http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haeinsa
After recovering from my new years day hangover a couple of the other teachers and I decided to get out of the city and go for an adventure up to one of the most important temples in Korea. I am not pretending I know all the history so there is a very helpful wiki link for those of you who are interested.
Haeinsa temple is about 70 minutes by bus out of Daegu. The first problem is finding the bus. Buses going towards Haeinsa temple leave from Seobu Bus terminal which is located the other side of Daegu to where I live. We thought that getting there would be simple. We would get into a taxi, announce in a proud and happy voice "SEOBU" and off we would go! Think again. We got in the taxi and said "Seobu" confident we would be right. Yet we were just met by a reply of "Huh?" The universal utterance which means "What are you weirdy foreigners talking about?" We persisted, in the way only English speakers know. We spoke very slowly and loudly. SEEEEOOOOOOOOBBBBBBBBBUUUUUUUU...still no response. Now we were clutching at strawers. "Bus?" we asked tentatively. A light bulb went on in the drivers head and off we drove, for about 100 yards. "Bus?" he asked us. Great. Generally when we do not know where we are going, we call somebody who has slightly more Korean knowledge than us and let them speak to the Taxi driver. This worked and off we went.
I was excited about catching a bus across Korea. I enjoy all forms of public transport, it is also a more interesting way to see the country rather than driving yourself or flying. The bus was a lot more packed than we were expecting. We were also the only white people on it, and from some of the looks we were getting, we were the only white people some of the passengers had ever seen. Due to the lack of seating we had to sit next to Koreans, much to their displeasure, but once we had got out of the city the population of the bus decreased and we were all able to bagsie a seat next to the window.
Remembering that this is the depth of winter Korea is still a very pretty country. I cannot wait until spring, because currently everything seems a bit dead. Every inch of spare land seems to be used here, mainly for farming once we were out of Daegu. In the western world we are used to fields being all on the same level, divided by walls and all being full of grass regardless of the time of year. Not in Korea. Here there are very definate fields, but they are all brown (I have just realised there is a distinct lack of grass here) and are a bizarre jigsaw of shapes and levels. We also drove past an entirely frozen stream, which again is new to me. It never gets cold enough at home to freeze entire rivers. After 70 minutes a little man boarded the bus selling tickets for the temple. It cost us all of 2000 won, which is just over a pound, and on we went into the temple. The bus droppped us off by the museum, that boasted the opportunity to have a go at banging a gong, but we decided to forgo that excitement and head up the temple first. It was about a 15 minute walk up hill to get there, and it had decided to rain. I enjoyed looking round, but I felt I could bring nothing more to the experience other than "Ooo that looks pretty" or "that is interesting" which is all well and good but hardly profound. Luckily the gift shop had a book that explained all the different parts of Buddist temples, so next time I will know exactly what the point of everything is.
Considering the Haeinsa is such a prominant temple both in Korea and in the Buddist faith it did not seem all that different to Donghwasa that we visited a couple of weeks ago. The complex does contain the oldest carved wooden tablets in Korea, they were very interesting. We were also able to go and see where the monks lived, so it was more of a personal look at a temple. I will add photos once I upload them from my camera, the rain and the mist added up to a very atmospheric temple trip but I still preferred Donghwasa. Maybe because it was my first temple, maybe because it was more peaceful? whatever the reason Haeinsa was a beautiful place but maybe did not live up to its hype.
However, Haeinsa is the closest place that does temple stays and I would be really interested to try that. Only when it gets warmer.
