Kyeongju Vacation

After only being here a month our largest Summer break was already ahead of us. We were about to have a six day vacation, which was actually just 4 days plus the weekend, but whatever.

Alex our boss was concerned that we didn't have plans and gave us information about the great city of Kyeongju (I believe spelling it with the G is more proper, however the K is how you pronounce it...or KGy.) So Kyeongju just happens to an ancient capital of Korea when some dynasty ruled for like 100s of years, I want to say 500, but I am probably wrong. The city is rather small now, but it is a tourist site with tons of history. You can just walk around and see amazing historical sites like 500+ years old. It is quite awe inspiring realizing that there is so much preserved history in the country. The United States just isn't old enough to have anything like this.

The first day we arrived at around 2:00pm, and right when we got off the bus we ran into another traveler named Sharron who was on vacation by herself. We found the hostel together, which had individual rooms ( I don't know if that is normal for a hostel) and was overall a pretty nice place to crash. Then we left for the Gyeongju National Museum. This place was huge and quite nice for seeing all sorts of pottery, old swords, armor, and just all sorts of random things to get a glimpse of how people lived thousands of years ago. I went camera crazy in that place, but decided to delete many of the photos because it was just too much.

Next we walked around this flower garden called The Rape Flowers. I am not making that up, but I do feel perhaps something was lost in the translation perhaps. But on everything we saw it was labeled Rape Flowers in English, so whatever. The gardens had beautiful yellow flowers and we walked throughout them taking pictures of them and the nice burial mounds. As I said everywhere you looked just seemed to be steeped in history. Eventually we made our way to the Cheomseongdae Observatory one of the oldest builds built in Korea for observing the stars. It was dark and it just seemed appropriate but you couldn't see any stars because of the cloudy sky and lights all around. Besides, they didn't like you into the structure.

The next day, Sharron went her own way on a bus tour and we decided to see the temples in the mountains which meant much hiking. We stopped at the first temple which was overly crowded, but nice to go through. The architecture and art is still so new to me I find each temple beautiful even when overcrowded by tourists. The pictures can tell much of the story at the temples. But, we decided to take a hike up the mountain to the second temple. It was a well constructed path of stone steps and well packed dirt trail but going up those stairs was exhausting. It was probably about 1.2 mile hike up to the next temple. This temple was much smaller but it housed a giant Buddha statue that was built in a cave. It was quite amazing. Unfortunately you are not allowed to take pictures of the Buddhas at the temples (at least the main Buddhas) so we didn't get any pictures. But, as an art form they were quite amazing.

After the second temple Miranda and I were exhausted. But, we drank some spring water from the temple and refreshed ourselves for the final hike up the mountain. It was about another 1 mile hike up the mountain. The information guide warned us about the foggies up in the mountain, but we wanted to try to get to the peak anyway. The foggies were actually quite thick...in that foggies is actually just fog. As we hiked we noticed the air felt lighter and it was noticeably cooler up in the mountains. As we hiked up we saw fewer people, apparently it wasn't the touristy thing to do. We finally made it to the peak and it was breathtaking. Dragonflies by the dozens were flying all around us. We saw the tips of the trees as we were standing higher than all the trees on the mountain. We looked out and saw the other mountains, and the city below it was awe inspiring. The most amazing thing was seeing clouds pass by you at eye level. This was one of the most visually stimulating experiences of my life and I didn't want to leave. However, we needed to finish the hike down.

Going down was easy and what took so long to hike up took less than half the time to hike down. On the bus trip back to our hostel for a break, we noticed so much more to do. A lake with an amusement park and water park was available, and hot air balloon rides, and much, much more. This was the high end tourist trap locations of the city, but there was less culture and history in these traps.

The next day (Friday) was our last day and we only had til 4:00pm to really see the sights. We first went to a nice Folk Art Village where the artisans created crafts in the same methods they used years ago. Many of the crafts were quite beautiful and it was amazing to see such craftsmanship being practiced in the same traditional methods. Then we went to a small pond and just sat for awhile. I think at this point we realized just how exhausted our bodies had been from the previous days hiking and exploring for 7+ hours. We just sat and enjoyed the scenery and peacefulness of the pond and tried to ignore all the other visitors in the area.

On the bus trip back we crashed and slept for awhile, and watched a Korean concert on the bus television. We already recognize the popular Korean Pop songs. Then finally we were home again.

The vacation was nice, and it really helped my confidence about living in the country and visiting other cities easily. Gwangju still doesn't "feel" like home yet. But we still get lost in downtown and can easily become overwhelmed by the amounts of people all around. Though, coming back to something familiar was definitely a relief.