Out to Gyeongju

Well it's a four day weekend for lunar New Year and while I'm not doing a 4 night trip like I did last year I am managing day trips and some good rest. With that in mind I headed out to Gyeongju on Sunday with Mike and Kris to explore a bit and gt out in to the country. I had previously gone to Gyeongju three times in 2009 and had seen the major sites before, but it was there first time so we got up early and headed out.

You can read about Gyeongju here. In short it was the capital of the Silla Kingdom that was founded in the first century BC. For about 600 years there were three kingdoms in modern day Korea and Manchuria. Then in the 7th century Silla allied with Tang China and conquered the other two but lost most of Manchuria to the Chinese in the process. With only a slight move north to the Yalu river these have been Korea's borders ever since. Today it's a small town with a population of about 250,000 but at its peak it was a city of over 1,000,000. It is covered with ancient ruins, temples and artifacts.

We got there around 11, grabbed food and hit the major temple Bulguksa, which is one of the oldest Buddhist temples in Korea and a centre of Buddhism. It holds several ancient relics as well as gifts from other Buddhist orders throughout the world. It's location in the mountain makes it a beautiful spot to explore as well. We then saw Anapji Pond, which is all that i sleft of a major pavilion built for the nobility to play in. We also saw a few other Silla era ruins including an observatory and burial mounds. By around 5 we had covered about 15 square kms and decided to head back to Daegu where we hit a makgeolli jip and then headed home.

Gyeongju is a really beautiful little city and at an hour by train an easy day trip.