lost or what?

Bulkguksa is about 30 minutes by bus away from down town Gyeongju. The road there is completely cherry blossom lined, and goes around theme parks, historic sites, roller coasters and a big lake. The APEC summit is also here next year so there is a lot of work going on around the convention centre areas. This is just a typical street in the Bulguksa village, more on the other stuff tomorrow, probably.

The path up to the temple at Bulguksa was a total blossom fest.

A veritable sea of blossoms. People were gathering up handfuls and throwing them in the breeze.

I read that to enter the temple costs $6, but today it was free. This may be because of the typhoon last year that closed the grotto for a while. More on that below. The temple grounds are quite nice of course.

Behold, Bulguksa, with blue sky! Pollution free blue sky.

The temple is much like any other temple, apparently it has a lot of significance to Buddhists, but to me it was no more or less spectacular than the 100's of others I have seen.

A lot of plastic lanterns were in the process of being hung everywhere.

Last temple pic. The light was spectacular.

Here is a German tour group on the bridge getting in my way as I try to exit the compound.

Now for the path to the Seokguram grotto. This was only recently opened after a typhoon caused a landslide. I had read that even while closed, real hikers had devised a way around... and I was prepared to try that, but it seems it is all repaired and now a driveway followed by new staircase.

I am assuming this is the bit that was destroyed by the landslide. I feel as though it is just a matter of time until it happens again.

Cloud was rolling in, so I got a shot of the view back towards Gyeongju from about half way up. It does not even take an hour to get to the grotto and the path is never particularly steep. Despite that, the tripadvisor review talks about near death experiences and how the path is best left to Bear Grylls. There were Junior high school kids skipping along the path and plenty of senior citizens, so some people really need to re learn how to walk 2km.

I have arrived at the grotto area. I did not know what to expect other than a stone Buddha. They have a good quality toilet.

This is it! It goes back into the hill for maybe 30 or 40 metres, and you can go in and look at 100 or so people praying in front of it, but there are numerous no photo police in there, so no photo of the UNESCO world heritage Buddha.

It is good to see the monks support the rainbow revolution.

After a walking back along the path a bit, it was time to veer further up the mountain and start the ascent to Tohamsan. There were zero other people from this point onwards, despite that the path was still of great quality. No rock scrambling today.

Not as desolate as the other day, but still quite desolate.

I got to this sign and thought, here we go, the trail is cut. But I translated it and no, this is a sign telling you that it is illegal to consume alcohol on the summit area. OK then.

Today's helicopter landing pad. They would really struggle to land in the wind today. It was windy enough that taking photos was difficult, so no selfies or stance shot today.

I had the summit all to myself.

Here is the view, away from Gyeongju. There was no real view back towards the city from the top.

I imagine you can get a view from the top of the fire spotting tower, but the thing is covered in cameras so it is probably not worth the risk of climbing for a view.

Now for the great path down. There were other ways to go down too that would make for a longer hike, but I wanted to go back down and explore the Bulkguksa village area.

The path down was fast, smooth, and often lined with purple flowers. I ran some of it.

Getting near the bottom, and it is graveyard time. Not as grand as the funeral mounds in town. I imagine if we had these in Australia, kids on BMX bikes would enjoy them. Interestingly, some of the tomb stones have crucifix's engraved on them, I assumed they were Buddhist graves, or maybe its like Taiwan where they like to hedge their bets?

And then, as usual, I exited the path into farmland.

Not to worry, I was very near a golf course. This is a boring photo except for the autonomous follow me golf buggies. Everyone had one, it literally follows you, and you tap something on it when you want it to stop. I had never seen that before.

This is the first tee. Fake grass! The course looks very high quality apart from the fake grass tee. This is part of the Kolon sports resort, Kolon sports is basically Korean Adidas / Nike.

Now for a few pics of the Bulguksa village, every building here is made to look like ye olde style.

They still have new style old person exercise equipment though.

All the streets here are nice.

I am pretty sure this is a hotel. They had a wall so I climbed up on some rocks for the photo. OK, that is enough photos of Bulguksa.