Adventures

I have not been idle. I have been out scouring the countryside for adventure and pockets of fresh air and greenness. Now it's time to catch up on my trip log.

At the weekend of the autumnal equinox (that's Sept. 22-23 for all you who are neither pagans nor amateur astronomers), I went to Gyeongju, which is the ancient capital of Korea, seat of the Silla dynasty for a millenium. The night before I had lain awake sweating, so it was in shorts and sandals that I set out on my trip. Only my intense backcountry training and peerless intuition prompted me to bring a sweatshirt. The bus wound into the mountains, away from sunny fields, through patchy clouds and finally into a cool, fine rain. I put on my sweatshirt and dismounted.


Mist clinging to every surface of my body, I got directions for the bus to my youth hostel. Another half an hour or more of winding roads, this time through the town, around a lake, and finally to the gates of a temple, where the bus driver told me to get out. Bulgoksa temple, my first in Korea, was a large, beautiful complex with many famous statues. Korean temples have more colorful painting in the eves than what I have seen in Japan or China.


Walking around the temple, I breathed, smelling the trees and feeling at home. I keep thinking of my grandmother's garden when I was a child, for no reason I can explain, save perhaps the juxtaposition of Japanese maple and slate. But no, I think it was more the overall atmosphere of peacefulness and the sense of being at home and in the presence of elders that comforted me in a similar way.

My peaceful mood left me at the temple gates, however. That night (after a friendly Korean family dropped me at my youth hostel nearby) I wandered through a spookily abandoned ghost town of empty hostels and darkened restaurants looking for somewhere to eat. I seem to have a knack for choosing vacation destinations at exactly the moment no one else does. This can give you the eerie feeling that you are lacking some essential information; it's quite possible you've missed the beginning of the apocalypse and everyone else is home glued to their TVs. Gyeongju's tourist village right before Korean Thanksgiving (for indeed, that's what it was) brought to mind other times I have been alone, cold and spooked out: in a remote town in northern Greece; on a peninsula in the Japan Sea.

I reached the edge of the tourist complex and, seeing signs of life at a gas station across the main road, went to ask for help. The station was shut for the night already, and it was clear there would be nothing else for miles around. Two young men were closing up shop, taking out the garbage from the go-cart track next door. I approached them, umbrella bucking in the wind, and asked if they spoke English. "A little," and a hesitant smile. I explained that I needed food, that the restaurants in the town were all closed. Did they know where I could get some?

"You. Wait. Five minutes." The young man bounded down some stairs and out of sight. I sat down on a curb to wait, gazing out over the fields to the hills in the distance.


Five minutes later, he was back carrying a plastic grocery bag full to bursting with cookies, soda, chocolate, and ice cream. I protested; wasn't he planning to eat this himself? He said he would eat at home. Stammering thanks, I accepted the bag. He disappeared back down the stairs. I started in on the ice cream. (It would have melted, right?)

Halfway through the second package of cookies, I started to feel pretty queasy and wish for some more solid food. I looked up and noticed a lit neon sign I hadn't seen before. Walking toward it, I found that it was a restaurant, and it was in fact open. I savored a hot meal of kimchi stew, rice and various garnishes as the rain made stripes on the darkening windows. The cup of hot, sweet, artificial-creamer-laden instant coffee that I had for desert was somehow especially comforting. Before I left, I confounded the waitress by pushing on her the remains of the junk food stash.

I walked home in the dark, wind and rain, enjoying the bluster around me. Back in my youth hostel room (simple but cozy: heated vinyl floor; Korean style bed, that is to say, a thick quilt on the floor; pegs for my wet clothes) I holed up with a book for the remainder of the evening, sighing a little as my heroine fell in love with Mr. Perfect and Misunderstood Until the End When You Realize He Has Loved Her All Along. Total female chauvinistic fantasy, but good company in a deserted hostel.

The next morning, well rested, I walked back up to the temple gates and the bus stop. I spied an information booth and headed over to ask how to get to other sights around town. As I stood by the door rummaging in my bag for the map, a young man walked briskly in ahead of me and started talking to one of the guides at the desk. I went up to speak to the other woman. She struggled a little in English, and the young man helped her. We started talking. Was he traveling alone? He was. We discovered that we wanted to go to the same place, and decided to keep each other company. He had a car; I got in and we headed up higher into the mountains, to Seokoram temple.

We started asking basic get-to-know-you questions. His name was Jun; he was a veterinary student in Junju in western Korea but was on his way home for the Chuseok holiday to his family in Pusan, an eastern city known for its beaches. He had recently returned from 40 days in Europe, and that had inspired him to do more traveling within his own country. He tutored math to support himself. He was birdlike and quick to smile and laugh; he had an active imagination. "Looks like we're heading into another world," he said, as the white mist got thicker and closer around us, everything beyond the trees at the edge of the road disappearing from view. Jun sent me this photo later:



I wish I could somehow embed the scene we found at Seokoram inside this blog: a temple jutting out from the side of a hill like a hobbit hole, enclosing the loveliest stone buddha I had ever seen, the tiny wooden foyer into which tourists were allowed redolent with incense and quiet mystery. The best I can do is show you the outside of the building:


Below the temple was a small hut where you could pay to write a prayer on one of the roof tiles. It's really an ingenious way of making money for the temple and promoting goodwill at the same time. Some of the tiles written in different languages had been displayed for all to see around the borders of the yard:

(Look closely; the lower center tile was written by a group from Iraq. The thought of them standing there and writing that filled me with a potent mix of sadness, anger and bitter frustration. Not sure what it says--can anyone tell me?)
(Stacks of tiles waiting for prayers)

Jun and I walked down from the temple to his car. We were having fun; it was clear to both of us that we wanted to continue sightseeing together. We chose our next destination and headed off.

The lake on the other side of town had a park beside it where kids and grownups alike rented little yellow bikes and rode around; it had duck-shaped paddle boats and paths for strolling beneath the trees. We walked along the water and stopped for a delicious squid-and-vegetable dish over rice. We got our picture taken by friendly passers-by.



That afternoon, we visited some very ancient barrow-style tombs: smooth, rounded hills suggestive of breasts and covered in the greenest grass. We strolled around a beautiful old garden and through the adjacent lotus fields.

Jun dropped me off at my bus in the late afternoon, with an invitation to visit him in Junju. More on that later.

My next adventure was a day hike up Apsan, which is a mountain right along the southern perimeter of Daegu. I went with a fellow English teacher from the U.S. whom I'd met by chance downtown the week before. I was horribly late, having been lost and frustrated in public transportation for an extra 45 minutes; Jonathan was thankfully very forgiving. We found the trail up the mountain through kind of a city park, and then hiked along the ridge, getting slightly different views at each turn:

It was a gorgeous day for hiking. My feet and knees were tired, though, so thankfully there was a cable car to save both them and my dignity and take us down the mountain in style:

That's all I have to tell for now. It's late here. I promise to post soon about the chapter where I visit Jun in Jeonju.

Tune in next time...