Korea Travelogue: Day 6 Boseong Green Tea Plantation
Kicked off day 6 in Korea with breakfast provided by Pedro. This will be served at the Voyagers Travel Café and Pedro himself prepped the food and beverages for us together with two other guests.
Simple breakfast of half a bagel with some cream cheese, banana slices, cherries and a chunk of cheese to nibble on. I also had a cuppa that morning because coffee and I are together for life already xD #caffeineaddict
Pedro called a taxi for us using his trusty KakaoTalk app - I don't think this is available on the international version - kinda like how Uber operates and we went to U-Square to get onto the bus to Boseong.
Journey to Boseong bus terminal took us around 1.5 hours, fare was KRW8,400/pax
Bought myself more coffee for the bus ride because Park Seo Joon was on it *insert heart eyes* and I loved him in She Was Pretty! We arrived at Boseong bus terminal and then quickly found a taxi to the green tea plantation. Note: The buses to Boseong from Gwangju doesn't bring you directly to the green tea plantation, you have to either take a separate bus or taxi to reach it. Taxi fare typically costs KRW7,000-10,000/trip and takes around 15 minutes. If you cannot speak Korean, remember to print out the address/location in Hangul to show to the taxi driver.
Reached the green tea plantation and we headed straight to the restaurant for lunch. They do have a café near the entrance as well but we were looking to have lunch so restaurant it was. P.S. There are no food stalls at the Boseong bus terminal so this would be your best bet for a meal if you want to find some food before the green tea plantation visit. Else, tabao (Singlish for 'takeaway') some kimbap! :D
Food was quite expensive in my opinion but everything was peppered with green tea from the plantation I suppose lol.
We ordered samgyupsal/pork belly, onion pancake to share and 2 green tea rice to share among the 3 of us.
Food was decent, nothing to shout about really.
Entrance fees to the plantation is KRW4,000/adult. We bought our tickets at the booth by the entrance before entering the plantation.
Upon entering the plantation, you'll be greeted by a line of small trees along the pathway. Just follow that path and you'll see the green tea plantation at the end.
It's a really magnificent sight to see the actual plantation although locals feel that this plantation is very small (?). To us city dwellers, this is already pretty enough to wow us off our feet HAHAHAHA!
You can climb up the stairs to get a closer look at all the tea leaves, a lot of ahjummas were walking between the rows of tea leaves to take pictures.
So we also monkey see, monkey do LOL and took a ton of pictures among the tea leaves.
It can get pretty hot because of how exposed the plantation is so do prepare enough sunblock and sunglasses to bring along! I can only imagine how much warmer it can get during summer because we visited in mid-May and already we were sweating buckets while walking up and down the plantation.
Took this to show how steep some stairs can be so please wear proper footwear!
We decided to grab some green tea ice cream at the café located inside the plantation because we were too exhausted and that was the only place with air conditioning. Oh and there are two stores inside the plantation selling local produce like green tea bags, green tea powder and even green tea biscuits so that's where you can pick up some souvenirs to bring home. I've tried the green tea bags so far and they are pretty mild in taste, very different from the matcha tea bags from Japan. If you want a more intense flavour, you will not like the tea from Boseong.
Headed back to Gwangju City by taking a taxi back to Boseong bus terminal and then taking the bus back to U-Square. Arrived in Gwangju at around 5-ish in the afternoon. Took another taxi to Chungjang-ro once again because we wanted to try this famous noodle place called Cheongwon Momil 청원모밀 in Gwangju and coincidentally it was near where we visited the previous night after returning from Damyang. You can say that we did spend quite some money taking taxis around Gwangju as it made more financial sense to split the taxi fare 3-ways then to take the metro and walk much more to the places we wanted to go.
Address
31-7, Chungjangno3-ga, Dong-gu, Gwangju, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea
Alternatively, take the metro to Geumnamno 4-ga Station (Gwangju Subway Line 1), Exit 1.
Upon exiting the station, turn around, then turn right at the corner. Go straight for 100m, and cross the street to arrive at Cheongwon Momil.
The recommended noodles were the momil guksu (KRW5,000) and momil soba (KRW5,000) so we ordered them. Added a bowl of momil jjajang (KRW5,000) because we were greedy lol. And perhaps quite hungry after all that walking around the plantation.
This was rated as one of our best meals for the trip! I loved the soba a lot and kept koping (Singlish for 'taking') from the bowl lol. Jjajang noodles were okay in my opinion but definitely go for the 2 recommended noodles, you won't regret it!
Walked over to Chungjang-ro after that again for more shopping - there was an adidas outlet store along the main road and we spent a lot of money there lol - before heading back to pack our luggage as we were leaving the next morning to Busan.
And that's it for our two-night stay in Gwangju City. It is worth a visit if you haven't been to this part of South Korea and love taking in natural scenery sights.
Stay tuned for the Busan entries up next! I just need to squeeze out time to edit the pictures lol. Bye ^^