Friday, May 18, 2012

Gyeongju - Part 2

Yay, back in Internet Land (Seoul/Homebase). We stayed in some crappy hotels the last few days, so I did not have WIFI available to me. Well, I didn't have free WIFI. They have WIFI everywhere, but it's locked down here really tight... you have to have a cell phone plan to connect to them. Anyways... enough excuses. Where was I?

Ah yes, after visiting the Buddah on top of the mountain, there was some night spots to check out in Gyeongju.
One of the most awe inspiring spots was the Cheomseongdae Observatory. This is one of the oldest scientific structures in the world used for studying the stars. It's not anything really special to look at, but if you consider the history and the fact that it survived time and many wars, you can't help but be in awe.


Next, we checked out Anapji. This is where the royalty and nobles would hang out. It was built as an amusment park/getaway. Now it's just a park with some beautifully lit up monuments.

Did I mention there was a super rad pond in the middle?

After walking around so much this day we packed it in and went back to the hotel for some shut eye. In the morning we were treated to a sort of nicer day. Here is the view of the lake from our 1970's hotel room:

They advertised that they had a tennis court. That's the brown dirt with the broken net.

We then decided to check out Yangdong Folk village. Upon getting there it didn't seem all that special. Just some very old houses. Until I saw a guy come out of one of the houses. Yeah, people are still living there! These Korean people are still sort of living the traditional lifestyle (well, for the most part.). This is a treasure of Korea and even Prince Charles has visited here before.

Traditional, plus cars.

The houses with the grass roofs were used by the servants and the houses with the fancy curvy asian shingle roofs were uses by the nobles.

Grass hut, where I'd probably live.

Next, we went to Millenium Park. This new amusement park was built to showcase Korean History and culture. As we were there, of course there was another school tour going on. Here are some teenage girls gawking over Hannah. She is somewhat of a celebrity here because everyone thinks she's sooooo cute.

AWWWWWW!!!

Near the entrance, there was fountains of all the 12 Lunar calendar animals. I'm the rooster. There's a fun fact for everyone.

Looks better in real life. Like most things.

In the park are also 2 shows that they put on. The first one tells a story about a war with China. It was pretty cool actually. They had fireworks, sword fights, ship fights (one of the boats sinks! haha), and dancing. They also did some crazy fantasy magic stuff. Maybe not historically accurate, but awesome nonetheless.

I control the water, fools!!!


Huge set. That's what she said.

Some dancing. Someone is in the rear of that animal costume.

Oh noes! The Chinese attack. Choreographed sword fights ensue.

Chinese lose. Some die, some get their ship sunk.

After the show, we wander around a bit and there is a spot where you can try archery. It's harder than it looks, but I hit the target a couple of times.

Robin Hood. Or Skyrim. or something.

We then saw another show/demonstration. It was half ninja tricks, half horse tricks and all awesome. I actually liked this show more because there was some serious skill involved, and they could have died 70 times over.

Prepare to DIE!

On horses, they shot bow and arrows and spears at a target. They were going with some decent speed and hit the target every time.


Back to ninja's...
The bamboo didn't have a chance.

Back to horses. They are now doing some tricks. They do flips and tricks and never fall off the horse.

Just chillin.

These pictures seriously do not give justice to what they were doing. I'll try and post some video of this later because it was seriously very rad.

On our way out, we decided to have one last final family photo at the park. After this, we returned the POS car and hopped on a train to... ULSAN!

1 comment:

Ash-Lee said...

Hey lovelies! I got your postcard - wha thank you! Just had to pop by to say that my boyfriend and I are keeping up with your blog - love the pictures and thanks for taking the time to update! Hannah is so gorgeous - I hope I get to meet her one day :) I can see why those teenage girls swooned over her.

Sending good energy and hopefully good weather from Halifax!

<3 Ash & Mike