In Korea, all EPIK teachers have a wonderful little loop hole in our contracts that give us the 1st of May off of school. This happened to be when Sarah was here, so it was even better for me!
We left after school and went downtown for a while, checked out some of the shops there, and then boarded a train to Gyeongju. The train was only and hour and half or so, but put us in a weird part of the city. It was dark by then. We got a taxi to the other train station because I had read that there were a ton of love motels across from the station. After getting to the other station and checking out a few very low level/ smelly motels, we realized this may not be the place the person online was talking about. I figured out it must have been from across the bus station!
We were close to a few of the sights we wanted to see in the dark to take night photos anyways, so we sucked it up and carried our bags for a while, knowing that we would eventually find a love motel!
We checked out Anapji Pond, which was really beautiful at night. I'm guessing that this is the way to see it at all. I think a lot of the magical-ness of it is lost in the daylight. We walked around the pond hoping to find a spot that we could see all three of the buildings. Visibility was a challenge because of an island in the middle of the pond. Below was the best I could do with capturing all three...
After that we walked to the Cheomseongdae Ovservatory, which was an old tower? At night it looked like a lit up old tower?
We headed to the bus station, and the posts I had read were right! There were tons of love motels! We picked one based on how cheesy the name was and realized that we got a pretty nice room.
Afterwards, we hadn't eaten and the closest thing that was still open was McDonalds. I have prided myself on my lack of eating McDonalds in Korea, but my hunger made me cave and I'm glad I did. I'm pretty sure this was the best McDonald's I have ever had in my whole life! The sweet chili dipping sauce was better than anything they serve in America. Sarah tried the bulgogi burger, since it is the specialty of Korea...
There was a bit of a funny situation that happened with the bidet toilet in our love motel. I encouraged Sarah to use it because it is a little different than most of the toilets in the America. You know, another thing to check off the Korean Bucket list....Anyways, I was lounging in the room and all of a sudden I hear some yelping and then the sound of water hitting the door and the ceiling! What on Earth could be happening- I thought...Well, turns out, Sarah was getting sprayed in the face with the bidet. She thought that it was finished...but she had pushed so many buttons that it stopped for a second and then continued! hahah! How funny!
Water did in fact spray up to the ceiling and the door. I guess they are pretty powerful and I will keep that in mind in the future! She was traumatized... ahahah
Our main project for the next day was seeing Bulguksa Temple. This temple is one of the most desired for visitors to see. Because of Buddha's birthday on the following Tuesday, lanterns were hung in the air. I was nervous that since Korea is in mourning for the Sewol ferry tragedy, that the festive weekend would also be canceled. This temple was really beautiful. The paint on it was more worn than I am used to seeing, but that actually added a bit of a charm to it.
We couldn't have asked for better weather on this day. It was warm and sunny, but not even slightly hot! So nice!
The best part was that even though it was a national holiday in Korea, schools and most businesses were still in session, so there were less people there than on a weekend. I even got some pictures without any people!!!
After visiting the temple we took a bus up the hill to the Grotto. Apparently there is a "hike" (2 km of stairs) that you can take to this location, but since we were tight on time, and not really wanting to be sore for the next few days of travel, we opted out on this hike. The bus was 30 minutes or so and took us up a winding mountain road to the top. There we found a bell to ring! (with a mandatory donation of 1,000 won of course)
Once you got to the top of the hill, you paid more money and could make the walk to "Grotto". This was a giant Buddha that was built into the mountain. I was excited to see it, but when we got close we realized that this was definitely under construction! They had built a building around it, and you had to file in a small hallway just to keep a distant glimpse of it. Plus, they didn't allow you take photos. I'm guessing to make sure that the line of people kept moving. This was also confirmed by the message found outside the structure, "Please don't explain inside."
After seeing this bit of a disappointment statue, we took a taxi to the bus terminal. This was to save time and it wasn't too expensive! We picked up out bags from the women we had paid at the convience store part of the bus terminal and boarded our bus back to Daegu. I really enjoyed Gyeongju and plan on going back in the future and checking out more of the sights. It really is a beautiful, historical city and I recommend it to everyone! :)
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