The Korean adventure starts in Gyeongju

The next destination on our Odyssey was South Korea. We arrived at Incheon airport, where we jumped on a bus, bound for Gangnam (yes, Gangnam as in Gangnam style), where where we were staying at Andi and Vijola's place. Andi is an ex-colleague of mine from my Nokia days in Ulm - great to see him again after all these years. After having dinner at their place, we jumped on a train, destination Gyeongju.

Gyeongju was the capital of the Silla kingdom for nearly 1000 years, until 935 AD. Actually, during its heyday, Gyeongju was actually the 4th biggest city in the world! We checked into our guesthouse, a traditional Hanok house (as you can see from the photo, traditional Korean houses are not dimensioned for me...). After getting settled, we headed off in search for dinner. It was getting a bit late, so it turned out to be a nearly insurmountable task, but we eventually found a place still serving food. And beer, thankfully.

The next day, we got up bright and early, and headed off to explore the town. We decided to start off with the most famous site in town, Bulguksa temple. Dating back to 528, this temple was the most important one in Korea back during the Silla period, and it's still considered one of the main touristy sites in Korea. The setting is certainly great, located as it is on the slopes of Mount Toham.

The temple is certainly a beautiful place, UNESCO world heritage site and all, but it still managed to leave me underwhelmed. I just think there are more beautiful temples in for example Kyoto. The atmosphere is also ruined by the hordes of tourists - most of them seemingly more interested in taking selfies than the temple itself (I didn't have to stay for a long time in Korea until I came to the conclusion that Koreans are the most selfie-obsessed people on planet earth, no question about it!). Having said that, it's an interesting place to visit.

After an average lunch not far from the temple (still haven't made up my mind about what I think about Korean food - it's very spicy, and kind of unusual, as most of the stuff they eat in Korea seems to be fermented - kind of an acquired taste), we jumped on the bus and headed back towards the town centre. We got off by Anapji pond, another major site in Gyeongju. This was the site of the Donggung Palace, of which not much remains today. It's a pretty nice place to walk around, with some pretty pavilions nicely located by the pond.

We were also treated to the sight of Korean ladies in traditional dress. Me and Andi immediately jumped at the occasion to pose with the ladies, thinking that it might be the one and only opportunity to immortalize ourselves with traditionally dressed Korean ladies (how wrong we turned out to be!).




Anyway, the tourist snaps done and dusted, we carried on to a park across the road from the pond, which houses several Silla-period burial tombs. The tombs take the form of small grass-covered hills. We also checked out the rather interesting Cheomseongdae observatory - actually the oldest astronomical observatory in Asia.

The climax of a wonderful day was no doubt the photo we posed for with a bunch of Koreans dressed in historic dress. All very Korean, I reckon!

And then, 'twas time for us to catch our bus to Jeonju, where we were continuing our Korean adventure. Andi and Vijola had to head back to Seoul, as Andi had to be back at the office bright 'n early Monday morning...