Jeju Island Transport
Handy little sign in the taxi
Jeju Island isn’t exactly the most tourist friendly place when it comes to transportation. Buses and taxis will be your best friends and you usually need both to get anywhere.
Firstly, to taxis. Most taxi drivers don't speak that much English so whenever you are planning to go anywhere by taxi, it's easiest just to have your hostel/hotel write the name of your destination in Korean on a piece of paper that you can give to a taxi driver. As you will probably be doing a combination of taxis and buses, it's sometimes easiest to get someone to write down the name of the bus stop you want to go that will take you to a certain place. Failing either of this, taxi drivers should have available a free interpreter service via their phones. See the picture to the left.
Onto buses. If youre staying at Jeju-si, all of the buses depart from the one place- Jeju Local Bus Terminal. You can walk there but it might be easier to take a taxi there sometimes. Most taxi drivers don't speak that much English so it's best to ask your hostel/hotel to write the name down in Korean so you can show it to your taxi driver. Once there, its pretty easy to get a ticket to whichever attraction you want to go to.
Buses will take you to almost any point in the island and to any major tourist attraction, but they’re somewhat inconvenient in that they never drop you to the doorstep. They always drop you that little bit away from where the actions is, such that you have to walk sometimes 20-30mins just to see the thing you want to. This doesn’t sound too bad, but when you're a tourist and have no idea where anything is and there are no signs pointing in the general direction, it’s a bit confusing. Whats more confusing though is trying to get the return bus. Not all buses are marked very well and it’s not always easy to find out which bus to get on, which bus stop to wait at and which side of the road to stand on. So I have a couple of pieces of advice:
Firstly, to taxis. Most taxi drivers don't speak that much English so whenever you are planning to go anywhere by taxi, it's easiest just to have your hostel/hotel write the name of your destination in Korean on a piece of paper that you can give to a taxi driver. As you will probably be doing a combination of taxis and buses, it's sometimes easiest to get someone to write down the name of the bus stop you want to go that will take you to a certain place. Failing either of this, taxi drivers should have available a free interpreter service via their phones. See the picture to the left.
Onto buses. If youre staying at Jeju-si, all of the buses depart from the one place- Jeju Local Bus Terminal. You can walk there but it might be easier to take a taxi there sometimes. Most taxi drivers don't speak that much English so it's best to ask your hostel/hotel to write the name down in Korean so you can show it to your taxi driver. Once there, its pretty easy to get a ticket to whichever attraction you want to go to.
Buses will take you to almost any point in the island and to any major tourist attraction, but they’re somewhat inconvenient in that they never drop you to the doorstep. They always drop you that little bit away from where the actions is, such that you have to walk sometimes 20-30mins just to see the thing you want to. This doesn’t sound too bad, but when you're a tourist and have no idea where anything is and there are no signs pointing in the general direction, it’s a bit confusing. Whats more confusing though is trying to get the return bus. Not all buses are marked very well and it’s not always easy to find out which bus to get on, which bus stop to wait at and which side of the road to stand on. So I have a couple of pieces of advice:
- When the bus drops you off at the attraction you want, take a taxi if you need to. For some attractions the walk will be 5mins, but for some others like Manjung-gul caves where you need to walk 2-3km, take a taxi.
- When trying to get a bus back, go to the tourist info centre (there’s often one at most attractions, if not, ask at the ticketing counter). Most of them should speak a little bit of English. Get them to write down in Korean where you want to go so that you can at least ask for directions by showing strangers the piece of paper. You can also get the info centre to order you a taxi that can drive you to the bus stop (this saved me a few times).