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.
No comments:
Post a Comment