Buyeo seems like a neat place to visit. The county seat of Buyeo-eup was the capital of the Baekje Kingdom from 530 to 660 AD, and there are a number of historical points of interest. The county has a shitty English website with tourist information here and a little better one in Korean here. VisitKorea has nothing about Buyeo, unfortunately, but Robert Koehler did a little write-up of Buyeo's history for Seoul magazine last year that is reprinted on the site here. You can probably glean more information through a Naver search. It doesn't look like buses go there from the Gwangju terminal, although you can catch one to Daejeon every thirty minutes, where it looks like you can catch buses to Buyeo.
Pictures of the Lotus Resivoir, taken from the Muan county homepage.
Muan has one in July, too, called the "Korea Lotus Industry Festival" (대한민국연꽃산업축제). It runs from July 24th through July 29th, although Muan has a lotus pond that is worth a visit at other times. There is a good profile on VisitKorea here, which tells us that it's the largest habitat of white lotus in Asia. It continues:
The highlight of Muan White Lotus Festival is of course a boat ride where you can get a nice view of the lotus flowers along the road. Exploring experience of lotus road on the water is totally magical just like a jungle adventure.
In addition to seeing and smelling white lotus flowers, there is another way to enjoy white lotuses, which is by tasting various foods made with white lotus. Not only traditional dishes of Muan but also various special fragrant foods with white lotus including lotus ice cream, lotus shakes, lotus sandwiches, lotus noodles, and lotus-wrapped rice can be enjoyed.
I kid, but it actually looks like a decent time. When I first started this entry I was more interested in the one in Buyeo, since it has lots of historical sites. But I'm pissed they suck at promoting themselves, and don't have much decent information available online, so instead I give the nod to Muan, at least for Jeollanam-do residents. Plus, the capital of Jeollanam-do is located in Muan, believe it or not, and they began a massive "New City" initiative in 2001 to grow the village of Namak-ri into a city of 150,000 by 2019. It got a new airport last year and has loads of development projects planned. Let's show a little civic pride and visit our glorious capital. *cough*
Anyway, buses run to Muan frequently from Gwangju and neighboring Mokpo.
1 comment:
Thanks for the heads-up on the two Lotus Festivals! Muan does sound like it might be the better choice, but having a shorter duration makes me wonder if it won't be even more crowded as a result. (Then again, the Hampyeong Insect Expo was pretty much a zoo - pun not intended - despite running for a month.)
The Muan city site would look a lot better if they didn't over-stretch the display image on their main page. Interesting to see the 외국인 show up in the promotional photos though!
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