Showing posts with label Jeju. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeju. Show all posts

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Autumn in Korea, Jeju: From Singapore to Jeju

I thought I was given a lifetime ban from Korea, given that we visited the country 3x within a year. Thus, imagine my joy when Leecher mentioned Korea as our holiday destination. Well, specifically he said Jeju but I'm OK with anywhere as long as it is Korea. However, this was a rather last minute trip as I was swamped with work and didn't have much time to plan. After confirming our leaves, I was frantically searching for tickets during my pockets of free time and only made the AirBnB bookings 10 days before departure. Leecher is quite useless at planning thus, car rental & changing of currency naturally fall under his department. 
Our tired faces on board before I started to feel uncomfortable. We departed from SG via Cathay, with a short transit in HK. I wasn't feeling too good on this flight and I blamed it on the nasi padang that I had earlier at the lounge. I didn't touch any food from SG to HK, which was pretty rare. The flight from SG to HK was slightly delayed hence we were escorted by ground crew for transiting. During transit, I held up the line as I had issues with my e-boarding pass. Paiseh to the max but hey, it wasn't my fault. I was then pulled out of the queue and made to walk the "path of shame" alongside with another ground crew. She had to fill up some forms and tadah, I was "free to go", ha! Again, she had to be "witness" at the boarding gate since I had to scan the same bloody e-pass. Feeling exhausted, I was thankful I had the chance to lie down and sleep better while we cruise to Korea. We finally arrived at Incheon airport, only to be greeted with crowded immigration and took us 1h to clear. With our luggages in tow, we began the journey to Gimpo airport for our next flight out to Jeju. 
Finally located Jeju Air counter at the end of the wing. Well, you can't possibly miss it given the vibrant orange logo. Our flight was scheduled for noon, but we could only check in 2h before departure time and we can't head to the lounge without our boarding passes. Mental note to self: for the next trip (if any) to buy tickets with earlier departure time. Hence, we sat on the chairs and tried to catch up on sleep.
After checking in, my hunger pangs struck much to Leecher's delight as I hadn't ate anything since the meal at SG. Lunch was just udon topped with oden and plain gimbap. Perhaps I was hungry, so this set was extremely tasty. The kimchi was spicy and crunchy (me like) and I paired it with gimbap to add some flavour to it.
Someone can't wait to start, ha!
Tired face after the long journey, SG > HK > Incheon > Gimpo. The last leg of our journey to Jeju, can't wait for the plane ride
We arrived at the gate and was informed that our flight will be delayed :( The initial scheduled departure time has now become the boarding time instead.  
 Our plane arrived and we started queuing for boarding. 
 
Don't you love Jeju air logo? I loved the wink and not to mention that the K-idols I adore were endorsers of the brand. #powerofKwave There are several domestic airlines that departs for Jeju, namely: Air Busan, Eastar Jet, Jin Air and T'way Airlines. I went with Jeju Air because they have more flights/timings as compared to the rest.
Hello Jeju! 
 
The last to-do item before we begin our Jeju adventure: picking up the rental car.You will not be picking up the rental car directly from the airport. Instead, all rental car companies are located a few minutes drive away from the airport. At Jeju airport, head to the rental car counters located near Gate 2 and show them the booking confirmation. We were then given a slip of paper to wait for the shuttle bus which will bring us to the rental office.

There was a long queue for registration. Fortunately, all counters were open so it only took a while before our number was called.

After completing the paperwork, we were shown to our car which came with Korean GPS. While Leecher familiarise himself with the mechanics of the car, the technician showed me that navigation can be done using phone numbers - which seemed relatively easy at this point. BUT, we encountered problems with it - more on that later.
With our luggage loaded, we are ready to go! 

🍃🍃🍃 Navigation for Jeju 🍃🍃🍃 

I have inserted a table that lists down the phone numbers for the various attractions. Simply enter the numbers in the GPS and viola - the places will appear on your map. Have fun driving in Jeju (^^)
 
Attractions Navigation
Yongduam Rock 용두암 (Dragon Head Rock) 7283918
Cafe Aewol Monsant 카페 애월 드 몽상 (GD Cafe) 7998900
Bomnal Cafe 카페 봄날 7994999
Accommodation Navigation
Citrus BnB N.A
Tangerine Pension 7646002

Psst ... more links will be added. Click on the links to read on our adventures!

Sunday, November 6, 2016

Autumn in Korea, Jeju: Preparations for Self-Drive Trip

Hello November! 2 months to the end of the year and 1 more to my favourite month. Looking back, we were away on our winter holidays for 2 consecutive years hence we decided to take a break this year and stayed in Singapore instead (for now). Perhaps, I may get to celebrate my birthday properly, ha! 

I pretty much spent the month of October travelling; a business trip before heading for a holiday to my second home, Korea! Yes, I'm finally back in Korea to complete my experience-4-seasons-in-Korea much to Leecher's dismay. This time round, we headed over to Jeju before continuing the rest of the journey in Seoul. We decided on a self-drive adventure in Jeju as this was the most convenient and efficient way to explore the island. Not to mention that we are spending 6 days in Jeju, ha! Our mini honeymoon since Jeju is the honeymoon island for Koreans. In order to drive in Korea, you will need to prepare these beforehand:
1. Obtain your international driving permit
The International Driving Permit is the first thing that they will request to see when we collected the car in Korea. You can apply for IDP via AA, either online at www.aas.com.sg or at their AA offices (Kallang Bahru/Ang Mo Kio). The IDP fee is $20 and the permit is valid for a year from date of issue. For walk-in application, the processing time is within 1h. They will help you to take a picture on the spot and the whole application was relatively hassle-free.
2. Reserve a car online 
There are lots of car rental companies for renting cars. Previously, I used KT Kumho but they have since changed to Lotte. You can sign up as a member to be entitled to discount rates off the listed price. Since car rental is Leecher's department, I put him in charge of getting this done. To think that he actually outsourced to concierge and they provided us with a list of rentals/prices. Finally, we confirmed the car with Hertz. 
3. Request for an English GPS 
We requested for one but it wasn't available. Hence, we survived on a Korean GPS which was pretty difficult to navigate at first (even our AirBnB host said so!) but I soon got the hang of it.

With that, we are ready to kick start our self-drive trip in Jeju! Now, I just need to sort out the pictures across cameras + phones before I start blogging about it. Before that, let me just catch up on the latest episode of Infinity Challenge - 무한도전. Stay tuned!
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