Afternoon Trip to Gapsa Temple

A dragon guards the main gate.

The main gate up the path.

The path to Gapsa Temple.

2 of the 4 kings guarding the second gate to Gapsa Temple.

Second Gateway of the four kings.

A natural mineral water spring where hikers can drink from. It was very refreshing.

Shin Sin at the entrance to a small shrine.

The private quarters of the monks and a blue public phone booth in this remote area. These phone booths pop up everywhere in Korea. You can always rely on finding one in the strangest places.

Buildings being kept up to date. Great backdrop of Gyeryong National Park.

Gapsa Temple has a variety of buildings in the temple compound.

Beautiful Architechture and use of colours.

Large Bell and Large Drum Room.

Sunday 10 June

by Melisa

This afternoon Shin Sin, the P.E Teacher from my Middle School took me up to Gyeryong National Park to Gapsa Temple. She picked me up from the apartment and we drove 20 mins to a handmade noodle house for lunch. After that we drove 10 mins to the foot of the national park. Being Sunday, the park was very crowded with Korean hiking groups and families enjoying the pleasant weather.

The park entrance has a lot of motels, restaurants and stalls surrounding the area. The market stall holders yell out to you urging you to buy stuff but I followed Shin Sins lead and kept walking ignoring them. Apparently this is not rude. Shin Sin is a lovely kind lady who asked me last week if I wanted to go to the park with her. She is learning english and finds it difficult to speak but she brought along her electronic talking dictionary and tries so hard that we found it easier the longer we were together.

I imagined the walk to the temple was going to be a long hike so I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was going to take 10 minutes to walk there on a gradual slope. The pathway up there was all cobbled and quite wide which makes walking very easy. Infact a lot of people I saw today were older. You can keep hiking up over to the other temples. There are 2 others in the mountains but it takes around 4 hours. I like 10 minutes better.

We passed through an amazing gate with the colours of the temple which is like a peacock blue, red, yellow, orange and green. The main gate had dragons guarding it.

The second gate had 4 kings inside the gates 2 on each side. They are a bit scary looking and almost hideous but its the Korean cultural style for that period of time.

Finally I saw a pagoda roof and we walked up the path to the temple compound. The colours were so bright and the architecture so different. My photos don't do it justice. It is such a lovely spot with huge maple trees surrounding it and the backdrop of the mountains. The main temple is quite small. Shin Sin said it is a small temple complex and the other temple in the mountains is a great deal bigger. However I enjoyed this one very much. A great way to spend and afternoon.

Day Tripping

7.00am Teacher Hur and Melisa on the bus

Sobaeksan National Park

Water pool at Sobaeksan National Park

Stone steps to the entrance of Gosu Cave

Inside Gosu Cave

Underwater pool inside Gosu Cave

Limestone Gosu Cave Metal staircases run through Gosu Cave

Walking deeper down into the depths of the cave

Artifical Chungjuho Lake

Friends Carol Kim and Sun Young Park on the Boat Trip

Teacher's eating on the Boat Trip

On the top deck of the 3 story ferry

Dion and Melisa singing Suspicious Minds on the Boat Trip

Daytripping with Yongnam High School Teacher's to Sobaeksan National Park.

We went on a bus trip on Saturday 2nd June with 67 teacher's from Yongnam High School.

Teacher Hur picked us up from our apartment at 6.40am and we went to school and got on the bus. There were 2 flashed out buses complete with a plasma tv, karaoke, ac and rainbow lights. It was very exciting to travel in style. We left the school at 7.00am with half the teachers as we were making 2 stops along the way to collect the rest. The school was paying for the whole day which was very generous.

We didn't have time for breakfast so it was a nice surprise when they gave everyone breakfast. It was 24 small pieces of gimbap or Korean Sushi. Melisa was so hungry that eating sushi at 7.30am didn't faze her at all and she ate the whole lot. We also got a water bottle, can of beer and a bag of goodies for the trip.

We only found out that morning that the bus trip was to Sobaeksan National Park in the next province and would take 3 hours to get there. We were thankful for the food and drink and the luxury bus seeing it would take awhile.

Travelling through the Korean countryside was enjoyable. The rice fields had been planted and along the way you could see the green shoots growing tall. The fields were full of cabbage, corn and other types of veges all in straight lines. The farmers seem to always be out on the land doing something. We never saw any animals grazing. Koreans must find NZ so spacious especially having room for animals to graze.

The land is mountainous but different to NZ. Some of the hills look rounded and their shapes look like they've been drawn. Some other mountains look pointed and sharp. It is still very beautiful and green.

We travelled all together up to the National Park and got a group photo taken. Half the group wanted to hike up Birobong Mountain (1439m) which takes 3 hours but we were behind on the schedule so they had to cut their hike in half. The other group (our group) wanted to go to the famous Gosu Cave after lunch. We separated and our group went to have lunch. It was at the resort town of Danyang on the edge the huge artifical Chungjuho Lake.

We ate a special spicy fish soup for lunch with loads of side dishes. Its a local delicacy and very expensive. The fish is caught over the road by locals and put into tanks in restaurants and in the markets. The soup was quite spicy but very healthy and tasty. The side dishes were really good with Eggplant, Cucumber, Tofu and tasty Korean Pancakes among the choices.

After lunch we went on to the Gosu cave, which is 1.7 km long and extremely old, although it was only found in 1973. It's a winding, up and down trail of narrow nooks and crevasses. There are many amazing features highlighted in the cave, including stalagtites, stalagmites and some beautiful ponds. The 'watch your head' signs were very helpful. Look at some of the pictures. They don't really do it justice ; times like this make you feel very small. We were taken through the cave by a maze of spiral staircases and other metal walkways.

With the incredible caving experience over, the bus took us down to Chungjuho ferry terminal where we caught a ferry up this very picturesque man made lake. We had some eats and drinks up on the top deck with the teachers and then had some fun doing karaoke with Captain Stubing from the love boat down on the first deck. He played his sax pretty well when we were singing 'Suspicious Minds'. At the end of the journey a whole lot of Yongnam teachers were having a lot of fun on the karaoke mic: all inhibitions were down.

We went back on the bus and stopped in at Ochang rest station and had some 'bibimbap' - a traditional korean dish(rice, vegetables and red pepper paste mixed together with egg). I like it but Melisa doesn't. The bus back turned into more of a party bus with teachers all getting up and having a go on the karaoke. One of the extraordinarily keen teachers roped us into singing 'Hey jude' and 'Time after time'. We finished off the night watching Korea play Holland in soccer on the big screen in the front of the bus.