Anmyeondo Island: A Walk Under the Trees

For our first day in Anmyeondo, we explored the island’s beautiful beaches. On the second day, we wandered in some of its quiet green spaces.

I was a little concerned that we had left almost a whole day to seeing the Anmyeondo Island Recreational Forest, as I couldn’t find much about it when researching before this trip. As far as I knew, it was going to be really lame and not worth seeing. This concern intensified when we couldn’t get a bus or a taxi from the hotel on Sunday morning and walked a very sunny 45 minutes to get there, partly along the side of a highway. Well, I am happy to report that the forest was worth both the visit and the walk. This must be one of the most undersold tourist destinations we’ve visited!

Once we left the highway, we ultimately did walk through an interesting residential and agricultural area to reach the forest, which is south of Anmyeon-eup and not really close to anything else (although by car it would be a very quick trip from town).

Anmyeondo Island Botanical Garden

Despite the unexpected walk, we made it to the forest and discovered that it is actually two large parks across the street from one another: the recreational forest and a botanical garden. You can enter both on the same ticket. We went to the garden first. Even in September, there were still a few plants blooming, and it was very green and peaceful.

We saw many butterflies, which we of course recognized. However, we also saw this other critter that we could not identify. It looked like a cross between a moth and a hummingbird (see below right). With a little research, we found that this insect is called (aptly) a Hummingbird Hawk-Moth. They do also live in North America, but we had never seen one. We got to watch this one at work for a long while.

We also saw some super-gigantic spiders. It pains me even to upload their photos, but they were so interesting that even I (a confirmed arachnophobe) had to look at them. I wish there were an object in the photos for scale. Just know they’re as big as they look like they might be. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Because in our experience there is always a hill (and often a pavilion) on any South Korean excursion, we climbed a hill to a lovely pavilion with a view to the west, all the way to the ocean. A delightful surprise!

Anmyeondo Island Recreational Forest

Our tour of the gardens complete, a walk back through the grounds and down a nice pathway led us under the main street to the Recreational Forest. The park is so large that the part we visited in a couple of hours was just a small piece. However, we got a good sense of the 100-year-old red pine forest, which though more recently revitalized is said originally to have been managed by the royal family during the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392).

We enjoyed walking through the treetops on well-maintained wooden platforms that wind through the forest. There were peaceful picnic tables where we stopped to have our lunch of champions – apples and trail mix!

In addition to those we saw camping on the beaches, there were also a number of people staying in cabins on the grounds of the Recreational Forest. The nicest cabins were styled as traditional hanoks. Beautiful!

Having spent our day in the green world of gardens and forests, we returned to Anmyeon-eup to see a little more of the town.

Anmyeon-eup

Here’s the thing: there’s not a heck of a lot in Anmyeon-eup. However, there are plenty of places to eat, whether you are looking for ultra-fresh seafood prepared right out of the tank or just a quick bite. It is also convenient to the bus station, which is what we needed to be sure to catch our Sunday evening bus back to Seoul. There is a small-town vibe to it that I liked a lot, always having a soft spot in my heart for my small-town roots.

We took a quick walk through the covered seafood market in the small downtown area, although we didn’t have time to eat there. The vendors cheerfully displayed their wares and tried their best to entice us to sit down. No surprise, we saw lots of very fresh crabs and enormous prawns!

Travel to and around Anmyeondo

This was our first experience with the South Korea intercity bus system, and overall it was great. Making the reservation was a little tricky, but once we realized the English website was temperamental, we switched to the Korean site and it worked. Note: I could only select dates and bus seats if I kept the language as Korean, and then I could let Google translate into English. The whole process required toggling back and forth between English and Korean on the Korean website.

We showed up at the Central City Bus Station in Seoul at the appointed time and easily found our comfortable, clean bus at a well-marked terminal. Returning to Seoul was not at all confusing because Anmyeon-eup only has one bus depot anyway.

We did have a couple of travel challenges. It was great that the bus was comfortable, because we were on it for a while! The trip that was supposed to take 2 hours and 10 minutes took 2 hours 45 minutes on the way to the island and 3 hours 15 minutes on the way back. Some of the highways we were on were too small to have dedicated bus lanes, so we were at the mercy of the traffic. Our bus driver on the way home also decided to avoid some traffic by taking detours onto much smaller roads, with the result that we largely bounced back to Seoul.

I was under the impression that once we got to the island, we could take local buses where we wanted to go. I couldn’t find any online bus schedules to confirm this, though. As it turns out, most buses run infrequently on the island, so unless we wanted to kill a lot of time waiting on a bus, it was not a good option.

This left the possibility of taking taxis, which were theoretically available but only sporadically. A couple of times we ended up walking rather long distances because no taxis were available. To be safe, we traveled on Anmyeondo only as far as we were willing to walk – just in case there was no other option available. Because of this, we missed seeing a couple of sites we might otherwise have had time to visit. If I were doing this trip again, I would probably rent a car.

We stayed at the Anmyeondo Plaza Hotel, one of the few hotels on the island. It gave the impression of being a very nice place that has fallen on hard times, which I think is exactly what’s happened. COVID-19 has taken its toll on Korean tourism as has happened in most parts of the world this year. The hotel advertised having 24-hour desk staff and English-speaking personnel, which is not really the case right now. I hope they will get back on their feet as they really are lovely, helpful people, and our hotel room was very comfortable despite the unexpected challenges, which were minor. I would stay there again but with a slightly different set of expectations (and prepared with better language skills of my own).

Overall, Anmyeondo is a very rural area. It’s clear that it’s a working fishing and agricultural island. We are not campers, but if you want to camp this seems like a perfect place to do so. My impression is that the beaches closer to Taean are more the sitting-under-an-umbrella-on-the-beach kind of places. If that is the trip you’re seeking, I would recommend staying closer to Taean. However, if you’re looking for a quieter experience and the adventure of visiting a more local-friendly area, Anmyeondo might be the place for you!

Did you miss our first post about Anmyeondo and the Noeulgil Course (plus food on the island)? You can find it here.

Want to see more photos of Anmyeondo? Visit Peter’s Flickr album to see more of the Anmyeondo Island Recreational Forest and our “day two” adventures.