Tuesday March 15th, 2016 Busan, South Korea

Today we are visiting Busan (formerly Pusan) in South Korean – this is our first visit to this country. I don’t have any preconceived notions of what to expect; all I know of South Korea is that it is an electronics and automobile manufacturing powerhouse with brands like Samsung and Hyundai, and of course the country lives in a constant state of fear over the possibility of war with it’s northern neighbor. Sandra’s dad was in Korea as a soldier in 1950, she has some cherished old pictures – I imagine things have changed a bit since his visit, however the two counties are actually in a ceasefire situation and so technically still at war.

In preparation for our visit we had not found a lot in the city of Busan that looked super interesting, and so we booked a shore excursion to the city of Gyeongju to learn about the ancient Silla Empire.

It was a bright, cold but clear day as the bus left the dock and made its way through the city towards the main freeway. Very modern large skyscrapers mixed with low-rise buildings, not much sign of anything old. We learn that Busan is the busiest port in South Korea; I suppose this is where all of those flat screens and cars make their way out to the world. We cross two long bridges, the first of which has a spectacular 360-degree spiraling on-ramp. 

After several morning rush-hour traffic jams we finally make it out on to the modern highway heading northeast to the city of Gyeongju. Soon we are in the countryside, which is mostly hilly, in fact 80% of South Korean is considered mountainous – and with the fast growing population driven by its hot economy, living space is an issue. An obvious solution pops into my head, but it involves the reunification of the two Koreas – something a certain short plump guy is not likely to allow.

We pass Hyundai City, which surprisingly does not look very industrial – it must be some trick of industrial design. Mostly the landscape is hillsides and rice paddy fields, lot and lots of rice paddy fields – just about every spare flat bit of land that is not covered by a building, is being used as a rice paddy.

The journey north took about 90 minutes and we eventually arrived in the city of Gyeongju; the city is a primary tourist site largely because it was the base for the ancient Silla Empire. Predating the formation of the country we now call Korea, the Silla ruled a large area starting in 57BC all the way up to 935AD. Over that last 100 years, archaeological work has revealed many of the former Silla dwellings, burial places and hundreds of artifacts. 

Our first stop though was not Silla related; instead the guide took us to the spectacular Pulguksa Buddhist temple. Built on a hillside the Pulguksa temple consists of about a dozen buildings set amongst a series of small lakes and streams and beautiful gardens. Everywhere we looked was a photo opportunity, and not for the first time I was thankful for the advent of digital photography. All of the buildings have the classic curvy tiled roofline and intricately painted woodwork; we must have seen a hundred Buddha statues. Our guide was a veritable encyclopedia of information about the temple, he’d been doing the tours for 25 years – however we found ourselves lagging behind the group so that we could get more pictures and so I did not catch everything he said. We’ve been to many Buddhist temples on our travels and this one has to be right up there in terms of beauty and awe.

Next we motored over to the Commodore hotel where a large buffet lunch was waiting for us, other Cunard tours had already arrived. My expectations for the “included” lunches on these shore excursions are never very high – but today the food was very good and included a mix of western and Korean style foods. Loud twanging Korean music temporarily distracted me from the food and we were entertained with a series for traditional Korean dancers.

After lunch we visited the excellent Gyeongju National Museum that displays the history and art of the Silla period in neatly organized exhibits. With the limited time allowed by the tour it was a bit of a rush to try and even see the top highlights in the museum; mostly we were interested in that artifacts recovered by the Archaeological digs during the 1970s. Perhaps the most impressive display was the gold crown from the Cheonmachong Tomb dating to the 5th or 6th century, as I rounded the corner into the room displaying the crown I experienced a literal breathless moment – it was so unexpected and stunning. 

Our final stop for this tour was at the Daereungwon Tomb Park; as the name suggested the area contains a number of tombs in a park-like setting. The tombs consist of large circular mounds of rock and earth very reminiscent of the ancient burial mound that can be found in Britain. The highlight of this stop was actually getting to go inside one of the tombs; in fact it was the Cheonmachong Tomb the source of the beautiful gold crown that we had seen in the museum. The tomb consists of a small wooden room, within which was discovered a lacquered coffin – some 11,500 artifacts were recovered from the tomb. The wooden room was then encased in a gigantic mound of rocks and covered with a layer of earth.

As we headed back to the port I took a look at the tourist map and estimated that it would take the best part of a week to explore all that Gyeongju has to show – it’s a pretty impressive place.

Later that night as we sailed out of Busan we noticed that one of the bridges we had crossed on our tour was lit up providing some spectacular views.