Day 4 Korea
Up early to get the KTX (bullet train!) from Seoul to Gyeongju for tonight. The KTX is great. Really nice modern train that goes FAST! The station is so easy to navigate as well. Everything in English and Korean.
I got blood sausage noodle for breakfast. Not quite what I was expecting but was tasty. I was kind of expecting stir fried noodles with vegetables and some blood sausage mixed in. No. It's an actual blood sausage where glass noodles are part of the sausage itself. Delicious but a strange texture with the noodles in there.
Anyway. Got on the train and enjoyed my 2 hour trip. Arrived at Simgeyongju station then got bus to downtown Gyeongju and tracked down my hostel.
The hostel was nice. Coolzaam Hostel. Run by a Korean lady who spent 6 months in Brisbane after she left school before coming home to get married and whatnot. Nice lady and I recommend the place if hostels are your thing. Beds were good, air conditioning good, modern bathroom and good shower.
Gyeongju is supposed to be a nice little town with a lot of Korean history to look at so I was sure it was going to be interesting.
I started by heading for some tombs in a park not far from the hostel. On the way I ran across this nice big bell in a pagoda thing. This was the Silla Big Bell which is a reproduction of National Treasure #29 - the The Sacred Bell of Great King Seongdeok. The locals liked the cut of the Great King's jib so they voted to get this reproduction made. Alas I was not allowed to hit the bell :(
The park was across the road from the bell. It's a very nice park and there were lots of people there. A bunch of Koreans in costumes walking around doing photo shoots with all the nice flowering trees. How they can stand walking around in those polyester outfits I have no idea. The tombs themselves were giant mounds in the park. There's a burial chamber at or just below ground level then they piled dirt on top to make a burial mound. Interesting for a couple of minutes but then time to go.
Next up was the Cheomseongdae observatory that is billed as the oldest astronomical observatory in east Asia. This should be interesting!
At first I thought it might be a miniature model but the observatory was a brick building that looked like a milk dud and was 9 metres high. Nobody was allowed in it of course. I'd be interested to know what they found the extra 9 metres gave them when looking at things hundreds of millions of light years away. Probably just looking down at good looking women walking past.
The observatory seemed to be in a big botanical garden of some sort so I wandered through there on the way to my next stop. Lots of people walking around, taking photos with flowers and riding electric scooters they hired from the entrance of the park.
The Museum was next on my agenda. It was a pretty small museum but they had a some interesting stuff. Some of the exhibits were in Korean only so it was difficult to tell what was going on. I'm not much of a museum go-er anyway so it wasn't a big deal. I just like to walk through and see some interesting looking things.
I must say though that after visiting London last year and seeing the museums they have most of the others I've seen have sort of paled in comparison. Nothing like thousands of years of conquering and stealing the rest of world's shit to land you with a good collection.
Got soaked by some rain on the way back to the hostel. It was a nice change from being soaked by sweat due to the humidity.
I had a quick walk through the market across the road from the hostel. Was fantastic seeing all the fruit and veg available after struggling to get much in Mongolia. They had a bunch of restaurants setup in the market which were a buffet. A bunch of stuff in bowls and you'd sit at the bench and help yourself. I would have liked to have tried it but there was _nobody_ sitting at any of them so I wasn't too confident in the freshness of the food.
By the time I got back to the hostel the dorm room I was staying in had filled up. There was a Korean, a Canadian (Korean heritage) and Spanish guy. The spaniard stank of sweat and BO but seemed quite happy to sit there in his own filth stinking out the room. I dunno how he did it. I hate smelling bad. I try to be very conscious of that and shower regularly when I'm doing this touristy stuff.
There wasn't a lot happening in town when I went out for dinner later. Gyeongju is not a big place. Eventually I found somewhere I liked the look of and wandered in. It seemed to be of great amusement to the staff that a while feller walked in and tried to order dinner. The teenagers behind the counter just cracked up. Eventually the only girl there took pity on me and took my order.
Korean menu so I had no idea what anything was. Just pointed at the picture. I got cold noodles with a red sauce and some fruit slices through it. Not what I was expecting but it was really tasty. A little spicy, a little sweet. And I got some dumplings which were really excellent.
After dinner I headed down to some museum that got a lot of good reviews. The hostel lady assured me it was best to visit at night. And I can see why.
It's basically 3 pagodas on a small man-made lake with a bunch of lights in the surrounding area so the pagodas are all lit up. There was a small walkway around the lake as well with a bunch of trees and park benches in there for canoodling.
I finally got there on a bus that took forever to arrive and I think I was there with 90% of Gyeongju! It was a steady procession of people buying tickets, taking photos and walking around the park. It was still raining but it was pleasant enough. Calling it a museum was extremely generous though. There was a small exhibit in the central pagoda that talked a bit about the site but that was only about 5 or 10 minutes worth of stuff. Grand plans for the future I guess.
Back to the hostel after that. The bed was long enough for me to stretch out (praise jebus) and it had a privacy curtain which is always nice so I ended up having a pretty good night's sleep.
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