Gyeongju (part 1)

Christa and I spent last weekend down on the South-East coast in Gyeongju City. There were originally supposed to be at least a dozen of us going, but we (ie. Christa) were the only ones organised enough to book bus tickets early enough. The new lunar year (Seollal in Korean) began on the 18th (it's now the year of the Pig), so many Koreans had to return home to their family homes to pay respect to their ancestors, hence the bus and train tickets all sold out real fast. We were told many times that the ride would take 8-10 hours. It actually only took 6 hours to get down there, and 4.5 back, so we very happy and relieved to get there. We actually thought we were stopping for a bathroom break up to the point when we started pulling into the bus station. We arrived around midnight, throw our bags into the nearest yeogwan (cheap hotel) that was acceptable to Christa's tastes, and headed out to party! Huh. We resorted to plan B, karaoked for a couple of hours. Went to bed. Saturday was miserable. Anne, one of the teachers who couldn't make it, donated to us the reservation she'd made for the next two nights. We must've spent 90 minutes walking back and forth along the same stretch of road looking for the damn place until we finally gave up and went to tourist information, where we found out that bloody Moon guide book map was wrong! Only Lonely Planet from now on. We were gonna hire bikes but couldn't because it was raining and the rental shops had shut. We wasted about half the day just going back and forth across the city trying to find something to do. We ended up at a museum all about Gyeongju's history as the ancient capital of the kingdom of Silla (pronounced Shilla). The Silla people ruled most of the Korea peninsula from the 7th to 9th centuries, and many sites dating from the period are still there to see. Of course, they're all outside, and we were trapped inside, bemoaning the fact that we had ever left Seoul. Honourable mention for highlight of the day (vegetarians stop reading now, this is not gonna be pretty) goes to the delights of Gyeongju market. I don't know what poor creature's been skewered in the first picture, either. Despite these tempting treats we sold out and went to Pizza Hut for lunch. Having no desire to tramp around town in the rain looking for signs of nightlife again, we stocked up on sake and wine at the convenience store and headed back to the ranch to drink and play cards.