Tips 👏
- It's a secondary city worth a visit if you're interested in authentic, daily life in Korea. Although no specific landmarks to see but also no tourists. We came to visit a friend relatives to experience this.
- Plenty of Korean activities to do for very cheap (golf practice, communal sauna, drinks & nibbles).
Accommodation 🏠
We stayed in a traditional Hanok houses, lost in the country side of the city, and that was spacious, super chill and relaxing. Make sure however to rent a car because taxi drop you off there but don't come to pick you up. We booked via their website Butler Lee.
Getting there 🚲
We arrived by first class bus from Seoul in 90 minutes with lie-flat seats and strongly recommend. For the car rental, we called a local company and they delivered the car to the accommodation, but we would recommend renting directly from the bus station.
Food & Drink 🍜
- 면식당가경점: Cheap ramen offering vegetarian options (quite rare) in the city center.
- 간이역 서문점: Amazing yakitori restaurant with great local vibes!
- 쫄쫄호떡: Delicious local pastry baked on the fly super popular with the locals (grab it and chill in the park!)
Duration ⏱
We spent two full days in the area and felt that was plenty, one full day would probably be good enough.
Local life 😎
Started our first day by relaxing in the city and meeting some friend family. We got invited in their flat for drinks and aperitivo, was a great way to observe the daily life in suburbian Korea, organised around sweet & communal moments. We then made our way by foot to the city centre along with all the local families taking pictures & selfie in front of the riverside with the long line of cherry blossom trees.
We then grabbed more drinks and food at an amazing local yakitori place with locals 간이역 서문점, enjoying a proper korean evening, with great vibes and full stomach.
Local activities 🏌️♀️♨️
Second day we invested our time in local activities. We started by heading to CGA golf range to practice our golfing drive (note that none of us really ever golfed). That was super fun & cheap, for about 10000KRW we could 'swing' for 50 minutes, starting to get a hang of it by the end under the look of some semi-professional one.
We then made our way to Sejong Spa Jjimjilbang for a relaxing afternoon with locals, to try out massages and sauna, while having food and relaxing all together. The facility itself was big over multiple floors, including a separated-sex onsen (with various hot and cold water pool, sauna and cold plunge), along with communal areas featuring various sauna, massage chair and chilling area with food and drinks. Also possible to get a massage in the communal area or in the onsen but was fully booked. Expect nudity 😅 in the onsen (mandatory!)
Sleepy but with good energy, we made our way back to Cheongju while passing by the ghost-like city centre of Sejong. The city itself is fairly new, and expended 15 years ago to support South Korea government buildings (cheaper than Seoul). However seems local people didn't fancy moving in, creating this empty vibe. On arrival after few already closed restaurants, we fell back on a local 'shabu-shabu' place (like a hotpot) before heading back to our lovely Hanok.
Hope this was helpful, you can ask us any questions on Instagram.