Why go:
You can hire bicycles, laze on a lovely sandy beach with tropical-looking palm trees, admire the jagged rocks of the small islands all around and enjoy spending time on an island (and others that you can walk or cycle to across bridges) that is largely villagey in feel. We went off-season (early April) and it was chilly, windy and not many shops or restaurants were open. But it was still a welcome break from the noisy and busy cities we had previously been to and it was really good to have a boat trip and to see more traditional of traditional life in South Korea. Also, I believe that if you like fresh, raw octopus you can eat it along the harbour front and for c20 minutes after it’s been “killed”, the tentacles will still stick to your mouth. This did not appeal to me but, for trying something new and exciting, I can appreciate the novelty factor!
What were my highlights:
Cycling, the slow pace of life, having the beach pretty much to ourselves for our picnic and taking lots of photos of us cycling and showing off. I also really enjoyed the boat journey.
Overall comments:
I am fully aware that Seonyudo is very busy in summer so would have been a very different experience. However, going off-season it was good to have the place largely to ourselves.
On paper, it sounds idyllic: sea; slow pace of life; opportunity to cycle; a nice beach; fresh seafood; small fishing villages; plenty of trees; rocky islands all around … yet somehow neither of us were that enamoured. We had read a few blogs about the place and it sounded picturesque. Maybe when it’s summer or autumn or covered in snow, that is the case. It just didn’t do much for either of us. But whenever I describe the day to friends, they’ve always enthused about how amazing it must have been and I can never quite explain that it wasn’t as wonderful as it sounds. I also feel I must be doing the place an injustice because so many of the blogs I read about Seonyudo describe it as a favourite place in South Korea. However, it does appear that people largely go in summer and maybe that makes a massive difference. Also, there was a staggering amount of construction work going on, mainly roads and bridges, which never presents a place in its best light.
The cycling was fun but I probably made a mistake agreeing to the first bicycles we were offered. They were 10,000 won, which I think is a standard bicycle hire rate (all very unofficial as it’s apparent you can’t exactly knick the bikes, ie you hand over the money and get a bike, end of). Our bikes were not at all roadworthy and my friend’s sounded like it would completely collapse at any given moment; a little scary when there are as many (fairly small) hills as there are. Seeing as there were so few people visiting the island and so many bikes on offer, we really should have asked for a proper bicycle.
I sat on the outside deck of the boat from Gunsan to Seonyudo. It was bitterly cold but I listened to music, shoved my hands in my pockets and loved being outside. On the way back, I recall there were seven of us. The main passenger area is just a room with ondol. All of us pretty much got into that warm room (after all the sea air, exercise and cold wind) and fell asleep. It was lovely until I started feeling like I was parboiled. I then had to stand up and press my face to the outer window to cool down.
Comments about Gunsan:
I do not like being dismissive of places I haven’t spent much time exploring but I really didn’t like Gunsan, which is where we stayed for one night.
I doubt it helped that we ended up staying in a low key love hotel in an area of love hotels, though ours was apparently a tourist hotel. Look at the corridor in the photos, which I am in looking somewhat shady. That has love all over it! Plus there was a very fancy lighting panel in our twin-bedded room to achieve a sense of, ahem, mood! Anyway, I digress.
The area seemed seedy but we never felt threatened. But I felt really uneasy so we drove through the town to the harbour. Our guidebooks gave the impression it would be a lovely port area. It was run down and too quiet. I didn’t like it there either, it all felt wrong.
Maybe I would go again and it would be lovely (I doubt it though) and I wouldn’t feel uneasy. I had wanted to stay there longer as I thought it sounded pretty and interesting. I am glad we didn’t stay longer and didn’t feel a need to stay long in the morning (we had to leave quite early to get our hire car back).
We did, however, have a lovely meal along the harbour around the fish shop area. It was a new “family style” restaurant and for 6,000 won I got the biggest bowl of seafood and noodle soup I’ve ever seen. The clams, cockles and mussels were deliciously fresh. The only down side was that it was almost too hot for me to eat it, which ruined the taste for me as my eyes were streaming. But don’t listen to me if you like spicy food, though my friend did try some (she likes chillies and hot stuff) and even she declared it too hot.
Of course this is just my opinion and what I dislike you may love, but I can’t recommend Gunsan as somewhere desirable to spend any great time.
Practical information:
There are a lot of different ports in Gunsan and it is easy to get confused. We went to the wrong port initially (entirely my fault as on the map the port we went to was closest to Seonyudo on the map), though there were boats going to Seonyudo and it was quicker to get there from that side of the Gunsan peninsula. That port is the one on the far western tip of Gunsan, right by the road bridge across the sea to another nearby island. From there you can get boat tours, so you get a set time on each island. This seemed like a good idea but we just wanted to spend a slow-paced day cycling around. I am very glad we did then drive to the correct port, Gunsan “Coastal Ferry Terminal” (which is next to the international terminal from where you can get boats to China), because we saw that the other boats were busy and full of very boisterous and noisy groups of largely older ladies.
It is very hard to find boat times online as they seem to change a lot depending on the time of year. We were fortunate to arrive at around 10.15 am and got a boat at 10.20 am. We got the last slow boat back, which was at 3.50 pm.
If you are driving, there is free parking on the roads around the ferry terminal.
We only bought single tickets and I recall that being the only choice, but we could have lost a bit in our language exchange (limited English and us not speaking any Korean). Our tickets cost 13,500 won each on the slow boat (sadly not to China for I would have been singing “(I’d like to get you on a) Slow Boat to China” for the duration of the trip if so!) and took an hour and 40 minutes. We couldn’t get a ticket back as no one was in the ticket booth on Seonyudo (a c2-minute walk from the boat), though we could see into the ticket area and there was a bed in there and I’m pretty sure the ticket person was fast asleep. It is clearly the done thing to have a ticket before you board and the ticket checker at the boat tried to send us back to the unmanned booth. There followed a series of rather fine mime to illustrate there was no ticket person at the booth. He let us on, then came round later to take our money, around the time we were all about to fall asleep!
As for Gunsan, the town and the ports are a long, long way apart; it covers a much larger area than we realised. There are lots of hotels around but most of the port ones are just in clusters where there is nothing to do but sleep and waddle to a 7/11. We stayed in an area that on our tourist map showed “hotels”. I don’t know how we didn’t fully appreciate we were in love hotel district until we’d been in about three hotels and shown three lots of double, slightly seedy rooms. The photo here is the area in day light. To think, we thought a “business centre” meant it would be a respectable establishment!!