Buseoksa

Like I said in the last post about temples, no Korean road trip is complete without seeing a bunch of temples.  We spent the night in a crazy love motel where you parked your car under the room, went up a flight of stairs, and paid into an ATM without ever having to see anyone.  You could even put down a kind of garage door in front of your car to block the view of your license plate and the model/make of your car.  Crazy stuff.  We woke up the next morning and headed out to Buseoksa, which has the oldest wooden structure in South Korea, a temple dating back to 626.  It was a beautiful day spent hiking into the hills around the temple and taking pictures.  As always, here's 10 pictures and some foolish comments.

I took over a thousand pictures during the weekend and editing all of them can get tedious.  When I start to get bored I try new things.  These pictures are the results. 

This is one of my favorite Korean temples.  The structures were really beautiful and the view across the surrounding hills was excellent.

Once again the fish and the drum. My cursory Google search revealed very little about the significance, so if anybody knows the story I'd love to hear it.

The tranquility was punctured by some heavy construction sounds, but when the drilling stopped, this was a great place to relax.

According to wikipedia the signboard with the letters on it was written by the first president of Korea, Rhee Syngman.   Check out his wikipedia page for an interesting president.  Check out any of the Korean president's wikipedia pages, lots of dramatic exits from the position.

It's hard to see here, but this part of Korea is just hill after hill after hill.  South Korea is as hilly as Kansas is flat.

This is the oldest wooden structure in Korea.  It only survived because the Japanese didn't come to burn it.  It's such a shame that almost everywhere one travels in Korea, every temple, every landmark, every city, there's some historical moment in which the Korean people were used as Asia's punching bag.

I could do a whole blog post on people looking at their phones in spots like this, though I'm as guilty as anybody.

We hiked up into these hills and saw a few smaller buildings.  Mostly it was just a great day to be outside in the sun.