I also just went back south to Gyeongju, since I wanted to hike Namsan there and had a friend visiting who also wanted hike it . It was last week on a national holiday- Children's day, so there were no classes, perfect time to go. It helped that the weather was absolutely perfect.

This area was the heart of Silla period Buddhism and the whole region is saturated with temples, shrines, statures, and historic sites. Namsan is a large and very rugged mountain covered with statues and Buddhas carved into the rock. It also offered some really tough and fun hiking. The top had several parts to steep that you basically hauled yourself up with a rope.

Here are a couple different views of the path, note the rope in the second one:



Here are a few Buddhas on the way up, this is only a tiny selection of what we passed. there were several other routes with other places as well.





The most impressive was the seated Seokgayeorae image, which is the largest Buddha image on Mt. Namsan.



Hard to relay a sense of the scale because of the size of the mountain.


This Buddha has a nice view.



Here is a view of part of the mountain as we walked down:




In Gyeongju we ate insanely well. We went to a sam gyeop sal place which was the definition of a grease trap. Check out the walls:




The food was more than just the sam gyeop sal--there were about ten other things to put on the grill, including jjukkumi (mini octopuses) and several other kinds of critters.



Hell of a feast. With several maektchus, the total was 29,000 won.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Americans don't get riled up to protest. Give away billions in taxpayer money to financial fatcats with no accountability--no worries. Refuse to punish war criminal torturers--no problem. The battle cry is...moo. Koreans, on the other hand, live in a vibrant democracy and their political action is a bit more direct. Here is a striking photo of union protesters in Daejeon using sharpened bamboo spears to attack riot police. (an article about the current state of rioting in Korea, quoting a Sogang professor, is here )
Read more

CHAOS WASHING MACHINES

My apartment comes with a washing machine called, imposingly, a Goldstar Chaos Hi Tech Washing Machine. I thought it was a dryer too but that doesn't seem to be the case. Korean apartments have these alleys between the living areas and the outside wall in which clothes are dried. There are sliding doors between the apartment and the alley, and large windows between the bedrooms and the alley. I thought I wouldn't have to use it but if the washing machine is also a "hi tech" drier I sure can't find the right combination of buttons. Not that I haven't looked. I tried to decipher everything with the help of my dictionary and limited knowledge of the hangul alphabet (which includes only a dim understanding of the actual letter order--still working on that). The word pronounced (I think) "saw" is a simple two letter word. But according to my dictionary, it means, "a cow, a bull, an ox" or "dressing, stuffing," "little, few, ...
Read more
Image
In case you didn't see that county map indicating increased Republican voting between 2004 and 2008 before they took it off of the NYTimes page, here is an image of it: This is a fascinating document that I think will be the focus of many studies. Explaining increases only in these areas in the entire country could be very instructive. Andrew Sullivan notes dryly: "Ah, yes, Appalachia and Arkansas. Obviously concerned about marginal tax rates for those earning over $250,000 a year, I suppose."
Read more