I’ll combine these two days, since they’re interconnected and very unique. For the first time on the Plus3 Korea trip, we are visiting locations other than Seoul. I feel very lucky to be part of the first group to experience this opportunity! On the morning of day 6, we departed Seoul for Gyeongju, the old capital of the ancient Silla dynasty. We traveled by high speed rail.

Getting to travel on a high speed train was itself a treat for me. As a kid, I was obsessed with trains; they were my favorite thing in the world. Although I don’t have that level of obsession anymore, I still like trains, and the trip itself was something I was looking forward to. We travelled on the KTX train from Seoul to Busan, although we got off a little early at Gyeongju station. KTX is South Korea’s first high speed rail system, operated by the company Korail. The train reached speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour, or over 185 miles per hour. It was fun for me to just watch everything whiz by. I wish we had this in the US!

From here on, we moved around via private coach. Although we stopped for lunch in Gyeongju, this was not actually our primary destination. We were to spend the night at the Golgusa temple, a 1500 year old temple affiliated with the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism. The temple was a very unique cultural experience.

We first had to change into temple clothing, and then we watched the monks perform an impressive martial arts routine. Next, we participated in Seonmudo training, which is a Buddhist meditative martial arts practice. Afterwards, we did 108 prostrations, although not everyone participated. In hindsight, I’m not sure why I did all of them; my legs were incredibly sore afterwards. Then came dinner, and the realization that the temple was vegan. This makes sense considering the Buddhist philosophy that all life is scared, but it’s not something I thought about beforehand. The food was good, but I could have killed for some meat (literally!). Our final activity for the night was another performance by some women dressed in very traditional Korean clothing, which was fun to watch.

We slept on floor mats in the temple, which I expected to be uncomfortable, but I actually slept very well. We had the option to attend Buddhist meditation at five the next morning, but I did not hear the gong that was supposed to wake us up. I instead awoke to someone’s alarm around six, and headed down for breakfast. After eating, we all took a hike up the hill and saw an amazing view from the top. We then participated in more Seonmudo and had tea time with the monks. Thus concluded our activities at the temple.

We had a short stop in Gyeongju. We visited Cheonmachong, the tomb of an unknown king of the Silla dynasty. We then had around an hour and a half to shop around Gyeongju. Instead, Chris, Rohit, and I broke off to explore. We walked around the park area containing many tombs and explored some of the streets of Gyeongju. Suddenly, an impromptu scavenger hunt began where we had to find where Dr. Yun was to get some dessert. We quickly identified that he was at Sulbing cafe based on a napkin in the picture he sent, but we went to the wrong one, since there were two only 500 meters away from each other! I tried some matcha ice cream, which was a very unique flavor. We also stopped at a cool bridge.

Finally, we departed for Pohang, the next destination where we would stay. It was about an hour drive from Gyeongju. When arriving at the hotel, I was surprised at how spacious the room was. Compared to the hotel in Seoul where we didn’t even have room to lay both bags on the floor, this was grand. For dinner, Chris, Nick, Jacob, and I got fried chicken, though we all forgot that Jacob can’t eat fried chicken. Even Jacob forgot. The employees didn’t speak English, but it was kind of a fun challenge trying to use Google Translate to communciate with them. We got way too much chicken, but still ate it all. Chris and I were quite tired after dinner, so we just stayed in the room for the rest of the night.