Let me tell you something straight, it’s highly not recommended to drive yourself if you have more than 5 pax in your group (which means you will driving a bigger vehicle than usual).

Our family of 7 got into a minor car accident- on the FIRST DAY of the Jeju trip. Yup, I said it. It was really a huge blow-off and generated lots of anxiety until the incident was settled.

If you have decided to self-drive in Jeju/ rent a car in Jeju:

1. First thing first, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE INCLUDED COMPREHENSIVE INSURANCE in whatever package that you have signed up.

This is very very crucial! For our case, our insurance is not comprehensive but just partial. So we had to pay a part of the damage cost while insurance covering the rest of the damage cost.

If we had purchased the full insurance, we would have only paid for the rental cost that the rental car company lose.

2. Make sure you have someone who is a good driver

As the driver seat would be different from Malaysia, which is on the left. It might take some time for the driver to actually get used. Not only does the driver has to get familiarised with the different seat, the entire road is different. Like how cars are making turns, which way to look, even the roundabout becomes anti-clockwise.

2A. Make sure you also have a good GPS Navigator assistant

As mentioned in point 2, it’s already a difficult task enough for the driver in getting used to the different driver seat and road condition. The last thing he/she wants to be doing is to be distracted on checking out on the GPS.

Of course you can choose not to use the in-car GPS and choose your own phone if you prefer that way. Still, the driver will need someone to help so he/she can stay focused on the road instead.

And please, do the driver a favour and don’t sleep throughout the journey. Since the distance between different tourist spots could be from 30mins up to 1.5hours or more (depending on how you arrange your itinerary). But you get my point, it’s better if the driver has some sort of support from the passenger seat.

3. TRY TO ARRANGE YOUR ITINERARY IN EARLIER DAY

My traveling period was quite a popular season of the year- Autumn, 18-21 October. I can say that the day starts really early, and the day ends even earlier. The sky starts getting dark as early as 5pm+. Which also means your visibility starts decreasing 6pm onwards. It’s going to be more difficult for your to find the routes.

4. Check if your hotel/Airbnb provides parking space (and still be prepared to look for parking space even if they do)

Obviously when you are renting a car, you will need to park it in the property that you are staying. For two consecutive nights, we had some difficulties to park. First night was due to the incredibly small parking space to fit our 7-seater car. Second night, the car park was full. We didn’t even get to see the car park and wasn’t sure how many parking space exactly do they have.

5. Parking space are REALLY SMALL and roads could be narrow in the Jeju town area

We were in the area near the black pork street, I’m not even kidding, the roads were so so narrow and the cars were just simply parked on the side of the road. Literally we had to check left and right to make sure we don’t brush any cars. Phew!