Hello, my name is Amy and I am going to tell you about the Great Chuseok Adventure 2016. During the Chuseok holidays some friends and I decided to take a trip down to Gwangju. A couple of friends and I packed up and took the long bus ride down to Gwangju. Before I tell you about the trip, I'll give you a short background as to why we decided to go there.
When I first decided to move to Korea, I was between two job offers. One was in Gwangju and the other was in Cheonan (where I currently reside). Gwangju is one of the larger cities in Korea and I was tempted to take that job offer. However, Cheonan is a transportation hub and a lot closer to Seoul. But I was always curious what I was missing from not moving to Gwangju. I finally decided that I should see what I missed by moving to Cheonan. I by no means know for sure what my life would have been like if I had moved to Gwangju and the short four days there by no means gave me the most proper look into life there. But curiosity killed something that one time and I thought maybe it would spare me, it didn't.
As I mentioned, Gwangju is one of the larger cities in South Korea. It is known for its art and beautiful scenery. My friends and I were really excited to see the new city and did a lot of research into what we should see when we went there. We went there armed with a list of things we should do, see and, most importantly, eat.
First things first, the bus ride was an hour longer than expected. I think this was due to the holiday traffic, it was a total of 4 hours sitting on the bus (note to self by train tickets months in advance for holiday trips). We made the most of it, taking pictures and eating snacks along the way. When we arrived, we had no idea where to go from the bus station. We were a little confused because near our bus terminal back in Cheonan, it's like the downtown of the city. But it was quite empty around this bus terminal. We came to the conclusion that this was probably because of the holiday. Most of the big cities are empty on Chuseok and the people are at home with their families. Once we found a taxi stand, we spent a good amount of time trying to explain to the cab driver where we wanted to go and he kept pushing the address away when we tried to give it to him. Eventually we convinced him we could give him directions in Korean and he didn't need to use the translate on his phone. We got dropped off close to our hostel..... however.... I don't know how to put this in great terms. I was the one who booked our hostel, it was cheap but had great reviews and photos. But I may not have chosen the best location. We were dropped off around a lot of abandoned buildings that look like they had been taken down by fire or just fallen into disrepair. The area was probably one of the shadiest areas I have seen since I moved here (shady being a relative term, South Korea is one of the safest countries and even through the rough looking surroundings we never felt unsafe enough to walk around at night. Although ghosts seemed like a fair assumption of something that would attack us).
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| The Gwangju Adventure Crew |
On to more positive things. After our trek through the ghosts and ghouls, we found our hostel in the middle of a lot of love motels. But our hostel was a beacon of awesomeness. It was super clean and seemed to be recently updated. The owner was really nice as well, he was always trying to feed us all the food all the time. We were not too far away from most of the things we wanted to visit. However, upon talking to coworkers, we were located on the wrong side of the city. I totally recommend it though, I Am Guesthouse in Gwangju.
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| Ducks falling into soup pots T-T |
We had read that Gwangju was known for two different types of foods, Duck Soup and Galbi. We were very close to a road known as Duck Soup road. There were supposed to be tons of soup restaurants. We decided that this should be the first thing we did because we love food. We immediately found the marker for it, it was a statue of ducks falling into soup pots. It was funny but we felt a little bad for standing and laughing at it. We walked around the streets and got lost. We found a restaurant in a back alley where no one was walking and no other people were eating, This is always a good decision.... not.... not always a good decision. We order the Duck Soup. It came with barbecue duck before the actual soup. It was very delicious. But we were getting a little full by the time the soup came out in this huge pot. The soup was quite tasty. The texture was different than anything else we had tried in Korea. It was creamy, except it was lacking any sort of cream. It had a lot of leafy greens and big pieces of tender duck. The sides (because you always have a million sides at any korean restaurant) were a bunch of types of kimchi. They all had a unique flavor and were interesting to try. All in all it was a pleasant experience and the food tasted great going down..... Fast forward to a few hours later when we were all laying in bed feeling nauseous. One of us (not me) was puking her life away in the bathroom. Two of us (this included me) were just nauseous but not as bad as the third. Now, this cannot be blamed on the restaurant. Duck is a much greasier meat. None of us usually eat very greasy food (although there are many fried chicken restaurants in Korea, we just tend to avoid them). And the puker.... well she did admit that she has puked every time she eats duck.
Our Gwangju adventure wasn't having the best start. We woke up the next morning with new hope. However, it was shortly dashed when we learned we didn't know how to use the hot water and we all had to take cold showers (the whole weekend was a slew of cold showers.... other people took warm showers and we asked how it worked but time and time again we could never get the showers to work. On top of this it was a big community shower, none of us are exhibitionists. So we were all running into the showers when we were sure everyone was asleep and trying to shower as quick as possible so no one else would see our lady bits.) After a cold awakening, we decided to go back to the bus terminal, where most the life seemed to be. We got coffee and plotted our day.
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| Pungnam Lake |
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| World Cup Stadium |
This whole build up has brought me to what we did and what I recommend you go and see in Gwangju. We started the day going to Pungam. It is a lovely lake with a lot of hiking around it. It gives some great views of the city and is a wonderful place to have a picnic. We wondered around the park having photoshoots and stopping to eat the millions of pounds of bread we brought for our picnic. There were some really fun exercise parks there as well, with some equipment we have never seen in Cheonan (we stop at every exercise park to play on the equipment). A short walk from there, you can visit the World Cup Stadium. It's worth taking a quick look at and there are some stairs that are good for a quick photo op. But now came the hard part, getting a taxi back to our hostel. We couldn't find a taxi for ages and did a lot of walking. But hey, cardio.
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| View from atop a random trail |
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| Art Street Photo Op |
That night we went looking for the famous art street. We had tried to find it our previous night but only ended up getting lost. Finally, we found it, it was very quiet at night and made for an interesting view. We made note of a lot of cute coffee shops and brunch places to visit the next day. Finally, and I do mean finally again, after being in Gwangju for almost two days, we found the people. We finally found the people. Everywhere we had gone, the people had been so scarce. We were getting worried that the zombies had taken the city. Around art street there are lots of cool statues to look at and a few murals. We found lots of excuses to stop and pose for the camera. Our walk back to our hostel that night was filled with running and screaming. We all talked about how if we had been back in our home country walking in a place that looked like it did around our hostel, we would have DEFINITELY been robbed. But we were never bothered and our pockets were unscathed.
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| Coffee Made by a Handsome Man |
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| Angry Bear Cookies |
By day three we were desperate for our two favorite activities, sitting at cute cafes and shopping. We had read that there were some really artsy cafes and great street shopping in Gwangju. One of these was not a disappointment. We had coffee at the cutest cafe named Full House Coffee. The shop was filled with knick knacks that were all for sale. It was covered wall to wall with notes and pictures from people all over the world. Our coffees were delicious and made with love. We also got the cutest cookies as service with the coffee. The owner was chatty and easy on the eyes ;) . Fueled by coffee we decided to go down to the underground shopping we had seen the night before. There were lots of little stores filled with things we usually see in the underground in Cheonan. There were a few resale shops and trendy shops that had some really unique pieces. But overall, the shopping was nothing special.
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| Cutest of the Cafes |
We decided to go out that night since we had finally found the people. We went to a drinking place. People in Gwangju seemed friendly enough. We enjoyed sitting around and chatting and went home much later through insane amounts of rain. We slept in the next day(read hungover) and lounged around because it had been raining on and off our whole trip.
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| Graffiti with a message? |
After four days in Gwangju we finally made our way back to Cheonan. The bus station was starting to fill up again as people came back to the cities from their hometowns. Gwangju was an interesting trip and it was great to see what life could have been had I moved there instead of Cheonan. I would recommend it. But if you are planning a trip to Gwangju... make sure to stay in the right area of town. And don't go when it is raining all weekend. And maybe go when there are more people (if you like people, if you hate people then Chuseok is a great time to go). But a few suggestions 1) make sure to have an itinerary, even down to the restaurants 2) contact a person who lives there or has traveled there to find out what is good and bad 3) have some sort of knowledge of how to read a map.
When we came down from the Village, we needed coffee because well we always need coffee. There is a road with tons of restaurants and coffee shops. I'm not going to lie, most of the places in the area are overpriced because it is for tourists. The word bougie went through my head when we passed by a lot of the shops. But we did end up finding this really cool coffee shop. It was up a steep stairway and the name is definitely what drew us in. The shop was great with tons of paraphernalia and cool artifacts around the shop. The guy behind this counter was super nice and his English was great. It is mainly coffee and juices, we were actually hoping for smoothies, but the coffee was not a disappointment.It was a great break from the heat because we were sweating like pigs.
Once we came back down, you would think we were done. But no we kept walking and found the Korean Folk Museum (once again, happened upon... it's a pattern). This is also a free museum you can walk through. There are restaurants and lots of other museums in the area. There are some beautiful temples and more historical things to look at. There is a kids zone with fun crafts to do. You can see men and women walking around in traditional clothing. We had fun walking through it and taking pictures and reading the signs (all of these were in Korean and English). There were some statues of the Chinese zodiacs that you can take your picture with, so of course we did that.
After walking through the Folk Museum, we were officially done. Our feet hurt, we needed a shower, and we stank.... like super stinky foreigners walking around. We decided it was time to head back. But if you want to keep going, there is a lot more to see. You don't have to know the way or use your phone to find anything. We only knew the first stop and from there we were constantly "lost". We did lots of fun things and all of this was just happened upon while walking around. Don't forget to be complete tourists and take lots of pictures for the gram. And definitely don't forget your selfie stick, you'll need it and you won't be a proper tourist without it.
