Now, without further ado, here's more Korea!
Our day started entirely too early (9am) considering we had gotten to bed so late the previous night. We took a bus to Busan Station (I believe), where we met up with her friend, Liz, so we could hop on the "Korail" train to Gyeongju. The train wasn't what I was expecting at all. Instead of a long, quick, electric model like I'm used to, it was this big, hulking, 4-car diesel monstrosity. However, it looked pretty similar to a Japanese train on the inside, and the ride was smooth.
Don't we look happy for being so tired?
It was about an hour and a half's ride to Bulguksa, where we were going to visit a big, famous temple. So we got off the train and started walking toward the temple. ...About 20 minutes into this, we discovered we were getting nowhere, so we hailed a taxi and were very glad we did, as it would've easily taken us another hour to reach our destination by foot!
Here I am at the beginning of our journey. You can definitely tell it's winter. It felt like it, too! Must've only been in the low to mid-40s, with drizzle and wind. Not a very good day to be outside.
This, obviously, would be the outside of the temple.
Ashley assures us this is a very popular picture spot, here in front of the arch. We just decided to go with it and let her snap this photo.
The underside of the eaves were painted with very intricate and brightly colored details. It must have taken an immense amount of time to do all that!
When you look through the hole in this statue at just the right angle, it looks like the Buddha from inside the hall is looking at you.
These are the stairs we had to climb to get to the other parts of the temple. The steps themselves were very short/shallow, too, which makes it very difficult for anyone whose feet are bigger than, say, a size 5 to climb up! (I even had some trouble and my feet are 7.5).
The view from the top of the stairs is nice, though. As you can see, there's a lot more of that painting going on in the eaves of that building, too.
I'm not really sure what purpose these stones served, but this entire section was covered with stacks of them. Some were topped with a won coin, too.
This was on the other side of the stone stacks. I'm not sure what it was used for, but I'm guessing there used to be statues there in that cordoned off area.
Ashley said it's good luck to rub the boar, so naturally I thought I'd give it a shot... while making the dumbest face possible. I apologize for that.
Since it was starting to rain harder and it was very cold, we left the temple and headed down to the bottom of the hill in search for some place to eat. Within just a few minutes, we happened upon a place serving bibimbap, which was good, seeing as that's what Ashley wanted us to try! This particular place was serving up the "dolsot" version (as noted in the wikipedia article).
The place itself was very tiny and seemed to be run by only 3 older ladies, but they were nice enough. It did feel a little odd, though, as after being there for about 10 minutes, the only two other tables of patrons left, so we were literally the only people in the restaurant.
As per Korean tradition, we started our meal with all kinds of side dishes--kimchi, some sort of marinated peppers, tofu, seaweed, a bunch of other stuff I don't know, and a kind of Korean pancake. It seems to be similar to Japan's "okonomiyaki", which is basically a thin batter cooked on a griddle with all kinds of vegetables and sometimes meat or fish mixed in. This particular one had octopus in it. Mmm~
There's Liz and Ashley! (As you can see, not a single other person in the place).
Isn't it nice occasionally seeing us without our jackets on? We promise we actually change what we wear underneath them--though sometimes it's hard to tell. (Also, I'd just like to note that I'm wearing a tank top and a long sleeve shirt underneath my sweater, and with my jacket, scarf and hat on, I was still cold!
It's already half gone, but here's the bibimbap. When they serve it in the pot, it's extremely hot. It comes with a raw egg cracked on top, and the pot is so hot that it instantly fries the egg as you stir it in with the rice. Also, if you don't stir it often enough, the rice will stick together on the bottom and get brown and crispy, so I had to eat it without taking a picture first. Sorry.
As you may have noticed, we have even more side dishes now--two soups have been added to the mix.
Once we had eaten our fill, we took another taxi to the nearby folk craft village to look for souvenirs. Even though it was a Saturday, there were hardly any people out, probably because the weather was so bad. Regardless, we all walked away with something new! I got a new little silk bag for my camera, Ashley bought some necklaces, Liz got a bracelet, and Cinnamon bought something for a friend.
We were pretty tired after that, so we took the bus back to Gyeongju station and made the hour and a half trip back to Busan. We had some time to kill before dinner, seeing as none of us were hungry yet, so we went to Centum City. It was a very nice, very new shopping area attached to the station. Apparently, Shinsegae, which is located there, is the largest department store in the world. And it was very busy!
While we were there, we went to a big book store looking for a CD for Cinnamon, but unfortunately, they were all sold out. Popular group! In the end, we left with nothing, and decided to finally go eat. For that, I'm pretty sure we went to Haeundae station.
This was a pretty nice place, and it was set up like a little village. There were all these different little houses with seating areas inside, and in the middle was the kitchen area, with all these people outside doing various things--washing dishes, cleaning grills, bringing food to and fro. On the menu this time was more bulgogi!
This time around, everyone got their very own tray of side dishes! And in case you were wondering, that bottle next to the grill doesn't contain alcohol, it contains barley water. That seems to be the norm when it comes to free beverages in Korea.
This particular type of grill seemed very strange to me. I can't fathom why you'd have the slits in the grill on the dome part, rather than on the bottom, where you'd think you would want to catch the grease/fat as it drips. Because of this design, every so often, a server would come and take the entire grill part away and exchange it for a new, clean one. Not exactly the most convenient method.
After dinner, we went back home, as we were all pretty tired from our long day. Up next is Nampo-dong and Haeundae/Gwangalli Beach (yes, beach)!
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