Review: Day Trip To Nami Island, Petite France & Gangchon Rail Bike (Korea)

It's fun to make your way to various tourist destinations at times but when it's so out of the way, a day trip on a tour bus makes a lot of sense. For one, you can rest on the bus (even nap!) between stops. Secondly, the tour bus usually takes you back to a location that's closer to your hotel so it's not so tiring to make your way back after an exhausting day.

When I went to Korea in 2016 with my friends, I decided to book a day trip to Nami Island, Petite France and Gangchon Rail Bike on Funko: Funtastic Korea. Well, mostly because it was more affordable. But don't just take my word for it, no matter where you book your day trips, it's important to do your research first. Read reviews and compare prices. I read a Klook review that someone was mad that they had paid a higher price but it's really important to do your homework first. I'm not defending any website that offers such day trips, just reminding my readers to do their homework first and live with the decision, if necessary. No point spoiling your holiday just because you missed something out or got a less than ideal deal, ya?

Anyway, on to my review of the day tour. It was basically a pickup and dropoff service where the tour bus takes a group of people to a location, drops them off, and reminds them what time to wait at the pickup point. It's not unlike a package tour, but we were given free-to-roam time that was far better than following behind a tour guide. Our tour guide was this very vain but friendly Korean guy who took every opportunity to preen before a photo shoot. Not that I blame him, of course, he is a pretty good looking guy but still... =x

This particular tour took us to 3 destinations: Nami Island, Petite France and Gangchon Rail Bike. They took us first to Petite France, where it's a small park that's designed like a French village. It's very instagrammable but smaller than I expected. Food is also comparatively more expensive, so I will encourage you to buy some bread and bottles of beverage before you set out for the day.

Petite France features many cute popular icons such as The Little Prince and their respective backstories. They even had a collection of puppets - some quite pretty and others kinda scary but it was a unique experience. The tour guide gave us a couple of hours to explore the place and it was more than enough. At the end of our walk, we even got to watch a puppet show. In my humble opinion, I thought it was the most interesting part of the entire place since we got to see how flawlessly puppets can move when their handlers have skill. Hehe.

After the puppet show ended, it was time to head to the next destination! This time we are going where the most romantic of people love to go (aka people who fell in love with Bae Yong Joon and Winter Sonata): Nami Island! 

If you thought Petite France was crowded, then Nami Island is just overpopulated. Since it made its name on the well-loved Korean drama series, Winter Sonata, throngs of people have visited this beautiful place. It's not a pleasant sight because everywhere you go is just mountains upon mountains of people. I really love the place for its beautiful trees and sense of tranquility, but the crowds just completely turned me off. Anyway, since we were already there, might as well make full use of our time there! 

The bus dropped us off at a jetty where you can either take a ferry or hightail it overhead via a zip wire (aka flying fox). It's a very fun and exciting activity, but as usual, you can expect to queue for some time before you finally get your turn. The price (which includes admission to Nami Island) is about 38 000 won. One of my travel mates wanted to try it out initially, but because the queue was too long, they eventually decided to join us for lunch at one of the nearby food joints instead.

Entrance to the Zip Wire...you can also spot our tour guide in the picture.

If you plan to eat before crossing the waters to Nami Island, there are plenty of eating places around. But like I mentioned earlier, it's a tourist destination so you might have to explore a bit before you find a place to settle down.

Yummy

After lunch, it was off to the jetty and Nami Island!

Crowded, right? But since we only had a couple of hours more to go, we decided to explore as much as we could of this beautiful island. I could only wonder how gorgeous it could get without all the people! >.<

Despite the fact that it's super crowded, Nami Island is one place you shouldn't miss out. It's super beautiful and the autumn leaves are simply gorgeous. Lots of instagrammable locations so you can't go wrong. Hehe. There's even a statue of the 2 Winter Sonata lovers honouring the couple for making the place so famous! LOL.

After Nami Island, it was time for our final stop! This time, we are going to take the Gangchon Rail Bike! By now, it was nearly evening time so our tourist guide hurried us up the bus after meeting us at the jetty. Riding in the dark ain't going to be fun if we can't see where we are going. Hehe. Once we reached the place where we were supposed to take the rail bike, we were divided into groups of 4 or 2. You could either ride the rail bike in twos or fours, but remember to practise teamwork! After all, you can't really expect the people in front to do all the work while you relax and only take photos behind, right? Anyway, you have to be careful as well since you might crash into the group in front.

It was quite a distance from starting to end point, but along the way, you can even check out the beautiful scenery. There are even a few tunnels halfway where they put up a light show, bubbles and loud Korean music to spice things up. I personally felt that the music was too loud, but it was a unique addition to the journey. Here's a video I took...apologies for the poor quality. Heh.

The journey lasted about 30 minutes if I'm not wrong and at the end of it, we waited for a choo-choo train to take us back to where we can hop onto the tour bus for home. Sorry, I didn't manage to get a picture of the train exterior, but here is the interior! Rather crowded, right?

As we waited in the cold, the train platform had a refreshment kiosk where you could buy drinks or snacks to stave off the hunger pangs. We didn't buy anything but took the opportunity to take some pictures! Ahem, forgive the poor quality of one of the photos. =x

And there you have it, a rather fruitful day in my opinion. 3 places in a single day! Now, that's what I call a relaxing tour. While you may prefer to make your way there yourself due to budget, but if you can, try to book at least one day package. It's SO MUCH MORE relaxing and trust me, being stressed and lost is the LAST thing you want to be on your vacation!

Review: My travel mates and I really enjoyed this day trip to not one, not two, but THREE tourist destinations. I seriously love how little trouble it was to book on the website and the meeting place was easy to find as well. The day trip also saved us lots of time travelling and I appreciate the fact that we got to rest in between stops as well. Imagine if we were to make our way to these places on our own. We might have gotten lost, or worse, not being able to cover so many places in a day. Hehe. I definitely recommend that you take up a day trip package but don't forget to do your homework first before booking, ok?