Kyongju

A couple of weekends back, Bert and I took a trip away from Seoul and on to Kyonju. It was about 2 ½ hour by train. The first leg of the trip we took the KTX and the second we took a slower train. It is always somewhat problematic to transfer trains as the writing is 90% in Korean and to try and find that 10% English can take time… and on this journey we only had 6 minutes to transfer…. Luckily we made it.

We arrived in Kyongu around 11:30 p.m. and then were on the hunt for a place to stay. It was honestly kind of nice arriving at a place and not having a specific plan. I felt like we were really doing the backpack thing…. I plopped myself on the road and luckily had found an old tour book … picked a hostel that sounded good… showed the driver the name … and voila… we were on our way. When we arrived we were in a somewhat dodgey area… but Korea’s dodgey is comparable to Regina’s South Albert + a few more neon lights on the hotels which are actually “love motels”…. so we weren’t concerned. It was a little alarming though that the hostel was completely dark. Being the person that I am, I went ahead and tried the door… it was unlocked… so I walked in and a lovely Korean man awoke to meet us and speak to us in PERFECT English. Our room was no 5 star resort but it was very comfortable… and the right price! I was elated—the trip was off to a good start.

We awoke bright and early to make it to a real 5 star resort. Not because we weren’t satisfied but because we heard that the resort offered full day bus tours to all of the ‘must see’ places in Korea. This was the second GREAT decision we made on this trip. Kyongju (also English spelled Gyeongju) is considered a must see if one were to travel Korea. The whole area is sometimes referred to as, a ‘museum without walls’, hence there are many great things to see but the distance between them can be quite extensive if you are under a time crunch (and like us have a language barrier.) We ended up paying $45.00 for a full eight hour, air conditioned, bus tour which included the $2-3 entrance fee to all of the sites. This ended up being more than worth it as the taxi ride to the resort from the hostel was already around $15.00.

We paid for the tour and entered the bus… and were of course the only ‘white kids’ around. We had many curious stares from the young children on the tour with their families. Roberta and I took a deep breath and prepared ourselves for all the “HELLO”S” and “How are you?” we knew we would receive from the school kids who were eager to practice their English. I sound begrudging, and truly I am not, I am used to it. This happens everywhere we go and it wouldn’t be so tiring if it wasn’t always followed by little giggles, the kids running off, and then returning in 5 minutes to the repeat the pattern. Ohh Korea Korea ☺

The tour stopped at our first stop and the guide gave a lengthy speech in Korean. I read to us from my guidebook. Luckily, there was one gentleman on tour who spoke excellent English and he was able to tell us what time to meet back at the bus so we were free to explore the sights on our own. The first sight we saw was “Seokgraum Grotto/ Bulguksa Temple. The temple was originally built in 535, and then enlarged in 752. Since then like most historical sites in Korea, parts of it have been restored due to the many wars Korea has been involved with. Seoukgraum Grotto is considered a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site. It is one of the finest shrines to the Buddha in the world. It is surrounded by Bodhisattvas and guardian deities and located on the top of a mountain surrounded by gorgeous trees. The Buddha image itself is housed in a granite dome. The dome, in itself would have been quite a feat for the time. All in all, it was breathtaking and made more real with the bowing monks attending to it.

From there we went to an old Silla temple/living area. We toured around the various buildings… and of course took pictures. All were created by the Silla dynasty which were a group of people that the Koreans (John is speaking to us on their behalf) are quite proud of (57 BCE- 935 CE). He claimed they are the ‘pure Koreans.” From what I understand, they are proud of the buildings they created, the Silla are responsible for the creation of the Korean language, the Buddhist influence, and a strong military that fought off invading Japanese and Chinese multiple times. Finally, we finished at a museum which told us a lot more of the same things but still interesting.

One of my favourite things was the rock men… see picture. The people would place rocks one on another and make a wish/prayer. I have seen this in Peru, too where they did it on top of Mountains.. to the mountain gods… and then of course there are the large Inukshuks the Inuit people built. Isn’t it interesting that all these groups of people live soo soo far away from each other in the world… yet there are similarities between them all???… WE ARE ALL CONNECTED ☺

After this we had a break for lunch at which point… John offered us to join him and his traveling companions… his daughter, his friend and his daughter. It was a lovely family affair. They even took us to a Western restaurant… because John was concerned that we didn’t get to eat food from home a lot. How sweet.

After lunch, we were back on the bus and headed to the Cheomseongdae Observatory. This observatory is Asia’s earliest known existing observatory. (tall stone structure in the picture). Apparently they used 365 stones to build it. After this we headed to Tumuli Park. (see green grass mound pic). Underneath all of these mounds is a bunch of dead Silla kings! The park itself contains 23 of the more than 200 royal tombs found in Kyongju. Two of the tombs have been excavated since and one of them was found with more than 10 000 treasures. These treasures included a golden crown (very popular to the Silla kingdom… very delicate with long protruding spikes… unlike any crown I have seen before). We were able to walk in to one of the tombs and see some of the treasures… displayed museum style behind glass. What is interesting about the tomb hills is that the coffin is placed in the center and then clay around it and then tons and tons of stone and finally dirt/grass … to prevent grave robbers… when I asked if any grave robbers were successful I didn’t receive a straight answer… I am fairly confident it was a language barrier thing.

From there I believe we finished the tour at yet another Museum that displayed artifacts from the Silla dynasty.

It was an exhausting and fabulous tour! We said goodbye to our ‘family’… and Bert and I bought some picnic snacks and headed to a place called Anapji Pond. It was a beautiful place full of Silla era style buildings and amazing lights after sunset. It was a wonderful close to an even better day.

The next day we went to look at a cool building—in a cultural type of center see the picture of the building with the carved out temple. We also saw a 3D movie about a legend from the Silla dynasty and dropped in on a quick meditation/martial arts lessons. All in a day’s work in the life of a Korean teacher. After which, we made it to our train, and back to Ansan trouble free.