I took the bus and met two coworkers there in the evening, in time for a night tour. For the first part we had one driver who was a biker touring South Korea and decided to stay in Gyeongju for a little while to work for the guy who owned the guest house we stayed at.
The pool is sort of an odd shape. I found out later that it was made to be a map/representation of their portion of the world. The shape of the edge of the pool is supposed to be China with a peninsula that represents Korea. There is also a rather large island that represents Japan.
We walked through the buildings and around the pool before setting off to our next location.
This location was an old hunting lodge for the king where there was this cool pond called Seolchulji. It was the location of a folk tale, which I will give an approximate retelling of. The king and his people were out at this lodge and a talking crow and a talking fox came up to him and said to follow them. He did and so he and his party were led to an old person (I can't remember if it was a man or a woman) but basically this person gave them an envelope/letter. The king was told that if you open the letter, two people will die. If you leave the letter closed, one person will die. After much debate they made the decision to open the letter, which said to shoot the chest behind them. The king did and they found that inside were two assassins, now dead, who had been attempting to murder the king.
This was a pretty cool location. It was really far off of the beaten path and it had an isolated vibe to it which was probably only enhanced by the fact that it was dark. Maybe it was the dark and maybe it was the folk tale we had just been told but the whole thing had this really cool, deserted, haunted ghost town (swamp) kind of aura to it that I loved.
There was a massive population of bullfrogs if the noise was anything to judge by. It was in fact the first time my friend had ever heard bullfrogs because she's lived most of her life in California and apparently the frog population there isn't large.
The fourth location was a pretty famous landmark from what I understand. It's a rather squat tower that looks a little like a bowling pin with the top broken off of it and is more that a little reminiscent of a brick pizza oven. It is believed that this structure was an early astronomy tower. Because they are historians whose professional lives are dedicated to this kind of thing, I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, but honestly it didn't look functional for anything let alone an astronomy tower.
I can only assume that it was roofless because the only opening was one small window that seemed way too high to regularly get to comfortably. It just really made me think of a tower for Rapunzel to be locked in, unless there is a secret tunnel entrance somewhere. Regardless, it's still a pretty cool remain of a distant time and the mystery makes the creative story explanation part of my brain excited. I kind of want there to be a secret tunnel entrance though.
We stopped back at the guest house to switch drivers to the owner of the hostel who drove us to the beach. He seemed to take delight in driving like a crazy person insisting it was only because he knew the place so well and that it is not a crowded drive. I personally just think he liked to hear all the reactions. There was some definitely shrieking from a few of the less composed members of our group. The beach was pretty cool. It was rocky but the sound of the ocean was really nice. We had some snacks and failed to light a lantern but it was an enjoyable way to end the evening.
The next morning I set off with one of my friends to visit the Gyeongju National Museum. Gyeongju is actually a really historically significant city in Korean history. A little background: the most recent dynasty/last monarchy in Korea was the Joseon (조선)Dynasty. The one previous so that was called the Silla (신라)Dynasty. Gyeongju was the capital city of the Silla Dynasty.
This museum was pretty incredible. There were several different buildings that held old jewelry, old pottery, even some more ancient bronze and stone age artifacts. Unsurprisingly there was a huge focus on the Silla Dynasty.
One of the interesting bits of topography in the area are these rather giant hills. These are actually burial mounds for a bunch of dead kings which is pretty crazy considering the size of some of them. They look a little like small mountains in certain areas. In the museum there was one segment which as far as I could tell was dedicated to demonstrating the burial process and hill building.
There was one building with a whole bunch of ancient clothing and jewelry that had been buried with the kings and their households. They had quite the obvious love of gold jewelry. It was in a style that I hadn't really seen anywhere before too. There was a trend of long thin pieces of gold that had been flattened to act as the base with smaller bits of shaped gold or precious rocks dangling from it. It was a very distinct style and all the royal jewelry looked rather heavy and uncomfortable to be honest.
There was a large collection of Buddhist art and an entire building dedicated to the moon pond that we had gone to see the night before. There was a small scale recreation of what it would have looked like, videos of the restoration and excavation, as well as a lot of artifacts, even a small canoe-like boat that had been discovered in the remains. It looked like there might be a plan to rebuild the rest of (or at least more of) the moon pond buildings.
It was in a beautiful area.
After lunch, and some waiting at bus stops, we made our way to the Bulguksa Temple (불국사). It was located at the top of the hill and unfortunately, parts of it were under construction while we were there. Everything was picturesque and beautiful (except for a few parts where the construction sites were peeking out behind gates and walls hundreds of years old. There were also parts of the temple that remained in use as spaces of worship and photos were prohibited in these areas, although I certainly saw a lot of tourists taking pictures there anyway. It was actually really difficult to take photos that did the temple justice because there were so many people posing for pictures. I don't mind having people in my photos unlike the friend I went with, but having picture after picture of tourists posing in front of buildings for their own photos was not exactly what I was looking for in my photos. In any case, there was a well of mountain water for use as a water fountain, which was very refreshing in the hot, hot, humid sun, especially after we had been walking up all the steps of the temple. It is worth mentioning that these steps were in general super large and steep steps that made my friend who has a phobia of heights extremely uncomfortable and made a lot of the tourists visibly struggle with getting down.
After the temple, we decided to take a taxi back to the bus station because we yet again had trouble with the buses. The trouble wasn't that we couldn't figure out how to use them because I can muddle through and my friend is fluent. Rather our trouble was that the buses didn't seem to be coming to our stop. It really made me appreciate the efficiency of the subways in Seoul and the frequency of the buses here as well.
(the bus stop)
We got on the train and took it to our next location which was Busan (부산). We got off at the station in Bujeon (부전) and took the little baby subway system that is Busan's subway to where we'd be staying the night.
When I was here I really felt like I was able to grasp the beauty of traditional architecture. All of the fortresses, palaces, and temples are built with beautiful lines, based in symmetry which makes for gorgeous aesthetic and for perfect wind flow to control the temperature. The roofing was fit together so well that it didn't require any bolts to hold it in place. The clay slabs and tiles were simply built to stay stuck together, even well enough to survive hundreds of years and several invasions and wars. Many of the old buildings I have visited have been fixed up or repainted but there have also been a large number that haven't simply because they were built so well that they have lasted this long even with their original paint.
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