It’s been more than 3 months since I posted an update on our planning for the year end holiday in South Korea. Basically, the broad itinerary we worked out in July was about right, so we didn’t think further about it in the last couple of months. That is, until several weeks ago when we started re-checking and working out the fine details. We realized that as interesting as Ulsan – where we’d planned to visit over days 06 to 09 – it wasn’t finally going to be very different from the kind of places we’d already visited, especially in our previous trips to Japan. The wife was OK sticking to 4D3N segment in Ulsan, but out of due diligence, we started exploring alternatives: which were:
Finding a different city to go to with a different range of sights.
Extending our stay in Busan by one day and Seoul by two days. This was my preferred option, since our itinerary in Busan and Seoul is pretty packed, and I didn’t think we were allocating enough time for us to just leisurely explore the city.
It didn’t take long for the wife to discover Suncheon, a mid-sized town of just population 280,000 – fairly small compared to the cities of Seoul and Busan with their 9 and 3.3 million population respectively. The small town hosts one attraction that really interested the missus: Suncheon Bay Wetland Reserve, a fairly large natural and wetland reserve south of the town. And there was also the Suncheon Bay National Garden, one of the country’s largest gardens and also widely praised for its beauty. One thing about the wife: once she spots a natural sight with flora and fauna that catches her eye, she doesn’t let go! So, a quick check to make sure there would be enough in the town for us to spend three days in, suitable accommodation options and also a plan to get there, and we were set to go with Suncheon.
Below is the updated itinerary that’s about 99% all done:
Comments about this above itinerary!
We’ve opted for Airbnb stays for our Busan and Seoul segment. Such stays are really popular and also a thriving business in South Korea, and it doesn’t seem to also suffer from the same kind of community anxieties for similar types of accommodation in Japan. We’re saving a fair bit going with Airbnb options this time, and also chose places that are near major train stations.
Busan offers a 24 or 48 hour visitor pass that provides discounted or included admissions to a large number of places. Many visitors to the city have remarked of how good value this visitor pass is, so we’re going to avail ourselves of that same opportunity. Days 03 and 04 is when we’re basically going to run from place to place and get maximum returns from the pass!
We’re still thinking of what to do on Day 05 – our last full free day in Busan. Of interest for me is a day trip to Gyeongju, a city a couple of hours away from Busan and which hosts several UNESCO World Heritage sites.
We timed our visit to the Suncheon Bay Wetland Reserve to catch the sunset, but it also means we’d have to walk real fast to get back to the visitor entrance/exit when done. Also, since that’s the highlight of our visit to Suncheon, we’d need to have that bit of flexibility to visit the Reserve on other days if the weather isn’t cooperative.
We’re also still figuring out how to get from Busan to Suncheon; and so far, we’d had no luck trying to reserve seats for the train that connects to the two cities. There’s also the express bus option, but the departing point – the Busan Express Bus Terminal – is some distance away from where we’d be staying and near Busan Station. Doable of course, but less convenient.
We spent just a few days in Seoul during our 2006 trip, so almost all of the places we’ve listed for our 9 days in Seoul are new for us this trip. The repeated bits are Nami Island – can’t run from this place since so many day trips include that as a stop, Seorak Mountain, and also the Myeongdong area that we checked out then. We’ve booked four day trips for the Seoul segment: including a visit to the DMZ (and we’re hoping Peter doesn’t do anything to start World War III there!), Alpaca World, a visit to Gyeonggi province, and Wondae-ri Birch Forest. That leaves us with three full days where’d explore Seoul on our own.
Day 17 is a bit of a wasted day: and largely because our flight home on Day 18 departs in the morning. We decided that rather than spend Day 17 night in Seoul and have to wake up crazy early to make our way to Incheon International Airport, we’d just leave Seoul on Day 17 and find an Incheon hotel near to the airport to spend our last night in South Korea.
This is a pretty busy itinerary for 18 days, and as these things go, there’s a good chance we’d just end up dropping a place here and there for the days we’re exploring on our own. I reckon with this trip, we would have explored at least 80% of both Seoul and Busan’s most important tourist places: which would make any subsequent trip to South Korea and centered on these two cities in the next years harder to plan. More on our planning for this trip to come!