Temple Thursday

James and I checked out of our hotel at 7am on Thursday since we wanted an early start and had a decent distance to travel. We took a bus from Yeosu to Suncheon, and then caught another bus to Jinju. Jinju was a middle ground for the two of us. There was plenty in town for me to see, and James could catch a bus to go to Jirisan National Park. Jirisan has the second highest peak in the country, at 1915meters. At this point in the week, I'd had enough of climbing peaks, so I told him to have fun, and I'd tour the city (aside from the fact that James must be related to mountain goats on one side - he climbs really fast, even by ajuma's standards). So we found a place to stay in Jinju, since there wasn't any lockers at the bus station and we weren't about to carry them around, and I headed to Jinju fortress, which was only a few blocks from where we were staying. On my way there, I passed the biggest Buddha statue I'd ever seen sitting very happily outside a convenience store across the street from the fortress.

There are two gates for the Jinju Fortress, and I went in through the eastern one. 

The fortress is a registered historical site and sits just north of the Nam River. In 1593, the Koreans lost a battle with the Japanese and most of the population of the city in the process. It's apparently one of the best restored city-fortresses in the country, and is a pretty popular park for the locals to visit. It should have been W1,000 to get in, but I was ushered through the gates by the attendant without paying.

Just inside the eastern gate is Cheongyeolsa, which is a shrine for 39 patriots. You'd never tell it was a shrine by the large amount of people sitting inside (or standing underneath the floor) eating watermelon and enjoying the shade.

And it has a great view of the river.

Near Cheongyeolsa is Uigisa, a shrine to Nongye. She was one of several gisaeng (similar to a geisha) selected to entertain Japanese generals following the invasion. She led one of the generals to the edge of a cliff, put her arms around him and then threw herself into the river below where they were both drowned. The shrine was erected in 1824 in her honor.

There were several temples and pavilions in the fortress, which was really more like a heavily walled park. 

One of the temples had some interesting interior decorations, including statues in the left corner, 

the seemingly requisite gold Buddhas in the center,

and an odd painting of someone with several hands holding various objects, and concentric rings of hands surrounding them.

After spending a few hours in the fortress, I decided to head across the river to Wolgyeong-sa, the largest temple I've seen since I've been here. 

It's located in the middle of a large area of apartment buildings, and looks a bit out of place.

It's beautifully painted inside, with a 'restaurant' on the first floor where you can get kimbop (rice and seaweed), and large worship areas on the second and third floors.

The third floor was  amazingly beautiful. You had to take your shoes off before you even got to the top of the stairs, so I'm assuming the entire floor was a place of worship. 

This is also the only place I think I've seen with a white Buddha, at least on this scale. There were three ajumas sitting on the floor near the back of the room eating watermelon and some sort of bread pudding. They asked me to sit and eat with them, and then told me that I could go downstairs to get kimbop if I was still hungry (at least, I'm pretty sure that's what they were saying, since none of them knew English, we were using sign language and my very limited Korean vocabulary).  So I took that as my cue to leave and head further up the road to the next temple, Jeongbeop-sa.

(This sign says Jeongbeop-sa to the left and Wolgyeong-sa to the right. Sa means temple.)

On the way up to the next temple, I passed this sign:

I don't know what it translates to, but I think it's pretty obvious from the picture what it's about (the boat says USA on it).

I headed up to Jeongbeop-sa, but it was less than remarkable. I was greeted by a rather vicious, though chained up, dog that growled when I tried to approach, and started barking at me when I got too close. One of the monks came out and sprayed water in front of him and ushered me into the small complex, but it only took me about two minutes to walk around. The temple itself had it's doors closed and I didn't know how to ask if it was ok for me to go in, so I didn't. The monk had to spray near the dog again to let me leave, and I mumbled a thank-you to her as I scurried away.

After the temples I decided to head to Jinyang Lake. I had wanted to take a bus there, but couldn't find any bus stops, so I hailed a cab. The Nam River, which was dammed in 1969, creates Jinyang Lake. I had read in my guidebook that during the summer you could rent row boats to go out on the lake. 

I didn't actually see where you could rent any boats, but there were other things to see there. I missed out on the children's zoo, but saw a nice family park

walking trails, 

a traditional pavilion

and I saw the dam from a distance.

After a long wait for the bus, I decided to head back to the hotel and take a nap before James got back. When I woke up an hour or so later the air conditioner had stopped working. I went downstairs to ask for help (with my phrasebook in hand), and she seemed to say she could fix it from where she was. When I got back to the room it was running again, but blowing warm air. So I sat down to write out in Korean "The air conditioner is broken. I'm hot. Please show me how to fix it" since she didn't seem to understand my pronunciation. At this point James came back in from Jirisan. We convinced the owner, after much gesticulation and pointing to the phrasebook, to let us switch rooms since she wasn't able to get it to blow cold air again. James and I were both exhausted (him more so than me of course, since he'd just trekked up the side of several mountains), so we went to sleep early.