On to my last road trip, we head to Yeosu. Yeosu is one of the many cities of Jeollanam-do. Perhaps the more well-known cities around are Yeosu and Suncheon, which hosts the World Expo 2012. We boarded a bus from Busan to Yeosu and the bus ride was about 3 hours long. You will get a small ticket like this. Just keep it and show the bus driver when he asks for it.
We usually take the economy bus (the best one is the first-class one). They are comfortable enough, but like any other long bus/train rides, your back will start aching after a while.
For any bus rides that are more than 2 hours long, I believe they will usually stop at a rest stop. Get these at the rest stop! Hodu kwaja. Translates into walnut cookies. This is by no means a cookie. They are soft and nice and best when eaten warm. A very nice snack to munch on the bus rides. 3,000won for about 12 pieces. :)
We reached Yeosu and took a cab to Elena hotel. There, I met the worst taxi driver that I've ever met everrrrrrrrrrrrr. He was not only grumpy and unhelpful. Because of the accent, he couldn't really understand our Korean. We gave him the phone number of the hotel but he didn't bother keying it in his GPS (it works for most other drivers). He just grumbled nonstop about how unlucky he is to pick up tourists and how he don't understand English. And drove us round and round even though he didn't know where he was going. Luckily Winnie spotted the hotel otherwise he would have charged us by driving us round and round.
Travelling opens your eyes to different things. Those who were mad with K-POP might think that everyone on the streets are good looking, or those who watched variety shows might think that everyone in Korea is as friendly and helpful. Of course I would say this is true most of the time, but you only need one terrible person to bring you back to reality that no matter how awesome TV shows portray the country to be, it is afterall just another country. Don't raise your hopes too high up in case you get terribly upset when you head there.
Anyway, so we stayed in Elena hotel. I love this place because it was so clean, big and bright. I love bright places because it made my mood a lot better. They also have a convenience store just downstairs so you can get most things easily. And best of all, the hotel staff were so so helpful. A big contrary to that terrible taxi driver. He gave us directions to all the places we are interested in. And told us we should head out soon because the rail bike we are interested in closes at 5pm.
Upon his instructions, we took a cab to the ocean rail bike. It may look fancy but riding in an extremely hot weather is not fun at all.
We got a ticket for 4 persons at 20,000won. That's equivalent to 5,000won per person. It's a 2km rail track that requires you to peddle non-stop.
Actually there is not much of a view. Even if there is, there was no time to enjoy the view. Because the bike behind was very very near, and they keep honking whenever we try to slow down. We were like racing throughout. How tiring. Me and the girls definitely didn't enjoy this. They should definitely increase the distance between both bikes so that we can enjoy the view and not ride like mad.
A hungry and tired us cabbed straight for ganjang-gejang. This was our main highlight of the trip. Ganjang-gejang, or better known as raw crabs, are crabs either marinated in soy sauce or spicy sauce. And Yeosu is famous for their ganjang-gejang. We had their ganjang-gejang/crabs buffet at 8,000won per person. You saw that right. It's a buffet! So you can eat any amount you want!
A pity it's probably not the crab season because the crabs we got were either small or lacking in roe. Still, they were fresh and really good. I miss this so much! For a gauge, two small crabs in Seoul could easily set you back by 55,000won! I rather eat the smaller but so-worth-it crabs in Yeosu anytime.
The spicy version was indeed too spicy for me. They were good and flavourful, but I felt that I couldn't taste the freshness of the crabs. All I could taste was the sauce. Give me the soy sauce version anytime please :)
It also came with a pot of maeuntang, or spicy fish soup. The soup was good and flavourful, but again too spicy for my liking.
Ganjang-gejang, is also known as rice thief. Because it's so good that you will eat a lot of rice along with it. This plate may look small but it's 2 bowls of rice. I was still craving for more even though I finished it. But I was so stuffed.
The cross-section of the raw crabs hahahhaha. They may look gross, a bit like raw chicken, but their jelly-like texture tastes really awesome.
And you are supposed to put the rice in the shell and mix them with the roe and eat it. Ohmygosh they tastes so good. You would never think that they are raw crabs. If you are a fan of hotate sashimi, you would love this :)
We went to a bigger and less crowded restaurant for this. The buffet costs the same as Hwangso Sikdang, apparently a very famous one in Yeosu. But the taxi driver that took us there says that this one is equally good. So we headed there - it's just a 1 min walk opposite Hwangso.
After dinner, we went to the town area of Yeosu. I can't remember the exact name. But even if so, there was not much shopping to be done there. We headed to a cafe and ordered oreo bingsu for desserts.
And we walked around a bit for one of the best views of Yeosu (supposedly). Hahaha it was nothing very impressive to me. We soon returned to our hotel.
