Last June I decided to head down to Suncheon, South Korea to take part in the Suncheon Bay Walking Festival. Although it’s not a popular festival for foreigners, it looked nice and I can always use more exercise! I was pleasantly surprised by how beautiful the gardens were there and enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
We were lucky and got a really cheap package through the chairman of the festival for $30, including transport to and from Suncheon, 1 night’s accommodation, festival entrance fees, and an international friendship dinner! It was such a good deal, I couldn’t believe it.
Suncheon is located about 4 hours from Seoul, so you are basically going from one end of Korea to the other! Me and my friend were basically the only foreigners, so we got a lot of attention. We didn’t care about it too much, we kind of did our own thing while we were there. There were three walking courses to choose from based on distance, so we chose the shortest one so we could explore the area more. The gardens were so beautiful (pictures galore!) and there was a really cool opening ceremony that had music and even a group stretching exercise before starting the walking.
Suncheon has one of the top 5 coastal wetlands in the WORLD. I had no idea! The entire area is just beautiful and filled with so many flowers and nature exhibits that we walked around the gardens for hours and weren’t able to see them all. No wonder they decided to do the Suncheon Bay Walking Festival here. There really isn’t anything nearby the gardens if you are looking for food, but there is a bus stop right outside the entrance on the main road that will take you a short ride to the main city.
We had a ton of fun completing the walk along the river and got to see a lot of flowers. People were really kind and interested in the foreigners walking around. At one point we walked off the path in search of food and a nice old man ran after us making sure we knew where we were going. The town was really small but near the bus station we found a kimbap place to eat. You can find kimbap anywhere!
We had so much fun the first day. I wasn’t sure about it since no one really blogged about going to this festival but it was totally worth it! I would definitely recommend anyone thinking of attending the Suncheon Bay Walking Festival to give it a try. It’s a beautiful area to explore. It’s so nice to take beautiful pictures!
Day two was even more fun! Coming soon. 😉
