Our trip to Gyeongju was great, what a spectacular and fascinating place.
The town itself is, let's be clear, a run down and rather featureless place with dirty air. If there is a good restaurant there we sure didn't find it, though there were some nice markets.
Some octopuses:
Some kimchi jars:
Most importantly, though, the surrounding mountains are beautiful, and there is a lot to see and do in them. The mountains look a lot like the Appalachians in size and structure. The town is basically embedded in a national park, and there are innumerable significant spots in every direction. Part of the area has been made into a Wisconsin Dells style resort (with theme parks like Kyeongju World) but I only saw it from the bus window, thankfully.
And it was sunny and very warm (60s), so no complaints from these quarters.
Traveling by train in Korea is even easier (and cheaper) than in Japan, and the KTX bullet trains seemed nicer than the Shinkansen. 300 kph and virtually silent. Our car happened to be absolutely filled with huge American GIs traveling down to Daegu.
I do wonder what Koreans think when they board a train filled with huge American soldiers, or if they even notice it much of the time. We took the KTX to Daegu and then a bus to Gyeongju, the whole thing took only three hours.
Unlike bus or train (or aiplane or even muleback travel) in U.S., everything was perfectly on time, clean, pleasant, and cheap. The KTX was about 38,000 won and the bus cost only 3500 won.
One of the dominant features of the town are these amazing Silla era burial mounds that are all over the whole area and in the middle of town. They look not dissimilar from Indian mounds in the Midwest and southeast. The color on them this time of year was fascinating, it looked like the desert sometimes. One of them was cut open and you could walk through, which was interesting.
They were really quite beautiful. I have seen pictues of them in the spring and they are completely green.
Across the Hyeongsangang River were the royal tombs of King Taejong Muyeol, nicely set against the mountains.
To give you an idea of the size
From there we climbed a mountain to see a Buddha carved in a rock in the top. Having no clue how high or steep the mountain was worked out to be a good thing, since it was very steep and quite high and carrying the Lil Buddha up there in the front carrier was not exactly optimal. But, by the time we were half way up were were committed.
Here is the king's tomb from midway up, giving you some sense of scale.
There are a huge number of tombs all over the mountain, which surprised me. They were in all sizes, many of them still covered in trees. I had read that in town houses were built on them as well before being restored.
Once you get to the top it was well worth it, with this Buddha carved into the rock. There is a small temple and a few wizened old monks up there, but nobody else.
The view of the city from on top:
Visiting this Buddha was definitely the highlight of our trip down there.
There are rock carved Buddhas all over the place, we only got to hike to this one and so clearly need to go back to do more hikes. There is a mountain called Namsan in Gyeongju as well that is covered in shrines, temples, carvings, and tombs, so we need to return to see that.
We saw many other Buddhist temples and many other Buddhas, but none quite as striking as this mountaintop one.
Here is Bunhwangsa Temple from the year 634 AD, a much older style of temple:
and this is Bulguksa temple, which is an Unesco world heritage site, along with the nearby carved granite Buddha at Seokguram Grotto.
The Buddha at Seokguram Grotto is beautiful and in a wonderful spot atop a large mountain. You can't take a picture of it. I realized after seeing it that the image of it is reproduced all over the place in Korea.
Here is the temple from the outside:
Here is an old picture of the Buddha:
here is view of the inside I got from the web :
After visiting a large number of these "world heritage sites" in Korea and Japan I have to say that I think that designation really helps to dilute the experience of visiting the places. Whether it changes the places I can't say, but definitely the vibe is different when you visit them
It certainly helps to commercialize them. It means that there are always a lot of people there, and that the infrastructure is much more designed from gawking than for experiencing it. I have found small living Buddhist temples much more interesting and moving than large world heritage sites ones which are displayed and deadened in the process. I know and appreciate that these sites are being preserved and celebrated and this is a good thing, but they are also being frozen and stultified in many ways. I don't have the solution, and I am sure that there are people who have written critically about this at great length, but it is palpable.
In any case, it is like anything else -- just take a few steps and the people disappear.
The town itself is, let's be clear, a run down and rather featureless place with dirty air. If there is a good restaurant there we sure didn't find it, though there were some nice markets.
Some octopuses:
Some kimchi jars:
Most importantly, though, the surrounding mountains are beautiful, and there is a lot to see and do in them. The mountains look a lot like the Appalachians in size and structure. The town is basically embedded in a national park, and there are innumerable significant spots in every direction. Part of the area has been made into a Wisconsin Dells style resort (with theme parks like Kyeongju World) but I only saw it from the bus window, thankfully.
And it was sunny and very warm (60s), so no complaints from these quarters.
Traveling by train in Korea is even easier (and cheaper) than in Japan, and the KTX bullet trains seemed nicer than the Shinkansen. 300 kph and virtually silent. Our car happened to be absolutely filled with huge American GIs traveling down to Daegu.
I do wonder what Koreans think when they board a train filled with huge American soldiers, or if they even notice it much of the time. We took the KTX to Daegu and then a bus to Gyeongju, the whole thing took only three hours.
Unlike bus or train (or aiplane or even muleback travel) in U.S., everything was perfectly on time, clean, pleasant, and cheap. The KTX was about 38,000 won and the bus cost only 3500 won.
One of the dominant features of the town are these amazing Silla era burial mounds that are all over the whole area and in the middle of town. They look not dissimilar from Indian mounds in the Midwest and southeast. The color on them this time of year was fascinating, it looked like the desert sometimes. One of them was cut open and you could walk through, which was interesting.
They were really quite beautiful. I have seen pictues of them in the spring and they are completely green.
Across the Hyeongsangang River were the royal tombs of King Taejong Muyeol, nicely set against the mountains.
To give you an idea of the size
From there we climbed a mountain to see a Buddha carved in a rock in the top. Having no clue how high or steep the mountain was worked out to be a good thing, since it was very steep and quite high and carrying the Lil Buddha up there in the front carrier was not exactly optimal. But, by the time we were half way up were were committed.
Here is the king's tomb from midway up, giving you some sense of scale.
There are a huge number of tombs all over the mountain, which surprised me. They were in all sizes, many of them still covered in trees. I had read that in town houses were built on them as well before being restored.
Once you get to the top it was well worth it, with this Buddha carved into the rock. There is a small temple and a few wizened old monks up there, but nobody else.
The view of the city from on top:
Visiting this Buddha was definitely the highlight of our trip down there.
There are rock carved Buddhas all over the place, we only got to hike to this one and so clearly need to go back to do more hikes. There is a mountain called Namsan in Gyeongju as well that is covered in shrines, temples, carvings, and tombs, so we need to return to see that.
We saw many other Buddhist temples and many other Buddhas, but none quite as striking as this mountaintop one.
Here is Bunhwangsa Temple from the year 634 AD, a much older style of temple:
and this is Bulguksa temple, which is an Unesco world heritage site, along with the nearby carved granite Buddha at Seokguram Grotto.
The Buddha at Seokguram Grotto is beautiful and in a wonderful spot atop a large mountain. You can't take a picture of it. I realized after seeing it that the image of it is reproduced all over the place in Korea.
Here is the temple from the outside:
Here is an old picture of the Buddha:
here is view of the inside I got from the web :
After visiting a large number of these "world heritage sites" in Korea and Japan I have to say that I think that designation really helps to dilute the experience of visiting the places. Whether it changes the places I can't say, but definitely the vibe is different when you visit them
It certainly helps to commercialize them. It means that there are always a lot of people there, and that the infrastructure is much more designed from gawking than for experiencing it. I have found small living Buddhist temples much more interesting and moving than large world heritage sites ones which are displayed and deadened in the process. I know and appreciate that these sites are being preserved and celebrated and this is a good thing, but they are also being frozen and stultified in many ways. I don't have the solution, and I am sure that there are people who have written critically about this at great length, but it is palpable.
In any case, it is like anything else -- just take a few steps and the people disappear.
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