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!