Earlier this month some friends and I took a day trip to Suncheon Bay National Garden. This garden was recommended to me by one of my coworkers and I’m so glad we went! Suncheon was about an hour and a half bus ride from Gwangju so we left around 8:30 and arrived around 10:00 am. The city of Suncheon is relatively small compared to Gwangju with a little less than 300,000 residents. Although small, I thought it was pretty cute and had a charming atmosphere. There was also a river running through the city lined with cherry blossoms in full bloom; it was beautiful and was one of the first days that felt like spring.
From the bus terminal we caught a 20 minute bus to Suncheon Bay National Garden. We originally planned to spend our morning in the garden and then explore other parts of the city. However, as we quickly realized, the garden was huge and we spent about six hours there leaving us no time to explore the rest of Suncheon.
The ticket to the garden was 14,000 won ($11.30). This included entrance into the garden as well as a ticket for the sky cube, which was a train that went from the main garden to Suncheon Bay Wetlands. The wetlands were in a separate area of the garden and the only way to get there was by taking the sky cube.
The garden was divided into multiple smaller sections with different themes. We started off by a large pond with gardens surrounding it. From there we saw another pond with flamingos nearby. After watching the flamingos for a bit and admiring their amazing talent of standing on one leg, we realized there was an entire animal section nearby! There were peacocks, seals, foxes, deer, kangaroos, meerkats, prairie dogs, guinea pigs, tortoises, and they even had parrots and a ball python that you could hold. It was so unexpected and very fun!
From the animal section we decided to take the sky cube to the wetlands. The sky cube was one of the most exciting parts of the day! It was exactly what a sky cube sounds like: a cube that went on a railroad in the sky. It was pretty awesome. The cube wasn’t that big, it only fit
six people which was perfect for our group size. The entire ride to the wetlands was maybe five minutes or less and we went over the garden. The sky cube had windows all around so we had great views of the garden below us!
Once we arrived at the wetlands we walked along the boardwalk a bit to explore. The most exciting part of the wetlands were the thousands of crabs we saw living there as well as these pretty ugly fish/tadpole looking things. (I later saw this same animal in a nature documentary and found out they’re called Mudskippers. They’re actually a type of fish that walk on land and eat crab legs.)
We stopped at a cafe to get some food and then took the sky cube back to the garden. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the rest of the gardens.
In order to get to the other side of the garden we had to cross the Dream Bridge. This was a bridge with thousands of tiles on the walls made by students from around the world. Each student drew a picture of their dream. It was so fun to see what different students drew and I could’ve spent a long time just looking at all of them.
The rest of the gardens were all designed to represent different countries. For instance there was a Chinese, Japanese, French, Italian, Turkish, and countless more gardens to wander around.
All in all, our day at Suncheon Bay National Garden was amazing. It was the perfect way to begin the spring season and a wonderful way to spend the day!
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