During our planning of our itinerary, we debated over how to spend the fifth free full day of our stay in Busan: whether to take a day trip out of the city, or just stay put for more retail theraphy.
One of the most popular day trips out of Busan is to the city of Gyeongju, a city that looks like it’s perhaps 70-80km north of Busan and past Ulsan too, a city that was in our itinerary months ago before we swapped it out for Suncheon. We were initially iffy about joining on this day trip, on account that we’ve visited a fair number of temples and religious sites in our Japan trips. As it turned out, Klook was offering this day trip at huge discount a couple of weeks ago that we just went for it: how often do we find a day trip that costs just SGD30 per person?
We were picked up the KTX Busan Station Exit 1, and the tour bus continued onto pick up more guests at Seomyeon, then Hauendae stations before journeying north for over an hour.Our tour group was about 18 persons in size, and since we had both English and Mandarin speaking visitors, our group had two guides who looked like they were in their late 20s to early 30s: i.e. not our usual typical uncle type of tour guide. One guide led the Mandarin-speaking group, and the other – which we joined – the English speaking group. Our guide tried his hardest, but it became quickly obvious that he was struggling a little explaining the cultural intricacies of what we were visiting. We privately joked that maybe we should join the Mandarin-speaking group, who had a much more lively guide and who was rattling away in fluent Mandarin!
Our first stop was Bulguksa Temple. Construction of the temple was built during the reign of King Beopheung from 514-540, and has experienced through significant damage during the Imjin War of 1592 to 1598. And many of the buildings were burned down during the Japanese invasion too, according to the temple’s info booklet. Ongoing restoration work started in 1920, and the temple was designated a World Cultural Heritage site by UNESCO in 1995.
Pictures and notes!
Continued in the next post!