Day 83 – Gyeongju

Today we woke up and had cereal for breakfast after years. It’s super easy to pack in the bag and cheap. I recommend it for anyone who is looking to save a few WON in Korea.

After breakfast we walked down the road to the bus stop to catch the number 10 bus to Bulguksa Temple. The bus took around 40 minutes and drove through the Bomun Tourist Complex area, which was full of cool buildings. If we had more time we would definitely have gotten off the bus and spent an entire day in the area.

After getting to the Bulguksa Temple stop, we went to the tourist centre to ask about Bus number 12 which would take us to the Seokgulam Grotto. They told us to cross the road and wait. Once we got there we thought we just missed the 1:05pm bus, so we were going to get on the 3:00pm bus after checking out the Bulguksa Temple first.

Bulguksa Temple

We walked up towards the Bulguksa Temple (tickets cost 5,000 WON / $6.12 AUD per person). The temple was built in ancient times (528 AD), and then burnt down by the Japanese. The majority of the buildings were rebuilt in the 17th century and some as late as 1972. The temple has a base built with stones, which I haven’t seen before. The stone structure is the only parts that are original.

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There are several buildings in the complex and each has explanations of what they are and when they were rebuilt. Mysteriously to the side, there is a new building with no sign-age. We walked inside to find out it was a museum. It was full of images and artefacts from the temple complex. In the museum, there was an image of a grotto, which we had seen a video of at both the Korean National Museum in Seoul (Day 71) and the Gyeongju National Museum (Day 82) . We were excited and hoping that Bus 12 would be taking us there (Yes, we didn’t know what the Grotto was. We were just going due to the recommendation from the host at Apple Motel).

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At around 2:45pm we started making our way back to the bus stop and we were there 5 minutes before we thought the bus was due to come.

Seokgulam Grotto

After a while we realised that we are looking at the return times for the bus, instead of the uphill times. GAHHH! So we had to wait until 3:40pm to go up. We decided to the eat lunch we had bought from the supermarket earlier that day.

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Once the bus came, it took around 20 minutes to go to the Grotto. The bus driver told us the last bus would leave at 5.20 pm so we had a deadline to reach, otherwise we would have to walk around 2 hours down the hill, which was really foggy and cold now.

We walked around 10 minutes down a curvy road and could finally see the Grotto. After ascending a few stairs we could see the Grotto. Unfortunately there was glass barrier blocking us from entering inside to the main chamber. 

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The Grotto was constructed in 751 and is incorporated into a stone cave. The wooden structure was built relatively recently to protect the grotto from the elements. After checking out what we could in the Grotto we left as there was nothing else to see. We were done in around 30 minutes, and had to wait for the return bus. To be honest, since the Grotto was behind a glass barrier, it was a little disappointing.

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On the way back we passed the Donggung Palace and Wolji Pond which are meant to be beautiful at night time, but we were just too tired to check it out. So we got off the bus at a night market instead. The market was very quite and mainly full of clothing and fresh meat. We ended up buying a chicken stuffed with rice which was nice, but the image showed 3 pieces for 3,000 WON / $3.67 AUD but we only got 1 piece of chicken. Disappointing.

We walked back home and watched the end of Ghost in a Shell on TV (on the only English channel we could find) as we had dinner in our pink motel room.