Gyeongju via Busan

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One of the destinations on our "things to do before we finish our four years and split from this country" list was Gyeongju. In fact it's been on my list for probably three years but when we lived in Seoul it just seemed to far to go for a weekend trip and any extended weekend would most likely be spent on a beach or island hopping which always appealed to us more at the time. But now that we're neighbors with the tomb city we thought we'd check it out over Buddha's birthday.

Our original plan was to take off Friday night at 6:00. The only way to get to Gyeongju from Yeosu, as far as I know, is to go via Busan, or Seoul with a beach as it's known, South Korea's second biggest city. I've never had a problem with just showing up at the bus terminal and getting a ticket for the next bus, even if that bus is leaving in two minutes and we've got to run to make sure the driver doesn't try and skip out of town a minute early. This particular Friday though we wouldn't be so lucky. I arrived at the terminal around 5:20 with enough time to buy our tickets, hope across the street to the super market and hopefully pick up some sushi for the road trip. The station was busier than usual but I thought nothing of it and made my way to the ticket counter. The attendant proceeded to tell me that the 6:00 bus was sold out. I looked at the schedule and asked for the next bus, which was at 7:00 and she again said,

"sold out."

"When is the next bus?"

"10:30."

"Bummer, I'll take two."

So with 4 and a half hours to kill before out three hour bus ride I called our hotel in Gyeongju and told them that we'd be getting into Busan tonight but wouldn't be able to make it to Gyeongju, about an hour outside of Busan, until Saturday. She was nice about the late notice and assured me that canceling the Friday was no problem. I could keep our Saturday and Sunday reservation.

We went out to our new favorite restaurant/bar around the corner. If you look at it on it's own it looks like some sort of German or Spanish style restaurant but we go there just for the fact that it has a deck that looks over a park and some mountains. It's really not a bad place to spend a couple of hours sharing a few pitchers of beer on a cool summer night.



With the time finally coming we headed for the bus station and did our best to nap for the journey. We arrived into Busan around 1:30 in the morning and the first thing we did was buy our return tickets so that the bus wouldn't be sold out on Monday. We asked the lady in the ticket office where we could find a hotel and within half an hour we were tucked away for the night.



Gyeongju is what South Korea might have looked like if the Japanese armies hadn't of burnt and destroyed everything on one of their invasion's across the nation. What Gyeongju lacks in ultra bright flashing neon signs it makes up for it in peaceful, traditional looking hanoak style housing. It's home to ancient tombs of the Silla dynasty that are Korea's version of the pyramids. Everywhere you look you see these huge grassy hills that are just too perfect to be natural and that's because they are.

Our first morning in town we dropped our stuff of at the guesthouse we were staying in. They let us put our bags in a closet and help ourselves to breakfast even before we were officially checked in. We told them we were looking to go to Yangdong Folk Village and they told us exactly how to get there. Imagine what you will about Korea but even if you speak a word of the language or decipher the signs it'll always be easy to get from point A to point B.



We made it to Yangdong around late morning. The sun was starting to heat up and we spent a lot of time walking down the windy trails through the ancient neighborhood hoping from tree to tree to take advantage of the shade. Yangdong is an ancient village where the rich and important people used to live. People do still live here so you have to keep that in mind when traveling through. The whole town looks like some old rustic encampment so it's easy to forget that the houses you're looking at and snapping pictures of are the residents of actual people. It's probably like living in the Goonies house in Astoria. When you wake up in the morning there's a good chance that people will be outside of your kitchen window taking pictures so you better make sure you're wearing pants.



We spent a few hours walking around, vising with some of the locals. Eventually we wandered into a tea house and had some cool drinks before re-applying the sunscreen. Keeping a careful eye on the time we decided to head back on the next bus that had just pulled in because the one after that wouldn't be arriving for an hour and a half. We met a nice lady from Singapore on the bus ride and spent the trip talking about her vacation in Korea.

Later that night we went to Anapji Pond. I'd seen pictures of the place and wanted to try and take some night photo's with my tripod. The lady we'd met on the bus advised us to get there early as the photographers come out and stake their spots in the early evening. We made it there around 7:00 after a much longer walk than our map would lead us to believe. I managed to find a decent spot for a picture and set up my equipment. The lady wasn't wrong, the park was swarming with photographers, children, couples, just about everybody in town was showing up to see the lights turn on and the sky to go dark. We were lucky to find the spot that we did. At 7:30 they turn the lights on that shine at the ancient structures and then it was just a matter of time until the sun would go down far enough for us to see the benefit of the lights. After about 30 more minutes we got our wish and I got my shot. Off to dinner.



There's plenty to do in Gyeongju during the day but when the lights go out your limited to shopping, drinking more coffee than you'd ever want ( I have never, and I feel like this is accurate, seen so many coffee shops in such a small place. There were coffee shops across from each other, next to each other, sandwiched between two coffee shops or next to a bakery that was on the other side of a coffee shop.) or sitting near the tombs while eating bread. We managed to find a Japanese restaurant that was open and actually had room for us and had dinner there. The food was okay, the owner went out of his way to be incredibly rude so we finished up quick and went looking for somewhere else to spend our money. We found it in a quiet hof-korean sit down style bar-and spent the rest of the night there.



Our guesthouse was starting to get pretty crowded. There were some Korean travelers staying there, two French ladies, a group of British teachers, a French couple and a girl from Malaysia. Outside of Iteawon or Noksapyeong in Seoul it was probably the most diverse group of people we'd been around in awhile. After getting up early the next morning and heading for a temple, which isn't really a smart thing to do on Buddha's birthday because of the crowds we headed for another folk village. This time in a quest to find some wooden totem pole style figures that Jen had seen in a different place at a different time but wanted to search over the ends of Gyeongju for. The day was even hotter than the previous one and lugging my camera and tripod around started to exhaust me. We stuck it out until mid afternoon and headed back to our guesthouse to rest in the courtyard with the dogs and 6 or our favorite friends. Cold, refreshing friends.

Oh, by the way, Jen never did find her totem pole statues. And we looked everywhere.



We sat at the picnic table, sheilding the sun away with it's giant umbrella and chatted, through broken English, with a Korean lady that was here from Suwon for the weekend. We'd met her the night before when we came back to the guesthouse and found a group of Koreans have a fire and chatting away.

We spent the afternoon with her chatting away and swapping life stories. Where we were from. What we were doing here. What we thought about Korea. To our surprise she told us that she didn't like Korea, which isn't a common thing to hear. She said there was too much stress on everyday people, kids especially. I was starting to understand why so many people come to Gyeongju to get away from the stress and enjoy the mountains and clear blue skies.



Our last night in town we made the decision to find dinner earlier than the previous night. We happend to come across a Korean BBQ place down an unmarked alley, really that's were all the best stuff is, down unmarked alleys, and ordered the Duegi Galbi (Korean style pork rib meat). After dinner we settled into one of Gyeongju's night activities, shopping, again we didn't find any magic totem men but jen found a dress and several pairs of shoes that she liked. Me, I complained that I wanted to sit down to which Jen responded that I too should buy some Birkenstocks so my feet wouldn't hurt.

We ended the night at the same hof we had beers the night before. The friendly owner met us again, set us in a table upstairs and brought a fan to keep us cool. We shared a couple of pitchers before giving up and crawling back to the guesthouse to sleep one final night in peace and quiet before getting the bus back to Yeosu and picking up the cat from the vet.

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Photos

hill people
hanging out with dead kings

the room
living korean style, with a mattress

Anapji Pond
Waited and fought off other photographers to get the shot

tired and sweaty
The search for totem's continues.

Dressed up at the Guesthouse
Jen wanted to try on the hanbok. Unfortunately there weren't any men's ones so I'm wearing the traditional American outfit of shorts and a t-shirt.