Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Sunny Suncheon-si

On Day 3 we caught the S-train to Suncheon-si, a city by the bay. S-trains are older trains which have been decorated nicely and offer some touristy entertainment as they "slowly" wend their way past scenic mountains and the sea. KORAIL also offers a discount for tourists who buy their tickets online.

Having lacked sleep the previous night, I tried to sleep on the train but didn't get very much rest. It didn't help that we had to leave early, and for some reason G was extra irritating that day. Because I was in a bad mood :P We arrived close to noon and stashed our bags at the Turtle Inn.

 The plan was to visit a folk village and the Wetland reserve. We stopped by a coffee shop to get a drink and plan our journey. Again, we went back and forth trying to find the bus terminal. G had somehow lost his T-money and had to buy a new card.  After a while we found the bus terminal and waited for the bus listed on Google. It didn't help that we had a LOONG wait in the hot sun before we got one. Much later, we found ourselves at the bus depot, and that we had been going in the wrong direction!! Ugh.

We tried to get another bus but basically they said it was a long way off. Graham was going on and on with the Google Translate instant camera translation thingy and repeating what we already knew. No taxis came along and I was getting more and more irritated. I had been feeling like crap and all I wanted was to get back to the hotel. In the end, we took a bus to a more populated area and hailed a cab there.

It took about 20 minutes to reach the Naganeupsong Folk Village by car, and thankfully, the journey  was cheaper than what Graham had feared it would be, and that put HIM in a better mood. Yeah, right. Be so kedekut with transport, but spend so much on stupid cups of expensive coffee instead of real food. (You can see I was really HANGRY at this point). All I had since morning was a cup of latte and half a bagel, a cup of iced coffee and some leftover cherries while waiting for the bus. 

Thankfully, G has a brain and he figured I needed real food instead of caffeine and fruits. So we shared a small meal at a nearby cafe before going to into the folk village. It was pretty well managed and presented. They even had actors and actresses playing the part of local villagers doing the daily chores from long, long ago. Afterwards, we took a taxi back to the hotel because it was already too late to wait for the bus.

I had booked 2 ondol rooms, but lucky me, I got upgraded because they only had one left. So I got this huge family room because it was on the ground floor and I didn't fancy lugging my bag up the stairs. We bought our tickets to Seoul that night and went to the Wetlands Reserve the next morning. It was a pity that I had forgotten all about the discount coupons I got from KTO, because there was one that gives 30% off on KTX tickets. That's a fair bit of savings I missed out on.

... to be continued.

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