What’s up, everybody? PHILCAELA here :)
We recently got back from over a month-long trip in Korea.
Now, in order to be able to travel to Korea during these times we had to do a mandatory
14-day quarantine in a government facility.
Korea has been handling COVID extremely well since the beginning of the pandemic so we
felt safe actually going there, given that we needed to quarantine.
We went as tourists on tourists visas, so we were required to spend 14 days in a government-assigned
facility, which was basically a hotel, but for people who are there on long-term visas
for school or for work, they have the option to stay at an Airbnb or some other accommodation.
Before going into quarantine, we did extensive, extensive research just because we wanted
to be really prepared and we found out that you don’t actually get to pick where you
stay.
Some people ended up in extremely great accommodations with great food, on the other hand, you have
stories that people did not like their rooms, did not like their food and overall had a
terrible experience.
We actually quarantined back in December so the rules might have changed just a little
bit, but for the most part, it should be pretty similar.
And we hope you guys join us as we show you the moments from when we were packing, getting
ready to leave, all the way up until we were free to travel in Korea!
Let’s go!!!
Now that we’ve made it off of the flight, the next step is to go through immigrations
and customs before we find out where we’re gonna stay.
Now we’re in this holding pen where, I guess, everyone in this area is going to the same
facility since we all have the red tags, but we don’t know where we’re going yet and
honestly I just hope that it’s a nice place.
OK so after sitting on the bus for about an hour, it seemed a little bit disorganized
but we were able to get into our hotel lobby now where we’re gonna be quarantining for
the 14 days.
We just paid.
We paid $1600 US dollars cash each for our own rooms and we’re pretty much just gonna
say goodbye now.
So I’ll see you in 14 days!
I’m sad!
I think I’ve had maybe like 6 or 7 COVID tests in my life, that was by far the worst.
Like literally up to your brain!
Yeah they’re not messing around here.
We’re gonna keep on documenting this quarantine separately now.
I love you!
I love you, too!
Bye, love!
Bye-bye!
Did I bring enough stuff?
Alright here it is, moment of truth!
Oh hell yeah…
Oh this’ll do!
I mean, I’m gonna be stuck here for 14 days…
Is that a balcony?!?
Oh my god, I have a balcony!
There’s a little desk to do my work.
How’s the bathroom?
Oh baby!
I hope Micaela’s room is nice like this!
OK good morning from Yongin.
This is where we’re gonna be quarantining for the next 14 days, so far it’s been pretty
good.
Honestly, yesterday the flight and the time at the airport wasn’t too bad.
But it was being stuck on that bus for an hour that was a little bit enough, it’s
OK it’s in the past.
And I just heard the breakfast delivery come get dropped so let’s check it out.
Plastic bag, opening up!
Alright looks like we got some soup of some kind.
This is potato?
Mmm!
That is actually really good.
Here’s the Day 1 spread right here.
I can’t imagine it’s going to be too different everyday but this is what we’re working
with here pretty much.
I’m glad the soup was like a little warm, it wasn’t hot, it was still a little warm,
which makes it easier to eat because if it was cold I think it would have tasted pretty
bad!
OK I’m about to dig in.
So the potato soup I already had some, it’s good, it’s warm.
And then the other thing I wanna get into here is this main course.
This Goguma Saendeuwichi, this is a sweet potato sandwich, right?
It’s a piece of cold white bread with some sweet potato some pickle and some tomato on
there.
I don’t think this is gonna be amazing, but let’s dig in anyway!
Mmm…
It’s what you’d expect.
It’s not that good.
I look forward to other meals.
I’ll put it that way.
Whoop, that’s tough…
OK the time is 11:30AM right now, still on the first day, I’ve been on this FaceTime
call with Micaela almost the whole morning.
Anyway, I just heard the lunch get delivered so let’s go check and see if it’s here.
Yes it is.
Alright so let’s go ahead and give these a try.
Here’s the vegetables and chicken, definitely gave me more than enough rice.
Uh I don’t think I’ll be finishing all this unless I just wanna be really full.
The kimchi and then some shrimp with a sweet and spicy-looking glaze on it.
Here’s that chicken right there, got some kind of sweet glaze on it.
This is actually not bad!
I feel like this kind of food, chicken, even though it’s just lukewarm, is still not
too bad.
And it’s tender and it’s good.
And now that it’s the afternoon, we have quite a bit of time before our next meal,
dinner.
So Micaela and I are both gonna use this time to work out.
I got my resistance bands here.
Light and then heavy.
Super versatile I can do legs, arms, muscles with it, deadlifts, squats, so not as good
as weights, obviously, but very convenient to travel with.
Alright so as Micaela said, we’re gonna be using resistance bands to work out and
honestly, you’re definitely gonna wanna stay as active as possible while you’re
in here.
Just because for your own physical, but also mental and emotional well-being, if you’re
kinda just sitting around all day, it might add up and you might not feel as well after
14 days of doing this.
Just try to clear up some space and do what you can to stay active!
So before I go out and grab my dinner, I called the number that they told me to call in case
I wanted to make any special requests and I basically just wanted more water.
So I called the number, a lady picked up the phone, she was very friendly, very helpful,
and basically said “OK, we’ll give you 5 extra bottles of water at dinner.”
And here they are!
So every facility is gonna be a little bit different, probably, but my experience here
is that they’ve really very helpful and very receptive.
Now, time to grab the dinner!
Alright dinner is served!
Let’s see what we got here.
Looks like we got some beef of some kind here, they don’t go cheap on their rice, again.
Chicken wings, kimchi, pickles, orange, and a side salad.
This beef here is actually pretty good.
I will say, though, it’s just another example of something that would probably taste way better
if it was warmed up.
Micaela has that Egg Bite cooker, which is basically like a small Foreman Grill, so it’s
very convenient for her.
At this point I do wish that I had brought one, but I’m still making do.
And the food does still taste pretty good so far even though it’s room temperature.
Today’s just been the first day, but I think that the breakfast, lunch, and dinner that
they provided are pretty good examples of what to expect if you’re doing the government
quarantine in Korea.
I’m not gonna record every single meal after this because I think by now you guys
all got the gist of what to expect in terms of food during the quarantine, but if anything
spectacularly bad or spectacularly good gets served, I’ll let you know.
So I’m gonna keep on enjoying this meal and I’ll see you guys later!
Alright good morning, it’s Day 4 in quarantine, slowly getting used to the routine by now
and it seems like here, at the Golden Tulip, every morning they give you some kind of sandwich
for breakfast, so here we have a Ratatouille Sandwich, but the last 3 days it’s been
the sweet potato sandwich and then an egg mayo sandwich, 2 days in a row.
Not the most appetizing, luckily lunch and dinner have not been too bad, but breakfast
has not been that great.
They do give you some fruit, water, yogurt, so there’s other things to eat, but breakfast
entrees… mmm… not on point.
OK, so after a few hours, lunch has arrived and when I was getting it, I noticed what
it was and I grabbed the camera immediately because I think it finally happened that we
got a pretty bad meal!
Pretty interesting thing for you guys to see.
What is that?
Yeah it’s uhhh… it’s something…
Not quite sure, it’s like a…
I don’t know if it’s a sausage patty or a veggie patty or something but it’s basically
mystery meat, well yeah obviously it looks a certain way but let’s go ahead and give
it a try.
Here we go!
Mmm that’s trying to be chicken!
I can tell.
Tastes like chicken, but it’s just very processed.
It’s like a chicken patty basically.
So I will say it tastes a little better than it looks, but it looks horrible so that’s
not saying much.
Yeah this one is not hitting it.
Luckily, though, I can chase this chicken in some sweet gravy sauce with this good kimchi
here.
Coming into quarantine, I knew that we would get a mystery meat day at least once or twice
or maybe three times, so it’s nice to kinda get it out of the way.
Basically, it’s just a very not-appetizing chicken patty in a sweet gravy, but I’m
gonna eat it.
Fast forward ahead a few days, it’s not Day 6, honestly the days are flying by pretty
quickly, overall been pretty happy with my room, my food, the internet, so everything
has been pretty comfortable.
Definitely very lucky to be in a hotel like this, but also the fact that Micaela and I
prepared as much as we did and we knew what we were getting ourselves into.
We brought extra snacks and all kinds of little things like that, our stay hasn’t been too
bad.
Just picked up my lunch, looks like we got some chicken tenders in here, fried rice,
kimchi, tofu and all the regular stuff.
Not bad!
That’s closer to a chicken nugget than a chicken tender, that is actually pretty good!
I like the sauce on it, it’s like a honey mustard, mmm this is amazing, actually.
This is really good!
Welcome to Day 7 of our quarantine, by now we have a really good idea of how the daily
routine goes, how the meals go, the things that we do everyday.
As you could probably guess, Micaela and I are both really big coffee drinkers, so having
good coffee was important to us for the 14 days.
So we brought our own beans that we had ground before we left and we’ve been putting them
into these filters here that basically set on top of your cup or your mug.
It’s been really, really awesome to have actually good medium or light-roast coffee
or whatever we want because they do they provide coffee for you, but they are these instant
coffee packets and they’re really not that bad, but if you want good coffee, this is
still gonna taste a little bit too watery for you, or maybe, too sweet.
And that actually leads into the next thing that has been super useful for us and it’s
this mug that I brought.
When you arrive, they’ll give you big sleeve of small paper cups to use while you’re
in quarantine.
But I can tell you that bringing this mug has been amazing to have an actual mug to
drink out of.
As you saw, I have this actual metal spoon here that we brought from home, but in addition
to that, having a bowl and a fork, again these sound really, really odd and maybe a little
bit basic, but you’re not gonna have any kinds of plates or any kinds of real metal
utensils while you’re here so it’s just having that nice touch of being able to use
actual silverware and actual mug that has made a big difference while we’ve been here.
One more thing to note is that in the government facility quarantine, trash is collected everyday.
You get 14 of these orange bags you throw your trash in it, and after breakfast every
morning they come by and pick it up. Really simple!
And also because it’s Day 7 and we’re at the halfway point in our 14-day quarantine,
I wanted to spend today taking care of that!
I’m gonna be doing my laundry the old-fashioned way using soap and hot water in the sink!
It’s not that much, it’s mostly what I wore on the plane here and like boxers and
socks, but still gotta do it anyway!
To be ready to do my laundry in the hotel during quarantine, I did bring some rubber
gloves to be able to protect myself from the hot water that I’m gonna be using in the
sink, but I cannot find the laundry detergent, the laundry soap that I had brought.
I don’t know where it is, so instead, I’ll be using this liquid dish soap that I had
brought.
It should still work, right?
And one other things that I’m not totally prepared for is where I’m going to hang
my clothes.
Of course I can find places to hang stuff around the hotel but I only have 3 actual
clothes hangers, so I’m gonna have to get creative.
That took actually way longer than I thought it would, but at least most of my clothes
have been cleaned!
I started running out of space to hang stuff so that’s done and it’ll be nice to have
some clean clothes again.
Alright, something cool happened, I’m really glad that today’s the day that I’ve been
filming everything.
Just got dinner, and after I took a look at it, I went and grabbed the camera because
I got something good!
I got salmon for dinner right here!
YES!
That is good!
Today’s Saturday so maybe it’s…
Salmon Saturdays?
I don’t know but this salmon’s delicious.
Salmon doesn’t need to be like piping hot to enjoy, this isn’t cold this is somewhere
around like room temperature, but it’s just fine, I’m still perfectly able to enjoy
and actually look this is flaking off pretty well.
This thing is just breaking apart every time I try to do anything to do.
So this is some pretty good stuff for quarantine.
Mmm!
Alright something happened…
It’s Day 14 of our quarantine, it’s our last full day and we had originally thought
that we would be able to get out at midnight tonight, but they actually changed the rules,
like the government changed the rules in the middle of our quarantine so we have to get
out now at 7AM from this facility.
So the reason that’s weird is Micaela and I had planned on continuing to work throughout
that night but because we’re only able to get out of here at 7AM now, we’re gonna
get to the hotel and check-out is at 10AM.
Actually the hotel just called me and said “Excuse me, sir, are you sure you just want
3 hours?
You know check-out’s at 10AM.”
I said, “Yeah that’s fine, just give me 3 hours.”
So change of plans, we’re gonna work here because we have to (we have no other choice)
until we can get released at 7AM, but at 7AM, we’ll show you guys what it’s like to
be discharged!
And just like that, wow it’s already 7AM, time to get out of here.
Waiting in the back of the cab now for Micaela, she should be down here any second, but basically
our cab is right in front of the hotel we just hopped in.
And from here it’s gonna take us to another nearby hotel so we can continue working, and
there she is!
Yay!
You're real :)
After we were freed, we went to a nearby hotel to finish our work for the day
and from there we were free to explore Korea!
So after this video, definitely make sure to check out our upcoming videos and we hope
you enjoy them.
If you haven’t already, SUBSCRIBE for more travel and food videos coming soon.
See ya next time!
Bye :)