Making Gangjeong and Trip to Gyeongju!

Making Gangjeong

A couple of weeks ago, our co worker Iris invited us to a monthly korean culture event that she helps to organise. It's held in a temple just outside Busan and is a free event for foreigners to come a learn a bit more about Korea! This months event was making Gangjeong, in preparation for Lunar New Year. It's a small rice sweet which reminded us a little of a crunchy rice krispie cake. We got to chat to lots of different people, expats and Koreans which was really nice. We had a great chat with a Korean school principle who gave us solid advice on how to have a long and prosperous life. His advice consisted of only three things; 1) Don't live in high rise apartments (for fear of earthquakes) 2) Don't live near the sea (for fear of earthquakes causing tsunamis) 3) Don't be shocked when earthquakes or any other natural disaster occur (for fear of spurring on a heart attack). We thanked him for his advice, smiling and nodding as he spoke. At the end we were given a box of our Korean sweets to take home which were gobbled up within the following week. Here are some piccies;

 Iris, our co-worker, making Gangjeong.

 Nina receiving wisdom.

Gyeongju!

Being Lunar New Year, we had a 5 day holiday starting the 21st January which we were very happy about. We took advantage of the time off to take a trip to Gyeongju, about an hour and a half north of Busan. Gyeongju was the capital city of the Shilla dynasty that lasted almost a thousand years up until its collapse in the late 10th century, so there were a lot of historical tourist sites for us to visit. On saturday, we took a couple of trains and arrived in Gyeongju around 1pm. Thankfully, we had done a bit more research into our hostel and it turned out to be much better than the dodgy one in Seoul. We dropped off our bags and headed out to find some bikes to rent as we had heard that this was the best way to see Gyeongju. On the way, we stumbled across a pet store selling puppies and Nina was introduced to what she thought was her soulmate, a sausage dog whom she named Sir Cliff after another of her soulmates Cliff Richard. It was love at first sight and she didn't stop making whiny dog noises for about 30 minutes. Here he is (against Nina's wishes, we didn't buy him):

 

Shortly after this brief love affair, we found a bike rental shop. The owner spoke not a word of English and Ed had a very brief miming conversation with him trying to figure out what time he wanted the bikes returned. Very luckily, a Korean couple popped their heads around the door and the wife spoke very good english and was able to act as a translator for us. Once they'd gone, Ed and the shop owner tried to organise payment. The owner requested a passport but Ed didn't really wanna give him his passport for fear that he may never see it again. Ed offered him his provisional drivers license which he looked at, and rejected, so Ed as a last ditch attempt offered the man his out of date student ID card. This was recieved with a smile as he noted down the student number and happily prepared the bikes for us.

We set off on our bikes safe in the knowledge that if anything were to happen, the Leeds Univeristy Union would be on our case. We biked for around 4 hours stopping at all the major tourist sites around the city. Gyeongju is famous for its mound tombs which are more or less the Korean version of the Egyption pyramids. Kings and royals were buried with eloborate jewels and finery and we visited a fantastic museum which showed a lot of amazing artefacts recovered from the tombs, some of which were 1500 years old! Here are some pictures from our bike trip around Gyeongju:

For dinner we found a unique little restaurant which was a Japanese and Korean fusion. Worn out and hungry from our bike ride we ordered an absolute feast!

 

Day 2 we took a bus to visit Bulguksa Temple which is UNESCO world heritage site.  Wikipedia does not lie when it says it's " a masterpiece of the golden age of Buddhist art in the Silla kingdom." It was a huge temple complex that is popular with foreigners and koreans alike. Unfortunately a lot of the temple was destroyed by Japanese invasions, however it has been redeveloped and rebuilt in the exact likeness of how it used to be. It was extremely grand and you could imagine Korean royalty walking around the grounds. Once we had looked around the temple complex, we thought we'd take a nice stroll up to the Seokguram grotto, another world heritage site. We were assured that this was a leisurely walk but it turned out to be a pretty hefty hour long hike up a mountain. It was completely worth it at the top as the grotto housed an ancient statue of buddha built in 742! We weren't allowed to take photos inside the grotto so we have copied a photo from the internet for you to see. Here are the pics:

(Taken from internet.)

On Monday it was Lunar New Year's Day, and the city of Gyeongju was spookily quiet and absolutely nothing was open. We searched for somewhere to have some breakfast but the only place which provided us with some refuge from the very cold weather was a pair of golden arches. McDonald's didn't seem to be affected by the Korean festivities so we begrudgingly went inside ordering some chips and a Bulgogi burger- more for interest rather than hunger. We decided to visit a folk village just outside of Gyeongju. The site had old authentic Korean houses made with thatched roofs and was still inhabited by some Korean families. Although the weather was absolutely freezing we wondered around and took some pictures before heading back to the station to go home. Here are a few snaps from the village ;

HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR!

x