Hello all

This past weekend, my cousin Peter and I spent two nights/three days in Gyeongju, considered to be the version of Korea that's remained untouched. Truth be told, when we arrived in Gyeongju, untouched wasn't what first came to mind. The main part of the city has definately been upgraded to meet their tourist demands; its when you get outside of the city that the major historical aspects begin to show. The city's phrase is "the museum without walls", and as you go from one historical moment to another, you get the idea that they're actually telling the truth. Located all over the city are burial mounds from former kingdom kings. I haven't included a picture, but they're basically just massive mounds of dirt. Their tombs were enclosed by over 5 metres of stones, so that if you tried to access the kings treasures in the tombs, you would be buried by heaps of stones; you had to access the tomb from the top, decreasing the chances of people raiding the tombs.

When working our way through the whole city and surrounding countryside, you realize that when the tour guides say that South Korea is 85% mountainous, they're not far off - the whole city is enclosed by mountains 365degrees. One of the major tourist mountains is Mt. Namsan, the mountain Peter and I climbed. Apparantly, theres over 30 different treks up the mountain, and on our way up, we had no clue where our path was going to lead. When we reached the top, we were rewarded with an absolutely beautiful sight - we could see over the entire countryside, all the way to the other ridge of mountains. The train ride in was beautiful, and even though we rode the KTX, Korea's bullet train, we could still see the whole ride in, and it was worth the three-four hour ride.

One of the major sites in the city is Bulguksa Temple, a massive ancient temple thats still in great shape today. The frustrating thing with travelling further and further away from Seoul is that the people know less and less english - and by "less and less", I mean they know virtually nothing. The really frustrating thing, (and this is typical through the entire country) is that Korean's will never tell you that they don't know what you're talking about - they'll pretend that they understand you, and when you try to tell them a second time, because you're almost positive that they didn't get it the second time, and they'll give you a really ignorant look. It can be really frustrating, especially when you just want to eat chicken and beer, and they're looking at you really funny.

Well, I guess that's pretty much the whole story. The pictures that I have really don't do the city and view justice; if you want more pictures, just drop me an e-mail at (notanymore) and i'll send you some collections of pictures; they're pretty big in size, so if you don't have broadband, it will take a while. If you're interested in more information Gyeongju, then feel free to click on thier link here: http://www.gyeongju.go.kr/eng/main/index.asp