Table of Contents

Originally, we had plans to travel to Italy in November, but our plans drastically changed once I realized that I couldn’t apply for a visa due to my employment pass validity. Likely, I understood it early enough to shift the gears. I was searching for a country, where I don’t need a visa and still have places from my bucket list.

Thus, we decided to visit a famous Korean island - Jeju. During the quick research, we also understood that Jeju isn’t that big, about 2.5 times larger than Singapore. Thus, we decided to check out the second-largest Korean city - Busan.

The most important stuff packed:

This trip was unique for multiple reasons. Firstly, we made a decision to rent a car. Nothing special about it except the fact that’s my first overseas rental car experience. Also, I never drove on the other side (right) side of the road. Secondly, we haven’t done any research on what spots we should visit on the island. The only planning that we’ve done is booking hotels on different sides of the Island and booking a car. That’s significantly different from our usual experience when my wife has a detailed plan for each and every day.

Links to the previous parts

• Part 2: South Jeju
• Part 3: East Jeju
• Part 4: East Jeju Extended
• Part 5: Jeju City and the Coastal Road

Jeju Itinerary, day 0: the city centre

The first day of our 5 days itinerary was very straightforward. After the long, 6-hour flight, we landed in the Jeju airport. Surprisingly, the customs checks were extremely quick, and nobody checked my ETA. Once we passed the customs, we started looking for a car rental place. It seems that the practice of renting a car is pretty popular in Jeju as public transport is quite underdeveloped outside of Jeju City. Thus, we managed to find a direction towards the car rental company (Lotte car rental) pretty quickly. There is a dedicated area where buses bring people to various car rental companies. After a short, 5-minute ride, we quickly grabbed a queue ticket to get our car. The processes seem quite well-polished as in about 10 minutes, I got a car key. The car was, obviously, a Korean hatchback. Interestingly, Jeju (and the whole of Korea) doesn’t use Google Maps as the country has its own maps services: Napster and Kokao Maps. But the car had a pretty decent GPS system itself.

I was a bit anxious leaving the car lot as it was my first time driving on the other side of the road, but eventually, everything was just right. Jeju drivers, despite Singapore’s drivers, are pretty chill and give you a pretty large room for mistakes. For my first drive, I honked only once - when I didn’t turn right on a red light. Also, all rental cars have a unique symbol on the car plate. Consequently, the locals can easily recognize possible “foreigners” and give a hint.

Once we parked at the hotel, I decided to get a break from driving that day, and we left for a walk. As it was relatively late, about 3 pm, and we were quite tired, the decision was quite straightforward - to visit one, maximum of two museums. Fortunately, my wife had an idea where to go - Jeju’s computer museum. It was about a 35-45 minute walk from our hotel. The weather was very lovely, about 18 degrees, which is heaven after Singapore’s heat, so we decided to have a nice stroll.

It’s quite unique Jeju thing - a rope-based road carpet for pedestrian convenience:

After a lovely walk, we reached a modern-shaped building, where the computer museum resides. I love the museum as it was almost like a trip back to childhood. The museum had dedicated stands for various computer games such as Prehistoric, Prince of Persia, Zeldas, etc. It was a great pleasure to one more time enjoy the games that I used to play ages ago with my brother.

After the museum, we just returned to the hotel to have some rest as both of us were pretty exhausted. I’ll be talking a little bit more about Jeju City Center on the last day of our itinerary.

For the first night, we decided to stay at the local hotel, which is LOTTE City Hotel Jeju. To be honest, I don’t have much memories of the place except that it was decent.

Jeju Itinerary, day 1: West

That was the first day of our trip across the island and the first day in our 5 days itinerary. The hotel had a brilliant map of the whole of Jeju Island with the most notable places across the island including museums, natural wonders, parks, trails, and amusement parks. Only one thing that the map was missing - the food places. Thus, the day before the next day we did planning and decided where we should go.

In the morning we decided to go to a place called “Nohyeong Supermarket”. As you can guess, it’s not a supermarket, but a media art exhibition. I had zero expectations, but Singapore has a brilliant art space called “Future World” as well as a Vah Goh’s immersive experience. Thus, my bar has been driven by these two experiences.

I can clearly say that the whole experience is rather outdated and old-fashioned. The experience is tailored to the Korean audience, so you shouldn’t expect any translation. I admit that some of the visuals are pretty lovely and entertaining, but the majority of experiences are rather boring and outdated (and some of them are quite weird).

Hallim Park

The second stop was Hallim Park, a natural part of the west side of the island. It took about half an hour to drive from Jeju City to the park. We parked at a beach car park, a stone’s throw distance from the park. The quayside was nice and lovely and we spent a lot of time enjoying the nice weather and breeze. It was a great surprise to realize that we spent a few hours enjoying the quayside, and we decided not to spend time at the Hallim and go straight to the modern art museum.

Museum of Contemporary Art

On the way to the tea museum, we decided to stop at the Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art. The museum isn’t that great, but I enjoyed the weather and overall vibe. The museum has a nice sculpture park and permanent exposition. We skimmed through relatively quickly and left for the tea museum.

Osulloc Tea museum

I’m a huge tea fan, and, because of that, I was looking forward to the team museum. A couple of years ago, I bought a great Yixin teapot in Seoul and I was looking for something similar in Jeju. If you’ve been in the Osulloc Tea Museum, you, are probably, already laughing. It was a great disappointment for me to realize that’s not an actual tea museum, but a nicely arranged teashop.

There are three shops available on the museum’s territory: two cafes, and a cosmetics shop. My wife and I bought some facials for ourselves and my wife’s friends, who had a birthday a while ago. The place was extremely crowded compared to all previously visited establishments.

International school

At the end of the day, we decided to find a supermarket to get some snacks. Google Maps pointed us to a western-looking supermarket not far from our hotel. On arrival, we spotted quite a few foreigners and the supermarket had even more foreigners inside. After a quick research, we realized that the supermarket vicinity has a pretty big international school. It was a big surprise for me that such a tiny place as Jeju has a decent international school.

Dinner

Lastly, we ended the first day of our 5 days itinerary with an amazing dinner in a great place for famous Jeju black pork - BongSoon’s Black Pork. The restaurant address is 1010 Gueok-ri, Daejeong-eup, Seogwipo-si, Jeju-do, South Korea. I strongly recommend the place if you’ll be around.