#gatbawi

[brazilkorea]

Mokpo - Descubra lugares e histórias incríveis da cidade

Mokpo – Descubra lugares e histórias incríveis da cidade

Image: visitkorea

Mokpo é uma bela e histórica cidade portuária situada no sudoeste da península coreana, que tem preservado suas tradições culturais únicas desde os tempos antigos. Conheça lugares incríveis que você não pode deixar de visitar. 

(more…)

View On WordPress

[shawna-ing]

#tbt Daegu, South Korea 2009. #nofilter #gatbawi #daegu #southkorea #landofthemorningcalm #landscape #travel #temple #wanderlust #🇰🇷 (at Daegu)

[21cnomad]

A Fake Pilgrim

One of my favorite things to do in Korea is hike. No matter where you live, you’re never more than a few subway stops from excellent hiking trails. Last Wednesday I finally made my way to the trail that leads to one of Daegu’s most culturally important places, the giant stone carved statue of Buddha known as Gat Bawi (갓바위로) or hatted stone. The statue is considered a masterpiece, and was built to…

View On WordPress

[kaitlinmcandrews]

3/4 of this is not about Palgongsan and is just about getting there. So to remind you that we will get there eventually, I will scatter pics throughout. ^-^

So last weekend we met up with a new friend (from our trip to Seoul that I haven’t blogged about yet…. I’m so so behind that the order I’m putting them up in no way reflects the order of events) and we decided to go to Palgongsan. I’ve heard of this mountain, and is supposedly a ‘must see’ if your in Daegu.We really suck at visiting our own city, but hey, it happens.

Well, the funny thing about this misleading title of it being a ‘must see of Daegu’ is that it isn’t in Daegu… We took the train for about an hour trip to a small town. The train was super cheap. Like 1600won ($1.60) cheap. I can’t even ride a local bus in Edmonton for that cost.

So, we had complete faith in the internet. fools.

#gallery-0-20 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-20 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-20 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-20 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

The internet suggested that we would have a super easy fun time getting to the base of the mountain. Multiple pages said to get off the train and take the local city bus #311. Whelp, that bus doesn’t exist. We searched everywhere, consulted the internet again and nothing.We were fairly confident that we were at the right bus stop. We scoured the bus map )lists every bus route and bus stop) for 팔공산 but couldn’t see it at all. It’s difficult to search through all the places even in English so looking for certain Korean letters was not easy. Our friend knew no Korean (he is just here on holiday) and Pat is, well, not great.

We got the courage to ask one of the locals. In my severely broken Korean (I am currently taking Korean classes so I know a bit more than I would have before) I ask 팔공산 아디에 있어요? (Where is Palgongsan?). To my surprise, she knew English. She said to take the bus $503 to Palgongsan and pointed us in the direction we needed to go. Whelp, guess what other bus doesn’t exist….

#gallery-0-22 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-22 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 100%; } #gallery-0-22 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-22 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

I decided to use Naver (basically Korea’s google. It’s awesome, but you have to type everything in Korean) and we found a pretty sure way to get there. Take the bus #803. Ah, so the Korean lady probably just made a mistake or remembered incorrectly. so, we look at the bus map again under the #803 bus line. Oh my gosh, it isn’t there. What the heck!!! I decided to just read every single stop and see if any of them sounded familiar. We figured it out. The stop we needed was 갓바위 (The specific part of the base we wanted to go to). guuuuuuh. well, whatever, we figured it out, let’s go!

Not much to say about the hike itself. We climbed. We saw stuff.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the closer we got to the top, the more we heard some chanting/singing coming through the speakers. It was kind of interesting ^^.

Once we got to the top. We saw the amazing Buddha (I’m guessing??? He isn’t fat though, so I have no idea. That’s all I have to go on about Buddhism apparently. fat Buddha.) statue that this mountain is famous for. He was really cool!

#gallery-0-25 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-25 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 100%; } #gallery-0-25 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-25 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

There were a ton of people praying and making wishes and placing coins on the mountains walls. It was pretty neat. Apperently, according to my coworker, The Buddha guy will fulfill only 3 wishes/hopes a day. It is really common to hike up there during exam season or before a job interview. Interesting.

people praying

We didn’t partake. we enjoyed the Scenery, but we didn’t feel the desire to pray or wish for anything.

#gallery-0-27 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-27 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-0-27 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-27 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

팔공산 Palgongsan 3/4 of this is not about Palgongsan and is just about getting there. So to remind you that we will get there eventually, I will scatter pics throughout.

[allophile]

"The Gaht-bah-wee rocks" ...and this curious seaside geology is a Mokpo must...

[delesseria]

This past Sunday I went hiking to the Buddhist site Gatbawi, which is located on top of Mt. Palgong, just outside of Daegu. Kathrine, Adam and I caught a city bus at the Daegu train station and rode about 40min outside of the city to the base of the mountain. I absolutely love the public transportation here because it is so cheap, the bus cost us 1,250 krw (about 1.25$) and it took us all the way out to the mountain from Daegu. I was reallyreallyreally excited for this excursion because I haven't been outside of a city yet in Soko! The first week I spent in Seoul for orientation and then the next 2 have been spent in Daegu. The train I took from Seoul to Daegu took us through the countryside but it was dark out, so I didn't get to see anything. 

After we arrived we stocked up on supplies at the base of the hill and started our climb. First we came upon a small grouping of temples, which I forget the name of, but were really beautiful. You could see people praying and flickering candles inside but I felt disrespectful disturbing their prayer so I stayed outside. Around this point the trail turned into really steep stone steps. The mountain is about 1,100m tall and the stone staircase runs the entire way up. Since it was a Sunday the mountain was packed and everyone was decked out in really high tech hiking gear. Koreans are obsessed with hiking. Or at least hiking clothes. There is a hiking apparel store at least every 100 ft. on the street I live on and they're all super pricey. So everyone on the trail had fancy hiking boots, pants, jackets, hats, gloves and hiking poles, which made Kathrine, Adam and I stand out even more than usual because we were just in street clothes and sneakers. The climb took us about an hour, with quite a few breaks to catch our breath. I am amazed by the physical state of most Koreans, the hike was pretty intense and yet you still saw people of all ages doing the climb. 

At the top we were rewarded with an amazing view of the surrounding countryside, which was covered with snow patches and rolling mist. The prayer pavilion's roof on the peak of the mountain was made out of hundreds of multi-colored balloons which apparently correspond to different families. Underneath the canopy were people praying on mats to Gatbawi, the giant stone Buddha statue. The combination of the view, Gatbawi, the smell of incense and the sound of chanted prayer was extremely moving. Underneath the side of Gatbawi, away from the prayer pavilion, was a wishing rock. You take a 100krw coin, make a wish, and rest the coin on one of the tiny ridges in the rock. Apparently, if your coin stays your wish will come true!

[emmaandbrian]

A Trip to Mokpo

We had our summer holidays from school last weekend,Korean style, with only three days off, so we didn't venture too far from Gwangju. After a bit (okay, a lot) of thumbing though the Lonely Planet and trawling other people's blogs for hints and tips, we decided to go to Mokpo, which is a town on the southwest coast of Korea. It's also home to a couple of ferry terminals, so we figured we'd go island-hopping for a few days. 

After procuring two bus tickets with my pidgin Korean (and zero help from Brian), we were Mokpo-bound! The journey took only 50 minutes. Our boss had conveniently written down the name of our hotel in Korean for us, so we grabbed a taxi as soon as we arrived and off we went, full of holiday cheer. The holiday cheer was quickly dampened when we saw our hotel: it was a hot pink, slightly run-down looking love motel (more on The Love Motel Phenomenon later) and the less said about our room, the better. We hightailed out of there as soon as we could and took off to explore.

After checking out the ferry terminal and scoping out the downtown area, we visited one of Mokpo's most famous sights: the Gatbawi. The Gatbawi are a pair of giant rocks which have been eroded into the shapes of two men wearing traditional Korean hats (apparently). The story behind them is that a fisherman dropped his father's coffin into the sea. He felt guilty for not taking adequate care of his father during his lifetime and sat of the edge of the sea pondering his loss. Eventually he turned into stone, as did his father, who had risen from the sea.

Now there's a story to frighten the kids: mind your mammy or you'll be transformed into a rock. I have to say, as cool as the rock formations are, they in no way resemble two men, hats or no hats. After the obligatory photos, we left the Gatbawi and wandered down to Peace Park, which is really a big long promenade, not a park at all, and discovered there was a festival in full swing. Score!

Korea is a country which is obsessed with festivals. They are held all over the country, all year round, and celebrate a vast array of subjects, some of which are more than a bit odd. A select few: cherry blossoms, butterflies, kimchi* , lotus flowers, the sea and, wait for it, mud!

The Mokpo Festival, however, was celebrating maritime culture, and a giant section of the seafront was taken over with stalls of various types. There was also a stage in the sea with different concerts on and lots of big screens dotted about so everyone could keep up the with action. I'm not exactly sure how the festival was celebrating maritime culture exactly, but it was good fun all the same. There were stalls hawking all sorts of things, from whole coconuts with straws jammed inside to various fish, battered, fried and served on sticks to wooden toys and jewellry. There were also a few bizarre stalls, like the one with an exhibit of illegally traded items or the blood pressure measuring station (surely not a good idea after a few beers). The place was hopping. We quickly forgot about Misery Motel and got into the holiday spirit, epecially after Brian found a kebab stall selling Turkish kebabs made by real live Turkish people! He was almost, but not quite, as happy as when we found the cheese...

After a post-kebab dinner and some well-deserved beverages, we returned to Misery Motel. Little did we know of the trauma that would greet us in the Ferry Terminal the next morning...

*Kimchi is spiced cabbage, and its the Korean national dish, meaning you get kimchi with everything.