...and I still rode my bike on Sunday!
My friend, Lee, and I decided to check out a few things in Gwangju. Expecting maybe a 2-3 hour bus trip from the Ulsan intercity bus terminal, we went to purchase a couple of tickets. To our disappointment, it was about a 4 and a half hour trip. So, we opted to do something else. Since Lee hasn't been on the coastal road to Gyeongju yet, I recommended that we ride our bikes up there.
Before long, we were checking out the north coast of Ulsan, at Bangojin. It's filled with a lot of interesting sites; some beautiful and some not-so-beautiful. As usual, the ride up the coast was very pretty. A few interesting things happened. The one thing that I don't have a picture of ended up being kind of scary. Lee was riding ahead of me on the two-lane road. It was quite windy, going around mountains, in valleys, though tunnels, etc. As well, Korean pavements isn't always the best. When re-paving a road, in Korea they don't usually strip away the old pavement. They just pave over the old road. This can lead to the pavement buckling in places. So, as I rounded a tight corner, travelling somewhere around 20-30 km/h, I got caught in some of this buckled pavement. I was confronted with two choices; either ride straight off the road, or turn tight into the crappy pavement and hope not to wipe out. While trying to ride the shitty road out, the bike's grip on the accordion-like pavement gave out and the bike, along with myself, went down; skidding off the road on the left-side of the bike (it was a left turn). I'm guessing that I'm not the first person to go though this here, as the turn was lines with tires (in anticipation of sort of thing). Luckly, the worst that happened was that I tore my jeans in two places on my left thigh and suffered a small bruise on the inside of my left ankle (from the bike). I just picked the bike back up and kept riding.
Since Lee was in the lead, he eventally noticed that I was no longer following him. So, after I was back on the road, I had a chance to wave to him coming at me in the opposing lane; trying to find out what happened to me. I pulled over at the next intersection and waited for him. He told me that he was a little worried at that corner as well. This all occured just a few kilometres east of Gyeonju. I'd never been on this section of the road before, as I usually turn down an earlier road and pass by Bulgoksa Temple. This road was the next road north, leading into the Bomun Lake area.
An event that happened later in the night was directly related to dropping my bike. As I mentioned earlier, I tore my jeans. One of the tears also tore a hole in my left side pocket. As we were pricing out hotels, I'd habitually places my keys in the pocket with the new hold. They fell out at the first hotel. It took about half an hour, lots of worrying, some prayer on Lee's part (thanks Lee), some swearing under my breath on my part, and an angry hotel ajumma; angry because we came back, not to pay for lodging, but to ask her if she'd seen any random keys lying around (done though lots of actions and stray Korean words), to find my keys. I was a relieved man when I finally found them.
We arrived back in Ulsan just before the noon church service on Sunday. Lee's wife was probably happy to hear that he wasn't the one to crash his bike after the fun trip. :)
Here's some pictures from the trip. Some of these locations have appeared in earlier posts, during a warmer season. The word "ajumma" refers to women who are usually middle-older aged.
This is one of my favorite pictures that I've taken while in Korea. It was taken at Daewangan, in Ulgi Park, in front of the small pine forest and Ulgi Lighthouse. The legend associtated with this place is that Queen Munmu had her ashes spread over the rocks, in order to turn into a dragon and protect the Silla (Shilla) empire. This is in the same tradition of her King-husband, who had his ashes spread over some sea rocks further north up the coast (I've wrote about him before).
Here I am, in front of a squid boat. The glass bulbs on the boat are used to bait the squid. They are lowered into the water and turned on. The squid are attracted to the light.
A few of some of the north port.
The same squid boat, and a large ocean freighter behind it.
Looking across the bay, you can see the side of the largest crane in the world; the Goliath crane. If you've ever seen the Ulsan feature on the Discovery Channel, this is one of the featured cranes on the TV show. It's used to put together the hull of ocean freightliners.
Here's one of those unfortunate squid who were fooled by the bright lights of the fishing boats. Lee and I had a lot of fun with these guys. At one point, I grabbed one around it's mantle (the long, soft and pointed shell). It didn't seem to like the idea of something many times larger than it grabbing onto it's head (perhaps vaguely aware if it's fate as an eventual side dish), and darted out of my hand; shooting water out of it's body at me. In this commotion of darting and splashing, it ran itself into one if it's multi-tentacled peers. The reciprical squid, in turn, didn't appreciate being disturbed. In retaliation of this, it decided to get out of the scene altogather. The result was witnessing a 10-armed cephalopod flying out of the tank and landing on the ground in front of my feet. Lee and I just stood there and laughed for a little while. As we were appreciating the humour of having an invertebrate so angry at me that it would launch itself to a probable doom, the ajumma that was running the squid-serving seafood restaurant came out to see what the commotion was. After witnessing a couple of foreigners pestering her pets, she went back inside and, between laughs, told our fishy tale to her co-workers inside. As they were laughing, I picked the squid up and returned it to the tank. We pestered the squid for a few more minutes before continuing on our way.
Here's the full picture of the first picture in this post.
Here's a small war bunker, I guess from the Korean War, at the edge of Daewangam Songrim (the Pine Forest).
A few ajummas live here during the warmer months. They have snorkel gear and spend the days gathering shell fish from the ocean to sell here, as well as in the markets.
Another makeshift hut.
Here's a view of the sea from where the ajumma huts are.
Here's a nice view between the rocks, looking onto a walking bridge (currently under renovation, but still usable).
Lee, like either a bounding tiger or a silly fool, went skipping across the rocks. I had my camera ready to take a picture of him falling into the water. Unfortunately, that photo opportunity never was never realized.
"I'm king of the rock!"
A view of Ulgi Lighthouse.
Here's a few of the Goliath cranes, as seen from the Ulgi rocks.
Up the highway a couple dozen kilometres, north of Jung-ja beach, the road ran out. I'm wondering if this was a result of Typhoon Nabi, which hit the area in the late summer. The entire section of road was washed out. We proceeded by going around the back of adjacent buildings.
Here's a cool view of our bikes on the road. I went for a slash under the road before we went on our way. If you don't know, slash is a slang-word for whiz (which is also a slang word).
"I'm being sucked in..."
"Aiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"
This is the beach where Kimg Munmu had his ashes spread. The rock formation is to the right, outside of the picture. I thought the gulls flying around looked impressive.
Here we are, coming into Gyeongju from the east.
This is where the wheelchairs entered the story. As we arrived at the Gyeongju National Museum, we noticed that they had wheelchairs available to use. We felt like using them. So, we spend a couple of hours wheeling around the grounds and buildings of the museum. I learned how to do wheelchair wheelies. I also learned how helpful Koreans are to the handicapped. They opened doors for us, helped us up ramps, etc. It was great!
Here's a freakin' large bell. It's actually the largest bell in Korea, at 3.3 metres in height. It's called The Devine Bell of the Great King Seongdeok, but it's better known as the Emile Bell. There's a story somewhere here about a girl who was killed during the making of this thing, I think. Legends has it that when the bell rings, you can hear the girl calling for her mother. Apparently it sounds like a child crying for it's mother when it rings.
I was so impressed that I climbed inside. Just like Emile, I felt like crying for my mother.
"Hey mum, check this out! I'm under a freakin' large bell! Weeeeeeeee!"
Freakin' large.
Here's an old statue of Buddha. There were a lot of old headless statues around here too, that were all decapitated by some pissed off Confusists. Who ever said that the Eastern religions were peaceful???
This is at a Prince's Palace at Anapji Pond. It was originally built during the reign of King Munmu (661-681 AD), during the Silla dynasty (57 BC -935 AD)
I finally found out how to properly take night photos...
These lit-up trees are pretty. So is my shadow.
There were originally more buildings here. They are currently in the middle of restoring everything.
The last time I was here was in June.
The island is brilliantly lit up.
As is this open building.
The pond has a wall on one side.
I liked how this tree was lit.
Here we are in downtown Gyeongju. The city has a population of just under 300,000 people.
Yet, it still has its share of western shops and restaurant chains.
This is the hotel where we stayed. The room was 40,000 won a night. There were other hotels for 30,000, but this one was a bit nicer. It only seemed to have one bed in the rooms, although the beds were double rooms. The first room we were shown was a heart-shaped bed. We didn't really like that idea, since we were (and still are!) two straight guys. We ended up getting a Korean-style room, where you sleep on mats on the heated floor. It was actually fairly comfortable. The hotel also had a VCR in the room, along with a selection of movies in the lobby. We watched Street Fighter, with Jean Claude Van Dam and Kylie Minogue. I fell asleep to it.
Now that I think about it, this might've been the Korean version of a love motel. At least it had a tub and a good shower. There was also parking available.
Here's a view of the hotel from highway 7, just down from Gyeongju train station.
Click on this picture and read the writing. It's hilarious.
The nori ba-angs here (karaoke rooms) all look crazy. This one has a dragon coming out of it.
This one has an Egyptian/Alien theme.
Here's the gas station that we stopped at on the way back to Ulsan. Gas was 1389 won/litre ($1.558 CAD a litre).
Some houses in the countryside outside of Gyeongju.
Here's Lee; ready to go!
I finally took a pica of Ulsan Simin Church. It's big and crazy looking.
Here's Maru with Missionary Bill, from New York.
This is the church cafeteria, in the basement. They serve a free lunch here after church, of kimchi, rice, veggies and I think the other thing was fish.
Phil and Maru are chowing down. Amazingly, Maru doesn't like kimchi (what the heck Maru, you're Korean!!!). Phil doesn't really like it either. I happily took both their share, mixed it with my rice, and chowed down.
