The Jeolla province (a.k.a. Jeolla-do, 전라도 in Korean) is one of the big secrets Korea hides. Unknown to many foreigners who visit this country, it is one of the most beautiful provinces of Korea, and with the best food. The drawback tough is that it is not easy to find English-speaking hotels, restaurants, or people, so if you want to visit here you better speak Korean or go with a Korean friend. That being said, I am sure that this region will experience a huge increase in foreign tourism in the next years, as its possibilities are endless.
On the way to Cheolla, we stopped by Boryeon (where the Mud Festival takes place every year) for dinner. Really great fish and so cheap!
One of the activities you can do in Jeolla is, of course mountain-climbing. This is one of the buddhist temples we found during our course.
The temple had this immense rock on the top which looked like it was going to fall at any time.
View from the top of the mountain.
Another must-see place in Jeolla are the Boseong tea plantations (more info here). Unfortunately, it was really foggy and rainy the day we went there, but it was still worth seeing.
Funny revolving tree 🙂
We could hardly see the plantations due to the heavy fog.
When you travel in the Korean countryside, where people are not so used to see foreigners, it is not uncommon that strangers ask you to take a picture with them. Sometimes you feel like a movie star.
A bridge at the trea plantations.
This place kind of reminded me of Nami Island.
Can’t help my love for bikes 🙂
Another interesting place is this dolmen site in Hwasun. I already talked about dolmens in Korea during our trip to Ganghwa Island.
As opposed to Ganghwa where there are just a few dolmens, this park is full of them, near three hundred according to the Wikipedia.
Like I said, food is also one of the reasons to visit this province, in this restaurant we had the best Korean beef I have tried.
Main gate of the restaurant. Unfortunately I forgot its name, but it is very close to the dolmen site, and quite popular, so if you ask for a Korean beef restaurant near, they will probably send you here.
