We’d spent five nights in Busan and relocated to our next city, Suncheon, on Day 06 morning. In retrospect, we could have allocated a few more days in Busan to explore other places in this very modern city, but five full days had been enough for us to at least get a good feel for the place.
We didn’t find many transportation options to get us to Suncheon from Busan, and the most uncomplicated one was to simply take an express bus. Thing is: navigating the Korean website to make the bus bookings was not easy for us. But with the help of our Busan Airbnb host, we were able to reserve seats for a 9:30AM departure from the Busan General Bus Terminal to Suncheon. To note too: the bus terminal is some distance from the busy part of Busan and Busan Station. You can either take the orange line of the Busan subway to the last station – Nopo – or just hail a cab. We opted for the latter, and the journey cost around 24,700 KRW and took 42 minutes.
At the Busan bus terminal, we exchanged our voucher reservation for the actual tickets. There is a Paris Baguette and also a Gong Cha outlet in the terminal, alongside a few small shops offering Korean-type snacks. The express bus we were on departed punctually at 9:30AM, and we were the only non-locals onboard the half-filled bus. The bus grade was noted as “excellent”, which is one grade below the best class that was departing at a later timing that was less ideal for us. The seats on our “excellent” bus were spacious, comfortable, and offered very good incline settings for comfort.
The bus was scheduled to arrive at Suncheon at 11:50AM, and actually arrived just a minute before noon. Such timing would have been unheard of in Japan, but I guess Koreans are less fussed about these things. There was also a service stop along the way where you could empty your bladder and/or get some food.
Our first impressions of Suncheon? Well, the vibe is completely different from that of bustling Busan: Suncheon has the feel of a small, sleepy town. What especially struck me so far, after several hours of wandering around the town – at least in the part of Suncheon we’re staying in – was the relative absence of young families, international tourists, and younger locals. Most locals we saw seemed to be middle-aged or older.
We’re staying in the Baguni Hostel, a small property that faces a river and is rated 9.3 on Tripadvisor. I’ll post our notes on the property on our last day. The property was about 500 meters away from the bus terminal, but it took us almost 20 minutes to walk the distance because the street we walked along was hosting a farmer’s market. We had to navigate through crowds of mostly elderly vendors offering their produce and shoppers browsing the stalls. The hostel’s check-in time was at 4PM and it was only past noon at this point, so we headed in the direction of Suncheon Station to find lunch.
There are several cafes and small restaurants in the station area, and we lunched at Mom’s Touch, a Korean burger and chicken chain that had three outlets in Singapore before they were all suddenly closed two years ago. For about 34,700 KRW, we had a family feast set for four that contained a lot of food: four sodas, four burgers with very juicy slabs of thigh meat, and a basket of eight boneless chicken thighs prepared Korean-style in garlic gravy. We’ve had fast food four times at this point – No Brand Burger, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Mom’s Touch now – and this joint takes a close second place to No Brand Burger in terms of their fare.
Our tummies filled, we next started making our way to our first sightseeing stop: Jukdobong Park.