Gyeong Ju

Gyeong Ju

Our recent travels have definitely given all the teachers here the traveling bug. When we have time off it feels wrong to not be up at the crack of dawn and traveling onwards somewhere.

I’ve never been on holiday and come home to somewhere hotter and with as many incredible sights I haven’t seen. It’s easy to be excited about exploring the world around you and forget to explore your home so we decided to get a bus to Gyeong Ju.

Gyeong Ju is referred to as “the museum without walls” by Koreans. It is about an hour and a half away from Daegu by bus and only cost us 4,000 won for a single so it was an easy decision.

We stupidly went on the hottest day of the year so it was sweltering in the mid day heat. This did lead to a quick stop off at a Korean BBQ restaurant which turned out to be delicious (I’ve yet to find a non-delicious Korean BBQ). As soon as we were done with food we were back on the temple hunt.

Patrick cooking up a storm

wrap the sam gyap sal and some red pepper sauce in a sesame leaf.....

Then its 'SAM'...eat in one!

The boys are 'very' friendly when it comes to BBQ

Gyeong Ju was the original capital of Korea and the capital of the Shilla Dynasty in 57 BC to 935 AD. A lot of the original temples and shrines still remain in Gyeong Ju and it is a beautiful place to visit if you have a day to spare.

There are hundreds of thing to see in this city but we decided to take the bus out of the center and see the cliff temple named Bulguksa.

It is home to seven of the national treasures of Korea and was extremely serine. It can get very crowded so if you are going to travel there then a weekend or a Sunday may be best.

Guardians of the temple

Eerie!

I am not a Buddhist but the religion does appeal to me and fascinate me. When I was younger and very ill I read one of the Dali Lamas books (who is a Tibetan Buddhist which is slightly different to Korean Buddhists) and it really helped me. I’d been in hospital for 3 months solidly so I needed all the help I could get.

Buddhism is something that intrigues me and I’d love to research in to it more as there is so much of it in Korea. It feels rude to not understand it.

You aren’t allowed to take pictures inside the temples which was actually a nice relief. I do get stuck behind my camera sometimes so it let me pause and actually look around.

As long as you take your shoes off you are allowed into the temples. They had on display some tiny white stones in a very elaborate glass box. There were magnifying glasses to allow you to look closer. We tried to work out what these objects were and we think they were the remains of Buddha so I can only guess they were bone shards.

It sounds creepy retelling it but it was very interesting (and only a little gross).

There was a live screen outside displaying them so I can only imagine how busy the building gets on religious occasions.

Korean 'Matchy-matchy'

The day was really lovely and made me want to get out and about around Korea even more.

If you are thinking of traveling to the city, there is a bus that leaves from Dongdaegu express bus terminal (the bus station on the same side of the road as the KTX train station) We bought our return tickets to Daegu from GyongJu bus terminal and some how arrived half hour early for our bus. The staff at the station were more than happy to let us change our ticket.

We went with a friend who is leaving Korea soon (don’t get me started on this sad story!) He has suddenly realized how little he’s done while in Korea so it’s a nice wake up call for us too. We will be sad to see him leave but we are happy to help him check some tourist things off his list before he goes.

If you’re looking for something to occupy your tired teacher’s brain on a weekend this is the trip for you.

I also got a chance to take some beautiful pictures of Marks girlfriend Jessie.