Day 45

Still in Gyeongju!  Last day, I promise.

After the Teddy Bear Museum on Tuesday, we walked to Bunghwasa temple, one of the seven greatest buddhist temples of Silla.  It was built in 634CE.  It was a nice little temple, but I wouldn't venture to say it was a must-do in Gyeongju.

Pretty, especially in autumn.

Not unimpressive, but I get the feeling it used to be much bigger.  I'm surprised that it hasn't been rebuilt to its original size, but also glad.  The recreations get a little trite after a while.

Traditional Korean self-portrait.

Door guardians, with a creeper inside.

Liking this stone lion in the front.  I don't understand why lions are so popular here.  Tigers I'd understand, but lions?
How did they even know lions existed back then?

Dragon?  Fish?  Not sure.

Inside the reconstructed temple at Bunghwasa;

Nice Buddha!

Some old art on the side of the temple:

It's cool to see older art!

Love the snowy mountains!

Not sure what this stone structure was for, but it's supported by a turtle, so that's cool.

Kinda hard to see the turtle here.

After Bunghwasa we went back into town for dinner.  Juan has a real knack for picking excellent restaurants.

Traditional Korean art.

This is a seafood pancake, or haemul pajeon.  It's DELICIOUS.
Haemul ("hey-mool") means seafood, and pajeon ("pah-john") means pancake.

The milky white stuff in the little copper cup is rice water, it's gross.
The bigger cups are full of makkoli, Korean rice beer-type alcohol.

Bulgogi!  So good!

Wednesday was our last day!  We booked a train to Seoul that left at 1:30, so I got up early and went to General Yu Shin's tomb.  It was about an hour-long walk because no buses went there, which should have been my first tip-off that this place was definitely not worth going to.

A fairly standard tomb.

At least I saw a nice butterfly!

Juan had already left, so Eric and I had lunch at a Japanese ramen place next to the smaller tumuli park.  Shockingly, it was one of the best meals I've had in Korea.  The meat was heavenly, slow-cooked pork that fell apart in your mouth.  I highly recommend it to anyone going to Gyeongju.

One last tumulus.  This one was my favorite because of the cool trees.

We almost missed our train because it turned out that the train left from a different station, about 30 minutes away by bus.  We cut it close, but made it.  (Heads-up to anyone visiting Gyeongju, leave time for that bus!)

One last tumulus at the train station.  Not sure why it has the opening.  It's like a coffin with a doggy-door.

Cute kids!  The boys has a Bumblebee (Transformers) toy and the girl kept using random adorable English words.

This dude filmed the train coming in.

We didn't have seats on the train, so we joined this posse of floor-dwellers.

And that's it from Gyeongju!  It was an excellent trip and I highly recommend this city to anyone visiting Korea.  A lot of tourists come and only see Seoul, and while Seoul is cool and big, it's hardly representative of the whole of Korea.  Gyeongju is smaller, older, and slower-paced.

Upcoming posts: Itaewon (the foreign sector of Seoul), Costco, and Korean alcohols.  Look forward to it!  :)


Cheers,

-애쉬톤 / Ashton

Day 44

Tuesday and Wednesday were our last days in Gyeongju and I think we certainly made the most of it.  We tried to visit the museum on Tuesday, but it was a 'sandwich day' (the day between two holidays) and it was unfortunately closed.  With the taste of failure in our mouths, we decided to try Gyeongju's other major museum: the Teddy Bear Museum.

The Teddy Bear Museum is not simply a museum of teddy bears.  It's actually the history of the Silla (pronounced "She-lah") dynasty with the major events recreated with teddy bears.  And you know what?  It was totally awesome.

Already awesome.

So excited!

The museum follows the story of bear-scientist Robert Grant and his family.  The protagonists are on the left in this picture, and the villains--Fredrick and his hooligan crew--are on the right.  Dressed in black, obviously.

Gangster bears!

Dr. Grant is building a time machine in his lab!

Trust me, it starts getting weirder from here and it never stops.

He wants to go back in time to check out the Silla dynasty, but unfortunately, Fredrick & Co. try to steal the machine, and everyone ends up in the time of the dinosaurs!

Very noisy!  Lots of decent animatronic dinos!

Fredrick & Co. are pretty resourceful, and decide to make the best of the situation and capture dinosaurs, presumably to sell back in modern times.

Oh no!  Poor dinos!

Actually, you know what?  This looks great.  I'm on Fredrick's team.

Watch out, Eric-oppa!

Soon the Grant family gets their time machine working, and they're ready to go see the Silla dynasty!  But that meddling Fredrick tries to steal it again (perhaps to get home?  I feel like Fredrick is really being unfairly villainized here.) and they somehow end up underwater.  The time period is never specified.

Yep, alrighty.  That's the sea.

This segues into the Silla dynasty a little further ahead, with octopi and fish swimming around in temples.  Kinda weird, but I told you this was getting weirder.

Random photo interlude.  I finally found someone I'm taller than!

Finally, we've reached the Silla dynasty!  The first thing you see (other than a bear-mermaid, a merbear?) is a video explaining the beginnings of the Silla dynasty.  And this is where things get... trippy.

The founder of the dynasty, Park Hyeokgeose, was born in a rather unusual way.  Some dudes were hiding behind a bush one day around 57BC and happened to see a white horse giving birth.

Horse by a well, nothing to see here.

But this horse laid an egg!  Then it flew away!  Naturally, the dudes had to check out this horse egg.

Flying horse in the top left corner.

Lo and behold, a baby emerged from the egg!  The name 'Park' is the English way of writing 'pak,' the word for gourd, referring to the egg from which he came,

Remember, bears = people.

They named the baby Park Hyeokgeose, and he became the founder of one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea.  He is also the first person to have the family name Park, although this was never explained.

Anyway, that wasn't the end of the supernatural babies.  Next the bear-dudes saw a chicken-dragon giving birth!  For some reason the horse laid an egg and the chicken-dragon gave live birth, don't ask me how this works.

Typical Korean wildlife.

No, seriously, I see these all the time.  I've even eaten one, it tasted like chicken.

So the chicken-dragon flies away and the bear-dudes pick up the offspring, which looks like a baby with a beak.

Yep, this looks cute, let's keep it.

Beak?  No problem.  Breast-feeding might be kinda rough though.

The beak fell off and a beautiful baby girl was revealed!  They named her Aryeong.

Ah, much easier now.

They took the bird-baby and egg-baby home...

Two peas in a pod!

...and raised them together.

The kids don't look too happy, do they?

They of course fell deeply in love and were married.

King Hyeokgeose and Queen Aryeong, still looking exhilarating.

They eventually died and were buried in tumuli, like all other important people.

A lovely mound.

Now that you've heard this, all those weird 'facts' about North Korea's late Kim Jong-Il don't seem so weird, do they?  For those who aren't familiar with the former North Korean leader's birth, let me fill you in.  He was born on a secret military base on a sacred mountain, and his birth was heralded by a swallow and double rainbows, and upon his entrance to the world winter suddenly turned to spring.  Seems totally legit now, right?

A teddy-bear battle.

Here's the museum's recreation of Seokguram grotto, a place I went but was unable to photograph.  So here you go, the next best thing.  I would actually say that this is a better view, and a lot less work to get to.

The real one has extremely reflective glass in front of it, making it hard to see.

A temple?  Maybe part of Bulguksa?

This here is a recreation of Anapji pond, Cheomsongdae observatory, and a pagoda that is potentially Bunghwasa (which you'll see later).

Much more convenient than the real ones.

But this place doesn't just have history--it has art too!

Seriously, somebody got paid to do this.

Lots of famous sculptors are rolling in their graves right now.

Frightening.

Why?  Why does this exist?

At least this is kinda cool?

The museum also had a 3D theater!  We were worried that we wouldn't understand the 15-minute film because, you know, we don't speak Korean, but we worried for nothing.  The message transcended language.

The film was actually a depressing animated look at melting polar caps (homeless polar bear cubs having a near-death experience), the destruction of a reef community (thanks a lot, trawlers!) and the literally crushing death of playful orangutans in a rainforest.  It was surprisingly devastating for a kids' animated short.  The reef one really hit home for me.  Poor turtle, all his friends died.  :(

Looking fine, boys.

That's all for now!  I feel like you really need a pause after the Teddy Bear Museum, to take it all in.  You've learned some valuable history today.  And if you're curious, this is not the only Teddy Bear Museum in the world--there's a few more around Korea and one in Hawaii!  I promise it's 100% worth it.

Tomorrow: Bunghwasa temple, our last dinner in Gyeongju, a famous general's tomb, and the train ride home (with pictures of cute Korean kids).

Cheers,

-애쉬톤 / Ashton