Gyeongju

This is a long one, go get yourself a cup of tea before you sit down to read.

As much as I have been complaining about Korea lately (and trust me, I have been), there are some really nice 3-day weekends here. Coupled with the ease of transportation (hop on a bus for $20 and cross the entire country in 5 hours or so), it's nice to be able to wander about the country and always find new things.

This past weekend, Ty and I went to Gyeongju, the ancient capital of the Shilla Dynasty in Korea - this would have been back in the day when Korea was made up of 3 different regions, and I think the Shilla one kind of conquered everyone else... hmmm, not sure - going back something like 1200 years. In some cases, we were looking at things that pre-dated a lot of buildings that can be found in Europe, and even older than Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Gyeongju has been a popular tourist destination for Koreans for decades. It's also a pretty popular place to visit for Chinese, Japanese and other foreign tourists. This means that, for example, you can go to the tourist information booth and ask for information, and actually get information, and it's all correct and everything. If you think that isn't a big deal, you haven't tried to find your way around Gwangju or something... but I digress.

The Lonely Planet calls Gyeongju an "open-air museum", and it is. Walking down the street, you may end up strolling past an ancient tomb, or maybe even an 8th century structure.... quite incredible.

We started off on Friday afternoon, found a hotel (this one had a glass wall between the sleeping area and the bathroom... apparently so you can watch your love do their business or something... we kept the blinds on that window closed the whole time) and headed to the main tomb park of Daereungwon.

Daereungwon

There were hundreds of people wandering about, and a very long line-up for the one tomb (Cheonmachong) that you can actually walk through to see a cross-section of the burial mound. We decided to simply walk along the path between the enormous mounds of grass, constructed in a way that made it nearly impossible for them to be looted or excavated without caving in around the would-be graverobber. Pretty cool.

Just past Daereungwon (after a detour through a pretty garden with horse statues), we found ourselves in a field of kite fliers.

Our personalized kite

Flying kites, with tombs in the background

For about $4, we were able to buy a paper kite, that was personalized with Chinese characters and our names in Korean and a roll of kite string AND a guy even got it off the ground for us. Really neat and lots of fun to be flying a kite next to a collection of tombs.

A collection of tomb mounds.
The round stones in the foreground mark where pillars for temples would have been.

Anapji Pond

We continued on, looking for the Anapji pond, which was the King's entertainment place back in the day. Along the way, we passed a field with (I counted them) 57 old ladies (ajummas) crouched down scratching at the soil with short-handled hoes. We took the opportunity to have a bit of fun:

Our plans to continue on to an atypically designed 7th century temple were thwarted by fatigue and hunger (and a damn long walk), so we grabbed some supper and backtracked our way through to Daereungwon again. This time, it was nighttime, with few lights and even fewer people. Kind of eerie. We found the Cheonma tomb again and, this time, with no line up, were able to go in and check out the ancient royal burial methods with the whole place to ourselves. Very nice.

On Saturday, we ended up at Bomun Lake (#10 bus, across from the Express Bus Terminal, W1,500. Return to Gyeongju on the #11 bus), which is a grand sort of tourist resort dominated by luxury hotels. It's quite family oriented, and the thing to do seemed to be renting bikes and following the paths around the (artificial) lake.

Our bikes at Bomun Lake

It was a great way to see the area and, ahem, get lost and end up breaking into the World Expo Centre (the security guards were very nice to us, however). Plans to do some of the fun things like Millenium Land or Gyeongju World (both amusement park type things, the first one is more about Korean history, the 2nd about roller coasters) were thwarted by sky-high prices.

Our cheesy swan paddleboat

Instead, we wandered around a small garden, then went all cheesy and rented a swan-shaped paddle boat. Finally, we found ourselves at the Contemporary Art Museum, where we spent a full half hour enjoying an abstract art installation.

We returned to Gyeongju, slightly exhausted from all the exercise, but headed out again. We wanted to have a quiet moonlit picnic by Anapji pond...

A rock concert??? Wow.

but were pleasantly surprised to find that Anapji was the site of a rock concert and a fireworks show. Once the music ended and everyone got up and left, we walked around and tried to get a few night shots of the lit-up pagodas reflected in the still water of the pond.

Pagodas and trees at Anapji Pond

Our weekend wasn't over yet... and I'm even leaving out things like what we ate (always quite good), randoms, a million lotus ponds, antique stores, and getting lost repeatedly (in lotus ponds).

Really wanting to see the east coast, on Sunday morning we grabbed a bus (#150, from across from the Express Bus Terminal, W1,500) to King Munmu's Underwater Tomb.

King Munmu's Underwater Tomb

Legend has it that this King Munmu was buried under a rock formation in the ocean so that he could come back as a dragon. Apparently it worked, and he managed to destroy a Japanese ship that was trying to steal a giant bronze bell from Gyeongju.

Tyrone "I can skip bricks" Fowler in action on the pebble beach

Sitting on rocks.
(just pretend my eyes are fully open in that one picture, okay?)

At any rate, this beach is filthy and sacred. There is litter everywhere, and groups of people either fishing, running around (like normal kids on a beach), or performing Shamanistic/Buddhist ceremonies.

These ladies are beating drums and chanting, then throwing coins into the ocean...

There were groups of women everywhere, drumming and chanting and, as we sat on some rocks and gazed at the water, several came to the water's edge to bow and throw coins or rice cake into the sea (the bottom of the sea is a great place for rice cake, methinks....).

Where to throw your "delicious" rice cakes
(instead of smacking your lips together as you chew with your mouth open in the staff room)

As we were leaving, we watched a monk lead a group of a dozen people along for some kind of... baptism? Who knows....

Not sure what is happening, but they are all facing King Munmu's grave

This whole trip, besides being a long-weekend of exploration (even though we only saw a sliver of what Gyeongju has to offer) was also a celebration of 10 months together. It doesn't seem like that long, and yet we have done so much since we first met last August.

Woooo... 10 months!

I suppose I should thank you for reading this far, dear Reader, and I hope that your tea hasn't gone cold.