This was one of those rare days we knew what we were doing in advance. Today was Buddha's birthday which is a national holiday. That means that George has a three day weekend. So today to celebrate Buddha's BD, we set off to visit our local temple, just a walk away from our flat.
Also spotted on our walk to the temple was this random shout out to Finland (which in Korean is pronounced Pinlandu).
As you can tell by all the squinting, it was a very sunny day, but as you can tell by the jeans, the weather was still pleasantly mild. The last photo was taken by a kind gentleman who offered to take it, I didn't even have to use the phrase taught to me by my phrase book! (REAL fans of this blog will recognise the reference!!)
Me surrounded by my blog readers.
I've gone a little overboard with decorating George's flat. HAHA JUST KIDDING, THIS IS THE TEMPLE.
After we left the prayer room, I sat outside to put my shoes back on and that's when I made a granny friend. She was very old and shrivelled, and refused to understand that I didn't speak any Korean. Throwing my only words around, such as "Hello" and pointing myself and saying "Finland!"she was considerably impressed and beckoned me to follow her (and ok, George too, but she was my friend first!). She led us to a big cafeteria, where the temple ladies were handing free lunches for members of the temple. We got a trayfull of delicious vegetarian stirfry, rice, bbq sauce, vinegary soup and seaweed soup. Natives successfully infiltrated!
Adorable kids.
Very pleased by our authentic cultural experience.
After the local temple, we decided to head to town because I faintly remembered reading a sign that there was another temple behind Tumuli park (check a few posts back to see Tumuli park). We had gone Buddha crazy, people!!
Nuns enjoying the free day off, despite recognising a different faith..!!
We got to town, and set off trying to find this fabled temple close to Tumuli park. Here's what we found:
A pillar erected in the honour of a dude who mourned his parents for three years next to their graves, impressing the king.
A very nice garden.
Tumuli park. Here George is making me laugh, how dare he?!?!
A wall of roses.
But no temple. Oh hey wait. Maybe it wasn't a temple. Maybe I got it mixed up and was thinking about this shrine. Yup. I definitely was. Well it didn't matter, the day was beautiful and this shrine was peaceful.
The shrine was full of tiny private rooms for meditating and prayer, but we just enjoyed a quiet sit down and a chance to not have to talk to each other all the time. We were on a roll and decided to continue walking.
_Very_ close by (like three minutes) was one of Gyeongju's biggest tourist sights: this tower. No one is 100% sure what the tower is for, but it's believed to have something to do with astronomy because it has 366 rocks, 52 something and 12 something or the other. Man, I really can't remember.
Little kings running.
Next to the tower was a big field full of families and tourists and couples enjoying the nice day, and flying kites. Suddenly, I was approached by four university (probably) student lads, holding a kite. "Do you know this?" they asked me. "To fly one? Yes!" I said (proud member of Kitten/Kite Club). "Then it's your's!" Waaah, how incredibly nice! I immediately set of flying the shit out of my new awesome peacock kite.
George was also allowed to try after he whined about it for long enough.
We had already previously decided that after sight seeing, we would go to town for dinner and to catch Great Gatsby. I was very keen to bring my new kite home for decorating the walls, but suddenly realised why I was gifted it in the first place: carrying it was a pain in the ass. So we paid the good deed forward and gave it to a family with two very appreciative kids.
Which I immediately regretted because I wanted to give it to these two bad asses posing by the entrance gate to the park. I strongly encourage you to click the picture to enlarge it, these two bad mofos look like they're in a middle of a photo shoot for their album cover.
George can only dream to reach those levels of cool, although he pulls off shades and standing around pretty well, too.
Dear Milla,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy reading your blog. On this entry I especially liked the photos of Korean children. I wish you would post more of those.
Love,
A devoted reader