27/11

First day of tour :D! First stop was Hahoemaeul or Hahoe Village in Andong, which was an hour and fourty minutes drive from Sangju. The village was well maintained and was still very traditional looking, the houses with their courtyards, traditional style roofing, and veggie patches. Kinda like what you see in the movies. Some of the houses were already converted into restaurants but a few still had occupants. And almost every restaurant salted mackerel on the menu, and it turns out that that was one of the specialities of Andong. There were also tourist stalls selling souvenirs and the one that caught my eye was the masks on sale. They were apparently used in the old days for plays that poked fun at the upper class Koreans, the Yangban. Another tip we learnt while we were there – tie up your cabbages if you want to protect them from frost :P!

Lunch was a very ginseng-ey affair. We had Samgyetang which everyone agreed was lovely indeed. Andong is famous for its Korean ginseng as well, and it’s the first time I’ve tried fresh ginseng and I must say it’s loads nicer than the dried ones we usually get back home. One of the side dishes they had also was deep fried ginseng coated in batter and drizzled with a little honey. Ingenious! (This is the deep fried battered ginseng which mum said looked just like prawns LOL!)

Then onto Sosuseowon (old name: Dosanseowon Confucian academy) that was founded by the scholar Yi Huang (whose face is on the 1000 Won note). The old school is still preserved amazingly well and it looked really a lot like a collection of little houses to me somehow, with the director’s office and also that of the other teachers. And there were student quarters as well. The latter don’t look extremely comfy to me. In fact, I can just imagine people getting frozen in them during winter! The large empty lecture hall was still standing as well. Everything appeared to be well planned, the way everything was built. The teachers’ offices were built on slightly lower ground than the director’s, and the students’ dorm being the lowest of all, as a sign of respect. The grounds were also still very well tended to, with lots of shrubs and trees, which makes it a pity that it’s winter right now, because the place would be so much prettier if it were spring or summer! There was a museum next to the academy as well, containing the books, grade records and so on of the students from long ago. Looking at the amount of stuff the students had to cover in a span of two years… makes me glad I’m not from that era because my brain wouldn’t have the capacity for so much information in such a short time!

Afterwards, it was off to Punggi where loads of ginseng is grown. We stopped by one of the Korean ginseng markets, and inside, there was nothing else being sold except ginseng. In all forms. Powdered, dried, fresh, candied, made into biscuits, tea, candy, jelly… Looking down the little narrow pathway in between the stalls on both sides, it looked just like there were two narrow light brown strips adorning the sides, where the fresh ginseng was placed in baskets. Seeing such a vast amount of ginseng is just overwhelming! (My cousin is the little boy in the red jacket, and the little boy next to him is Aunt J's little cousin. That one is a darling, though a very naughty one!)

We were still full from lunch and so managed to convince Aunt J’s dad that we needed no dinner. We hadn’t realised it would be the last time we would be seeing that time, and we only realised that later when he turned up at the hotel with a big basket of persimmons and apples and pears and mandarins! Aunt J’s parents were worried that we would get hungry in the middle of the night and wanted to make sure we would be ok, and also to say goodbye to us. They are really model hosts! It was a bit sad that grandma and grandpa were already in bed by then.

28/11

Drove all the way up to Gyeongju, and checked into Hotel Hyundai there. I’m still sharing the room with Aunt M and our room has the most stunning view of Bomun Lake! We were right next to it!

Gyeongju was a two hour drive from Sangju and as we were entering the city we passed by some mountains where there were still lots of old Buddhist temples and where statues of Buddha were still in abundance. I think it was the Namsan that we saw and apparently it’s now made into a World Heritage site.

The first place we visited in Gyeongju was the Gyeongju National Musuem. It was a really big place, with huge grounds, where some of the excavated Buddha statues were place. We dropped by the archaeology hall and there was kept lots of pottery, crowns, armoury, carvings and more Buddhist artefacts, mostly from the Silla period. There was also a big stone slab covered with prehistoric carvings of shamans, pigs, hunters, whales, and so on. Too bad that flash photography wasn’t allowed though. The other hall which we dropped by had a Chinese name to it which I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean, but literally translated word for word, it would be ‘Think people, Think colours’. It was more of a contemporary art gallery. The paintings were really good, I’ve no idea what the abstract pieces were about, but the drawings that featured flowers and also of some Buddhas covered in snow were pretty good. Aunt M and I both thought one of the latter was a photo at first! Outside the halls, in the museum grounds, was King Seongdeok’s bell. It was huge and rather than striking it, there was a recording of the sound it would have made had it been struck that was played at noon.

Next place we visited was the Bulguksa temple. The temple site was very expansive, and there were numerous ‘temples’ each dedicated to a different Buddha. Some of the wooden buildings had actually been rebuilt after the Japanese invasion during the 1500s, but the stone structures had been intact since the 500s. The grounds were very well landscaped as well, with ponds and lots of trees around. The Japanese maple, or at least that’s what Aunt M calls them, made the whole place all the more beautiful which would otherwise be rather bare, with just the skeleton like branches of naked trees and perhaps the occasional evergreen. The other beauty of note was the entrance in the big surrounding wall which was painted with lots of fine details, mostly in shades of green and blue. Behind one temple there was a small area where little pyramids of stones were laid there by visitors. Apparently if you add a stone to an exiting pyramid, or made a new one and made a wish, and it didn't collapse or drop off, your wish would come true. ^_^ No harm trying I thought, and I'm not sure if it counts as cheating, but I used a really really tiny piece and plonked it right on top a huge flat one LOL! (Japanese maple trees line the side of the walking path, located in the temple gardens)

After that it was a short drive up the hill to Seokguram Grotto, and then a short walk along a winding road and a short climb up some stairs to reach the shrine carved into the stone cave which houses the single large stone statue of Buddha, and also that of two fearsome looking guardians and of other little guardian deities adorning the side walls. The floor was also carved with pictures of dainty little flowers so that it appears as though the floor was tiled. The grotto was impressive to say the least, but even more impressive I think would be the people who had the stamina and determination to built it in the first place! I doubt the walkway and roads were there when the carving took place, and crawling all the way up the hill is no mean feat! The view from up there was just breathtaking. Looking out one could see the sea, and when we were there, it was starting to get pretty dark and we could see the boats out at sea fishing for squids, their lights bobbing far out at sea.