GYEONG-JU, KOREA

Monday, May 08, 2006
GYEONG-JU
for the long weekend of childrens day we decided to get out of town again...gyeong ju is one of the best touristed areas in korea outside of seoul and the DMZ...anywho, we took a night train thursday evening, arriving at the fabulous hour of 0400...we took a taxi to the hostel at which we had made reservations only to find the doors locked...we called the number on the door, only to be told they were full, and that they had waited for us...(not likely, since we arrived slightly ahead of time, and we had informed them what time we would be arriving)...so we walked down the street, found a love motel (despite their often poor reputation, they're usually pretty good value for the money,) checked in and went to sleep...
friday was taken up by walking all over the parks in town...gyeong ju was once the capital of the silla dynasty, even ruling the whole korean peninsula from 668 - 918...the area is now known for the silla tombs that are found all over the area...when you think tomb, don't think of what you see in a new orleans cemetary...think egyptian pyramid...the big difference is that the silla made their tombs of earthen mounds over the burial sites, and the egyptians built the pyramids...the silla tombs are only slightly smaller...really impressive...they buried their dead the same way, with plenty of stuff to take with them to their afterlife...in one of the parks, one of the excavated tombs is open for tourists, and it was neat to go .in and see how everything was set up, as well as see what was included in the burial...the next park we walked through wasn't so exciting, but because of the holiday there were a LOT of children out, hanging out with each other and their families...we found the area where an old confucian academy was located...amazingly, we were the only people walking through...the silence was pretty incredible...
we had thought the parks would take longer to walk through so we ended up taking a taxi out to a nearby man made lake...(after taking another taxi back after dinner, we found out that the first taxi driver drove around enough to add 4000 won more onto the fare)...this is an area that is newly developed, more along the lines of big resorts that don't give you any reason to leave their property...aqua world, mini atv and scooter rentals, etc...after a dinner of very disappointing donkas we went back to central gyeong-ju and our love motel...
saturday brought us rain...nothing but rain...after hanging out in our room for way too long (watching tv, playing on the computer, reading, etc) we ventured out, mainly for food...deciding that we didn't have many choices as to what to do, we ended up going to see Mission Impossible III...headed back to the motel room too early, but oh well...
sunday was a lot better...we took a bus out to bulguksa, a buddhist temple 16 km outside of gyeong ju...it's the crowning glory of the silla dynasty, and is on the UNESCO world cultural heritage list...(we did have a discussion as to what qualifies a site to be on that list)...originally built in 528 during the reign of king beop-heung, it was damaged and reconstructed several times, the last time in 1969-73...(the japanese weren't so nice to korean heritage sites while they occupied the peninsula)...while it was neat to see a temple that had been so important in it's time, it really looked like so many of the other temples in this country...after a while all buddhist temples start to look alike...(the same with so many of the castles in europe)...after bulguksa, we took a bus up to seokguram grotto, which is also on the world heritage list...this bus went up the most windy road ever...both of us got motion sickness, which got a whole lot worse on the way down...anywho, in this grotto, there is a ginormous granite sitting buddha...pretty nifty, especially when you think of what it took to build him, and get him up there...there are no nearby granite sources...sadly, you don't get to get up close and personal with him...you only get to view him through a glass wall...originally the area was completely open, but i guess not all tourists were nice to the buddha, so they put up the wall...it's still pretty impressive...
a quick bus ride back down, then another bus ride back to town, where we had an early dinner before picking up our bags where we had left them at the motel, then hopping on the train back to seoul...
another excellent weekend adventure!!!!