(Journal from last Monday)

Monday morning, we woke up early to catch a bus to Gyeongju, on the south eastern edge of S. Korea. Gyeongju was the center of the first unified Korea. As such, it has tons of historical sites. Because of the various temples and ruins, I was interested in visiting it.

The bus ride down was four hours long, but it cut through much of Korea, going from Seoul in the NW to Gyeongju in the SE. After experiencing the hyper-urban Seoul, filled with neon lights and skyscrapers, I was surprised to see that much of the rest of Korea is forested mountains. I had imagined Korea to be similar to what I saw of Japan, with the urban sprawl extending pretty much everywhere but the most rugged terrain (or perhaps all of Korea -is- rugged terrain). The road probably went through about 10 tunnels on the way there, and most of the cities we saw were nestled in between two or three mountains.

The hotel we stayed in was near one of the major temples, Bulguksa. Because we are traveling right before peak tourist season, Zane has been able to get some excellent rates on hotels. The hotel we stayed at in Gyeongju was listed as "5 Star" (though that is doubtful), but it was none too shabby. It had a golf-course on site, various saunas, and an excellent dining room with floor-to-cieling windows with views of the surrounding mountains.

The entrance to Bulguksa, with mountains behind it.

As was true with every other Buddhist temple in Korea, Bulgaksu was decked out in colorful lanterns.

Bulguksa temple, with strings of lanterns.

The entrance to the main temple of Bulguksa, from the front.

The lantern strings were tied to dragons at the top of the stairs.

In a corner of the temple complex, there was a city of little stone towers, made by visitors. Zane and I built up one of our own.

After that, we hiked a mountain path behind Bulguksa up to Seokguram Seokgul (Seokguram Grotto). The hike was a bit more strenuous than we expected. We figured that 2.2 km was nothin. However, 2.2 km at an incline was a bit more than we bargained for. When we started the trail, I had been considering climbing it before dawn the next morning, as sunrise as seen from Seokgul Grotto is supposed to be amazing. After a few hundred meters, I realized that climbing that trail at 4am was just not going to happen.

Apparently falling rocks are a danger.

Our first glimpse of a building outside the grotto.



The climb was worth it, though. The hordes of kids on class trips kinda took away from the sanctity of the place a bit (as screaming chaos often does), but they made up for it by being incredibly friendly. And most of them had no interest in the Grotto itself, so we had that to ourselves for a while. No pictures were allowed inside, though.

View of Gyeongju from outside the Grotto.

Zane with a group of kids.

The kids were kind of fun, and kept calling English phrases out to us. "Hello" "My name is ____" "How are you? I am fine!" "Nice to meet you!" Unlike in the lantern parade, where it seemed like every other person we ran into was a Westerner, I haven't seen very many outside of Seoul, and didn't run into any hiking. Perhaps that's why we were treated as celebrities.