Lewisham, United KingdomDeparture from the UKBremen, GermanySchuelpBack to BremenChristmas in the HarzDriving in the HarzAround Bad Harzburg and Christmas Market in GoslarWinter Tourism im HarzAnd home againViennaNew Year'sSightseeing in Vienna Day 2More sightseeing in Vienna and some plansArrival in BudapestTickets Booked!Bath HouseTrain to LvivWe made it to Ukraine!Leaving LvivOdessa, UkraineEventful arrival in KievMorning in KievOn the train to MoscowBrief stop in MoscowOur first trip east of the KnownOn the train to Kazan - a lot to catch up onkazan - at an ungodly hour of the morningOn the train to YekaterinburgOne night until SiberiaSiberia!!!!! Tobolsk - it's not on Google Maps! It's 4 hours north of TyumenDay trains5 Hours from IrkutskSafe arrival in IrkutskLake BaikalBack to IrkutskGoodbye to BaikalAn Experience in Ulan-UdeCrossing the Border - Happy New Year and Australia DayPlans changing in HarbinEnchanted with BeijingBeijing WanderingsCrashingMore CrashingSam's almost better againSecond last day in BeijingLast day in BeijingTianjin, ChinaIncheon ArrivalSeoul!!!Exhausting full day of enjoying SeoulI still love SeoulRainy and grey in BusanUnvalentine's DayInfinite turtlesDry land againA Perfect EndCoolangatta International Airport, or lack thereofBrisbane, AustraliaMum and Dad's
 | samandleonie |  | Heading East |  | Infinite turtles |
Not enough votes to display rating.
Feb 16 2009, 04:36 PM
6 photos
Embed trip
View in Google Earth
Rss news about this trip
GPX Track
Journal
Location
Busan, South Korea
I'm very glad we made it to Kyungju yesterday. It's the old capital of the Shilla dynasty in Korea, the first one to unite the peninsula. There are sites from 650AD. I didn't come down here when I lived up north, even though it's the premier tourist attraction in the country, so I'm glad we made it. We did have to take five buses, though, which wasn't great fun. I've rediscovered carsickness, unfortunately. It probably has something to do with how few times I've been in a car since we left Australia in 2006. I got a bit carsick back near Lake Baikal and it wasn't fun yesterday, because Korean bus drivers have no consideration for the comfort of their passengers. You just get thrown around. Sam commented that we got air once going over a bump.
But we made it, anyway. The city of Kyungju is just under an hour away from Busan by bus, but the historical sites are spread out over the surrounding countryside and mountain slopes. The primary site is Bulgugsa, the centre of Buddhism from the Shilla period. There are two pagodas that are over one thousand years old. Of course anything wooden was burned down by the Japanese in the sixteenth century and some of it wasn't rebuilt until the seventies, but luckily the Shilla people were well known for their masonry, so quite a bit of stonework survived. The larger pagoda, the feminine one, was under construction and surrounded by scaffolding, which was a shame, but luckily it had a set of steel steps and a glass panel so you could see some of it. The stonework was amazing. Because it represented the feminine, the lines were curving and there were lotus leaves and complex series of tiers and pillars. The other pagoda was free from scaffolding, but it was the masculine one, so it was all straight lines and squares.
There were a couple of Buddha statues that are national treasures. It was hard to believe they were really that old, though, because we saw a five hundred-year-old Buddha in China and it was a little tarnished and really looked old. These ones looked like they'd just come off a factory production line. Supposedly two of the statues are from the Shilla period, though.
The coolest bit was the grotto on the mountain. There was a shuttle bus taking people up, but we decided to walk the 2.5km track up to the ridge. Of course when we decided to walk, we hadn't quite realised how steep it would be. Needless to say, there weren't many people walking up. We took the bus back down and it occurred to us halfway up that it might have been simpler to take the bus up and walk back down, but it felt good to walk up to the grotto, rather than back from it.
The grotto itself is a man-made granite cave with a grass mound on top. It was build in the 700's AD. Inside the grotto is a granite Buddha, also from that time. It was really hard to believe the statue was that old. It looked in very good condition. We can only conclude form what we saw that the Shilla people were very skilled in stonework, because the lines were still smooth and defined. Around the Buddha were numerous reliefs of Boddhisattvas and things that we couldn't identify very well. The interior of the grotto is closed off with a glass pane, so you can't walk around the statue, you can only look at it. It was very impressive, though, and popular with domestic tourists. There were lots of families at both Bulguksa and Seokguram, the grotto. I enjoyed hearing one girl ask her father why one particular Buddha had so many hands. The father didn't answer her. I almost wish he had, because I would like to have heard the answer. There is still so much about Buddhist iconography that I don't have a clue about.
We did see a few more things placed on the backs of turtles, which we remembered well from Vietnam. How is the world held in place? It sits on the back of a turtle. And what does the turtle sit on? Another turtle of course. It's not so different from our current ideas about infinity.
After Bulguksa and Seokguram, we walked across town in amazement at the astronomical observatory and the ubiquitous tumuli. The observatory was a large stove-looking piece of stonework, in excellent condition but unspeakably old, as we'd become accustomed to. It was made from 365 stones and somehow helped to predict eclipses. The tumuli were dotted all over the city. They're burial mounds of kings and queens, generals and aristocrats. Some are up to 40m high. There's one park with the most important mounds, but they appear unexpectedly in all directions as you look down a street or across a construction site. They were excellent stimulus for thinking about a realm that is so old we don't have much of a concept of it. It's been centuries since people were interred in burial mounds with all their armour and preparations for the afterlife.
The weather turned a little cold again yesterday and we'd been caught a little by surprise. Unfortunately, all of these sites are outdoors, so we spent a long time outdoors and it wasn't warm. We were happy to get back on the bus to Busan and the warmth of our hostel. When we came back after a fairly early dinner, we didn't leave the hostel again, we just watched a movie. Our fellow inmate wanted to watch a Korean classic called “My Sassy Girl”, which I had heard a lot about but had never managed to see, so we watched that. It's a lovely movie, because it was funny enough that Sam was rolling in his seat at times, but they also get together in the end, which is nice for me. When the movie finished, we sat in front of the TV for a bit longer, flicking through channels. This TV in the hostel receives a channel called the “Australia Network”, which is amusing. It plays lots of AFL. Last night it was broadcasting “Looking for Alibrandi”, which I sat and watched because it was quite a novel experience. The film is probably almost ten years old, now, so it's odd that I can watch it and identify individual songs and what album they're from. It was a fairly annoying movie at the time, and it still is, but I enjoyed the nostalgia. I think nostalgia has me by the throat at the moment, what with our impending arrival back in Aus and my digging up in Korea.
Today we're being very lazy. We went out for ddeokbokki for lunch, because it's our last ddeokkbokki opportunity. It's a shame to think that we got two big plates of it for £2.50, but one small plate at our favourite restaurant costs £4.50 in London. Other than that, Sam's been job searching and we'll just go out to find a post office and a grocery shop soon. Our boat leaves at 3pm tomorrow afternoon. It's really countdown time. I'm only going to wash my hair twice more on the road. We'll only have one more international withdrawal (thank goodness). We only have two more border crossings including Australia, which doesn't really count, so one. And five sleeps!
Comments |
Log in to add comment |
No comments