Been a While

Erstwhile readers, I apologize for not updating more frequently!  To tell the truth, the month of July has been a little sleepy for me, however I did take a visit to the east coast of Korea, to a small-ish port city called Sokcho.  I'm in a little bit of a rush as I type this, so I will likely do my full post tomorrow, but I wanted to put up some pictures of the adventure. Enjoy!

As I said, Sokcho is a port city, so the first thing I did upon arriving was to explore the rocky beaches a little.  This pavilion was closed, so I couldn't go out on it, but it still looked cool.

Rocks!

Lighthouse (more later).

More rocks!

There were these tiny crabs everywhere, and they could somehow climb vertically, never seen that before.

The orange bit there is actually the underside of a starfish.  Neat!

A prettier angle.

This is a shot from me climbing the stairs to the lighthouse.

And again, just to showcase the beautiful cliff.

Almost there!

Looking out over the harbor from the lighthouse.

Back across the city.

Dinner was traditional bibimbap (rice with vegetables mixed in).  I got all this for about $6.50, such a deal!

The next day I visited Nasansa temple, it is one of the older temples in Korea and is apparently very famous.  Unfortunately a lot of it was burned down during a forest fire in 2005, however as of 2010 it has been fully rebuilt as per some of the more original designs and descriptions.  It still functions as a Buddhist monastery.

This pavilion was rebuilt after the fire, the large bell you see is a remnant from the original.

Some wooden crows and mounds of the old roof tiles.  Not sure what the crows are for, but they were surprisingly realistic.

This is the actual entrance to the monastery grounds, everything else was sort of the outer garden.

This massive stone Buddha is one of the famous features of Naksansa.  No word on whether it ever comes to life and turns into a fighting robot in times of peril.

A large pond and then a big gate that serves as the entrance to the main temple area.

Perhaps somewhat low quality, but I wasn't sure how kosher it was to take pictures of the buddhas inside the temples, so this was a quick shot from the hip.  Interestingly, this was not the "main" temple, courtyard had two auxiliary temples to the right and left, which housed smaller statues.  The main buddha statue was about three times this one's size. Wicked impressive, but I have no pictures.

This is called a "stupa" and is a sort of reliquary in the Buddhist tradition.

Did I mention the temple abuts the sea?  This pavilion stood on the eastern edge of the temple and looks out over the pacific.

The massive buddha statue again. 

Looking out over the mountains.

Some neat wall art of any angry guy.

I'll be honest, I have no idea what purpose this building serves, but it looked very cool.

A big drum and bell, presumably for calling the monks together or hosting sick raves.

Not sure why this dragon is so short.

Fear my tininess!

The four kings of heaven I believe.  You can't see it, but people left spare change or small bills at their feet.  I gave 100 KRW to the guy in the upper left as he seemed the most relaxed, turns out he's sort of the patron of The State, so go politics I guess?

These fountains were everywhere.  People used them to wash their hands, feet, etc, but also to drink from (not the little scoopers on the right edge).  For a while I abstained as I was a bit leery of drinking from a public fountain, but this one seemed very clean, and I liked the statuary, so I gave it a shot.  No jiardia so far, so I'll put it in the "success" column.

This dude was a little creepy though.  "Wazzzuuuupppp...drink some water."

And ad I saw waiting for the bus back to the hostel.  Yangyang is the name of the province Sokcho is in.  Given how beautiful the area was, I sorta feel like the Yangyang Board of Tourism really took a swing and a miss on this slogan.

Anyways, that concludes the pictures that I took in Sokcho.  Stay tuned tomorrow for a description of the fun had there!