Bongeunsa: Templeing Gangnam Style

Sometimes when you're wandering the labyrinthine shopping malls and department stores of Gagnam, gorging yourself on cheese and guzzling eight dollar cups of coffee, trying to choose between the dozens of plastic surgeons that fill block after block, you need some fresh air.  You need a chance to step outside the thick, heavy, uncirculated air of wherever you've decided to spend a ludicrous amount of money and take a breath.  Just across the street from COEX, one of the most labyrinthine of all shopping malls in the world, rests Bongeunsa Temple.  Surrounded on all sides by apartments and gray buildings, Bongeunsa is a quiet spot to take a break.  To think about whether or not you really need that $35,000 television, or that $40,000 car you can buy in the mall.  

Founded at the end of eighth century(!), Bongeunsa has seen the city grow up around it.  Today it's one of Korea's most important Buddhist temples and a place for tourists and locals to come and pray, take a break, and try to find some serenity in all of Seoul's neon madness.  The grounds are surprisingly large, we spent an hour walking around and taking pictures, hoping that the rain wouldn't start to fall and push us back underground into the tunnels of COEX.  Because of the bad weather there were only a few dozen other people there, and we got a chance to take in some of fall's colors.

Because the sky was a kind of blanket gray with little to no texture, and because I'm trying some new techniques, I decided to just go crazy with these pictures and throw a bunch of textures on top of them.  I did all of this on Pixlr.com, an awesome browser based photo-editor.  It's a process with a steep learning curve, but with some pretty cool results once you get a handle on it. 

For more info on Bongeunsa, check out Bonguensa.org, which has a great English language version of the site.

For more info on using textures in your photography, check out Frenchkisstextures.com, a great place to get started.

As always, here's 10 pictures and some foolish comments.

I imagine that a hundred years ago this place would have been like most of the temples in Korea, surrounded by fields, a view of the mountains, a quiet peaceful place.  Now it's apartments, hotels, and office buildings.  Also, if you're looking for a great hotel in Gangnam, the Park Hyatt is pretty nice.

I'm really shy about taking peoples photos, so I'm starting slow, taking pictures when people aren't looking.

Bongenunsa's a beautiful spot, running water, vibrant colors, a great job's been done by the city to incorporate it into everything around it.

These temples always have great doors, but this one was particularly massive.  Three meters high, at least, with a great painting.

Anytime you can get to a lantern festival at a temple is really cool.  All the paper lanterns, all the colors, a great chance to take some photographs.

The Park Hyatt's probably two kilometers away, but this statue's so big we could see it from our room.  

There were a lot of little buildings like this one, and Sara says that each one had it's own special purpose.  Some buildings were for financial prosperity, some for health.  By far the busiest was the building for fertility.

The statues were really impressive, the lions, the buddhas.  Very cool.

A little path runs behind the temple and gives a pretty good view of Gangnam and COEX.  

This is one of my favorite bell towers.  It was really old and had a ton of texture in the wood.  And a sign that said, "Don't ring this bell."

Gangnam's a great neighborhood to stay in if you're only in town for a weekend.  There's tons to eat and tons to do.  I don't think I'd ever move to Seoul, but if I did, I'd like to be in Gangnam.