Saturday, April 20, 2013

Jeju Island, Korea

One of our main mission visiting Jeju Island was to hike Mount Hallasan, well apart from visiting the obligatory tourist destinations in Jeju Island itself. Afterall, it is known as the "Hawaii" of Korea. We stayed in Yeha Guesthouse, a clean and nicely decorated backpackers. 

Guests were given one complimentary beer each night!
We chilled at the common room, enjoyed how homely backpackers can be. No hotels can ever give you that awesome experience of staying in a backpackers. 

The walls stairs were lined with happy pictures of tourists from around the world. 

The next morning, we hired a cab driver to bring us around Jeju Island. Manjanggul cave was our first tourist destination, known as the longest lava tube in the world. We thread through the icy cold cave, avoiding puddles of water and uneven rock formations.

This was what we were rewarded at the end of the cave, a unique formation nicely lit. Given that neither of us were really interested in structures and formation, we were not very impressed, and were eager to turn our backs and head back to the cab. 

Our cab driver also became our photographer of the day! He was nice enough to stop at a few scenic locations along our journey to take a few pictures for us. There were two cute little kiddie chair placed there, so we took a few shots, and I personally like the one above a whole lot. 

Made a short climb up Seongsan Ilchubong Peak, supposedly a famous place to observe the rising of the sun. The view of the top was quite magnificent, you could get a bird's eye view of most part of Jeju Island. Very scenic. 

 (: 

Lunch! at some restaurant where the cab driver brought us to. We had seafood pancake, abalone porridge and some seafood soup alongside the condiments. The meal was truly worthy. We loved how fresh the seafood were, and how the soup warmed our cold bodies up.

That's Seongsan Ilchubong behind us! 

Seopjikoji, filming location of many a Korean drama. Would have looked more picturesque in spring, when the grass is green and flowers bloom. 

 Steep narrow stairs down the lighthouse.

Oh we also visited Jeongbang waterfall, the only waterfall in Asia that falls directly into the ocean before calling it a day.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Monday Runs


For the past 20 years of my life, I've never taken fitness seriously. Things started to change sometime last year, where I decided to start healthy living, for several obvious reasons. So I joined a gym, and started going for group classes, which were fun and effective.

It was going all fine, until I noticed that some of the classes were so packed! I hardly had comfortable spacing to move around freely without worrying that I would accidentally kick someone (during body combat). So I decided to get on the treadmill and just jog / run.

Ok, yes, I admit I used to have bad stamina, and I used to hate running. So the first 10 minutes on the treadmill  running at the speed of 8, I was out of breath. I wanted to give up, call it a night and just head home to the comfort of my bed. But somehow, I managed to continue running on for 40 minutes, and that's when I experience the runners high. OMG I felt so good after the run!

So I inserted a new routine in my weekly schedule, to run every Monday.The end goal would be to able to comfortably run 21km by the end of this year. Gonna be tracking myself to work towards it!