Anyway, this week Michelle and I got our ARC’s (Alien Residency Card)!
We are officially aliens! Trust me - you cannot live in Korea without this little baby. This meant that I could get a better bank account, pay my bills and my phone off, so generally some pretty useful stuff.
So on Sunday morning, bright and early at 8am, we set off to Gyeongju with 박 선생님and 윤 선생님. I don’t work with 윤 선생님, but he was going to be our guide and was a friend of the teacher at my school, 박 선생님 (박 = Park, as in his last name, and선생님 = teacher).
We started off going to Bulguksa Temple (불국사), which is kind of a big deal around these parts. As you can probably tell, I’ve been getting heavily into my Korean, so I can break down the name to explain its significance. So, ‘Bul (불)’ means Buddha, ‘guk (국)’ means country and ‘sa (사)’ means temple. So literally in English it means ‘Buddha’s Country Temple’. Buddhism ison a par with Christianity here as the biggest religion so it’s a huge spot for Buddhists. In fact its incredibly busy, hence the early start.
It was built 1500 years ago, but our guide told us that those pesky Jap’s messed it up a fairbut when they ruled Korea. Still, most of it is still in good nick. Having a Korean take us round was cool actually, because he told us all this stuff that we would have just never figured out.
First thing was that the wooden columns in Korea are actually convex (I think that’s the rightone?!) to make sure that the loads on them are diverted down effectively, hence why these 1500 year old bits of timber are still nailing their job.
Another cool thing was around each doorway. On the picture below you can see that there’s this bit of timber you need to step over to get through the doors. It seemed kind of awkward to me. I thought maybe it was for flood waters or something?! But no. Apparently it was incorporated in each doorway in Korean palaces and temples to keep ghosts out! Absolutely mental.
I forget the other interesting things he told us, probably because it was so damn early still. But here are a couple more pictures from 불국사….
Afterwards we met 박 선생님 again and he took us to see an ancient observatory and some tombs around the town. Oh, I should also say as well, Michelle and I were not allowed to pay for anything - it was all ‘taken care of’. We didn’t even get the chance to get our notes out, it was sneakily done before I even realised!
Here are a few pictures from the next few sights….
^Our two tour guides with Michelle^
^LOLZ^
After we saw all this, we were taken for lunch at this awesome little restaurant! Of course, we were not even given the option to pay, it was all done without us even realizing. It was a traditional place, where your shoes were off at the door, and there wasn’t a chair in the place. They actually prepare the meal in the kitchen on your table, and then bring it in. It was very cool. I think we must’ve had around thirty little dishes on the table, with a large portion of Bul-go-gi (불고기) in the centre. 불고기 is so delicious. It literally means ‘barbequed meat’, but it’s not. Its this fried beef in a sweet bbq style sauce. It’s so damn tasty. Here are a lovely little picture from the meal…
So, after this meal, we still weren’t done! We took off and went to the National Museum of Korea. It was alright, but after 3 hours of sight seeing and tucking into my fair share of 30 dishes, I wasn’t too fussed about some thousand year old gold earrings they recently dug up. They did have cool stone statues outside though. Oh, they also had some petro glyphs…
After this, we went home. It was a long day in the historical capital of Korea. Then came nap time.
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