Damyang Bamboo Forest
The problem with taking 2-day weekend trips is that you can only spend one night in these places you visit.
As you know, I’ve committed myself to getting out of Seoul and seeing more of Korea on the weekends now. This weekend was no exception! I brought along my friends Molly, Kristin, Nate, and Courntey for a trip down to Damyang, and Sunday we went to Boseong to see the green tea plantations (blog entry about that to come).
It’s easy to get down there. Just get on a bus to Gwangju from the Express Bus Terminal (they leave every 20 minutes or so), enjoy the comfy recliners with ridiculous amounts of leg room for 3 and half hours, then hop off in Gwangju and onto a slightly less comfortable bus to Damyang for a little over an hour. You can walk to the bamboo forest, but it may be easier to just take a taxi (as we did). Also, we stayed at the Green Park Motel for 35,000 won a night per room. It had comfy beds, nice shower and modern decor, plus a huge flat screen plasma with cable TV! It wasn’t the cheesy “love motel” that you come to expect in Korea, so that was nice, haha.
Anyway, off to the bamboo park. You pay a nominal fee of around $1 and then beyond the entrance you’re immediately surrounded by bamboo. Walking through the trails was so nice because it’s cooler under the canopy of trees, and the fresh green smell everywhere was enough to make us Seoulites quite happy! Clean air is very nice indeed, hehe. Throughout the forest there are little benches to stop and relax, pagodas to hang out in if you’re getting tired. They also have a couple shops, a restaurant, and one pathway leading towards a “Bamboo cultural experience” features old-timy Korea houses which are always neat to see. There were even women dressed in the traditional hanbuks in one area who were dancing to some music and pulling in unsuspecting foreigners to dance with them (myself included).
Once you tire of the bamboo (and it is beautiful, but once you’ve seen bamboo I mean it really is just bamboo) you can stop for lunch just outside of the park entrance and try out the bamboo-infused rice with pine nuts, plums, and garlic….served in a giant bamboo shoot. This meal was awesome, and as expected they served us a wide variety of other food, including grilled fish, spicy beef with bamboo shoots, and the assumable array of smaller traditional side dishes (kimchi of course being one of them).
I believe this meal set us back about 9,000 won each ($9.00), so that’s not bad. One of the great things about traveling around Korea is that you meet Koreans who are non-Seoulites. They tend to be more excited and curious about meeting foreigners, so all-in-all they’re more helpful and engaging. The adjosshi (meaning older Korean man) sitting at the table next to us offered to bring us some coffee when we were finished with our meal. He had been eyeing us throughout to make sure we were doing ok.
The park is located along a tiny river which looks to be manmade, but it’s nice nonetheless. We went for a stroll to walk off our meal as the sun was setting. You can’t help but have these “I love Korea” moments. I’ve talked before about people who are miserable here, and how they can’t find anything good to say about Korea….and we were all discussing that as we were walking. You almost feel sorry for people who come here for a year, go back home, and never really experience what this place has to offer.
Ah well….that’s enough of that. Damyang did NOT dissapoint, although I got the feeling there was more to this sleepy little town that we were missing in our brief encounter with it. I’ll definitely go back in the future and spend more time there…we were in a bit of a rush to get to Boseong the next day and see those green tea fields (coming-soon). I have lots of pictures from Damyang, but here are some thumbnail links of my favorites!
