 2+ hour forest hike for whole family); back to resort area for lunch at The Cliff; walk down the cliff to play at Jungmun beach; evening swimming at hotel
Day 6 - Seogwipo: H went into the resort’s Kid’s Camp for the day (reserved in advance); HD & I carried M up to hike Hallasan (just the quick Eoseungsaengak trail - we didn’t have time for Yeongsil and back before camp pickup)
Day 7 - Hyeopjae Beach: before check-out, H did a cooking class at the resort; we cabbed to our final beach-side hotel; Hyeopjae beach play
Day 8 - Hyeopjae Beach: family beach-side walk; HD rented a scooter and took H on a daddy-daughter ride / I took M to the beach for more sand play
Day 9 - Hyeopjae Beach: final beach play for M; packing up and cab to airport; depart
It was nice to stay around Jeju City for a couple nights, to avoid being in a car and spending so much time “arriving” on our first day. Our hotel was 15 minutes from the airport.
Really my favorite activities were the hikes. We did 3: Seongaksan (cliffside along the ocean), Forest of Healing (forest), Hallasan (mountain). They were all different and beautiful, and the hiking paths were so well maintained. Aside from the last, our daughter (4) was able to complete the others independently.
The sussurus of the long grasses whistling in the mountain wind is something I won’t forget for a long time.
I’d decided to try H (4) in a day-long Kid’s Camp at our Seogwipo resort. It would be all in Korean, a language H doesn’t really speak anymore. I thought the immersion might be tolerable, but after lunchtime, the hotel called to pick her up because she was having a bad time of it. It didn’t help that the other five kids in her camp that day were all boys (H is a girl’s girl). I cancelled the next day’s camp reservation and signed her up for a 1-hour cake baking class instead, which she loved. All three little chefs were girls.
M and grandma easily walked the boardwalk through the forest. We saw other families pushing baby strollers along, one old man with a cane, and a woman being pushed in a wheelchair. What a brilliant, inclusive, and generous use of this forest-space.
In the future, I’d love to come back and do more biking around the island. The camping spots near Hyeopjae Beach were incredible, directly facing the ocean. When the kids are a little older I’d like to bike / camp / RV around.
We weren’t sure whether we’d stay for 7 days or 9, but because the kids ended up loving the ocean, we extended for the final two nights at a hotel just next to Hyeopjae Beach. The hiking, the hotels, the biking - were all so kid-friendly but also so gorgeous and enjoyable for adults. I highly recommend this trip for those with young kids. My only caveat would be that Jeju travel is probably seasonal - spring/autumn strike that perfect balance in terms of temperature. Because the destination is so outdoors-focused, and because kids love beach and pool play, I’d probably not bring them in extreme heat or cold. And also: Koreans speak a good amount of English, so if you don’t speak any Korean, you’ll be fine.
If you have questions about anything, please comment or reach out. I definitely will be planning more trips to Jeju in the future. Friends, if you want to meet and travel in Korea together, let me know!