Gyeongju, Bulguksa, Seokguram
koneecheewa,
Howdy, y’all. We just got back from the coolest Korean holiday we’ve been on, and guess what?! My camera is fixed, and is taking beautiful photographs again! So fortunately, we’ve uploaded some pictures for your viewing pleasure. Instead of boring you with my words, I’ll just let you look at the pictures (with a little commentary to go along, of course). There are quite a few pictures, so go pour yourself a nice glass of red wine like I just did. Just for background, the place we went to was perhaps Korea’s most important cultural heritage site. Gyeongju, with a population of 280,000, was the capital of Korea for over 1,000 years, and some of the sites we visited are on UNESCO’s important cultural relics list. It was an awesome trip. I’ll let the pictures tell most of the story now…
The following two pics were snapped at Gyeongju Train Station. The first was taken by Nicole at our arrival. The second features Nic, the following morning.
A baby Buddha lantern enroute to Bulguksa Temple. The lanterns were everywhere to commemorate Buddha’s alleged birthday. Funny. It was my birthday, too. Me and the Buddha, we got some stuff in common.
This stairway (that has an archway underneath where the nobility used to apparently float through on boats while having sex… according to my Korean source, at least) was built something like 1400 years ago, and is a cultural treasure.
It was funny, because here we were at Korea’s most celebrated Buddhist site, and we arrived to hear a bunch of drummers rocking out on a stage, the amps cranked to reach Japan. Here a choir assembles.
The above pagodas are both cultural treasures. I particularly like the second of the two.
The kindy cop, aspiring jet-setter, seldomly photographed and offically older: Su tee bun.
This one is probably my favorite of the bunch. Here, Nicole stands in the main temple overlooking the birthday celebration below. This event was anything but tranquil. It was a photo-snapping, cotton-candy-eating, high-heel and suit jacket affair. The Buddha was shaking his bald head the whole time, methinks.
Wanna jam?
Here were my travel companions for this particular adventure: Nicole in the forefront, as sinister as ever, Tabitha from New Zealand, and her native boyfriend, Seongyeong (I think that’s how you’d spell it).
Oh, and they had corn-dogs, too. Pretty untraditional. Nic likes ‘em.
I took this photograph on the way up to Seokguram Grotto, which I’ll talk about later… and it ROCKS. We walked up a congested road for about an hour before coming across an old couple selling vegetables in the middle of nowhere. They informed us that we were nowhere close to our destination. We aborted, and planned on riding a bus up the next day.
A couple of the season’s last remaining cherry blossoms. After the temple experience, we had a jet-bath in our pimped out hotel room, had a great dinner, hit a singing room for an hour, and went to sleep to the sounds of frogs.
Kay… these next few pics were taken the following day. Despite a little humidity, we elected to go all the way up the mountain to view one of the most treasured statues in the Buddhist world, a gigantic stone Buddha in its own stone grotto, perched on the top of a mountain overlooking the East Sea (or Sea of Japan, for some). It pissed the whole time, the rain increasing progressively through the morning.
Huddled in rain ponchos beneath umbrellas, hundreds of pilgrims waited in line to see the Seokguram Buddha. We were a few of them. Despite the mist and rain, or perhaps in part because of it, it was so nice to be on the top of a mountain in what felt like a tropical jungle, surrounded by lanterns and giant bells, and temples and other stuff.
The line-up was HUGE. We spent what felt like a good hour and a half waiting to see this bloody statue. We finally got in. I held my breath for the entire 5 seconds I was in the grotto, and then I was pretty much bulldozed out the opposite door. That was it! Here is the procession coming down from Seokguram Grotto. It was incredible. It was enormous, and there were all kinds of stone relief carvings in the dome-like grotto. It was behind glass, to protect it. But the whole thing was a little anti-climatic. And then after spending an additional hour shivering in the driving rain on the top of a mountain waiting for a bus down, I would have said the whole thing was a waste of my time! Of course now, a day later, in the comfort of my apartment with a warming glass of red wine in my belly, it was well worth it. Wish I could have photographed the big bugger, but I don’t have a lot of good karma to spare as it is.
The countryside along the way exceeded our expectations.
All the better to smell you with, my dear!
At the Bulguksa train stop, awaiting our bus home. Four thumbs up for this trip. We’re both really loving Korea these days, especially when we’re not teaching.
Peace,
Su tee bun
