Travel to Jeju in a post-COVID-19 world. Well sort of post-COVID

At the time of this post (17 Sep 22), South Korea requires an arrival PCR test. This test is very sensitive and it will pick up past infections as positive If you are flagged as positive, you will be required to be quarantined. For our party, one member was previously infected on Mar 22, tested positive and was required to quarantine in the hotel room for 5 days. There were no daily checks or exit tests. We checked with the SG embassy, if tested positive, try to do another within 24 hours to confirm. So plan your itinerary to factor in all of the above.

Navigation apps. Google Maps doesn’t have turn-by-turn navigation. You can navigate by comparing your current location vs destination. I used Naver Maps to give me directions and help to communicate with the taxi driver about my destination. Naver Maps search is a bit weird, probably due to the translation of English to Korean. So I used Google Maps to help to search and try to type the result into Naver.

Taxi booking – Kakao Talk, it never worked for me. Same as the app review. 🙁

The weather in Jeju in September changes rapidly from rainy to blazing hot. Our umbrellas got much use.

We got sick of eating Korean noodles and wanted to eat some pizza. Italian food is challenging to find. As far as I can see, only pizza is available and in limited places. We got a New York-style pizza from LotteMart for 14,000 won. Hmm, should have made LotteMart the first stop. Japanese style food is readily available eg kimbap, udon dishes etc. No sushi though. We brought along our own cutlery and that was really useful as the hotels don’t provide spoons. We bought some paper plates and bowls to supplement.

Shopping in Jeju, for fresh produce best go in the morning. Most shops open around 12noon. For finished goods, the best time is the late afternoon to overlap with the night market opening up. It is very quiet from 8-10 am. Their color preference is different from ours. I took a look at New Balance and Foot Mart. Strangely the sneakers are only in 2 colours, white or black. There is no shortage of big chain coffee outlets.

ABEBE Bakery is really underrated. Unfortunately, each pastry/doughnut is so filling that I can only eat 1 per day. I should have brought some home.