Jeju Island: Manjanggul Cave Near-miss and Jeju Rail Bikes

Last night while planning our day, we originally planned to go to the Manjanggul Cave and scrap the Jeju Rail Bikes.  We were looking at all the reviews for the Rail Bikes, and they kept saying it wasn’t a good view and it was a waste of money.  The Rail Bikes are extremely expensive.  So, in the end we decided to scrap it, and told the kids this morning. 

We arrived at the Manjanggul caves and sat in the parking lot for a few minutes.  While sitting there we noticed one comment element- all visitors were putting on jackets, sweaters, coats and had pants on.  This immediately made us extremely nervous as we were all in shorts and a t-shirt.  I looked online and found that the temperature on the caves are about 10 degree Celsius.  We came to Jeju without any plans, so we weren’t prepared for a freezing cave.  We have also been in a few caves, and always leave feeling like it wasn’t ever amazing.  Caves are cool for the first 5 minutes, but then after that the cave just gets cold and wet and the same thing over and over again.  Asian caves are also always a  one way cave, you enter and have to go the entire route before you can exit, with little kids, it’s hard to go down a one-way street without an exit.

It took only a few minutes for Kevin and I to put the pieces together and decided to skip the cave and take a gamble on the rail bikes instead.  

We arrived at the Rail bikes at the perfect time because the bikes were ready to go and we wouldn’t have to wait.  We swallowed the exorbitant amount due to ride and had the three girls in the first bike and Kevin and I and Monster in the second bike.  

These Rail Bikes are different then any we have taken before, as they were fully automatic.  We didn’t have to peddle at all.  This works out perfect since we had kids on our bikes. The bikes were also more like little buggies then the rail bikes we have been on.  It was a bit of a windy day, so it was super chilly.  But we had a great time.

It seemed like the Rail Bikes were built on a farmers land, surrounded by cattle and horses.  The scenery was beautiful with rolling hills, ponds and wildflowers.  It took about 40 minutes to get all the way around the rail.  Our bike was extremely fast, we kept having to put the break on so we wouldn’t ram into the girls bike.  There was this rather large hill and our bike went so fast, that Monster, Kevin and I were yelling, whooping and hollering down the entire thing and our bike was booking it.  

We made it to the end and all the kids jumped off.  As we exited the rails, we noticed a small animal petting farm and the kids ran in. I love Korea randomness!  The kids enjoyed seeing bunnies, sheep, horses and more. 

We left the petting farm and found set up photo ops all around the rail park.  We took some time and took a bunch of pictures before we went on our way.  

I am so glad that we didn’t listen to the reviews and that we skipped the cave for the Rail Bikes. Eventhough it was expensive, it was worth it.  All the kids had a blast riding the bikes, seeing the animals and taking pictures. We got in the car and left with all smiles.