During our planning of our itinerary, we debated over how to spend the fifth full day of our stay in Busan: whether to take a day trip out of the city, or just stay put for more retail therapy.<\/p>\n
One of the most popular day trips out of Busan is to the city of Gyeongju, a city that looks like it’s perhaps 70\u201380 km north of Busan and past Ulsan too, a city that was in our itinerary months ago before we swapped it out for Suncheon. We were initially iffy about joining this day trip, on account that we’ve visited a fair number of temples and religious sites in our Japan trips. As it turned out, Klook was offering this day trip at a huge discount a couple of weeks ago, so we just went for it: how often do we find a day trip that costs just SGD30 per person?<\/p>\n
We were picked up at the KTX Busan Station Exit 1, and the tour bus continued on to pick up more guests at Seomyeon, then Haeundae stations before journeying north for over an hour. Our tour group was about 18 persons in size, and since we had both English- and Mandarin-speaking visitors, our group had two guides who looked like they were in their late 20s to early 30s: i.e. not our usual typical uncle-type of tour guide. One guide led the Mandarin-speaking group, and the other\u2014which we joined\u2014the English-speaking group. Our guide tried his hardest, but it quickly became obvious that he was struggling a little explaining the cultural intricacies of what we were visiting. We privately joked that maybe we should join the Mandarin-speaking group, who had a much more lively guide and who was rattling away in fluent Mandarin!<\/p>\n
Our first stop was Bulguksa Temple. <\/strong>Construction of the temple began during the reign of King Beopheung from 514\u2013540, and it experienced significant damage during the Imjin War of 1592 to 1598. Many of the buildings were burned down during the Japanese invasion too, according to the temple’s info booklet. Ongoing restoration work started in 1920, and the temple was designated a World Cultural Heritage site by UNESCO in 1995.<\/p>\n Pictures and notes!<\/p>\n Continued in the next post!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During our planning of our itinerary, we debated over how to spend the fifth full day of our stay in Busan: whether to take a day trip out of the city, or just stay put for more retail therapy. One<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/blog-2024-korea-day-05-20241211_113552.jpg\")
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