Jeju Road Trip With My Teenage Daughter

Two days after my 12-year-old daughter collected her PSLE results last November, I whisked her away on a road trip to Jeju. This is the story of our first father-and-daughter solo trip.

We flew out on the Friday of the PSLE results week. As I wrote on social media when I made the booking,

She was disappointed with her PSLE results. Tears were shed. Rather than letting her brood, hiking up The Peak in Hong Kong early Saturday morning was probably better for her. She didn’t like it at that time. A rather reluctant hiker, this girl. But I like to think 10, 20 years from now, the hours and days immediately after she collected her PSLE results will be a blur, but she will remember hiking in Hong Kong with her dad.

We were in Hong Kong to host a pre-departure dinner for a few families joining Yamayama Travel’s ski camp in Shiga Kogen. We hiked, hung out with friends, ate ice cream in Lan Kwai Fong, and took a 2:40am red-eye flight to Jeju.

The Jeju trip, officially branded as a Mindfulness in Nature Camp organised by Yamayama Travel, ran as a guided self-driving tour of Jeju. Each family rents a car, and we get around Jeju in a little convoy led by our local guide. Every morning, kids start the day with a one-hour mindfulness session where they practise curiosity, self-awareness and resilience. Adults get to wake up late, stroll around the resort, pick fresh tangerines for breakfast, and, when the kids are ready, take a leisurely drive to a cafe for morning coffee.

I have always been a fan of small, independent cafes, but the ones in Jeju are at a different level. Every single one we visited is surrounded by nature, with ample space for the kids to run around. The problem with starting the day in gorgeous cafes is nobody wants to leave, which is where having your own car comes in really handy. Wanna spend more time at the cafe and skip the next location? By all means.

A guided self-driving tour combines the benefit of having a local guide with expert knowledge of the island and the flexibility of choosing how long you want to spend at each spot.

Including Summer and myself, there were altogether nine families in Jeju. One parent observed that out of the nine families, only one travelled as the whole family. All the other eight families only had one parent with one (or more) kid(s). To be clear, these aren’t single-parent families. The other parent just couldn’t make the trip. I certainly didn’t market the trip as such, but it somehow turned out this way. For the better, I might add, because it gets lonely travelling alone with your child. There were certainly nights when Summer missed home and her four siblings. For the parents as well, spending 24/7 with your child can be intense. In a small group of nine families travelling together, both adults and kids make friends. On more than one occasion a few families would spontaneously get together for dinner (only welcome and farewell dinner were included in the tour package).

The Alpaca Farm in particular was a hit with the kids. They had so much fun feeding the alpacas, petting them, being near these beautiful gentle creatures.

The weather in Jeju is unpredictable, which makes itinerary planning challenging. Every night after dinner, I spend an hour or two on the phone with the local guide planning the following day’s itinerary based on weather forecast. But even the best laid plans go awry, such as the day we climbed Seongsan Ilchulbong Peak and got caught in a hailstorm. We braved the hailstones, made it to the top, and came back down. A remarkable feat for four-year-old twins Keegan and Kiran. Maybe the resilience bit during the mindfulness sessions came in handy?

The trip to Jeju was both Summer and my first time visiting Korea. I don’t know what the rest of Korea is like, but Jeju is stunningly beautiful. Nature is probably Jeju’s biggest draw. The peaks, hills, volcanoes, waterfalls and rock formations are what makes Jeju such a special place.

Just as importantly, I got to spend quality time in nature with my teenage daughter. It’s a very special feeling. Reminds me a lot of the film Aftersun, “profound and masterful” according to the film writer at Indiewire.

I brought along a vintage Konica C35 camera with me on the trip and managed to take a bunch of photos of Summer on film. I call it my Love Letter to Summer Series. Fleeting moments of her on the cusp of childhood and teenagehood, captured on film, with Jeju as the backdrop. So beautiful.

Jeju, I mean.

_{All photos except Lan Kwai Fong and alpaca farm taken on a Konica C35 with Kodak Ultramax 400.}

Yamayama Travel will be running another Mindfulness In Nature Camp in Jeju 1-8 June 2025. Sample itinerary subject to change according to the weather. If you like to find out more, please get in touch.