Sancheoneo Ice Festival, Hwacheon, Korea

This weekend I was able to go to any ice festival, Sancheoneo Ice festival and as per CNN it is world’s 4th largest Ice festival.

So here I will give you all the details in my style :

When It is held : probably month of January everywhere.

Where : It is situated in a city called Hwacheon, Korea.

How to reach there : It depends on from where you want to start.  I was staying in Suwon. So from there I took a express bus to Chuncheon, if you are staying in Seoul also, you have to do the same. you can also use Subway, but I will suggest use bus, that way you don’t need to change many metro to reach there.  Then from Chuncheon, there is very frequent bus service to Hwacheon( every 15-20 mins). Ice festival venue is some half a kilometer away from bus terminal, so you can walk down the road.

Activities you can try : Mostly it is popular for Ice fishing. So you can dig a hole in the frozen river and enjoy fishing, there is also bar hand fishing available if you want to try. Worth to mention, there is a foreigner help desk where you can purchase all the fishing equipment and they speak English so you can get any help if you want. To use the Ice Fishing ring you have to purchase ticket of 8000 won, out of which you will get some 3000-5000 won back as food coupon.

Apart from that you can try other things too, like Ice Sliding for that also you have to purchase 5000 won ticket, but I must say it was fun. There are a lot of activities, but I think others are for Children only, the other activities are :  Go Karting on Ice( or I say Go Icing  ), Ice Bicycle, small bungee jumping, Fake Para gliding through the crane(:P).

We were lucky that, it was Special Winter Olympics held in South Korea, so there was a team of Figure Skating, who performed on the very famous “Gangnam Style” song. And I must say, it was awesome performance and must watch too.

Also you can make your snow man there as lots of ice, and volunteer will help you to form shape.  And always watch your step, as it is very slippery. But overall it was good experience.

Food : You will find many food stalls. As for non-vegetarian you will have lots of option with traditional korean food items, but for vegetarian can also survive. In veg food, you will have Tofu(soya-paneer), some indian utppam kinda stuff(tasty though) and some fruits.

Etc: If you are planning to stay in the night, then I will suggest you visit the market as they have really nice Lightning in the night.

I hope it will help you plan your trip to Sancheoneo Ice Festival.

Korean Folk Village

Finally I came out of Dan pretty much after one and half month of no trip at all. So it was refreshing to have a feel of chilly korean weather.

Let me share the experience of Korean Folk Village Trip in my usual way:

Where it is : Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do( Near to Suwon)

How to reach there : I will suggest you to use subway to reach Suwon Station. As from there you will find 2 buses (37 and 10-5). But I prefer 37, as it is better frequency. Also Tourism department provides free shuttle from Suwon station, but it has limited frequency, although I didn’t use it(may be my timing didn’t match).

What it is : It basically gives you the glimpse of the traditional korean village. you can say it is a musuem of an Korean Folk Village. You will find everything, like traditional home, their village council, items they used to use, shops etc.

What to do : Apart from vising all the places mentioned above. Management has made sure you dont get bored easily. As they have managed to have some 2 hours performance. First the traditional marriage ceremony, Folk music performance (awesome), rope performance (not that interesting) and performance by horse riders. It starts around 10:30 and they will repeat all performances from 2 PM.

After covering all these performance you can proceed to food court where you will find traditional korean folk food(veggies take your foods with you, no good option for you). Then you can go for the museum about korean culture.

Next is Amusement park, which covers haunted house, 4D movie Theater, many rides for children as well as adults.

Further, they have sculpture garden(good for you if you are art fan).

Finally there are few more museums related to other countries culture, you can check it out if you want.

how much it costs : Fee for adult is 15000 won(Admission ticket) and 20000 won(Admission + Amusement Ticket). I will suggest go for second option, as if you pay for rides individually it will cost you more.

Hope it helps you to plan.