December 28th - 30th
Gyeong-ju is the home of many older, historic sites, having once been the capital of the Silla kingdom. As such, the city has some truly beautiful places - the largest wooden temple in Korea, for example, was within walking distance of our hotel. There were also more than just a few burial mounds of kings and royalty of the distant past that dotted the landscape in various places. By far, my favorite location was Seokguram, home to a stone grotto containing a beautiful Buddha.
That being said, our trip to Gyeong-ju was surrounded with complications. We had to abandon our day-trip plans to a different city, one of Brendon's to-see locations, because the location was nigh impossible to travel to on a one-day schedule, despite its proximity. Our first night in Gyeong-ju, we voyaged out at 7 pm into a nearby restaurant-and-store area, and found the place that had been bustling in the afternoon to be a dark ghost-town after the setting of the sun. Our lack of knowledge about the layout of the city and the routes the bus system used had us backtracking often and, at times, with greater expense than we would have liked. I, at least, was beginning to reach the dreaded point where the phrase "yet another temple?" inevitably would come to mind when reaching a new "must see" site. On top of all of this was the wear of lengthy travel and required companionship; we were at the midpoint of our travels and we were beginning to tire.
We lucked out in other ways, however, most notably in our hotel. When we arrived at our hotel in Seoul, the Bali Tourist Hotel, several things began to worry us. The staff spoke little to no English, a surprising development at a hotel claiming to be a tourist local. The trappings in the room revealed, by their embroidering and labeling, that the hotel had changed management and names three times in the recent past. The bathrooms were encircled with glass rather than opaque walls, and only a small strip of this glass was frosted. In Glenn and Brendon's room, there wasn't even a door for the already-too-visible bathroom. Worst of all, we were told upon returning to the hotel after dinner on our first night that our rooms were being changed, though no reason was given for this change. One night later, a police officer in riot gear woke Brendon and Glenn with his pounding at the door, only to see foreigners in residence and leave. (I can't help but feel that the room change and the police visit were related.) The hotel was better than nothing, but I would not ever plan to stay there again.
This is all to say that, thankfully, our hotel in Gyeong-ju was the complete opposite of the Bali Tourist Hotel in practically every regard.
While we did see some interesting things while traveling in Gyeong-ju, the best part of my visit there was actually outside of the city. We took a bus from Gyeong-ju to Busan, as we were flying to our next stop. On the bus were two adorable little girls, who looked to be 6-year-old twins but were actually, we later found out, 2 years apart in age. Jennifer and Glenn were playing Mario Kart on their Nintendo DSes. (The DS is a portable gaming device that has wireless capability, allowing up to 4 people to play against each other providing they all have DSes and one has the actual game. Mario Kart is a racing game featuring characters from the Mario games of the 80s and 90s.)
These two girls watched the match between Jennifer and Glenn avidly from their seats in front of the gaming pair. At one point, one of the girls pointed to the free seat next to Jennifer and asked in beautiful English, "Can I sit here and watch?" Within 10 minutes, the pair of the girls were playing Mario Kart against each other, each being coached by Glenn and Jennifer. As they played, the astounding level of their English was revealed. For example, the younger called out to her sister at one point in the midst of a game, saying, "I'm catching uuuup!" Later, this same child asked us where we were going to go and, when she found out our flight destinations were the same, she asked us what time our flight was. We were heading to the airport really early - we would arrive at 3 when our flight was at 7. When she heard the time of our flight, she said, "What will you DO for four hours?" with the perfect inflection of a 6 year old who cannot possibly understand those older than her.
We arrived at the airport and said our goodbyes to the girls, still rather overcome by these children's level of English. We checked in to our flights and settled down in the airport lobby, seeing no need to go through security quite yet. As we were sitting, the girls and their mother came around and settled down with us. The mother disappeared for a couple of minutes, leaving me to believe that we were truly being regaled into babysitters, when she suddenly returned with a tray pilled with donuts for us all to eat. (This brought about a wonderful moment where the younger and the older were comparing, in English, who had eaten more donuts. Upon hearing the totals and her sister's higher number, the younger responded with, "Piggy piggy.") A few hours of playing later, the girls and their mother left for their flight, leaving us exhausted but happy. Not much later, we ourselves were off to our final destination in Korea: Jeju Island.
This is a woeful account of the things we saw while we were visiting Gyeong-ju - I would recommend my facebook photo albums to any who wish to see more of the city. Still, Gyeong-ju leaves me with the impression of being a tourist city, and it knows the fact entirely too well. It left me somewhat unsatisfied.
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