Our Final Time in Korea

---

Leaving Korea Part 2
Jeremy: Immediately after we put in our 30 days notice, we headed for the old Silla capital of Gyeongju. (Jen: Getting there was in itself quite an adventure. We had called the English tourist line to find out the best way to get there. We were told we could take the express bus to Nopo-dong where we would catch the next bus to the capital. This would save us about 40 minutes time and we were in need of all the extra time we could get. We stood waiting in front of the line for the 2002 bus. Everyone around us was hopping on buses, but the one we needed didn’t seem to come. We spent over an hour waiting for it and it was supposed to run every 20 minutes. Finally we gave up all hope on the “mystery bus” and caught another that would get us most of the way there. When we got to the last stop, we hopped onto the subway and took it to where we could catch the next bus. The city is an hour or so north of Busan, but we got there much later than planned because of the whole thirty days notice episode. We immediately went into the tourist information center to find out how to get to the temple itself. She hesitantly told us and then warned us that it closed at 5:30. We looked down at our watches to discover that it was 4pm. We figured it would be no problem, but then she told us the next bus to the temple was about 40 minutes. This was definitely a hit to our plan, but we’d already gone through a lot to get there and were determined to see it. There was no turning back. As soon as we got there we made a mad dash up the hill to the temple. )

Jeremy: We had a nice bus ride through the city and saw all the traditional houses and burial mounds of old Korean royalty. I was a bit taken aback by the temple. I wasn’t expecting much at all but to me it was the nicest we had yet seen. It was serene, spacious, well-landscaped; its peacefulness stood in marked contrast to our harried selves, as after only 15 minutes there our watches read 5:00. The grotto, which housed an old and famous sculpture of Buddha, was 3 kilometers away. As we knew we were leaving Korea in a few weeks, we decided to try and hurry to see it. Did I mention it was 3 kilometers up a mountain? 3.2 actually. We started up at 5:05, pushing ourselves hard and confident we had a chance at least to see it after our legs had been girded by months of subway stair climbing. We sweated and wheezed and ignored the beautiful forest all around us and made it to the top at 5:25 to find it closed. We were crushed and literally begged the maintenance men to let us in to take a quick picture. We could not even see the Buddha from where we were. We even offered to bribe the workers but all to no avail. A passel of monks walked by and we tried to stroll in incognito with them but we were stopped. We thought about rushing the gate but that seemed to go against the spirit of the place (not that bribery was in the spirit, but…). We were angry by this point and even angrier when we saw we could have taken a taxi to the top. As the sun dipped below the mountain the maintenance workers closed the iron gate with a clank and the last taxi sped off into the distance. Now we were stranded. We had two choices: walk back down the perilous trail we had just ascended or walk down the road. The darkness left us no choice at all. We began to walk.

The road was steep and curvy and we saw a sign that simply read “8.” I remarked that I hoped that did not mean 8 kilometers to the bottom. It was a cloudy night and completely dark. Invariably, as soon as our eyes became adjusted to the darkness a car would come peeling around the corner with its lights on bright and ruin our night vision. It was kind of an eerie walk down the wooded pitch blackness, and as minutes turned into more than an hour, it became apparent we were indeed on an 8 kilometer walk. The road seemed to stretch to forever and we began to wonder if it would ever end. (Jen: During our entire walk we could see in the very far off distance the glimmering of city lights. They looked extremely far away and we worried we may not make it there before dawn) Jeremy: The road finally came to an end and after all the hiking up and down our sense of humor was still intact as we wryly wondered if the accursed maintenance workers had sped past us as we trudged on, laughing at our karmic misfortune, We virtually skipped to the bus stop, and even though we had a local bus ride, a city to city bus ride, and a long subway ride home, we finally made it home around 11 (after improbably running into a couple of valley girls on the subway that had been with us on our trip to Beijing). We had planned on going to a national park the next day, but our muscles cried out in protest, so on Sunday, we rested.

On our penultimate weekend in Korea, we went back to the spot of our first excursion: Beomeosa Temple. On that trip back in May, we had only made it to a plateau midway up the mountain. We had been stymied that day because Jen was wearing flip-flops, I was wearing poor hiking shoes. We also had no water and it was extremely hot, and finally we had a shoulder bag instead of a backpack. After all, we had expected a temple, not a temple and a mountain. Despite its obstacles, that day had been lovely and special and we vowed to come back another time and make it to the top. On our first trip we had huffed and puffed to the top, but now we were expert hikers and made it to the first clearing in no time. We found the rock where we had sat and ate ice cream and Jen had given me my ring. It was near invisible as the short grass had grown quite high in the intervening months. We pushed on up the final 800 meters. The final stretch was almost totally vertical and we had to use ropes to get to the top. Instead of solitude at the end of the climb, we found a few dozen Koreans on the relatively small peak. The view was striking and the clearing below seemed tiny and far away. We spent some time up there in the whipping wind and then descended, enjoying the fall colors all the way. We “adopted” a roof tile at the bottom-basically you paid a small fee to help with the temple upkeep and you got to put a message on a piece of roof tiling. We inscribed our names to commemorate beautiful Beomeosa-we had come full circle from May. (Jen: Koreans love their nature- without a doubt. Hiking in popular places is like Disney World to us. There are so many people on the trails with you the whole way up. Once you reach the peak everyone really comes together and marvels at the accomplishment. Everyone usually adopts Jeremy and me. We are always well fed and received on our adventures. Even walking up the trail random people will hand us an orange or a juice to drink. We joke about Koreans being the most aggressive and impatient bunch of people, but in all honesty they are also very hospitable and kind.)

Jeremy: The day after Beomeosa, getting up early for the assault on Mount Daedun was an arduous task, but we roused our weary bones. Since we had first set foot in Korea, we had been captivated by the idea of the iron bridge that spanned the top of this Korean mountain, and we had promised ourselves to see it in the fall. This would be our last opportunity to see it. We took a train two hours north to Daejon and alighted at the local bus station. A bus would take us the rest of the way to the mountain. We were greatly disappointed to find that the bus didn’t leave for another two hours. The sun sets here around 5:30 and it was already 11:40. So we hopped a taxi. The driver took a back road and we were making great time, but turning on the main road we were confronted with a line of cars as far as the eye could see. It took quite a long time to make it to the end of the mountain road, and our frustrated taxi driver took semi-insane chances in passing cars, but we finally arrived. (Jen: The entire time we were in the taxi, we couldn’t tell what the reason for all the traffic was. We postulated that it must be an accident. No, it must be construction. Over and over, but as we continued on the well worn track we were shocked to find that it was a solid line of cars coming to hike the very same trail we were planning to explore. The crowd of people there was insane! The wait to go up on the cable car was longer than for a ride at Universal Studios. It had the same feel as a snowboarding and ski town. Tons and tons of people are everywhere just waiting to get on the trail.)

Jeremy: We were stunned by the crowds. It was like Mount Disneyworld. We had planned on giving our muscles a break and taking a cable car to the top and then walking down, but the wait was almost two hours. We began trudging up the mountain. There were places on the trail where there were so many people we literally could not move-it looked like a Manhattan crosswalk had been transported to the middle of the mountainous woods. (Jen: Have we mentioned that Koreans can be aggressive? A prime example was on this trip. The mountain we were hiking was steep. I don’t mean a little steep, I mean very steep. Parts of it we couldn’t walk. We literally were rock climbing through part of it. -Especially me with my very short legs. It was very hard to keep your balance and everyone was pushing each other out of the way to get past. Very, very young children were making the trek with their parents and even they were getting pushed to the side. Those that weren’t pushing were grabbing- for balance. It was very uneven terrain and people kept grabbing onto us to help balance themselves, not that we were stable in any way.)

Jeremy: But Mount Daedun and the iron bridge had long been important in our minds so on we went past the wall of Korean flesh. We made it to the iron bridge and there was a line to cross it, but when we finally made it on the bridge it was worth it. It stretched from one stone peak to another right below the highest peak. The bridge swayed a bit as we walked across and the drop down was sheer and looked bottomless. Across the bridge, there was a staircase that led to the highest peak. The line for that was even worse. There was a sign that asked everyone not to push old people, pregnant people, or drunk people. Good advice. Climbing this mountain is a rite of passage for Koreans, and many do it under the influence. (For many it is considered the accomplishment of a lifetime) We touched the top then hiked down among the teeming masses. The line for the bus back to Daejon was almost as long as the line for the iron bridge. We were worried we wouldn’t make the first bus and we settled in for a long wait. But when it came the old Korean women started pushing, and when an old Korean woman starts pushing, Hercules himself could not resist. The bus driver was aghast as person after person crammed into the bus. He begged us in charades not to get on and we relented but were immediately shoved on by a madwoman. This regular sized bus wound up with 98 people on it. 98! I was sitting on the stairs where you would come into the bus; Jen was in my lap. It was the most miserable hour and change. When we finally arrived, people filed out of the bus in a daze, as if they had just been through a traumatic event. Doubtless many in the back had. We caught a nice noncrowded train back home and collapsed into a deep sleep plagued by dreams of giant Korean women steam-rolling us for the last piece of bread at market.

---