Day 6 Korea
Today is my last full day in Korea. My goal today was to visit one more temple and hope it wasn't boring. I'm a bit templed out but still on the temple bandwagon from the really nice one in Gyeongju. This one was supposed to be a bit different though in that it is one of the few Buddhist temples that is built on the ocean. Thinking about it the only ones I've ever been to have either been in cities or in the mountains. So surely this one will be amazing and different right? Please FSM make it amazing and different.
And you know what? It was actually pretty nice. It was a different enough setting that I'm glad I went and saw it.
It was about a 30 minute bus ride then a 15 minute walk to get there. It started to absolutely piss down rain while I was on the bus and it did not let up for quite a while so my walk down to the temple was pretty soggy. The sun was out when I left so I didn't take my umbrella with me.
Oh well. The vendors out front were making a killing with umbrella sales.
I grabbed one of those seeded donuts for a sneaky breakfast on the way down to the temple. It was as tasty as the first one I had though it was a fair bit soggier.
In an unusual turn of events for temples you actually start out at the top for this one. You have to work down a beautiful twisting stone staircase to get to the cove the temple is built in. There are some speakers playing some monks chanting though I'm not sure if it was a soundtrack or if they were just playing the chanting that was actually happening in the temple at the time.
At the bottom of the stairs you walk over a nice little bridge and up a small flight of stairs to the temple buildings. It's quite a beautiful place with the rocks, the sounds of the waves and the wind. When I finally got to the bottom it stopped raining so I'd clearly made it into Buddha's protective bubble. Clearly he saw my purity of soul and decided to reward me with a free lunch!
I'm not sure why but they were giving out free lunches to everyone who wanted one. The Buddhist spirit of generosity? Perhaps. I suspect there's a financial incentive. Maybe they needed a tax break so they bought some food and started giving it away.
Anyway. The food was simple but hearty and nice. Letting the ingredients speak for themselves. It was a vegetable soup and a basic vegetarian bibimbap.
There was a service of some variety happening while I was there. This is actually a practicing temple rather than a tourist exhibit so all these people were there to actually do whatever it is Buddhists do. Lots of chanting by the sounds of it.
After wandering around for a while I found a track out the back of the temple that led to some sort of fisheries museum. So I followed the track and checked out the museum. It was sort of a cross between and aquarium and a museum. It wasn't a great museum but they had some interesting exhibits from what I could tell. There was only sporadic English throughout the place so a lot of stuff I couldn't really tell what they were saying.
I'd say the highlight for me was the sardine projection. You could stand in the centre of this box and the thing would project a school of sardines around you and you could move around and influence where the fish would go. Childish but fun. Reminds me of Amy dancing with Baby Groot at the Marvel exhibit at the Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art just because I started my trip.
There was also a big ship out the back they used as an exhibition hall that had a video game on the bridge (is that what you call it on a ship?). You had to steer a ship out of port without crashing it. Looked like fun but these bastard kids were hogging it. Little shits. Give the adults a turn! I would have been far better at it than them.
After that I went back to the hostel, bought a couple of local beers from the 7-11, did some laundry and tried to plan out my first couple of days in Japan and catch up on some blogging.
When I went out for my dinner wander I headed in the direction of some craft beer. I stumbled across a Brewdog pub in the back alleys of the eating area and stopped in for (accidentally) a very expensive beer. It was an imperial stout and it was really tasty but I didn't really mean to spend that much. Woops.
On the way back I ended up at a place that looked like it only served bibimbap. One of those cheap places you expect to see in Asia that look a bit dodgy but actually serve really nice food.
Early start in the morning so early to sleep. Or not. 2 chicks joined our dorm room at about 11pm and were annoyingly noisy for a while. I don't think I got more than 3 or 4 hours sleep. The downside of hostels.
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