Boseong Green Tea Fields

Boseong, South Korea

On my every growing to-do list in Korea was one that I heard many great things about: the Boseong Green Tea Fields.  So, a few weekends ago my friends and I decided to take a bus down to Gwangju, a city close to the tea fields to check them out.  They lived up to all expectations.

Friday night, we got to Gwangju late, ate some dinner, had a drink, and went to bed because we were waking up early the next day.  We stayed for two nights in a "love motel", cheap motels scattered around all of South Korea.  They have aquired the name "love motel" as many Koreans live with their parents and have to escape for some privacy, you get what I mean.  The hotel was only about $10 a night because we put four into a room.  The hotel rooms were big, relatively clean, and even had a computer with internet in the room.

Our love motel "Dia Motel".  The curtain entrance to the garage shows that its a love motel.

Yummy dinner- galbi with egg around the outside.

Saturday morning, we left the hotel around 9:30am.  We grabbed some breakfast to go and headed to the bus station.  We took a 1 hr and 30 min bus ride to the Boseong Bus Terminal and then a taxi directly to the tea fields.  We arrived there a little before noon, which gave us plenty of time to explore the area for the day.

The Boseong Tea Fields is the destination to go to in Boseong.  There is a huge parking lot built outside filled with tourist buses and many cars.  We happen to be some of the only tourist on foot/public transportation.  We enter the tea fields and I was blown away.  They are extremely beautiful and really big.  The tea fields are all in perfect terraces and wrap gracefully around a mountain side.  We spent a couple hours just walking in between the rows of green tea leaves.  We even managed to make it to the peak of the fields where you were suppposed to catch a view of the ocean, but I didn't see that one.  I also attempted to try the raw green tea leaves, but I think I just chewed on a leaf...

The trip crew was Quinn and the ladies.

After walking around for a while, we all developed an appetite and lucky for us we were surrounded by green tea delicacies.  I believe we ate everything with green tea (in Korean Green tea = Nok-Cha) possible.  For lunch: green tea ice-cream, green tea seafood pajeong (korean pancake), green tea nnang myeon (cold noodle soup with green tea noodles), and green tea maekolli (rice wine).  It was all delicious.

Delicious green tea ice-cream.  I also unintentionally matched the food :)

Cold noodle soup with green tea noodles.

After filling up on green tea, we hopped on the public bus that took us to "Yulpo Beach".  This beach was not spectacular but it had sand, mudflats, a little water, and some boats to check out.  Next to the beach was Boseong's famous sea water spa, but after a quick look it was not worth spending time there.  So instead, we made some Korean friends and sat outside of a convenient store sharing some maekolli, snacks, and laughing the afternoon away.  These really are my favorite moments in Korea when you just naturally interact with the culture without have to do something.

After relaxing, we got back on the public bus to go to the main town of Boseong for dinner.  Our friends who had visited Boseong before raved about the green tea ssangyepsal (green tea pork), so we had to try it.  Warning: If you are vegetarian (MOM) you might not enjoy this. Our biggest question was does the pig eat green tea or is the meat soaked in green tea?  We got both answers.  But, our nice, well spoken in English waitress said the pigs eat green tea.  I actually would like to believe this one.  The meat was delicious and had a sweeter taste.  We also tasted green tea bibimbop (mixed rice and vegetables), which tasted the same as regular bibimbop.  After dinner, we got back on a bus to Gwangju.

I found this place in Gwangju!

Once back in Gwangju, we decided to head out for the night.  We were staying in the "going out" area so luckily we did not have to go far.  We checked out a couple of bars, but had the most fun just sitting outside and people watching.  We started playing this game called "ninja", which attracted a lot of attention to us on the streets.  So before you knew it, we had made quite a few new friends.  Gwangju is awesome.  The Koreans in Gwangju were extremely friendly towards us and were very interested in us.  They were a lot more forward than in Seoul and would just come up and talk to us with perfect English (surprising).  I highly recommend people in South Korea to visit both Gwangju and the green tea fields.