Busan Cont'd
Trip Start
Oct 20, 2008
1
57
93
Trip End
Jan 31, 2009
Busan,
Korea Rep.
Friday, December 19, 2008
As we were hiking with the hopes of finding the Beomeosa Temple, we accidentally went into a much smaller temple. The family that managed the temple offered us cookies, fruit and cookie, without expecting anything in return. Then they gave us the directions and we found the actual temple located in the middle of a hillside forest.
When we reached the temple grounds, I heard some Buddhist chanting. Followed the sound into one of the buildings and sat with the nuns as they prayed. I hadn't seen Buddhists pray like this before. They were bowing all the way down, thereby touching their foreheads on the floor. It looked almost like the Muslim prayer.
Karaoke Time
Although Beomeosa was an old temple that was established in the 7th Century, it wasn't impressive architecturally. The main difference between this temple and the Japanese ones that I have seen was that Beomeosa is much more colorful. In addition, there were more depictions on the exteriors and the roof structure was slightly different. I had never seen a wide angle between the line that goes to the top vertex of the roof and the one that goes to the lowest vertex.
Beomeosa was located near the Northern Gate of a mountain-top fortress. We started hiking. Once we reached the Gate, we decided to hike all the way up to the peak. The sun was going to set in an hour, so it was a slightly risky decision. The view from 801 meters was amazing. You could see the Busan port, the Hae-Undae Beach, the mushrooming greenhouses and the airport.
Mr. Yang: 60ish; small and bold; chemical engineer and the President of the Busan Tennis Association; has 2 kids; although he is a Buddhist his daughters are Christian; Terza (the Dutch girl) didn't want to go up to the summit; as she was waiting for her brother and me, she met Mr. Yang who offered some Soju (Korean whiskey) to her; when we returned from the summit, he took us to the bus stop; then he showed us the way to a nice restaurant called Darae, not the regular backpacker type; he had the entire table decorated with every single Korean dish he could think of; noodles, fish, sushi, sashimi, various salads, mussels, rice, soup, beef ribs..
Mr. Yang
. he was a very pleasant guy who laughed a lot; taught us the reciprocal, Korean way to drink Soju; after a couple rounds, he got pretty drunk; with unbelievable generosity, he paid for all of us; just as we were thinking that the party was over, he took us to a bar next door to drink gigantic bottles of Hite, a local brand of beer; he introduced the middle-aged bar owner to us as Mrs. President; Yang's fascination with my beard, lead him to ask me if he could touch it; I was surprised at how physically cordial he was, as this is taboo in the Japanese culture; patted my back the entire night; he gave her 28-year-old daughter a call to make her speak to us in English and French; she sounded as sweet as her father; Mr. Yang took us to a karaoke bar, as a cherry on top; these guys take their karaoke seriously; we had a room exclusively reserved for us; we sang a variety of songs ranging from Mr. Yang's favorite Korean songs to Frank Sinatra; finally, he showed us the way to the subway station and waved at us; I had never seen such warmth and hospitality in any other city that I've ever visited.P.S: My family is having an eraly New Year's dinner tonight at my grandparents' place. I miss them all a lot and wish them a happy new year. Wish I could be there...
