This morning decided to sleep in for a bit as I keep doing everything too quick when I visit places. After a while headed out to the bus station which is supposed to be a short walk from the hotel. Wandered around the town for a bit but managed to find it.

Jeju is an oval shaped island. Jeju city, a large town with the airport is on the north. Mount Halla, a dormant volcano is in the centre. To the south is Jungman about 30kms from Jeju City. I'm staying in Seogwipo about 6kms east of Jungman. The rest of the island is small hamlets and mostly unpopulated.

Buses are tricky. There are about six bus lines that criss cross the island. There are no bus maps and I had to sit with the map of jeju for about half an hour figuring out where they all go. Bus routes are in hangul so luckily I can read to figure out which way to go.

First I took the Jungman express in the direction of the World Automobile Museum that I wanted to go. As mentioned, people always talk about Jeju's natural beauty, but they have built so many silly and crazy museums to rival Las Vegas or Dubai. Today I was going to visit some of them. Unfortunately, they are scattered across the island, and not all served by bus routes.

The Jungman bus branches off about 3km from the museum so I had to walk rest of the way along country roads. Reminds me of country roads outside Toronto, single lanes, very green, and be careful of fast traffic.

Eventually made it to the museum. Starting with the invention of the automobile, they had cars from each decade up to about the 80s. They had the Ford Model T, a Presidential Car with flags and CIA foot escorts, and Rolls Royces in front of mock Beefeaters. At the back was a track where kids can ride small electric cars around world landmarks, and get their photos taken and a fake drivers licence made.

After that wanted to goto the miniature world about 3km further along a country road. I didnt see any cabs at the auto museum and no buses go on this route. There is another miniature world the other side of the island, and for some reason Jeju seems to have two of several museums, and countless number of maze parks.

Opposite the miniature world was an egyptian desgined mirror maze which I had already been to at Psyche World yesterday. Inside this was probably one of my favourite places. Aside from the usual stuff, Buckingham Palace, Whitehouse, Capital Hill, Mount Rushmore, Eiffel Tower, Leaning Tower if Pisa, they also had asian stuff like the great wall of china, Jeju airport, Gyeongbukgang Palace, The Blue House in Seoul, Courthouse, and KBS TV headquarters.

They also had the Taj Mahal, a Malaysian Mosque, Iraqi Mosque, and the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The other miniature world the other side of the island is pretty much the same except it had more asian skyscrapers, the roman colloseum, and Toronto City Hall.

Then wanted to goto a chocolate museum but the bus routes are a bit strange as mentioned. The map said there was Alice in Wonderland World nearby but I didnt see it. Anyway, I took the bus south to Mosulpo Port. Here I was supposed to change to a bus to go west from where I would have to walk up a country road or take a cab to get to the chocolate museum.

At Mosulpo which is a very small town, the bus just lets off on the road and I didnt see where to change buses. I found some foreigners at a cafe who told me to goto another bus stop around the corner. Because the buses are hard to navigate and dont exactly go where you want them to go decided to go instead back to Jungman which is a more built up area with more attractions.

At Jungman there was another waterfall Cheonjeyeon (confusing, the one yesterday is Cheonjiyeon spelt with an 'I' instead). I thought this might be a waste of time since I saw two waterfalls yesterday but this was the best of the three. It is a three stage waterfall, the middle one is a large horseshoe like niagara falls. Didnt walk to the third one as too many steps in the wrong direction. There is also a dalek shaped building in the arboretum nearby.

Jungmun has a cluster of attractions like Niagara's Clifton Hill. First I went into Ripleys Believe it or not. Wasnt really anything that great and I dont think making fun of people with deformaties or medical conditions like circus freak shows was nice. There was also a musical instrument museum opposite.

Across the road was another teddy bear museum. There was one yesterday at Psyche World but I didnt go. Again, I thought this might be a waste but turned out to be one of my favourite places. They arranged the teddies in many scenes, such as the wedding of charles and diana, the beatles, coronation of queen elizabeth, teddies on the catwalk in a fashion show, the moon landing, mona lisa, michaelangelos hand of god, korean royal court, other aristrocrats. They even had Rupert the Bear, Paddington Bear, and Winnie the Poo.

Around the block was another chocolate museum for $2 entry free. This can be exchanged for chocolate or a drink in the museum shop. This was quite a small museum, the larger chocolate museum I wanted to goto on the other side of the island is probably better. This one had chocolate decorating activities that people could try and chocolates displays from europe, asia, and america. Surprisingly for the UK they had a few tesco bars and no Cadburys!!

After that had to walk a km or so to the museum of Africa, that I had most wanted to goto. The outside is shaped like the great mud mosque of Mali. The museum was started by a collector who got out of hand so needed larger premises. I think it was well intentioned but was a bit stereotypical of safari and nomadic tribespeople. There was no representation of Egypt, nor modern africa, or anything post colonial.

Then walked a km back to the bus route home. The love affair with jeju has worn off, I dont want to live here as navigation is crazy. Next time I'd probably rent a car if I came with friends. The buses dont go where you want them to, the museums are scattered all over the island, so be prepared to walk across deserted country roads or pay for cabs.

There are more places I want to go like mongolian horse and sword shows or trick art museum, but again they are too out of the way and not served by buses. They need to have tourist hop on/off buses with bus maps and day passes if they want to become really tourist friendly. They want to make jeju one of the new 7 wonders of the world. They have enough crazy stuff to rival dubai or las vegas, but they need to market themselves better and work on internal transport.

Weather is also a lot like england. Being an island there is a constant mist and it looks like its going to rain. The sky only clears briefly and I havent seen the main volcano mount halla as theres always a shroud of mist over the island.

Tomorrow am doing the eastern side of the island for some natural wonders and circling back to jeju city for my flight home.

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I was invited back to Jeju for a Press tour in Oct/11, you can read the entry here
http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-e ntries/londone7/1/1319539255/tpod.html