14 April 2023
Crowded and overrated
Haedong Yonggungsa Temple
Today I went to a location that is generally on everyone's top 10 things to see or do in Korea.
It is quite a long way from my hotel, with a train change. I missed my change so got off a station later and walked back, and that was probably as interesting as the temple!
Strangely, a little old lady pushed me on the train, multiple times. She was weak and feeble, I thought she was trying to hang onto me at first, but I was standing and there were many spare seats, then she ranted a bit and some other Korean women gave her a talking to. I did not fall for the trap and backhand her across the face and end up arrested and on Korean tabloid TV (it happens).
The temple area is in a new ghost town, full of malls and a theme park. A lot of temples seem to have a theme park, refer to my Gyeongju visit from a few days ago. The actual temple area is tour bus horror, and way too many people.
It is a long way to go for maybe 30 minutes of temple, so for that reason, I declare this to be the most overrated temple in Korea. I expect the temple board of directors to start trying to find ways to discredit my opinion.
Like I mentioned, I transferred one stop late at Dongnae and walked back one stop. Which went along this underground park. I am literally under the station. I thought this was great.
The nearby mega church was indeed mega. The leader is in there now (it is Sunday morning) receiving donations from idiots who are awaiting transport off the face of the earth when the rapture arrives. On this occasion, the actual church building transforms into a space ship (look at it, you know I am right).
So in summary today I have offended the leaders of the Buddhist temple and a mega church.
The drain near the church was adorned with yellow flowers. How often do you get to say adorned in your life?
This is Osiria station, where I got off to walk to the temple. It is in the middle of nowhere and a new city area is being built around it. The train to here while technically part of the metro, is actually the commuter line to Ulsan. It only runs about once every 20 minutes.
The theme park is huge, but hard to get a photo that shows any of it.
Somehow I ended up under the road in a home-wares mega mall. More mega malls to come. This place was all mega malls for the temple goers.
Behold, another mega mall, I shall go through it on my way back to the station.
Approaching the temple and there are millions of people (possible exaggeration) but it was really slow going.
There it is. That is all of it.
Sure, the rocks are nice.
The bridge is nice too. There were numerous statues you are supposed to touch to ensure you have a male baby. And the bridge is where you can drown unwanted female babies. This is not longer really a thing in Korea, because no one has any babies.
CONFIDENTLY INCORRECT. This sign really sums up what I think about this place. It is marketed really really well, but is really just a tourist trap.
Today's Buddha is a plastic gold coloured fat Buddha.
I hoped to walk around the coast, but you cannot. This is as far as I could get. There was a loudspeaker announcement in every language that a free lunch of instant Korean noodles was now being served. This caused a stampede. A stampede for instant noodles.
A statue.
Technically this is part of the pay car park that is not affiliated with the Temple. There seems to be some kind of dispute about that.
Time to exit via the plastic religious artefacts stores.
On my way back, I passed a different part of the theme park. It might be a separate thing entirely. This one has a luge track and a zip line. You take the chair lifts back to the top. Both activities seem potentially holiday / life ending, so I continued on.
The mega mall I passed earlier is still in the process of opening in stages. Much of it is the Lotte outlet mall, so semi outdoor like a DFO in Australia. Finding a toilet that was actually open was challenging!
And for my final photo today, here is the city under construction nearby. I suspect no one lives there yet.