Yesterday I had most of the day off in Gyeongju, South Korea. I wanted to do something cultural other than eating. On a map of Gyongju it listed some of the themed tour programs such as exploring cultural heritage, a cultural tour of Gyeonju, an exploration of Korean traditions, and shooting real bullets.
Many of the monuments in Gyeongju were built during the Silla Dynasty between 57 BC and 935 AD. Silla is pronounced like the woman’s name, Sheila. I think Australians would get a kick out of the description of another one of their tours which is described as a tour of Silla in the moonlight.
I went on a city bus tour of this “world cultural heritage city with its thousands of years of history and traditions.” I wasn’t as boring as it sounds.
The bus tour was all in Korean but that was okay. The first stop was the Poseokjeong Site. It is described as a Royal pleasure ground where the kings and nobles floated drinking cups and composed poetry. My kind of place. According to historical records, it is also a site where a unicorn flew down and danced before an egg. The egg later hatched a baby boy whom soon became king. I’m not making this stuff up.
Stop two was Cheonmachong, royal burial mounds with an excavated tomb. During the excavation of the kings burial chamber a lightning bolt came close to striking the worker and scared him off.
The third stop was Cheomseongdae, the oldest astral observatory in Asia, and then my favourite, lunch.
Lunch was a Korean buffet with more fruits and vegetables than all of Tulsa. It’s shocking how healthy Koreans are. I ate lunch with a Korean man and his wife who were on the tour. Earlier he remarked that I look like a famous Russian wrestler. Too funny. I was going to tell him that sometimes I feel like Mickey Rourke’s character in the film The Wrester, “I’m just a broken down piece of meat” but I did not think this would translate well. He asked me how old I was and if I was single. I told him that I was thirty-nine and that I was single. He said I missed my chance to get married. Just kidding, he said. Funny guy.
Speaking of funny Korean guys, last week I had lunch with one of my hotel contacts. During desert he had an odd look on his face as I ate some black forest cake and he asked, “Do you like cake?” I said I did. “Korean men don’t eat cake.” More for me!
After the tour's lunch we visited Seokguram, a Buddhist temple on the top of mountain and afterwards Bulguksa Temple, a royal palace with numerous Buddhist temples. All of the sites are on ancient grounds but are only a few hundred years old. The buildings would be a lot older and the culture would be more preserved if the Japanese had not come in and destroyed every single building in site and killed all of their animals.
I am staying in the Gyeongju Hilton. The view from my balcony is of a man-made lake with odd-looking swan tourist boats. Across from the corner of the lake is what looks like Disneyland. If I had more time here I would probably rent an ATV or maybe race some remote control cars or helicopters.
