I staggered down to the bus station and picked up Ruth. We dropped her bags at my apartment then went down to the Lotte Mall. A huge department store with lots of Western shops and a garden on the roof with a fantastic view of the city. We got there on the right day aswell, there as an acrobat show happening right in the middle of the mall, they looked Russian.
We then walked down to Jagalchi fish market. I mentioned the fish market in my last post so I won't talk about it much but one new thing I saw on this visit was shark meat. A HUGE piece of boneless meat was sat on a counter. At first we thought it was a very big piece of Salmon but the woman selling it told us other wise. The picture below isn't one I took, but this is what it looked like.
Later on we went back to the KongBul restaurant in Kyungsung. For anyone who hasn't been there I highly recommend it. If you don't know how to get there just send me a message. There's a gas hob in the middle of the table and they put a large tray on it filled with vegetables, some extremely spicy sauce and a big squid. Just make sure you ask for it to be not so spicy otherwise it will blow your socks off.
The next day we got the bus to Gyeongju, the old capital of the Silla kingdom, which ruled the Korean peninsula a long time ago. As such it is one big museum. Lots of tombs and old stone buildings which were something important in their day. The tombs all looked like teletubby hills.
We took a bus out of this city the first day to go visit Bulguksa temple and Seokguram Grotto. Bulguksa is an old Buddhist temple outside the city, about 40 minutes bus ride away, well worth going to see.
From Bulguksa, you can walk 4km to the grotto or take a short bus ride. Being the lazy louts that we are we decided to take the bus. Seokguram is very disappointing! It's an old hermitage with a Buddha statue inside and is certainly not worth the trek unless you are on some sort of pilgrimage. I think the best thing at Seokguram Grotto was the stall were you can buy a slate and write a message on it. Outside this stall there are dozens of sample slates that people from all over the world have written their own messages on. There was even one from Uzbekistan (more on the Uzbekistanis later).
Just east of Gyeongju is Bomun lake. The surrounding area has been transformed into a resort with 5 star hotels (a Hilton being one of them), an Expo Center and an amusement park. In the summer they hold performances, such as traditional Korean dances, are held at a small Amphitheater around the lake. That night I missed the Liverpool-Man Utd game to go watch one such performance. After finding our way to the food village, which is situated around the lake, we then walked for what seemed to be miles, only for the performance to be cancelled due to the fact that the rain was coming down faster that Michael Jackson's nose.
On Monday we decided to go check out King Munmu's underwater tomb. I've heard about this before so I assumed it was one of Korea's "must see's". DO NOT GO!
King Munmu's underwater tomb is nothing more than a bunch of rocks, sticking out of the water, 100m of the coast. You can't take a boat out to the rocks. All that there is, is a sign saying "Underwater Tomb of King Munmu", and a short story of why he's buried there. The bus runs about once an hour. It takes an hour to get there. Then once you arrive, it takes you 10 minutes to realise there's bugger all there, then a 50 minute wait for the bus back! DO NOT GO!
By the time we finally got back to Gyeongju it was 2 o clock and it took us another half an hour to find somewhere to eat. By the time we finished our late lunch, the bike shop across the road said it was too late for us to rent a bike. So instead we walked down to the Tumuli Park, just a park filled with Telletubby hills (they're actually tombs). There is one tomb you can go in but there's nothing of interest in there.
A short walk from this park is Anapji Garden. This is beautiful and well worth seeing, especially at night when the "oriental gazebos" (for want of a better name) are lit up quite spectacularly.
The next day we went to Yandong Folk village. During Korea's immense industrialisation of the 70's and 80's, the government decided to set up some traditional folk villages, such as Yandong, to keep alive rural traditions. Yandong is a 40 minute bus ride and 15 minute walk from Gyeongju. It's simply a really big housing estate, only difference is the houses are very traditional with the curved roofs and all that. The beauty of the place is spoilt a bit by the cars sitting outside the houses. It must be very weird for the residents of the village. Imagine every day bus loads of people, many of them foreigners, walking around your estate or neighbourhood taking pictures of the houses.
When we got back to Gyeongju we went to see the museum. It's cool and interesting, and has a lot of Buddha statues. That night we bought some refreshing alcohol and sat on the roof of our hostel with a bunch of other foreigners who were passing through Gyeongju. A very random moment occurred when I saw 2 Scottish lads on the roof I'd met in Kine-Eye in Busan last Friday. I remembered them because they rocked up wearing kilts. But as Richard Elizabeth Richard once said "The Scottish are allowed to be transvestites."
I think that's more than enough for one blog. Hope I haven't bored you. I'll post again soon with the highlights of Daegu and Seoul.
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