Provincial Office of Education Cultural Trip: Busan and Southeast Korea

So this weekend (Thursday to Friday) the provincial office of education wanted to take all the TaLK teachers from this province on a cultural trip. We get one of these per semester, and this one was going to Busan! We were all excused from our teaching duties, because this field trip is mandatory.

Everyone met up in Gwangju early on Thursday morning and then we boarded buses and departed.

Our bus driver was really nice and our bus didn't smell like cigarette smoke!

We drove to Suncheon, picked up some more people, and then continued to Busan. At Busan, we turned North to see a special mountain and look at a temple there. It was very beautiful, especially because the fall colours are starting to come in full force.

On the top of the mountain is a special hike you can take to a grotto carved into the side of the mountain, where inside rests a big buddha. Unfortunately, it was being air conditioned behind plexiglass, lest the god deteriorate from the elements. Also, camera flashes were prohibited because they thought the god would melt.

Waiting outside the grotto. 

If you ring this bell, you'll get good fortune. Costs $1 per ring.

Regardless, it was a beautiful place, and there were a million other people there as well to share in the moment. Lots of school kids must have been on a trip. 

This picture is from Bulguksa temple, which is sort of near the base of the mountainn
(the grotto is near the top). The thousands of school kids wanted me to take their pictures for them. 

 After the mountain, we went to the Gyeongju museum, where you can look at all the cool things they've dug up around town. Lots of knives, pots, jewelry, and armor. One of the most interesting things they had was some of the crowns that they've discovered in the area. Oddly enough, you can see the relationship in design between what's on the crowns to what is considered fancy or a symbol of wealth in contemporary design. Lots of frills, lots of bling.

A genuine Shilla era crown. I believe it was worn
by queen Seonduk or something like that.

The typical outfit of a Shilla era royal.

Dagger and scabbard

 They also had a bunch of pagodas on display. I learned that pagodas are supposed to carry a bit of the buddha's ashes, which is what makes them important and symbolic. As well, Chinese pagodas are usually made from brick, and Japanese ones are made from wood. Korean pagodas however, are made from stone. Stone was more plentiful and apparently easier to work with. Plus, one didn't have to worry about fire destroying the structure (kind of ironic since there's ashes inside).

This pagoda is thousands of years old.

 I should also mention that they had other pagodas around, but they were replicas (made in the '70s or something). I laughed and felt like a stereotypical Western tourist when I said, "These don't look very ancient..."

After the museum, we went for dinner and then went to the five-star hotel for the night. We have a new head honcho for the provincial office, since the old, foreigner-hating Korean woman decided this job was too much bother and moved departments. The new boss is the polar opposite and is really laid back and much more lenient on things like curfew, behavior, and excursions.

Our hotel room in Gyeongju. It's got ondol (heated floors) so you don't get a bed.

The next morning we had a western style buffet (they tried hard but they couldn't get the eggs right--too slimy) and then left for some burial mounds in Gyeongju. When a queen or king would die, they would create a big coffin, and then pile some rocks on top and cover it with dirt. Gyeongju has many burial mounds and you can rent a bicycle and tour around all these things.

The building in the background has a pagoda design cut out of it. Gyeongju is like
one big Korean history theme park city.

Annie and Nancy rented some bikes in Gyeongju.

Some of the burial mounds. There are tens of these things all around.

While we were walking through the park, there were some little kids getting their graduation photos taken so I took some photos since they were so adorable. Some other kids were being cute and playing, so I wanted to show them to you also. 

Their teacher noticed I was taking their picture, so she told
them to wave at me :)

Adorable. 

As you can see, the leaves are really nice these days.

This is a famous ancient observatory tower called cheomseongdae.

Gyeongju is also famous for its bread, so I bought some to take back to the teachers at my elementary school.

Making the famous "gyeongju bbang" ("bread" is a loan word in Korean coming from French "pain").
Gyeongju bread is either bun style or pancake style and has red bean paste on the inside. Mmm :)

After Gyeongju, we headed for Busan and stopped to take some photos of the coast along the way. 

Some buildings on a bluff. We made an unscheduled stop to take photos here.

I don't know if you can see it in this photo, but we were able to barely
see the island of Tsushima (belongs to Japan) in the distance.
Apparently you can only see it about 60 days of the year.

After stopping at the bluff, we drove to a nearby temple to take a look.

Our supervisor insisted we stop at this awesome temple on the coast

It was absolutely beautiful. They were piping in some buddhist music
(sounds like one person hitting a drum over and over and singing) and you could
smell the incense. I felt like I was in Civilization IV.

The edge of one of the roofs.

To the right you can see the bridge one must cross to enter the temple.

They had a few dragons guarding the place.

A sneaky shot of the inside of one of the prayer rooms. I was able to
snap this photo because the doors were open so buddha could look out to sea.

A jolly buddha outside. Probably 10-15' tall.

Some of the stairs you could climb to see another buddha (this time female)
statue. I can't believe how so many old Korean people were able to climb these things.

 Our last stop of the day was Haeundae Beach, a very famous landmark for the city. Some people say it's the nicest beach in Korea.

On the way to Haeundae Beach in Busan. Behind the tower on the right
hand side was our hotel for the night!!

Haeundae Beach

Haeundae Beach

While at the beach, we also visited the aquarium on site. It was well done and the animals looked like they were being treated well. The sharks were scary with all their sharp teeth!

They had speakers playing a little song, welcoming people to
the Busan "Aquarioom"

Inside the aquarium. They did a good job with all the fish.

At the penguin exhibit. The light makes me look sinister :(

Shelby and Brandon smile at me as we descend to look at more fish.

My friend from Texas described this fish as "ugly as hell".

I've never seen this type of jellyfish before, have you?

More jellyfish. So graceful.
How do they even see where they're going?

Stunning.

Lion fish.

Holy mackerel. 

Nemo!

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie.....

The octopus came out of hiding to see me. Probably hiding
from all the Korean people licking their lips at him :(

Clever! This was definitely a high note of the aquarium.

Shark tank! You can pay a little extra to ride in a glass-bottomed boat above
these things. I think you might be able to scuba dive with them too, but I'm
not sure if that's here or in Seoul.

Those teeth :P

They have Korea's longest underwater passenger tunnel or something like that.
Either way, it was pretty cool :)

Yikes!

Jim Carrey stopped by to advertise for Madame Tussaud's

Welcome to the beach!

After spending some time at the aquarium, we went to a restaurant and had samgyeopsal for supper. Sam means 3, and gyeopsal has to do with layers of fat. Thus, samgyeopsal is like really thick bacon that you barbeque and eat with banchan (side dishes). It's really delicious, and kind of like the Korean social equivalent of a steak dinner.

The restaurant.

Frying the samgyeopsal. Nancy doesn't look too approving, but it
was a great meal.

After dinner, we arrived at our waterfront, super deluxe, five-star hotel. It was our Western coordinator’s birthday, so we had purchased her a cake as a surprise, and so I hid with a few other people preparing the cake and lighting the candles as a surprise. We brought it into the hotel lobby where everyone had gathered for roll call and sang happy birthday to her. She cried a little.

She doled out the room assignments and keys and told us we were getting a late curfew. It was at this point when we were gathering our luggage and I realized that someone had stolen my bag of  bun-style Gyeongju bread and replaced it with their box of pancake-style. I was very angry.

People took off for the bars and the clubs but I'm not into that so I went with a friend of mine (Brandon) to Centum City, the largest department store in the world. Unfortunately, it was closing for the night (10pm, Friday, in high pace Korea??) so that meant we couldn't go skating like we had planned. Perhaps another time. 

Our $300 room that didn't even have a coffee maker ;)

Ondol style again. More mats.

The view of Gwangan Bridge, where they have the Busan Fireworks Festival every year.
This is the view from our hotel room.

Brandon and I got lost trying to get to the ice rink and none of the
elevators would take us to the floor we wanted, so we ended up
on the roof and found this awesome lit up tree in a garden.

View from the roof garden at Centum City.

Some of the towers at night.

The blue dot shows you where our hotel is.

Million dollar condos at night

The next morning (Saturday) we had the most delicious breakfast buffet in Korea and prepared to leave. One of my careless roommates neither checked the room before he left with the only key they gave us, nor did he leave the chain in the door so people could still get in and out. So all my stuff was locked in the room when everyone else was in the lobby, so I had to get the front desk to send someone to unlock it for me. How frustrating! To top that all off, he forgot one of his own shirts in the room, so I brought it to him :S

As well, I was informed of how the lack of observation skills among my other roommates caused concern for the coordinator last night on my behalf..... You see, in our room, there is a big room which has the kitchen, couch, and TV, and then in a separate room is a bed. Originally, I had plopped all my stuff down on a mat in the corner of the big room, and as roommates, we had all decided that whoever got back from partying earliest would lay claim to the bed and the rest would sleep on mats. Well, Brandon and I arrived earliest, so I gave Brandon the bed and I wanted to sleep on the floor next to the bed and in between the window. That way, we could close the door and wouldn't be disturbed by the partyers coming in later on. So, I moved my stuff into the bedroom and called the front desk for another mat and blanket set, because we were now short one set for everybody.

Anyway, apparently during the night, the others had come back from the bars and thought I wasn't there. When our supervisor came around at 2am to do a curfew check, they reported me missing, much to the stress of the supervisor, who sent out text messages and started a small information manhunt. I guess they eventually clued in to my shoes being at the front door, and all my stuff being moved to the bedroom, as well as my exposed feet sticking out from beside the bed and realized that I was, in fact, present. Sigh. 

Regardless of the idiocy and carelessness of my roommates, we set off for a day of island hopping. On the way there, the bus was hot so everyone was asleep and it was a traffic jam. The girl in front of me woke up and turned to me and said she was about to start throwing up. Luckily I had a plastic bag for oranges in my travel bag, so I gave it to her and I'm assuming she filled it up with last night's party. Gross. I guess I saved that girl's dignity, everyone's noses, and the bus driver's floor.

But I digress, we continued on to the islands.

Container port. Busy.

We left for the island city where Bo Young is from because we were going to catch a ferry to a botanical garden island nearby. They have recently connected the bigger island to the mainland with a bridge system and underwater tunnel, and the supervisor wanted us to stop at the visitor centre before going underwater.

In the background you can see a bridge. There's an underwater tunnel that goes from
that bridge to the island in the foreground, to right where I'm standing.

A map of where the underwater tunnel is.
That big island in the lower left is the island that Bo Young is from.

I suppose the underwater tunnel connects those above with those below?

 We drove along so many winding roads, it's not even funny. No wonder it takes so long to go such a short distance in Korea, it's either up a hill or down a hill, or around a bend.

At the ferry terminal I saw this sign. I will try to obey the last rule.

 So we boarded a bit of a rickety passenger ferry and departed for a botanical garden island. The captain would yell at us and he made some weird obnoxious noise (I think he was lacking a boat horn, because that's what it sounded like...that or a gong?) to inform us when we could go outside and take pictures. If you want to see a video of the ferry experience, here's one I took: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hme9vOC87cI&feature=youtu.be (36 seconds)

You have to take one of these to get to the botanical garden island.
You can see the Koreans in the foreground are in hiking mode.
I can't begin to tell you how ubiquitous that hiking fashion is.

Some of the cliffs we saw. 

Perfect day for sea travel.

Our trusty, loud, ferry. 

No birds really.

So this island, Oedo (I'm pretty sure the translation would be Oedo Island, but -do means island in Korean, so it might just be Oe Island) was bought by a Korean couple. In their younger days, they were going to make their living off it by growing oranges or tangerines or something. Unfortunately, this proved to be unprofitable and so they decided to just make a garden out of the whole thing. In the end, it became a big tourist attraction. The husband died in 2003, but the wife still gardens and lives here. She's been on TV a few times for her efforts. 

The Venus Garden

A view of the Venus Garden and Concert Hall at the end

A view of the peninsula from the Bamboo Road 

Bonjour!

The Venus Garden on the left and the Stairway to Heaven on the right

Venus Garden

Stairway to Heaven

This are is called Dreaming Heights. They had an impression of Christ the Redeemer. I thought the Korean child added a special element.

They even had a little chapel where I assume people can come and pray 

The Dreaming Heights chapel and small amphitheatre

This area was next to the Hope of the World Garden, which had a bunch
of statues that were children in incredibly scandalous poses. I'm not taking a photo of that :)

This island is in a national park.

This path is in the 3-Way Junction (In Korean, it would be samgeori)

My friend took a photo of me at the summit of the island.

At the summit of the island are more of these European-esque statues.

The island was pretty and well-maintained, and had lots of statues to look at. It was really steep though, definitely not handicap accessible and probably not a great choice for the elderly either (but that didn't stop DROVES of them from coming haha). 

A maddening thing happened though.... I was walking towards the washroom area when two South Asian men approached me. The first one said, "please take a picture, my friend", and so, playing innocent, I said, "okay, give me your camera and I'll take your picture" and I held out my hands. However, as I suspected, that's not what he meant, and he moved me over to stand next to him and his friend took a photo of us. I gave a sad smile. The other man took his photo with me as well. I said goodbye, they said thank-you and left. This happens every once in a while in Korea.... every time it makes me mad.

After the garden, we left for a cable car, which was our last stop before heading back home.

The shipyards at Geoje-si (Geoje city, which is where Bo Young is from).
Daewoo and Samsung both have huge shipyards here.

The drive took quite a while actually, mostly because Korean traffic lights are timed and don't have pressure switches, so they take FOREVER to turn, and because the road's down south are all windy and twisty. Finally, we arrived in Tongyeong-si (Tongyeong City).

The cable car going up Mireuk-san (Mount Mireuk) 

View from the top, looking Southeast

View from the top, looking towards Tongyeong

At the 461 metre summit of Mount Mireuk. How far away is Gwangju?

Looking towards Tongyeong

Looking towards Tongyeong

Me, with Tongyeong in the background

The sun began to set on our vacation. Looking South, Southeast

On the way down, I rode with 3 people who were terrified of heights.
I opened the window.

So that's it! We drove back to Gwangju and arrived in the late evening. I went home and went to bed, exhausted :P It was a fantastic trip, and I've heard we get an awesome cultural trip compared to the other provinces (some don't even get a cultural trip). Certainly, this one was fantastic. I can't wait until next semester, when we'll go to Jeju island :)