Bulguksa Temple and Seokguram Grotto

After getting settled at Hanjin Hostel, we made our way to Bulguksa Temple, possibly the most famous temple in Korea, and the most famous sight in Gyeongju. Since it was Buddha's birthday, admission was free, which was cool, but there were also tons of people.

All the lanterns in the picture are from Buddha's birthday.

A temple guardian at the gate.

After seeing the temple, we decided to visit the second most famous sight in Gyeongju, Seokguram Grotto, which is a cave with a Buddha statue inside that's a really rare work of religious art. The only problem was, we had to hike up the mountain to see it. A bus goes up every hour, but it was getting a little late and we didn't want to wait. The trail fooled us, though--it started out normal and then all of a sudden took off in a steep incline. It took us an hour to hike 1.5 miles!

It was painful, but totally worth it. We even got to walk around the Buddha; normally you can only look at it from behind a glass wall. It was one of the coolest things we've seen in Korea, but unfortunately no pictures are allowed. Fortunately, you can see some pictures on this web site.

Here are a few interesting facts:

-Both Bulguksa and Seokguram were built in the 8th century. The temple was built by King Kim Daeseong in honor of his parents in his current life, and grotto was built in honor of his parents in his former life.
-"Bulguk" means Buddha's land and "sa" means temple.
-The Buddha in the grotto faces the East Sea and supposedly the cave catches the first light of the sun as it rises.
-The Buddha is a symbolic protector of Korea against invasion by Japan.
-A document from the time says that the sculpting of the Buddha was "like weaving silk out of stone."