Day 42

My first Korean holiday, Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving), has come and gone!  I've just returned from a five-day trip to the beautiful Gyeongju, a city in the southeastern area of the Korean peninsula.  I had an excellent time--I made new friends, learned the history of the Silla dynasty, gained some new Korean vocabulary, and came home with an overabundance of new teaware.

An excellent view of the Gyeongju area.

Gyeongju was the capital of the Silla kingdom.  Silla was one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, ruling for nearly 1000 years and played a major role in shaping Korean culture and history.  After 992 years of power, the Silla dynasty bowed down to the Goryeo kingdom, from which modern Korea draws its name.

The history of the Silla dynasty, particularly its inception, is actually very interesting.  Or at least, the Teddy Bear Museum made it pretty interesting.  But we won't get there for another few days.  Rather than try to fit all five days into one blog post, I'm going to split everything up by day.  Today let's focus on Saturday and Sunday.

This is a bird I thought was pretty.  It didn't really fit anywhere else in this post, so here it is.
There you have it, a traditional Korean bird eating a traditional Korean squished fruit.

On Saturday I took a bus from Chuncheon (where I live) to Gyeongju, which took about 6 hours and mostly involved an overweight Korean man with halitosis falling asleep on me.  Not pleasant.  Fortunately the trip got better after that.  I dropped my bag off at the Gyeongju Guesthouse, a nice hostel with clean bathrooms, half-comfy beds and free make-it-yourself breakfast.  After that I made my way to the park, where the tumuli are.

Tumuli are tombs beneath artificial hills.  The important person (usually a king) was put into a casket, the casket was put into a wooden room with all the burial goods, then that was covered in clay, and then that was covered in an enormous layer of rocks, and then the whole shebang was covered with earth.  So to summarize: casket, wooden room, clay, rocks, dirt.  Some of the smaller (less important people's) tumuli were looted and destroyed, but the larger ones have mostly been untouched for hundreds of years.   A few have been excavated and a veritable trove of treasures has been unearthed from each.

Tombs!

There's dead people in there.  And lots of rocks.

More tumuli.

There are at least two dozen tumuli within the downtown area.  The area is pretty flat, so they stick out. They're quite impressive, actually.  One of the excavated tumuli is open to the public to view, but they don't allow photos inside.  It's neat but nothing to write home about.

The area with all the tumuli has a few other interesting sights, but the tumuli are cool because they're the originals.  Korea only got into the tourism industry about twenty years ago, and much of Gyeongju's tourism (especially for foreigners) has been established within the past ten years.  But the Korean peninsula has been through a lot of wars, invasions, and rival dynasties, and many structures of historic importance have been demolished.  So what did they do?  Rebuild them, of course!

To be fair, most of their recreations are pretty cool and as true to the originals as possible.  But it's also strange to look at many of the 'historic' buildings and realize that they were built within my lifetime.

Traditional Korean door in a park full of tumuli.

Anyway, rebuilt or not, the stuff is cool.  This vase-shaped thing below is a primitive observatory called Cheomseongdae, and is apparently admired by modern archaeologists as very advanced for the time period.  Under the window (which is actually a door that was reached by ladder) the building is filled with rocks.  Above it were wooden planks to reach the top.

Not a bad-looking stone observatory.

It's a National Treasure, number 31 to be exact.  It was built during the reign of Queen Seondeok (632-647 A.D.) and apparently has miraculously made it through the last 1300 or so years without looking much worse for wear.  I don't buy it for a second.  The Korean government has absolutely no problem recreating anything of moderate historic importance and immediately labeling it as a National Treasure. As you'll soon see, they do this a lot.  So call me a skeptic, but I think this is mostly 'restored,' if not completely rebuilt.

Near the Cheomseongdae observatory we've got the site of a destroyed crescent-shaped palace called Banwolseong, Historic Site #16.  (Everything here is a Historic Something-or-Other.)  Banwolseong was built during the early first century, but nobody seems to know when it was destroyed.  Inside the confines of old Banwolseong is an ice storage called Seokbinggo (National Treasure #66), which was originally built in 1738 by King Yeongjo of the Joseon dynasty and three years later moved about 100m by the same king.  Nobody knows why.

Outside of the ice storage.

Inside the ice storage.

Cute camouflage frog!

Around the corner is the Gyeongju Hyanggo Confucian School.  There's a few Confucian schools in the area, though I'm unsure what they actually do.  They seem to be tourist attractions these days and little else.

Totally empty!  How did I get so lucky?

Now let's move out of the downtown area and south to Bulguksa.  The Bulguksa temple is a UNESCO-designated World Cultural Asset and the home of numerous National Treasures.  Despite all this pomp and fuss, it's actually quite lovely.

My travel companions hadn't made it into town yet, so I visited Bulguksa alone early Sunday morning.  I was delighted to find the place mostly empty.  Lucky me!

At the entrance of Bulguksa!

A map with the layout.  I'm at the gate in the very bottom right corner.

Bulguksa was built between 751 and 774 and was the center of Silla Buddhism until it was completely burnt down by the Japanese in 1593.  The temple was rebuilt between 1969-73.

On the map above, this is just across that bridge, about 1/3 from the right side and the top.

Ooooh, colorful statues with swords!

The signs are all in Korean so I don't know what these are for!  I'm pretty sure they're guardians of some sort?

The guitar-playing guardian?  Really wishing I had a Korean guide right now.

Look between their legs, there are tiny monsters!  Or maybe people?

There was a lovely pond with lilies, perfect for taking selfies.  Trust me, there is no activity more Korean than taking photos of yourself.  And since I was alone and wanted some pictures with me in them, I had no choice.

Please just be happy that I'm not instagram-ing all this, okay?

Yep, very pretty.

Now we've reached the main temple area.  In this photo are at least two national treasures.  The first is the staircase, which is original and fairly unremarkable as far as staircases go.  The second treasure is the building itself, which is 100% reconstructed.

Two national treasures, right here!

To be fair, it's all very attractive.

Full view!

My favorite thing about Bulguska was that they had signs with good English!  There's a plethora of awful Konglish (Korean+English) translations in this country.  It was great to learn about the history without needing a Korean guide!

MONK MONK MONK!

Seriously, where are all the people?

A lovely door handle.

Side view from atop the steps.

This here is a cool pagoda called "Dabotap."  It was built in 751 and is actually the original, or mostly.  There is a stone lion sitting atop the front steps, and it's believed that there were one three more, one for each staircase.

You can get smaller recreations of this padoga for your backyard!
I'd love a life-sized one myself, but imagine the shipping costs.

There was another cool pagoda here, but it was under construction/repair and hard to see.  So here's Dabotap again.

View from the back.

Here's a fish or a dragon or something.  Probably a dragon.

A deer-dragon-fish?

Temple hallway.  It was nice of them to build these all covered so the monks never have to get wet.

The temple buildings also had some cool spiky bits beneath the roof.

I love this deer-dragon guy!

Check out those spikes!  Very cool!

What temple is complete without a bell?

Found these gems painted on a door to a staff-only area.  Check out the muscles on these handsome gentlemen.

My god, those muscles are disgusting.

I don't even know if this is a man or a monster.  Look at those teeth!

It looks like I have major ear hair in this picture, but it's actually that monster-dude's nipple hair.

I CAN'T HELP MYSELF.  IT'S TOO SEXY TO RESIST.

Back to the front for more pictures!

Why does it look like I've been photoshopped into all these pictures?

Finally, a tourist-free shot!

Here's the temple fountain, where you drink spring water from a communal plastic cup.  Here's hoping nobody has communicable diseases.

Delicious fresh spring water!

And a few more pictures from Bulguksa.  The individual temples were lovely, but they don't allow photos inside.  I try to be a respectful tourist so I abide by the no-photo rules.  Inside each temple was a monk performing a Buddhist chant, which was very relaxing to listen to.  I spent a few minutes in each temple listening to them.

This was my favorite temple here.  You can't see the inside but there's lots of cool art and delicious-smelling fruit offerings!

Another temple!

Oh hey, another one!

After I finished touring Bulguksa, I teamed up with a few people from my hostel and took a bus to the Seokguram grotto.  There is really only one thing to see at Seokguram, and that is a stone Buddha statue that is behind glass and difficult to see.  It's impressive, I'll admit, but I'd have been more impressed if the glass had been less reflective.  You're also not allowed to take photos, so here's one from Wikipedia.

Credit for this photo goes to this German dude.

Construction began in 742 and the statue has undergone various renovations since, including some extremely shoddy repairs by the Japanese in the early 1900s that would make modern art renovators shudder.  Apparently using steam to clean statues and encasing them in concrete are both poor ideas, but live and learn, right?

Anyway, Buddha aside, this place is popular for viewing sunrises over the ocean.  I didn't make it there quite that early.

Yes, that's the ocean way back there.  I promise.

There was also a very large old bell, which you were allow to bang if you donated 1000₩ (about $1) to a charity.  It's for charity, and I'm a good person and all, so of course I did it.  The bangy-bit (the banger?) was very heavy so I enlisted some help.

So heavy!

Me and my new Korean friend Jiha!

And that's all I've got for Saturday and Sunday.  Monday was by far the best day, so look forward to that in the next few days!

Cheers,
애쉬톤/Ashton