Bongeunsa Buddhist Temple and homeward

I woke up the next morning still suitably stuffed. I dithered for a bit after packing, not knowing exactly what the Tiffany's check-out time was. (Silly me, sometimes I act so much like a blockhead tourist I disgust myself.)

Anyway, to be on the safe side I checked out and hit the streets. I still had a couple of hours to kill before our appointed meet-up time. Adam and Elaine would be meeting me at the subway station at Sinchon about an hour or so before our train departed, giving us plenty of time to go a couple of subway stops, fight our way inside Seoul Station, perhaps grab a snack, secure our tickets and a place in the line, and get on board. Jeff would be catching the bus down to Geoje later on with Bryan. We'd all been so drunk two nights previously that we'd neglected to finalize our rendezvous, so Adam thoughtfully Facebooked me about it and I, my mind running along similar wavelengths, had gone to the nearest PC bang and received his message. (Whew!) So that was all set.

Now, what to do on a bright Tuesday morning, the last day of Seolnar, with two hours to spare and Jamsil stretching all shiny, cool and hazy before you?

I figured I'd do like I'd seen all the trendy young Korean couples do and go to one of the myriad coffee houses that dot Jamsil and have a cup of joe. I tried, but no such luck; they were still closed, even at mid-morning. I tried the door of one of them and succeeded in doing nothing more than setting off the burglar alarm. Unconcerned, and noting that opening time was a mere 30 minutes away, I sat down and updated my journal in the cool January breeze. I observed with detached interest as an ADF security vehicle pulled up and a uniformed man got out, went up to the coffeehouse behind me, unlocked the door, and examined the interior of the premises for burglars and thieves. Finding none, he shut off the alarm, made a call to his superiors, then got in and drove away.

None of this really connected up in my mind with the fact that I myself had set off that alarm; I was too busy thinking about how I was going to make the most of my last few hours in Seoul. Then suddenly I knew my calling. There was still a blank spot on the map. It was labeled simply "Bongeunsa." It was depicted with the strange obelisk-shaped icon merely denoting an object of cultural interest. Having no idea what it could be (I rather suspected it to be some kind of memorial park rather than a temple), I trudged in its direction.

It proved to be a good deal closer to me than either COEX or the Han River, which was saying something: hardly a block away across the street. As it happened, it was a Buddhist temple! I stood reverently outside the towering gates for a moment before steeling my nerves, bowing twice (once each to the four nearly life-size statuettes enshrined within those gates), and entering.

Being inside was like the realization of a dream. In my fantasies about world travel I had always envisioned myself, wearing travel-dusted clothes, hat clapped to my head, notebooks and pens in my pockets, wandering around the earthen streets of temples and castles and towns on the far sides of the world. Suddenly I was really doing it. Bongeunsa didn't seem all that separate from Seoul proper. The glittering edifices still presided in the distant hazy sky, and the traffic, though light, still broadcast the occasional roar or honk. Yet Bongeunsa did manage to be separate, somehow. Ethereal might be the term.

From Merriam-Webster Online:

ethe·re·al (\i-ˈthir-ē-əl\) 1 a: of or pertaining to the regions beyond the earth; b: celestial, heavenly; c: unworldly, spiritual. 2 a: lacking material substance; immaterial; intangible. b: marked by an unusual delicacy or refinement; c: suggesting the heavens or heaven. 3: relating to, containing, or resembling the chemical ether.

All of those multitudinous definitions, excluding the seventh and final one, which is slightly too literal, fit the bill. There was a haze of blue, fragrant smoke hanging over the place, from the wood fire they had going in one corner of the square for visitor's warmth. Buddhist chants, eldritch yet strangely soothing, slid peacefully from speakers hung from the eaves of the traditional buildings. Pious Koreans, many of them middle-aged or elderly but with some younger demographics represented, wandered in and out of the temple buildings, or clustered in worship. In the central square, my first sight upon entering, there were about three dozen people grouped about a twenty-foot obelisk:

Supplicants bowed at each of its four sides, pursuant to the four points of the compass; then they lit candles and incense sticks at an altar on its south side, and prayed. Behind the obelisk, up a set of stairs, was what seemed to be the main temple. Before entering, everyone doffed their shoes. Inside, on prayer cushions the size of card tables, Korean men and women bowed and prayed before an enormous golden statue of Buddha and two of his acolytes, itself in front of a rich tapestry of the Enlightened One's doings, under a ceiling of oddly grouped and planed wooden blocks painted in varied colors, supported by thick, cylindrical wooden rafters from which enormous dragons leered down with hollow eyes and fanged jaws. Or so my memory seems to recall; I took no pictures for fear of violating some half-imagined sacred law.

Outside and further along the trail up the hillside were smaller temples of sorts. They seemed to resemble Catholic confessionals; inside there were one or two monks in attendance (there had been about a half-dozen at the main temple; I had just missed the services) and many, many candles, as well as what looked like booths.

The crowning glory of that exploration, however, was what awaited me just a little ways farther on: the Buddha himself.

I saw this statue, all fifty or sixty feet of it, looming all of a sudden to my right. I stood in awe. I hadn't imagined I'd find anything like this short of the deepest jungles of Burma or Thailand. Reverence of a different sort was happening at the statue's base; on the polished marble floor you see in the picture (which also necessitated the doffing of shoes), people were doing worship. At the bowl-like altar you see at the base of the statue were more candles and more incense.

I could explain the significance of these things if I knew a little more about Buddhism, heh heh...not about to trust Wikipedia on the subject, I'm afraid...

I wish I could describe such events with the significance they deserve, but I was ever inarticulate when describing religious practices with any sort of reverence. I must practice more. On my way out of the temple I saw the raised, roofed platform wherein was kept the enormous conical bell, and the gigantic two-sided drum, both Buddhist instruments of the highest importance.

I also saw this, which I absolutely must try someday:


Isn't that cool? It's called a temple stay, and you can do them at many of the temples in Korea. You stay overnight (or a couple of nights) and you basically live the life of a monk. That includes getting up at four in the morning and chanting sutras. Notice how it doesn't say anything about that on the notice.

So, finally, the time had come. I trudged down to the station, quite pleased with myself. I'd managed to hit everything on my to-do list except Lotte World, which had proved to be out of my reach (for whatever reason, distance or time or lack of sobriety). No matter. I knew this wasn't the last time I'd be in Seoul. I'd had a taster; a week or two was needed to assay the rest of it. Not that I wanted to take up permanent residence or anything, and seeing as how it was the first major foreign city I'd ever seen, it still struck me as being a place affable to foreigners and forgiving of mistakes and miscalculation, perhaps more so than European cities and even the remainder of Korea.

Seoul had been described to me by Koreans as being like its own country. As internationalized as it had proved to be (signs in English every which-way, and a great deal more Western food, coffee, and clothing store chains, not to mention public transportation, street layout and architecture indistinguishable from many U.S. cities I'd been to), I could see their point. Seoul is foreigner-friendly to a degree, I'm sure, rarely seen anywhere else.

I duly met up with Adam and Elaine at Sinchon, after duly getting my jonesed-for cup of joe at a coffee house called "A Twosome Place." I had a cinnamon-chip mocha, and for what it's worth, it wasn't bad. I'm not much of a coffee drinker, and I don't go for limp-wrist pansy-ass coffee drinks like that (much less fruity cocktails like Oaxaca Jim), but it got the job done. I can now say I've had coffee in Seoul, trendily.

A, E, and I emerged into the now-familiar chaos of Seoul station, made note of our departure gate, then found a small diner and took a break. I had an egg sandwich whose flavor was somewhat tarnished by a soggy English muffin and the inclusion of green peppers. Then we got into line, boarded the train, and had an uneventful (and somehow even slower) trip back to Busan.

I'll never forget the cab ride from Busan Station to the bus annex. The cabbie asked us if we wanted to listen to one of his CDs. He put it in and (lo and behold!) Get Low by Lil' John and the Eastside Boyz started blaring out of his speakers. I'm no more a fan of hip-hop (or crunk) than I am of limp-wristed coffee drinks, but still, this "song" still had some nostalgic value for me; I remember getting low out on the dance floor many a time in high school. So there I was, grumbling the lyrics away under my breath in my best imitation of Lil' John, with Adam and Elaine behind me, grinning indulgently.

It was in Busan, in fact, that we hit the first and only real snag concerning transportation. We had some difficulty finding the station itself, first of all. The building we were dumped off at had several levels; we were on the third before we figured we'd gone too far; we went back to the second, followed the signs, and wound up on the third level again; finally, on our second run through the second level, a sympathetic employee (the second level was a clothing store) who'd noticed us go through the first time pointed us in the right direction. Turned out we had to utterly traverse the first building and venture across a footbridge to a second building behind it, which was the bus station.

That spot of trouble overcome, we then hit another one, somewhat more serious. We'd planned to catch a bus from Busan directly to Gohyeon, but we arrived at the station too late; the final run had already departed. Crossing our fingers and trusting to luck, we caught a bus for Tongyeong (still having to run to make it in time), hoping we could catch a bus from there to Gohyeon, or at least a cab. After an extremely claustrophobic and uncomfortable ride (my bag was on my knees, and Korean bus drivers all seem to have lead feet on both pedals), we were in Tongyeong. Our luck held. We caught the next bus for Gohyeon and got home safe and sound, breathless and exhausted, heads spinning and hearts pounding. Best of all, we had the next day, Wednesday, off! We used it to recuperate, and the weekend following.

I suppose this is the point where I should sum up this informative treatise with a restatement of my thesis (whatever that was) and some kind of witty, pithy, articulate thought, but in reflection of the fact that this is a blog and not a travel article, and that I am recovering from a nasty cold right now, and that I hate this conclusion part of writing anyway, I'm going to say the hell with it and just sign off. Hope you enjoyed the tale, and annyeong for now.