Asia - Journeys off the beaten track around Seoul

So I have two stopovers in ICN coming up soon: the first is just ~15 hours (daytime) between flights, the other is 6 days of free time. Help me decide how to use them!

For the 15 hours, I was thinking it'd be nice to explore the area around Incheon instead of heading into Seoul itself. Ganghwado and the Bomunsa Temple sound interesting, but getting there seems logistically a bit challenging -- the best I've been able to figure out so far is bus to Gimpo North Bus Terminal, bus to Ganghwado-eup Terminal, bus to Oepo-ri village, ferry across to Seongmodo, bus to Bomunsa and hike up to summit. Yow. Is there enough on Yeongjongdo (ICN's island) to keep me occupied, or anything else of interest in the vicinity?

For the 6 days, I'll probably spend two in Seoul with a friend, leaving me 4 days to explore. I've been to the DMZ, Busan and Jinju before (previous trip here (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=463935&page=4&pp=15), post #51 onwards), so this time my objectives are to ride the KTX, get well off the beaten track, stay overnight in a nice hot spring and check out a temple deep in the mountains. Here's iteration one:

Seoul -> Cheonan (KTX)
* Independence Hall
* Onyang/Asan Hot Springs?

Cheonan -> Jochiwon -> Chungju (plain old train)
* Suanbo Hot Springs
* Woraksan NP

Chungju -> Danyang (cruise)
* Gosudonggul Cave
* Guinsa Temple
Back to Seoul (direct bus)

Suggestions for anything I'm missing, would better be off skipping, places to stay or eat, etc very welcome. And yes, I know Guinsa is all modern concrete and strange cults, which is precisely why I want to go! (Is there any way to stay overnight?)

And oh yes, recommendations for a good boshintang restaurant in Seoul are also welcome :D

ICN offers you excellent choices for golf, eating Korean food, getting drunk and playing mahjong or pool. I mean, that's what normal people do when they have spare time... :D

For the four day journey, another suggestion: KTX all the way to the beautiful coastal city of Mokpo and heading towards the SW tip of the Peninsula from there. It's off the beaten track for sure, hot springs and temples are not hard to find in Southern Cholla plus the food is top notch and you can visit the famous green tea plantations.

Regarding dog soup, haven't gotten around to trying it for some reason. The closest call was last year when the brother of a friend wanted to go to a Gwangju backstreet boshin tang joint. Well, that particular friend has a pet dog at home and adamantly refused to join us. It seems to be a shady back alley or warehouse area thing generally though.

Ah what joy when I recently discovered wrapped up dog meat at a Chinese highway stop. It was good. ^

And oh yes, recommendations for a good boshintang restaurant in Seoul are also welcome :D

You know that they torture the dogs before they kill them, right? Typically they are strung up, beaten with something similar to a baseball bat and then set on fire - all while still alive. The purpose is to get as much adrenanline into the blood and muscle as possible. And it is all just mythology about improving male "stamina" or "energy" as they would like to call it. Some Korean men eat boshintang before a night out in the brothels.

Use your own judgment if you want to support either industry. :td:

I lived in Chungju for three years - Suanbo is not really anything special - and the Woraksan drive is nice (I had a car there) but also not super spectacular.

There is an old royal palace in Seoul that is worth seeing. Many Buddhist temples are great - and the non-famous ones are often better than the famous ones - as you will often be the only person there. But, after you have seen about 3-4 of them - uh . . . like much of Korea - they will all begin to look the same.

My best times in Korea were with my own car just driving around back roads. There is a river just outside Chungju heading towards Suanbo - if you get off the main road and take the little road along the river (to the right - up stream) it wanders through a lovely area and eventually comes to a very nice waterfall.

Most back country roads in Korea will eventually pass by an interesting temple - they are typically hidden in the mountains.

Most tourist places in Korea are JAM PACKED with people.

You know that they torture the dogs before they kill them, right? Typically they are strung up, beaten with something similar to a baseball bat and then set on fire - all while still alive.
I'd still probably rather choose to be reincarnated as a soup dog than a battery hen -- but this is neither the time nor place for this argument.

I lived in Chungju for three years - Suanbo is not really anything special - and the Woraksan drive is nice (I had a car there) but also not super spectacular.
So can you suggest something that is super spectacular? I won't have a car, nor even the license to drive it, so public transport of some sort is necessary.

Most tourist places in Korea are JAM PACKED with people.
I lived in Tokyo for years, so I'm used to it. ;)

mosburger, thanks for the South Jeolla trip, will consider it. The whole Jeolla/Jeju area has been on my to-do list for a while but I'm not sure I can do it justice in just 4 days... and the KTX track between Daejeon and Mokpo isn't really high-speed either.

Anyway, as far as the 15-hr layover, I've decided to put Bomunsa on the back burner (might hike it from Seoul on the second half of the trip though?) and potter around Yeongjongdo and the OZ/SQ lounges at ICN instead. The Haesupia spa sounds pretty good...

jpatokal:

You'd better just forget about being too individualistic ;) and head into Seoul on your layover. I have travelled quite a lot within Korea but almost never alone or with non-Koreans so maybe this will sound a bit biased.

Two suggestions: The Gangnam Express Bus Terminal next to the Marriot Hotel has a very enjoyable Korean sauna/spa in the basement. Think 60'ies Japanese business style...retro heaven.

Then, for lunch hop over to the giant Noryangjin fish market. As you are already familiar with, first choose a fish or other sea creature from the stalls and then have one of the upper level restaurants prepare it. And a bottle or two of soju if you're not too afraid to miss your connecting flight... :D

The reason I'm quite fascinated with Cholla/Jeolla is the historical East/West division of Korea into the Pekche and Shilla kingdoms. People from Jeolla still feel a deep antipathy toward their Korean brethren in Busan and Daegu etc. Some friends from Jeolla had even their blooming romances with "Shilla" partners blocked by parents resentful of those bloody East coasters. ;)

During most of the post-war period military juntas "Shilla" was always favoured at the cost of "Pekche". In practice this means you will find spotlessly clean sidewalks in Gyoengju, the hometown of former President Park, while the ones in the "Pekche" cities ( Mokpo, Gwangju etc. ) are unkept and relatively "dirty".

But "Pekche" is also the birthplace of Korean democracy and civil society. People there are not too fond of Seoul ( where you cannot even get proper Korean food :cool: ) and prefer to set their own agendas. Apart from that, old traditions extinct elsewhere in the ROK can still be found a few steps from the glittering Samsung and Hyundai signboards.

Btw, for some reason most Chinese residing in Korea are from Fujian province so if you want to familiarize yourself with local Chinese food your chances might be better there than anywhere else apart from China.

Bump. Still looking for recommendations for dog meat restaurants, and now looking for maximally bizarre/kinky love hotels as well. :p Does Seoul have a Dogenzaka-type area with lots and lots clustered together, so you can just wander around and take your pick?

Dr. Dogmeat (http://wolf.ok.ac.kr/~annyg/english/index.html) (now there's a name to inspire confidence) recommends some joint called Renoir Restaurant, 143-5 Songpa-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul, which apparently serves dog burgers -- not quite what I'm looking for. Lonely Planet online has the following recommendation, which sounds better: If you're curious about eating dog meat, there's a well established restaurant in nearby Myeong Dong. In business for 50 years, Gae Soon Ok (91-2 Jeo Dong 1 Ga, Jung Gu) serves up bowls of dog soup to hungry punters. It's down a small lane opposite the Myeong Dong cathedral.

Bump. Still looking for recommendations for dog meat restaurants, and now looking for maximally bizarre/kinky love hotels as well. :p Does Seoul have a Dogenzaka-type area with lots and lots clustered together, so you can just wander around and take your pick?

I haven't ever eaten boshintang before but I did encounter quite a number of boshintang restaurants near Seong Nam Airport (a bit South of Seoul?). I went there for the 2005 Seoul Air Show and from the subway station (Moran) to the airport, you pass by restaurant after restaurant. You can't miss it as you'll see cages of dogs. Can't say whether it's good or not but it seems like an area that specializes in boshintang.

As for a Dougenzaka type of area, the closest thing I've encountered is in the Sinchon area. There's easily over twenty motels in that area within several blocks of each other. It's all a block behind the main road that goes from Idae station to Sinchon station.

You know that they torture the dogs before they kill them, right? Typically they are strung up, beaten with something similar to a baseball bat and then set on fire - all while still alive. The purpose is to get as much adrenanline into the blood and muscle as possible. And it is all just mythology about improving male "stamina" or "energy" as they would like to call it. Some Korean men eat boshintang before a night out in the brothels.

Use your own judgment if you want to support either industry. :td:

how inevitable...

So, just in case anybody stumbles onto this and is curious how things turned out, I ended up pretty much following the original plan -- the story can be found here (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=568664) (Yeongjong/Haesupia up first, the longer Cheonan-Suanbo-Danyang-Guinsa loop later on in the story). Nutshell summary would be that Haesupia, Cheonan's Independence Hall and Guinsa were all very worthwhile, but Suanbo was a bit of a disappointment, and there isn't much in Danyang either unless you really live caves or are an an avid hiker. And boshintang was better than expected, although I couldn't find the restaurant recommended by LP.