Suncheon
City is known as Korea’s eco city, and fittingly so. We caught a train to this
southern city as part of one of our long weekends. It was a sort of the spur of
the moment decision as the holiday weekend crept up on us and with no plans, we
took the advice of one of Dean’s teachers and headed to this coastal city. We
were a little apprehensive as Suncheon barely featured in my Korean tour book
but it was worthwhile visit and should perhaps be given more credit. Suncheon
is near Yeosu and the train ride is just over an hour from Jeonju.
Suncheon
Bay Ecological Park is Korea’s first coastal wetland and it is listed as one of
the world’s 5 major wetlands. The wetland plays an important role to migratory
birds and is teeming with fauna like crabs and mudskippers.
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| At the top of the hill in the background is the Yongsan Observatory. |
There are
boardwalks that snake over the reads with look-out spots to watch for birds and
look at the mud below to see the hundreds of crabs. Walking across the wetlands
you get to a rather steep hill that you can walk up to reach the Yongsan
Observatory and get a good view of the wetlands. The round-trip to the
observatory was a good 40 minutes and thank goodness for the breeze and the
drop in humidity as the walk was rather steep and tiresome.
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| Some beautiful views from the top-looking over the wetlands and to the farmlands in the distance. |
Another of
Suncheon’s sites is Suncheon Bay Garden. This garden was host to the 2013 World
Garden Expo and is still open to the public and well maintained. Another World
Expo I had never heard of, but the Garden Expo was started 150 years ago in
Europe and it showcases different gardens and flora from around the world. I think there was a ticket special while we
were there as we bought tickets for 2500 won that allowed us entrance into both
Suncheon Bay Eco Park and Suncheon Bay Garden, so it was a great cheap visit!
The garden
is absolutely huge and you could definitely spend a good couple hours walking
around. As we got there towards the end of the day, we only had about 2.5hours
to explore and we didn’t come close to seeing it all.
There are
2 sides to the garden and they are connected by the “Bridge of Dreams”. The one
side is filled with themed gardens from around the world and the other is where
the Korean garden, wetlands and more “wilder” gardens are.
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| A view from the gardens towards Suncheon City in the background. |
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| The Bridge of Dreams. The walls are covered with thousands of tiles of drawings done by Korean school kids and they have drawn their dreams. |
As a
person who loves flowers and nature, Suncheon was a great visit for me and I
loved all the opportunities to take photos of the beautiful flowers. I’m
definitely enjoying taking photos and learning a lot with my new camera!
A trip to
Suncheon is an easy day trip from Jeonju although we did opt to spend the night
at a motel as we planned on doing some more things in the area the next day.
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