Day 2: Iksan Seodong Festival - South Korea

Our South Korea trip this time was filled with lots of unexpected "nope", "closed" and "maybe". What I mean is that although I starts planning for the trip a month ahead on what I would do each day, I still managed to buy the wrong tickets, go to places on the day its closed or to stores that says they would offer something but turns they don't.

Going to Iksan is definitely one of them. I have never heard of Iksan before. And the reason I got myself to this place, which is about 3 hours bus ride from Seoul is because I purchased the wrong bus ticket online. I didn't realize the bus heads to Iksan until I boarded the bus...I am a black hair bimbo....

First, I heard about Jeonju and when I google it, I found a website that promote tourism to Jeonju for foreigners. Here is the site: http://shuttle.dongbotravel.com/en/

The site talks about Jeonju and it would be a great deal for a 10,000 won 2 way bus ticket to Jeonju. So, I proceeded to purchasing the ticket on their website. Since the whole website was about Jeonju, I never thought the bus would go to other places (atleast at the time when I booked, the site isn't very well maintained and no information were posted other than Jeonju.).

I paid online and never even got an e-ticket as their website claimed they would send out. So, I emailed their CS and their CS said they got my name on their list. So, I just needed to bring my passport to get on the bus. To be honest, when I booked, I did see the work Iksan Festival on their calendar. I simply thought "Iksan Festival" is a name of a festival held in Jeonju. I was just too stupid. So, basically, the entire website was promoting Jeonju, but their bus ticket heads to Iksan. It's still OK though as we did have a pretty relaxing day at Iksan.

The bus stop is near Gwangwhamun. Bus shown below. There is a guide that would check our passport before boarding and that's when she told me we were actually going to Iksan that day. Since we were already there and the bus ticket were already paid for, we just boarded to bus to wherever it would take us.

We arrived quite early. It was a little pass 7:30am. The bus leaves at 8am. The street was still pretty empty.

What a beautiful day!

The bus is quite comfortable. There were around 10 people that boarded this big bus. So, we had a lot of room to ourselves. A down side is that the air condition wasn't really working and I felt like we were being baked alive.

Took a pic of the outside after about 2 hr ride. It's in the middle of nowhere!

Finally arrived! It's a park and a art/gallery museum in the middle of no where. The sun was bright!

Not a very big place and doesn't have many interesting things to see. At least there is a festival there and so there were performances and food. Not many tourists. No English or Chinese signs. People can't speak much English or Chinese here as well. The good point would be we don't have to be pushed around by other tourists. They say it's a celebration between the love of ‎牛郎織女.

Really nothing much to look at. Cho and I wander around in the village for hours until my feet could not walk anymore. The bus would only return at 4:30pm. We had too many hours to kill in such small place.