Our trip to Gyeongju

Paul and I are returning from work from a three-day weekend. Yesterday, the country celebrated Buddha’s birthday. We decided to take the weekend to do our first bit of real traveling in Korea. Though we’ve been here eight months, we haven’t left our province except to go into Seoul.

One of the best parts of the weekend was simply seeing a different part of Korea. Until now, we’ve been in one of the more population-dense areas; everywhere I look, the mountains and greenery are hidden by massive apartment buildings. But as we drove south, the apartment buildings slowly disappeared. We could see more lush mountains and rice fields.

It was about a six and a half hour trip to Gyeongju, the ancient capital of Korea; the home of the Shilla dynasty. (Six and a half hours for a 150 mile trip.) Yongin is made up completely of rectangular concrete buildings; but Gyeongju actually had more traditional-style buildings. We stayed in a traditional Korean guesthouse where we experienced sleeping on the floor of a very small room. Perhaps not my favorite traditional Korean experience; though it’s something to laugh about. (We took pictures, of course.)

We spent Saturday wandering around the tombs of ancient Kings; tombs that look a lot like the burial grounds in southern Ohio, but perhaps a little nicer, and a lot older. We saw one of the oldest astronomical observatories in Asia (which looked suspiciously like the kilns in East Liverpool). And we saw the forest where the first Kim was found in a gold chest with a rooster crowing over him.

Sunday, we went to Bulguk temple where we saw some the oldest pagodas in Korea and a gold anteater. After a quick look at the temple, we hiked the mountain to a grotto to a Buddha statue from the 700s – definitely the best-preserved thing we’ve seen in the country.

Though we had intended to stay until Monday afternoon, the trains were sold out. We had to buy tickets for the last train Sunday; we boarded the train at 10:00 and got home at 3:30 after a rather exciting cab ride from the station. Though we enjoyed the weekend, we were both very excited to be back at our own apartment.