Gyeongju: temples and tourism

I awoke on the morning of the second day (the first full day) in Gyeongju, the "museum without walls"...or perhaps it is more appropriate to say that I came to myself. Sleep is a liberal word for what I did in that room. It was so hot and stuffy in there that I hardly got any rest at all. I had to kick the covers off and just sleep on the bare mattress. I did snatch a little rest, however. I got up, re-dressed (I'd slept in the previous day's clothes), arrayed myself with water and camera once again, and advanced boldly to the nearest bus station.

It was my plan to see Bulguksa, the famous Buddhist temple some 16 kilometers east of Gyeongju, and Seokguram Grotto, an even more well-known monument, an enormous Buddha presiding over the eastern face of the mountains behind the aforementioned temple. I expected it to take all day. If I had any time left over, however, I figured I'd just go the rest of the way to the East Sea (the Sea of Japan) and view the sea-tomb of King Munmu, said to be the only underwater tomb in the world.

It was at the bus stop where one of those fateful international travel meetings occurred. I bumped into a fellow foreigner. Actually, he struck up a conversation with me...not in my usual mold at all. I'm usually the more amiable one who starts talking first, but he just sauntered up and said hello. His name was Jerry. He was taller than I was, fair-skinned, with curly, almost frizzy brown hair and a few freckles. His accent was difficult to place. It definitely sounded as though it originated in the U.K. somewhere, but there was something off-kilter about it. It was the same sort of confusion I'd experienced in trying to place Adam and Elaine's accents upon first meeting them. But Jerry wasn't a Geordie. He revealed himself to be German-Irish (born in Germany, raised in Ireland, bilingual...no wonder I'd been having trouble). He was a friendly fellow. He was on vacation from a teaching job in Japan, and had picked Korea as the cheapest destination. We were both headed to Bulguksa and Seokguram Grotto, so naturally we decided to stick together and go venturing as a duo. That was a happy decision; the day was made so much more fun and memorable for it.

After a twenty-minute bus ride we were in the main parking lot before the temple, in the foothills of the mountains. The day, partly cloudy in Gyeongju proper, had degenerated into a sort of sullen overcast. The ground was soggy and muddy, but at least the sun wasn't beating down as we climbed the wide causeway up the hill to the entrance of the temple. There were some beautiful ponds, ringed with pines and weeping willows, into which quiet waterfalls were trickling with a cheery sound. We passed the gate, and the four imposing temple guardians which guarded it with massive weapons and snarling visages, and entered the temple proper.
Inside the temple it was a zoo. It seemed the traffic I had endured on the bus ride to Gyeongju hadn't passed this place up. It was, as I mentioned before, a double-holiday weekend. Indeed, the monks had strung the entire temple complex up with multicolored paper lanterns in recognition of Buddha's Birthday, an amazing feat, as the temple was of no small size. And so Jerry and I began to wander; up this hill, down that staircase, across the other courtyard.
It was an impressive place, and bigger than Bongeunsa in Seoul, if I was any judge of size. I peeked inside the temple buildings (I didn't take any photos out of deference to the monks' wishes), and though the architecture was not as grand nor complex as Bongeunsa's had been, it still invoked awe and reverence. In the central courtyard were the two pagodas whose replicas I had seen at the National Museum the previous day: Dabotap and Seokgatap. Dabotap was swathed in a scaffolding, wreathed with opaque sheets of burlap; there was some kind of renovation or restoration going on, I guessed. But Seokgatap, the plainer of the two obelisks but nonetheless impressive, was revealed in all its glory.

We wandered on, out of the crowd, and passed through the remainder of the temple. There was something odd I hadn't been able to put my finger on at first, but it was just about then, as we were exiting the central courtyard, that I realized it. I hadn't seen a single monk. They were nowhere in sight. Only the uniformed exhibit guards, clothed like the priests but not shaved bald and obviously not part of the doctrine, were present in the temple that day, it seemed. Jerry and I tossed around various explanations for this, the most convincing and least insulting of which held that the monks went under hatches on big tour days like this and came out again to clean up the mess afterwards and get on with the monking business.

We passed some intriguing and, I'm ashamed to admit, inexplicable sights. I always have wondered how journalists and writers manage to divine the purpose for or origin of the strange customs and phenomena they witness during their peregrinations. I suppose the obvious answer is that they ask. I am neither sufficiently fluent in Korean nor resilient enough against the half-imagined potential for ridicule to ask that kind of question aloud, so I either resort to inane guesswork or merely present facts as I see them for the reader to interpret. I'll do better next time, I promise. One of the inexplicable sights Jerry and I witnessed was this:
People had collected bunches of loose, oblong, amorphous rocks in this one place and had stacked them up into intricate little piles. I've seen these tiny, precarious cairns in several other places around Korea since then (all of them outdoors) and can only assume they have something to do with good luck or good health. And then we were on our way out.
I couldn't just leave one of the most famous Buddhist temples in Korea without some kind of proof, and if that proof could also serve as a good-luck charm for whatever harrowing circumstances or imbroglios I might find myself entangled in years down the road, so much the better. To that end, I stopped in at the gift shop and purchased, for two thousand won, this little number.
It's a yeomju, a Buddhist wish-maker and protection-giver. It saves you from evil, and you can also make wishes on it, if I'm not mistaken. The larger varieties can fit around the gearshift of your car, for the stimulation of beneficent vehicular fortune. We had bigger fish to fry.

After departing Bulguksa, we made a quick stop by the tourist information booth to obtain the route up the mountain to Seokguram Grotto, a UNESCO World Heritage site and home of an enormous carved stone Buddha, seated in an artificially buried temple facing east from the mountain face to the Sea of Japan (sorry, the East Sea, as the Koreans call it). We got the route, but missed it. Somehow or other we wound up walking up the road. Fortunately we realized our mistake and turned back after a kilometer or two; otherwise we'd have been walking uphill for five hours.
We retraced our steps, went a little ways back toward the temple, and finally found the correct trail. On our way up (it was not hot, but the trail was steep, and we got quite sweaty) we discovered this!
It's a spring, a spring of fresh mountain water trickling down the mountainside. We both drank of it. It was largely tasteless, but fresh. Seeing as how I couldn't drink the tap water back in Gohyeon, drinking from a source of water welling up out of the ground was quite novel to me at that point. I know what you're thinking. The whole effect is rather tarnished by the rubber hose sticking out the dragon's mouth and the cell phone advertisement on the sign board. But what are you going to do? This is Korea.

Not long after this (thank goodness) we were at the top. Not quite the summit, mind you, but the top. From here it was an easy walk along the ridge line to the grotto. Or at least, it would have been, if it weren't for the line. I'm speaking of the humongous line of people waiting to get in to see the grotto.
By some cosmic twist of fate, there was a troublesomely large number of people trying to see this Gyeongju attraction as well. I am, of course, being extremely sarcastic. Of course there were a lot of people here. It was a holiday weekend, and this was another scenic wonder of Gyeongju (and Korean National Treasure No. 24), for Pete's sake. I don't know much about who built it or why, but it was truly astounding close-up. Recessed into the grotto, barely swimming up out of the shadows and dim electric light, loomed the enormous figure of the Enlightened One, his head geometrically aligned with the lotus flower or sun thingy or whatever it was on the grotto wall behind him, presiding silently over the assembled company (and indeed, the entire countryside) as he had been for some time, and might conceivably continue doing for eternity. This was one of the few times during my trip to Gyeongju that I, desensitized to temporal displacement by fiction and literature, felt properly awed by the weight of ages.
I remained respectful to the wishes of the curators and took no pictures. Perhaps it's best to let my memory stand on that count. A brief glimpse, the thrill of rarity and antiquity, an achievement after a long trial (we did climb the mountain by ourselves, when there was bus up the mountainside we could've taken)...and then we passed on.
Predictably, as we made our way down the trail back to the parking lot at the trailhead, the line had disappeared. Figures. Due to our dwindling amount of time that day, Jerry and I elected to take the bus back down the hill. After a 20-minute wait, we accomplished this; after another 20-minute wait, we got the bus back to Gyeongju. We immediately resolved to set out for the Sea Tomb of King Munmu, as we'd previously discussed; but it was already dinnertime, and the sun was getting low in the sky; Bus 150 wasn't showing itself. We had just barely missed it as we got off in Gyeongju. We wouldn't have time to get 20 kilometers back east to the ocean in time to see the tomb in the glory of sunset, so we decided to skip it, and returned to Tumuli Park instead.

Well, I returned...Jerry hadn't seen it yet. I'm ever so glad he came up with the idea of touring it by evening. My first look at it (visible in some of the pictures I've posted), under the leaden gray skies, was not encouraging. Now, lit by the glorious brilliance of the evening sun, it was a far cheerier and more satisfying sight indeed.
We toured the whole park, strolling around in the warm, still evening air, the park itself filled with families and field trips and tour groups and even some other foreigners. I took loads more pictures; I had to recapture everything I'd photographed in the previous day's drabness. As an added bonus, the line to get into Cheonmachong (the Heavenly Horse Tomb, remember?) wasn't so prohibitively long that evening, so after we'd finished with the rest of the park we got in line and managed to get inside in what could reasonably called, by Korean standards, a jiffy.

It was impressive inside. Once again, I took no photographs as per regulations, but I think I can muster up a decently florid description. They'd scooped out the inside of one of the tumuli, cross-sectioning half of it so that the king (whoever he was) and his tomb, remains and all, would be visible, as well as the striations of dirt and gravel used in the construction of the mound. They'd put in hard cement flooring, added a ventilation system and stainless steel gates, and in the inner walls of the mound (opposite the king's wooden burial chamber), they'd placed display cases with artifacts recovered from the tomb. There was drinking ware, and personal trinkets, and equestrian equipment, very well preserved. The Heavenly Horse Tomb, in fact, was named for the insignia found emblazoned on some of the saddles and saddle blankets found in the tomb. Standing there in that tomb, the dark vault of the mound's interior arching over my head, the almost religious half-light of the displays playing over my face, the very casket of the royal family within arm's reach, the weight of ages pressing down upon my shoulders...I could hear the voice of the king.

"Hey, what's the big idea?! I was sleeping peacefully in here until you bozos came along, scooped out my mound, stuck in some tasteful mood lighting and dropped a glass partition through my casket! Who the heck d'you think you are? God, as if subduing the entire Korean peninsula wasn't enough, now I have to donate twelve hours of my precious afterlife every day so moon-eyed tourists can waddle through my resting place and gawk at my treasures? At my very remains?! Whose brilliant idea was that? How did my tomb get picked for this kind of sacrilege anyway?"

Indeed, it was hard for me to reconcile the two extremes: a Korea that claims to care deeply about and take pride in its long and time-honored history, and a Korea that turns its tombs into tourist traps. Don't get me wrong: there's nothing vitriolic in my musings. I lay blame on no one; I am not attempting to lambaste the commercial world we live in. I am merely speculating, and I invite you to do so as well. After this we headed north briefly (passing through Noseodong once again)... ...and wound up in the central downtown area of Gyeongju, whence began the bars and restaurants. After a little reconnoitering we finally decided on Pyeongyang, a restaurant whose name bears a vague resemblance to the North Korean capital. Any similarities to Communism ended there, however. The food was good (we had beef marinated in soy sauce, grilled over a bed of coals at our table, Korean style), the place was cozy, and even though we didn't have beer or soju, it was still a unique enough experience to indoctrinate Jerry with. He was used, as he admitted, to Japanese cuisine, which is somewhat bland compared to Korean food, I understand. Korean food is spicy. All of it. Pretty darn spicy, too, by most people's standards. I supposed I'd gotten used to it, or else my upbringing, fraught as it was with spicy food (my dad's a fiend for Mexican, particularly red chili sauce) has dulled my sensitivity.
Things only improved from there, if that were possible. Retracing my route from the previous day almost to the letter (with the exception of the Gyeongju National Museum), Jerry and I proceeded to tour Wolseong Park and Anapji Pond...after dark. Nocturne, Korean style. It was transcendently beautiful. Some clever electrician had rigged up the whole of the Wolseong tumuli and the fringe of trees lining the old fortress walls with floodlights. Not only that, but they'd gone on and done it to Anapji Pond, too. The restored pagodas were lit up like skyscrapers on a holiday, and the pleasant little woodland surrounding the pond was splashed with luminescence of the most lurid and astounding kind. Even the little well, the washing-pond I'd noticed earlier in the day (and that I begged you to take note of) was brightened up with a series of submarine lights that changed colors every half-minute or so: first vivid red, then deepest blue, now warmly purple and green.

And that was just about the end of our little adventure together, Jerry and I. We stopped in for a beer at the London Pub...

...and in deference to his hostel's curfew we split just before 11:00 p.m. We returned on sore legs and aching feet to our respective accommodations: he at the Hanjin, and myself right across the road at the forty-grand-per-night yeokwon I'd selected. We said our goodbyes, promised to meet up on Facebook, and departed as friends.

The day was infinitely better for his company.

Gyeongju: bread and bicycles

Before you start reading, you might want to get up, grab a snack or an alcoholic drink (preferably both) and then settle in. This is going to be a long one.

The first weekend in May, I went to Gyeongju. You may question my decision to travel on the heels of that killer romp in Busan, but I insist it had to be done. I unexpectedly found myself with four day's furlough. Saturday being Buddha's Birthday and Tuesday (May 5) being Children's Day, our benevolent director, Jacob, kindly called class off on Monday and let us have the whole four days. With my time in Korea winding down and free time at a premium, I decided to seize this opportunity to travel somewhere. I hadn't been anywhere since Seoul, for Pete's sake. It was time to make something happen.

History's at the top of the to-do list in Gyeongju, Gyeongsangbuk Province (the one just north of Gyeongsangnam, unsurprising when you realize that buk means "north" and nam means "south" in Korean). Once the seat of the Silla Dynasty (which incorporated all of the Gyeongsang Provinces and eventually the entire peninsula, persevering for a millennium), the area has enough temples, pagodas, obelisks, statuary, fortresses, museums, memorials, artifacts, and architecture to keep scads of diligent scholars busy for at least eleven successive lifetimes. (It's too bad Korea's 50% Christian, and there isn't a larger representation of Buddhism and Hindu; otherwise those drooling scholars might actually get their shot at eleven liftetimes of research.) There's so much history (역사, or yeoksa) that Gyeongju has come to be known as "the museum without walls."

Come now, how's an enterprising young buck and aspiring travel writer like myself supposed to resist a moniker like that?

Gyeongju's been on the to-see list ever since Charles let the name drop a couple of months back. Ironically, we were discussing all the things in Korea I haven't seen, which was depressingly long compared to the somewhat paltry list of things I have. He said there was a town north of Geoje Island and Gyeongsangnam-do literally stuffed with historical sights and museums (plus it was just a scenic sort of place). My imagination was fired and had been simmering away ever since. I was forced to relegate the newly-found ambition to the back burner, however. Charles's opinion and personal research convinced me that I'd need at least three good days to properly see the city. (Seeing is that loose verb which refers to the visitation, sampling, discovery, and experience of a city, country or area; and it can be usually only be done properly, i.e. not shoddily, with an appropriate allowance of time.) Without so much as a three-day weekend between me and the expiration of my contract, I stuck Gyeongju on the list of things to see during the two weeks' furlough I'll be taking after said contract expires.

But suddenly hope glimmered on the horizon! The first weekend in May was an inch off from being a holiday weekend. Technically it was already: Buddha's Birthday was on Saturday, and Children's Day was on Tuesday. We were definitely getting Tuesday off; it was up in the air whether we'd get the Monday off as well. Finally Jacob's magnanimous streak showed itself, and it was announced early that week that we'd have a four-day weekend! YAHOO!

Plans began to be laid almost immediately. Charles, as usual, was an invaluable resource and a willing agent. Working in concert, we managed to hash out a bus route. It was a tricky one. There was no direct link from Gohyeon to Gyeongju, unfortunately; I'd have to stop at the halfway point, Masan (directly north of Gohyeon, on the mainland), and there switch terminals. My bus from Gohyeon would come in at the south terminal, and the Gyeongju bus departed from the northerly one. (In case you haven't guessed, Masan is a city of some size.) Charles strongly recommended I take the city bus between terminals. Then there was the problem of accommodation. I say "problem" because this upcoming weekend was, indeed, a holiday, and therefore the roads and hotels were all likely to be packed to the gills. Charles and I scouted around the Internet a bit before classes for a couple of days, but found that most of the hostels and guest houses (of which there was no shortage) were mostly booked up solid. I wavered momentarily, thinking I might truly have to postpone this Gyeongju gig for the two weeks' furlough I'd be taking at the expiration of my contract; but then my resolution returned. I'd do like I'd always done, and trust to my prodigious luck to see me through.

Charles then delineated the four echelons of Korean lodging. First, most expensive but harboring the most amenities...hotels. Next, motels, somewhat cheaper and therefore shabbier. After that, yeokwon, an obscure species somewhere in the neighborhood of the dirt-cheap "love motels" one habitually finds in Busan, and even here on Geoje. At the bottom of the ladder, with a name I didn't even bother to memorize, was a form of hospitality so primitive it usually didn't even include a bathroom. Needless to say, I thought I'd aim somewhere around the line dividing motels and yeokwon.

I'd originally planned to test my scooter skills in Gyeongju as well. That would definitely be my main method of transportation on Jeju, but I wanted to get a little practice in even if it wasn't strictly necessary. There was, after all, a thorough bus system and bike rental shops in plenty. That was fortunate, because as it happened all the scooters in town seemed to have been booked up solid as well. Our Internet research confirmed it. I resigned myself to riding my first scooter in late June, thanked Charles for his help, and then set about trying to memorize certain pertinent travel-related phrases that he had thoughtfully translated for me, such as "I think I'm lost," and "Which way is the terminal/station/temple?"

Then, two days later, it was time. I awoke at 6:00, dressed, arrayed myself with wallet, keys, handkerchief, documents, travel guides, and my prepacked bag and sauntered out into the cool, moist morning to meet my destiny. I purchased a ticket with little trouble and caught the 7:34 from Gohyeon to Masan. That trip was uneventful, and even halfway comfortable; I was one of only five or six people on board. I stretched myself out languorously over three of the rear seats and had a reasonably pleasant two-hour ride. Switching terminals in Masan turned out to be a breeze, if an expensive one. The first thing that greeted my eyes upon emerging from the station was row of taxicabs. I thought to myself, "What the hell, the bus ticket was only 10,000 won anyway." I caught the attention of one of the drivers and directed it to the scrap of paper upon which Charles had scrawled the name of the northern bus terminal. The driver nodded and motioned me into the passenger seat. The ride was 6,800 won...a bit stiffer than I'd have liked but not as bad as I'd feared. The bus station was quite crowded, mostly with Republic of Korea Navy personnel in their liberty whites. I thought that was a bit odd. Gyeongsang is not exactly landlocked, but I wondered why there was such a profusion of sailors in Masan buying bus tickets for elsewhere. Were they, too, doing a bunk on this four-day weekend?

I got in line (one of the many, actually), purchased a 9,000-won ticket for Gyeongju, then got in line again to get on the bus itself. (It was during this trip that I rediscovered my distaste for all things crowd-related, like long lines and traffic jams.) As it happened, however, I kinda-sort made a friend in that line. There was a short, plump, friendly-faced young Korean lady standing there with me. She saw I was a foreigner and introduced herself in accented yet flawless English. "Hi," she said, "my name is Julia." I gave her my name, and said it was nice to meet her. My inherent L.A. suspicion, mentioned elsewhere, was kicking in again. It reminded me that any strangers who introduce themselves to you while you're traveling think they've got something to gain by it, fair or foul.

Julia asked, "Where are you from?" I said I was from the U.S.A. I asked her where she was from. "Masan," she said, gesturing around us. I asked her if she liked it.

"No," she said. "This is a complicated city."

We chatted a little more as the line inched forward to the very last berth at the terminal where our bus was parked. She was going to Gyeongju to meet her boyfriend (I was most intensively relieved that she had one) and I was going to see the sights. We were both teachers at English academies. After we'd established this, boarding time came. Both Julia and I luckily managed to snag a seat on the EXTREMELY crowded Masan-Gyeongju run. I am not saying that figuratively, here. People were literally standing in the aisle. I know that's commonplace on a city bus, but this was an express intercity special, with an aisle the width of a belly dancer's waist. I had some young couple's iced coffee hovering two inches in front of my face for the entire Masan-Yangsan leg. It cleared out a bit after that, though, and all I had to contend with during the remaining two hours was the heat, the cloying closeness of the air, lack of legroom, my aching posterior, and the endless lurching of the bus.

I'm sure I've opined pithily about this before. Bus drivers in Korea all have lead feet. They, like the rest of the drivers in the country (who are, pretty uniformly, sausages), jam on the accelerator and jam on the brakes. This would be less noticeable in a car, but in a big diesel bus, whose transmission and operation is jerky enough anyway, it becomes maddeningly exaggerated. The bus drivers are also opportunistic, just like the other Korean drivers, and aggressive. This means that they'll jam on the accelerator whenever there's a gap in traffic, which means they catch up to the car ahead of them and have to jam on the brakes again. At this point, the driver will either honk until the car speeds up (causing the ruination of many an attempt on my part to sleep), or swerve violently around it into another lane, and the process will begin again. There's never a moment of peaceful cruising. It's all just stop-start, stop-start, stop-start, honk-honk-honk, swerve, stop-start.

This infuriating situation was only exacerbated by the tremendous amount of holiday traffic. I should've known what I was setting myself up for. This was a double-whammy. Buddha's Birthday was on Saturday (the day I was traveling) and Children's Day was on Tuesday. Everybody and their brother in Korea was traveling somewhere. What should've been a two-hour bus ride or less from Masan to Gyeongju took two-point-five. Finally, though, I stumbled from the mobile prison and into the sticky heat of high noon in Gyeongsangbuk-do. Julia directed me to the nearest tourist information booth, and asked for my e-mail address. She was so genuine and friendly that I couldn't see the harm in it, so I gave it to her. Haven't heard from her since, but I wish her luck.

My first look at Gyeongju wasn't a promising one. I saw green fields across from the bus station, but the town itself was dingy, crowded, and shabby. Nonetheless I rallied, consulted my guide book, determined where the hotels and motels were (actually they were very close to the station, within sight), and sauntered off in search of accommodation.

My first five tries were all no-goes. The motels in Gyeongju were all insanely expensive: upwards of 100,000 per night. That meant trying my luck with a yeokwon. The proprietress of the first one, a lady with a massively permed pile of hair, looked me up and down distastefully and informed me that there were no rooms. The "proprietor" of the second, which had a picture of Herbert von Karajan on the stairway and a defunct aquarium tank in the hall, was passed out on the floor of his office/kitchen with the radio blaring some inane talk show. I had to bang on the window to wake him up. The rate was 50,000 a night (a bit steep), but that was a moot point. He had no rooms, which he managed to convey to me after about six or seven tries (after I'd given him the money). So I got my money back and kept going. The third yeokwon was full up. The fourth, though, finally had space. It was a ways over from the bus station, but it was clean and slightly more respectable in appearance than the other places. It was right across from the Hanjin Hostel, one of the more famous hostels in the city, even mentioned in the guide book. Moreover, the price was right: 40,000 a night. I checked in and gratefully shed my burdens in my hot little room. It was adequate, but roasting: linoleum floor, spacious enough bathroom, double bed of questionable cleanliness, TV, dresser squashed against one wall, hat stand, and a few boxes of accoutrements (like shampoo and combs). I trusted the proprietress, however. She was a nice little middle-aged lady who looked like a typical sweet motherly type. Could've been one of my kids' moms, in fact. Nonetheless I took all my important documents with me when I left the apartment a short while later. I'm the cautious type and there was a sign in the lobby that said "Valuables may be checked at the front desk. The owner is not responsible for any loss of property that occurs in the rooms," (or something like that).

Transportation concluded, accommodation acquired and the load lightened, I sallied forth into the overcast afternoon to survey what I could of Central Gyeongju. At the corner of the main road, near the bus station, I located a bicycle renter and after a little bit of Konglish haggling I forked over my alien immigration card as a deposit and was entrusted with a mountain bike for the afternoon (fee to be determined upon my return, no later than seven o'clock in the evening).

My first impressions of Gyeongju were in keeping with my original ideas. Despite its claims to be one of the premier tourist spots in the country and a Mecca of historical significance, the city itself seemed dirty, run-down and halfhearted. There may have been tourist booths everywhere (with pretty Korean girls who spoke good English), but apart from that, Gyeongju seemed to have little to offer in the way of character.

Or perhaps it had too much. The two things Gyeongju seemed jam-packed with were bike-rental shops and bakeries. Both these businesses abounded everywhere in the city and its environs. The former seems dependent upon the tourist industry, but I couldn't for the life of me make out how any one particular bread-monger managed to stay ahead of the game with bakeries every 30 yards along the main drag. I am not exaggerating. You can't swing a cat in Gyeongju without hitting a bakery. Bread seems to have hit it big here. Gyeongju, in fact, is known for one particular type of bread, a Korean take on some Western idea (most likely): a sort of pancake with sweet red bean paste in the middle. But that's a story for another entry.

The first stop was Noseodong and Nodong, two blocks' worth of tumuli just east of my yeokwon. To be clear, "tumuli" is plural for "tumulus," which is scientific equivocation for "burial mound" or "barrow." As far as tumuli go, these were pretty impressive. Larger than they seemed and oddly symmetrical, they loomed over me and other passersby, throwing us into the shadows of antiquity. Or at least, they would have if it had been sunny day.


You read that last one correctly. One of these tumuli, apparently the biggest on record at Gyeongju, was excavated by none other than King Gustaf Adolf VI of Sweden (or, according to the actual plaque itself, Gustaf VI Adolf). Who'd a' thunk it?

This impressive weight of ages didn't diminish as I crossed the main road and entered Tumuli Park (for ₩1,000). It was a picturesque place, even under the sullen sky. I strode around, snapping photos, breathing the semi-clean air and attempting to foster the sense of awe and temporal perspective suitable for the occasion. The line to get into the Cheonmachong (the Heavenly Horse Tomb) was prohibitively long, but I didn't give up; I merely shifted that priority to the back burner, and directed my steps southeast to Wolseong Park. It was (and presumably still is) larger than Tumuli Park, with extensive open fields, more tumuli, quite a few food vendors, and large holiday crowds. There were people flying kites, strolling, riding tandem bicycles, eating snacks, and even one fellow who was carrying around a vaulting pole. No, seriously, look:


Anyway, I threaded my way through this throng and made my way eventually to the actual site of Wolseong Fortress itself. It was unrecognizable. All that remains is the raised foundation upon which it once sat, a sunken stone wall running around its perimeter, some staircases half-hidden in the grass, and Seokbinggo, the ice house. The area is now several square kilometers of trees and fields, a lovely parkland upon which people were relaxing, picnicking, and chucking Frisbees and baseballs at each other.


Making my way back in an ovoid loop, I exited the Wolseong Fortress grounds by the way I had come (the north entrance, which probably was once the grand, main mode of ingress to the fortress in its heyday), forked over 500 won, and got my first look at Cheomseongdae, the Royal Silla Observatory.


It may appear nondescript to some of you, but look closely: not only is this an observatory, and as such a monument to the undying and commendable investigative spirit of the human mind, which reaches out toward the stars and all the higher things they represent, the pursuit of science and the quest for knowledge beyond earthly boundaries...but it's also put together quite niftily. The base is constructed of twelve large stones, representing the twelve months of the year. Counting from top to bottom, there are 30 layers to the structure, which stand for the 30 days of the month. Finally (and this is the kicker) the whole shebang is made of exactly 366 stones, signifying the days of the year. (Okay, one off, but what's a stone or two between civilizations?)


Fascinating stuff thus far. I had two more things I truly desired to see in Central Gyeongju that day, the first of which was due east, across the Wolseongno road and a bit south: Anapji Pond. It was a botanical garden built at the Eastern Palace (or, by the looks of things, the Eastern Palace was built around it) to commemorate some military victory or other. That having been said, the place was quite beautiful.


I strode around the lake and snapped photos, feeling oddly let down by the gray skies. It's difficult to appreciate anything when it's seen in an unfriendly light.

Now, I want you to make careful note of that statement, and the photos above it. They will be vitally important later for comparison. For sometime following this I returned to Anapji, and...well, you'll just have to read about and see.

Despite the leaden firmament, I soldiered on. I bought a clay model of the observatory for two thousand won at the vendor by the gate to Anapji, then sauntered (or rather, biked) across the road to...

THE GYEONGJU NATIONAL MUSEUM!

It was impressive, outside and in. Outside the main building was an enormous bell, a bulgyo (Buddhist) relic. My guide book cited a legend claiming that the bell's toll can be heard for three kilometers around on a calm day. Unfortunately, the only bell toll I heard while I was there piped stridently from a nearby speaker. It was an impressive sound, tinny and distorted though it was.

Disappointed, I entered the museum proper. There were many exhibits to see and archaeological artifacts to peruse, all dating from various epochs of Silla dominance and predominance: everything from stone tools to cavalry armor, wick-trimmers to golden crowns. These last were particularly impressive, thinly-battered yet overweening affairs with multitudes of round discs hanging loose from them which would undoubtedly make a musical rattling noise wherever the king trod.


Between the museum outbuildings were replicas of two towers which stood at the Bulguksa temple a few kilometers east of the city. They were replicated because they were too precious to move: indeed, they are two of Korea's national treasures. They were also replicated because their design and preservation is so incredible. I was quite awed myself. Something like this I hadn't expected to find outside the deepest jungles of Thailand or Burma. The replica of Dagotap (the more complex-looking tower) is particularly noteworthy due to the four stone lions guarding its base.


I hit the art building last. Boy, did I ever save the best. Inside it was a heart-throbbing labyrinth of black marble corridors and galleries dimly lit by recessed lighting, with untold treasures and indescribably ancient and beautiful artifacts looming up out of the half-light and shadows: masks, roof tiles graven with lotus, and more huge and exquisitely sculpted stone Buddhas than I had ever hoped to clap eyes on in one building. There was also a rather neat diorama of the entire city of Gyeongju, laid out as it had been at the peak of the Silla Dynasty; it spanned both sides of the river, with that aforementioned grand avenue running up the middle, pagodas and palaces popping out here and there among the swath of houses and lanes. Unfortunately, the photos I took inside (not knowing whether I was being naughty or not) didn't turn out so hot; I included the only halfway decent one above.

I was just walking out of the art building when the weather took a turn for the worse. It having been cloudy all day, there was no way to see it coming. The first raindrops came splattering down as I walked down the steps, falling harder and faster as I reached my bicycle parked across the road, and finally turning into a downpour as I biked my way furiously back the way I'd come...back up Wolseongno, past Anapji Pond and Wolseong Park, hanging a left at Tumuli Park, and back down along the main drag to the west until I reached the bus station and the bike rental place. The owner scurried out to hand me back my registration card and collect his fee (I had to correct him on the proper price) and then I trudged my way back to my yeokwon, getting soaked but not caring. It had been a long, hot day, and I was glad of some cool rain to wash off the sweat and fatigue. I retired to my hot, stuffy room, hung my clothes and hat up to dry, sat down and watched a few movies in English with Korean subtitles (making a quick run across the street into a corner mart to get some potato chips and a can of beer for dinner). Then I turned out the light and, fully clothed and not trusting the cleanliness of this former love motel's sheets despite my congenial middle-aged hostess's trustworthy demeanor, went to sleep.

Okay, I'm going to call it there. I've been blogsurfing lately and I've noticed that most people's blog posts tend to be, well, a paragraph or two. Heh heh. Guess I'm committing some sort of blogsphere faux pas, aren't I? It's a cardinal sin to write something long-winded on a blog, I'd imagine. But I don't care. I hope, if you managed to sit through all of the above and get to this, the final paragraph, that you don't care either, and will forgive me for this breach of etiquette. I am, after all, first a writer, then a blogger. Stay tuned for part two.