Anne in Korea: Hiking Namsam

Today I went hiking on Mount Namsam. This is a pretty mountain about 20 minutes outside of Gyeongju with a bunch of ancient buddhas strewn over it. I had never gone before, so I had to take a bus to unknown territory. A friend kindly gave me instructions and I thought "How hard can it be?" Anyways, sitting in the bus I was happily playing aps on my phone and looking at the beautiful countryside. Suddenly, my water bottle fell to the floor so I got up to retrieve it. Only then did I realize that I was alone on the bus. The driver also only noticed me then and started speaking to me. While he only spoke Korean, he was very good at the inter-language mime game, and I quickly understood that I had missed the stop a long while back. He told me to come sit up front and he would let me know when to get off on the way back. Oops. I was very embarrassed, but the driver was being nice about it.

So we get to the end of the route and he stops the bus for his break. He noticed I had my phone out, and came over to check it out. He was very amused to see the Korean phone in English. What happened next will sound rude, but in Korea people have less personal boundaries due to a more communal mentality and less space. Anyways, he took my phone and started playing with it and it was hilarious. He recognized Kakaotalk, a Korean messaging app, so he clicked that. He then sounded out some of my friends names and started clicking their photos. One friend had a picture of her poodle as her display image, and he loved that poodle. He kept returning to it and laughing. It was so funny. He had a sprinkling of English words which he would use while looking at the pictures. It was all I could do not to just crack up at the whole situation. He also checked out my pictures, and my Korean learning app. When you open the latter, a Korean cartoon characters pops up. He had a laugh at that too. It was so funny it made missing the stop totally worth it.

Eventually I got to the mountain and got off the bus. The hike was 1.7km and I must say I really did not expect to have to exert myself so much! The mountain was beautiful, the air crisp and smelling of pine. I passed a few Koreans coming down and was quite embarrassed by my laboured breathing. One man smiled and asked me where I was from. I told him Canada, to which he replied "Quebec!" I was so surprised! I told him that I was indeed from Quebec, and later when I was waiting for the bus home he drove by smiling, waving, and saying "Goodbye Miss Quebec!" It was hilarious.Anyways I made it to the top of the mountain, and it was very beautiful. Two ladies arrived at the top after me and were super jolly and kept speaking to me in Korean. It was cute.The way down was muuuuch faster, and I was amused to note the difference in disposition in people going up the mountain, and those going down.

Next to the seated Buddha
was this little cave/shelter.
Inside was a stone bed.
Looked pretty cool.

View from within the cave.

This guy meant business.
I was pretty jealous of those
sticks soon enough.

I really liked the sun bear mascots on all the signs.

No grapes!!

Spring is coming!

This rock has Buddha carved into it. Sadly the information
provided was mostly about the size of the carvings
and what they were of, and not of who carved them
or when.

On my way down many of the
Buddhas had fresh offerings.
I wonder what they do with
this stuff. Is it just left
over night? Also Buddha
drinks beer? I saw a few people
lighting incense and praying too.
I find Koreans so similar to us
that I forget they have this whole
other religion. It's neat.