Gangneung KTX Day Trip: Eating and Market Hopping
Thanks to the Pyeongchang Olympics, the KTX (high-speed train) from Seoul to Gangneung recently opened. It takes just an hour and a half, meaning you can get to Gangneung faster than taking public transit from Bundang to Bukhansan (a mountain in Seoul). Just looking at the time, it seems totally possible to do a day trip to Gangneung without having to stay overnight. I can hear the local hotels sighing from here... To see if it's actually doable and just how fast and comfortable it is, I convinced my mom to join me, and we decided to go on a Gangneung day trip!
I booked our tickets online two days in advance and we boarded at Cheongnyangni Station near our house. Maybe because of the sunrise crowds, it was really hard to get our outbound tickets, so we ended up in First Class (36,400 KRW). For the way back, we easily grabbed discounted Economy seats (22,100 KRW). Paying extra for First Class lived up to its name—they give you peanuts and bottled water. The seats are spacious, and true to the KTX, the train ride is incredibly quiet.
A little while into the ride, a very elderly man—who looked like a company chairman—and two slightly younger men who seemed like his secretaries sat nearby. They were having a serious discussion in a Gyeongsang dialect about the future of Korea and their business direction. Listening to this great conversation, all I could think was:
"These old guys are being so incredibly loud without any consideration for others. If they want to have a meeting, they should step outside. Why are they doing this here? At that age, they should have learned some manners. Ugh."
No matter how good the conversation is, it's just noise if you do it in a quiet public space. The KTX is especially quiet compared to a bus, so you really need to keep your voice down. There's a reason the screens keep showing reminders to take phone calls in the passageway and to keep kids quiet. I read somewhere that one of the things Chinese tourists struggle with is this silence on trains. But this is Korea. Be quiet!!!
After enduring an hour and a half of non-stop chatter, we arrived in Gangneung, which turned out to be warmer than Seoul. I had bundled up thinking I'd freeze to death, so that was a bit anti-climactic. We were told we couldn't pick up our rental car at Gangneung Station, so we took a taxi to the Gangneung Intercity Bus Terminal. Since Gangneung Station is so new, the rental car companies aren't located nearby yet, and they don't deliver cars during busy hours.
I think their definition of "busy" is different from Seoul's.
It was inconvenient and cost us extra taxi fare, but the rental car employee confidently told us they'd be opening a branch nearby soon to fix the issue. Another problem was the "roads." We got in a taxi, and the driver frantically made two U-turns to get on our way. It wasn't like he was taking a long detour to make more money off a short trip; making two quick U-turns just seemed weird. When I asked him about it, he said the roads were built poorly and he had no other choice.
"Seriously, how are we supposed to drive when they build roads like this? People are so strange."
We took two taxis that day, and both drivers said the exact same thing. The consensus is that when they built the station, they constructed the roads without properly understanding the traffic flow. Come to think of it, during a past cycling trip in Gangwon-do (the province Gangneung is in), I almost got hit by a train because the road was designed so weirdly. I don't know if it's a problem with the provincial officials or the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, but the roads in Gangwon-do really have issues.
Still, you can tell that the taxi drivers and rental car staff are aware of these inconveniences and do their best to provide good service so customers don't feel the brunt of it. They also have high expectations for the KTX, which is why they criticize the flaws so harshly. It's a classic underdeveloped-country style problem and solution: making up for the absence and failure of a system with human resources.
The first place we went after arriving in Gangneung and renting a car was a restaurant. We hadn't eaten a proper breakfast, so we needed to fill our starving stomachs first. We spent a small fortune on snow crab, but it was incredibly satisfying. The place was Terrace J, a snow crab restaurant in Jumunjin, Gangneung.
Right after eating, we headed to Jumunjin Market to buy more snow crab. Located right next to Jumunjin Port, the market sells snow crab for almost half the price of a restaurant. A friend told me Mukho Port is even cheaper, but figuring the round-trip gas might cost more, we just bought 2 kilos at Jumunjin for 50,000 KRW per kilo. Of course, thanks to Mrs. Kim's (my mom's) haggling skills, we got a little extra thrown in.
We ate it after getting back to Seoul and it was insanely delicious. Snow crab really needs to be steamed at the source.
During the 20 or so minutes it took to steam the crabs, we bought some mackerel and looked around, but we still had time to kill. We looked for a place to sit and found a coffee shop on the second floor. It was very spacious and beautifully decorated like an art gallery. It's a bit of a shame that such a nice place didn't have many people. The person there—maybe the owner—explained the artwork, facilities, and products in great detail, so I got to rest comfortably while my mom had a great time listening to all the explanations.
Our next destination was the Hangwa (traditional Korean sweets) Village.
If it feels like I'm just quickly listing the places we breezed through, you're absolutely right.
Tourist spots like Ojukheon and Heo Nanseolheon's birthplace were already closed (we meant to go, but gave up because our meal took too long), so we ended up just food shopping all day before heading home. For the Hangwa Village, we decided on Gyosan Hangwa, which was recommended by the person running that beautiful coffee shop on the second floor of Jumunjin Market. Gyosan Hangwa.
Since we didn't visit a single tourist attraction, we had plenty of time left over. To wrap up the trip calmly with a cup of coffee, we headed to Coffee Street. I had heard there were a lot of people in Gangneung and wondered where they all went, but coming here, I finally understood. It wasn't completely packed, but there were quite a few people at the Coffee Street near Anmok Beach. Even though it had gotten dark and you couldn't see the ocean at all, the coffee shops were using the darkness to silently hustle for customers with their brightly lit signs.
We wrapped up our itinerary for the day, returned the rental car, and found a long line for taxis in front of the Gangneung Intercity Bus Terminal. Everyone was waiting their turn in line, but some drunk guy was blocking the front of a taxi, screaming at the top of his lungs. I was already a bit annoyed by that, when suddenly a middle-aged man cut in line right behind me. He looked exactly like a mid-level corporate manager, and he just casually cut in while muttering about how cold it was. A thought suddenly crossed my mind: 'Is the civic awareness and manners here really sufficient to host the Olympics in Gangwon-do?'
Well, I guess previous games have shown that high civic awareness and public safety aren't strictly necessary to host the Olympics anymore.
It's a fallacy to judge the whole based on a few incidents, so I'm sure my thought was wrong.
With the KTX opening in Gangneung, an endless stream of tourists will come, and people will start evaluating Gangwon-do. Right now, people mostly just go to the resorts, but if they offer good people, a clean environment, delicious food, and no frown-inducing incidents, it has plenty of potential to become a healing getaway for city dwellers, much like Jeju Island. But if not, it'll just remain a town that's convenient for visiting resorts. I feel like I saw both sides during my day trip today. Seeing the merchants and taxi drivers working so earnestly made me think the area will do well, but then seeing the news about room rates jacking up dozens of times higher than usual, the line-cutting guy today, and the loud men on the KTX made me think it's doomed. The Olympics aren't actually what's important.
As long as it doesn't fail too miserably.
What's important for Gangwon-do is that the infrastructure is being upgraded thanks to the Olympics, like laying down the KTX tracks and revamping the roads. I hope they make the most of this opportunity and become an internationally famous tourist destination like Jeju Island, not just famous within Korea. Seems like a pretty grandiose conclusion for just taking one KTX ride.
Final verdict: Now you can pop over to the East Sea for a quick bite of snow crab and soju. The iPhone X takes really great photos.
The map location is wrong. I guess this will change too...