A trip to Yeosu

Last weekend my boyfriend and I were celebrating our 1 year anniversary and therefore decided to take a trip to Yeosu. We went there together last summer and decided to visit it again. There's a train going from Jeonju to Yeosu, so my boyfriend didn't have to drive. We wanted to take the KTX, which is the fastest train in Korea. But there was no KTX going to Yeosu at that time, so we had to take Saemaul train instead.

In Korea, there are three main types of trains. The fastest (and the most expensive) is KTX. Next is Saemaul, a bit cheaper and slower than KTX. Third, the slowest and cheapest is Mugunghwa. We took the Saemaul and I think my boyfriend even paid a bit more so we would get more comfortable seats, but we ended up getting the worst seats ever. I have never had a more uncomfortable seat, even on Mugunghwa. It was one of those seats with a table, so we had to face another couple the whole time. And the seats were so weird, so hard and uncomfortable... I can't even explain, the back of the chair had a 90 degree angle, so you couldn't possible sit like that for two hours.

After a couple of stops a lot of people got off, so we moved to a 'normal' seat. The seats on Saemaul are nothing special, but compared to what we had before, they felt amazing. After about an hour and 45minutes we arrived to Yeosu. Yeosu is a city located in Southern Coast of Korea and is famous for hosting Worl Expo in 2012.

Last time we took a two day trip there, so we had time to visit downtown area as well, but this time we decided to stay at the Expo area and see the things we skipped last time. There is a huge aquarium in the Expo area, but it is rather expensive (as most aquariums are) and we went there last time, so we didn't go there again.

Instead, there was this Shark exhibition and we decided to check it out. There were many people at the ticket office, but apparently most of them confused the exhibition for the Aquarium, so the woman stepped out from the ticket booth and yelled out loud that this was not Aquarium and that there were not life fish inside. The exhibition hall was almost empty, but that was even better for us. And we didn't expect much, but we were positively surprised. There were displays of different types of sharks and other sea animals and I thought it was really well made.

There were also different activities for the kids - of course we had to try them all out too. :) For example, they had stamps with sea animals on them, basketball with sea creatures written on the balls. You probably had to check what sea creature it was and then throw the ball in the right basket, but we didn't go in such details. :P There was also origami and as you can see from the photo, my boyfriend made a nice fish. I on the other hand didn't do so well and just gave up... 

There were also this 'slippery' fish that you had to try and catch with your hands. There was one kid that was pretty good at it. My boyfriend and I were too afraid to even touch them. Well I had to touch one because I lost at the rock-scissor-paper game to my boyfriend. And there were those 'doctor fish' that eat the skin. I find it rather scary, but I eventually managed to keep my hand in there for a while.

After the Shark exhibition we saw a man dressed as a teddy bear and went to see what was going on. It was a teddy bear museum and since the price was 50% off that day, we went to look inside. It was quite cool. Hundreds of teddy bears in different themes. There was a dinosaur theme, American theme etc. It was nice.

Then we went to another hall to see another exhibition. I don't even remember the title, it was different stuff about pollution and oceans. It really wasn't all that interesting. There was also a 4D movie, but you had to wait for more than an hour to see it, so we skipped that.

The whole Expo Area is quite big and if you're a smoker, then you should know that the whole place is non-smoking. So you have to actually leave the area, go outside the gates near the road if you want to smoke. My boyfriend was a bit annoyed about that. :)

After that I wanted to visit the Odongdo Island again. It is this beautiful island with more than 70 different species of wildflowers and with a small lighthouse on top. We visited it last time and I loved it so much. I really recommend you to visit it, if you're ever in Yeosu.

But if you do go there, DON'T take the red train to take you there. There's this small red train that takes you from the main entrance of Expo Area to the Odongo Island. We probably waited for about 30 minutes for that train and so did about 30 other people. But when it finally arrived, it was FULL and only about 5 or 6 people got off the train. Meaning that the other 25 people there just wasted their time waiting for it, including my boyfriend and I. The whole things was a total BS. My boyfriend even called the person on the train to ask where we could get on, and the guy told him it was only possible at the main entrance. If that was true, then why wouldn't people get off the train. It made no sense at all.

We were fairy upset with the whole thing. It is much better to walk. It is really not that far anyway and it's less than a 30 minute walk to the island, but there was no way we could have known. We'd already lost so much time, it was hot and my boyfriend complain that his legs hurt, so we didn't go to the island after all. Instead we found ourselves a nice bench next to the sea, where there were almost no people around. We took a short nap, enjoyed the view and just relaxed. ^^ I wanted to walk more, but my boyfriend hasn't completely recovered from the cold yet and I know his legs hurt lately because of work. And resting on that bench near the sea was actually really nice too. ^^

 

In the evening we wanted to get some dinner first before getting on the train, but my boyfriend ran out of cigarettes. Since the whole are is non-smoking, the convenience stores also don't sell cigarettes. So we had to walk to the train station to buy some. And since we were at the station already, we went to buy the tickets in advance. And we were so lucky to do that, because we got the last two tickets available. There were only two trains left, A KTX at 9:10pm and a Mugunghwa at 11:40pm. It was only 7:30pm when we arrived at the station and we got the last two tickets for the KTX. I guess sometimes it's not so bad that my boyfriend is a smoker. ;)

The restaurants also started closing around 8pm, but we still managed to get what we wanted. Well, we wanted tuna, but got chicken instead. It was still quite good though. Then we sat down on a bench and watched the sea-life display while listening to music.

The ride back was much more comfortable with KTX. Since we got the last tickets we didn't get to sit together. I was in the first car and my boyfriend in the fourth, but a girl who got a seat next to my boyfriend was kind enough to switch places with me. ^^ KTX can go as fast as 300km/h, so it should be almost as fast as Japanese Shinkansen. But the thing is, there are a few stops between Yeosu and Jeonju so it can't go really fast for a long time. We used the gps to check the speed and we went about 200km/h. We arrived home around 11pm. Not everything went as we'd planned, but we had a really nice day anyway. ^^