GIC Events
[Review]GIC Wando Tour with Warren
- Name
- 임은정
- Date
- 2012-07-10
- Views
- 1944 회
Last June 30, we visited Wando with GIC Tour. The participants consist of 40 diverse personalities from different nationalities. Wando County (Wando-gun) is a county in South Jeolla Province, South Korea. It takes its name from the island of Wando, which is the largest island within the county and serves as the county seat. Wando is perhaps most famous for Cheonghaejin, the former headquarter of ChangPoGo, a 9th century Korean historical figure whose private fleet and army dominated the sea routes in the Yellow Sea. Wando's most famous native in modern times is the champion golfer K.J. Choi.
We all gathered in front of Jeonil Building, Geumnam-ro at 08:15 am with small doubt whether the tour would be cancelled or not, because the night before the tour day it was raining heavily and we already been informed from the GIC it might be cancelled if it would continue to rain that way. But the auspicious rain stopped and tour started on time as scheduled. We all were excited to visit the place especially the beach in the summer and the food (Raw fish with spicy soup), it’s a new delicacy for almost all the participants so everyone was curious for that. And the most important thing, the weather was super cool, not so hot and not raining heavily either; so it was a perfect weather for travelling mainly in the summer. The journey was about two hours from Gwangju to Wando by bus.
When the journey was started then the tour guide Warren and all the volunteers from the GIC briefed the schedule in details for the whole day which was already distributed by e-mail to all the participants. The main schedule for the day was visit to four specific places: Cheonghaejin, ChangPoGo Memorial Hall, Raw Fish and Seafood Soup for lunch, and Myungsasimni Beach. And Warren also described about some new places, with some historical background and the importance of those places on the way to Wando, especially the dragon range stone mountain, Buddhist temples, forest, natural/ wild tea farm and some agricultural farms.
First we visited the Cheonghaejin, this is the place known as the naval and maritime trade and it played the role for interconnecting Korea, Japan and China. It was nominated for historical site and had been excavated since 1991 and restored as it currently looks. Also we got the opportunity to see the beautiful and clear natural scenery from the top of the place.
Secondly, we visited ChangPoGo Memorial Hall; this hall was built in 2008 in the memory of the great maritime trade emperor, ChangPoGo from the 9th century. The hall is very fascinating and well designed as we found many historical things with lots of information; especially the audio visual section is great in detail with clear information.
Then we went for our most awaited section of the tour; Raw Fish and Seafood Soup for lunch, after visiting those two most important places, all the participants were hungry so we can say that was one of the most highlighted section of the Wando Tour because it’s the first experience to almost all the participants.
After lunch finally we reached the Myungsasimni Beach, and some of the participants tried to enjoy with swimming, some enjoyed walking in light raining and windy weather (kind of romantic weather), some enjoyed photography and some were drinking in the beach. In general this section was most enjoyable and relaxing for all the participants.
As per schedule we started the journey back to Gwangju around 5pm and we reached in time (7pm). Overall the trip was well managed/researched, well disciplined, followed to the schedule, enjoyable and the most important thing is, it’s quite informative who is interested in Korean history. So we can say it was a successful trip. Hope everyone enjoyed and got relaxed from their hectic weekdays routine.
Written by_Deepak Prasad Bashyal
