西洋오랑캐

A funny thing happened to me on the way to Gyeong-ju (경주). After a day spent living it up in Busan, 진희 and I awoke to find that during the night the weather had gone from glorious to far less than glorious. The sky was an ugly gray and a steady rain was falling. We had already bought bus tickets to the city know as Gyeong-ju, so we decided to simply head out there and hope for the best.

Gyeong-ju is a city chock-full of Silla (신라) era historical junk, unfortunately (or fortunately depending on the weather) most of them are huge buildings or monuments located outside. Therefore a trip to Gyeong-ju could quickly start to suck much ass if the weather was not great, as it appeared to be that Saturday morning.

Anyhow 진희 and I showered up, returned our room key, and then headed off to the bus terminal. In the terminal we purchased some breakfast and canned coffee and sat down to wait for our bus to arrive. This is the point at which something completely insane happened to me. I sat in a chair by the area my bus was set to depart from and was attempting to open a sandwich which was oddly wrapped in plastic. Somewhere in the station was some slightly obese woman clad in Buddhist monk gear, with a visor approved by the 아줌마 Board of Fashion, and a “top pony tail” sprouting out of the top of the visor. She was walking through the subway station chanting something.

I paid this woman no mind, and had just opened the wrapper on my sandwich when something was slammed into the top of my skull. I looked up and there was the woman, clasping the object which she had just smacked me in the head with. It was a set of wooden Buddhist prayer beads, each the size of a small child’s fist. I was more surprised than anything else, though if I were to say it didn’t hurt at all I would be a liar.

I glared at the woman, and shouted a stream of Korean profanity at the woman which summed a security guard who was standing a few feet away. As the guard dragged this woman away she did that “You wanna go?” arms to the chest move to me. You know that move that white trash warriors on Jerry Springer are want to do before throwing chairs at people. At this point I kind of had to laugh, especially when two other people waiting for the bus looked over at me and then the woman, and then both did the universal sign for a nut-job (the single finger rotating about the ear).

With my morning skull crushing out of the way we got on the bus and headed off towards Gyeong-ju. Again the bus ride was fairly uneventful, mainly because I was unconscious most of the time as a result of blunt trauma to the head. After an hour or so we were there…in Gyeong-ju, and somehow the weather seemed to be alright. Sure the sky was a little overcast, but it actually looked like it was going to clear up. Boy was that a misconception!

From the express bus terminal the wife and I hopped on a local bus bound for Bulguksa (불국사 / 佛國寺).

Bulguksa is a large Silla era Buddhist temple, and is probably the most famous of all Buddhist temples in South Korea.

After a 50 minute or so bus ride we arrived at the temple, just in time for the rains to begin. At first the rain was not that bad, but as we wandered around the temple grounds the rains became increasingly heavier.

The temple, inspite of the less than ideal weather, was simply beautiful. The buildings, paintings, and stone work was all outstanding. At the temple we saw a large number of foreign tourists, who oddly enough were all senior citizens. I want to give mad props to those people, who were seriously trucking around in crappy weather, seeing the world. It was awesome!

So my wife and I checked out the grounds, took some photos and then decided that we would head to the nearby Seokkuram (석굴암) and check out an extremely famous piece of Korean Buddhist artwork.

As we headed toward the bus stop we first stopped at 아줌마’s cart to purchase some yellow garbage bags…or rather yellow rain coats in an effort to prevent our clothes from becoming even more saturated, but it was too little too late.

“Are your shoes wet?” 진희 asked.

“I don’t even know…probably.”

Anyhow I digress. We headed to the bus stop and got on the bus that would take us up the mountain to Seokkuram.

The bus started up the rain slicked mountain roads. Clearly the bus was in Korea. The bus driver floored it up the mountain, whipping around curves like it was a sports car.

At was at that point when a car coming down the mountain crossed over the yellow line and came inches from smashing into the side of the bus. The bus driver cracked the window open and cursed out the driver of the other vehicle. Everyone on the bus kind of held their breath recovering from the shock…everyone except 진희 who was calmly munching on Pringles.

“Why are we stopped?”

Near death experiences aside we arrived at the temple grounds, and after a brief mountain hike in driving rain we were at the statue…kind of.

The statue was located in a cave with a small building attached to the front. It was the main attraction of this area and everyone wanted to check it out. The only problem was, the small ante-room could only hold so many people.

So we waited in a line, in the rain, to see a statue. Anyhow I’d seen pictures of this venue in books, and somehow the statue seems much more impressive in photos than it does in person. In the photos the statue seems massive, but face to face in doesn’t seem that huge.

Anyhow we checked out 석굴암 and headed back to the bus stop in order to head down the mountain. The rain was still coming down in buckets, and by this point everything we had with us was completely drenched.

We decided that it would be in our best interest to head back to our hometown. So we went back to the express bus terminal, got some tickets, and headed back north. We were wet, but had a great time.

Again, for those of you that enjoy photographs of historical monuments and pictures of me standing with said buildings check out the complete set of these pictures here.