Sanjay on the rocks!

(Day one is here, day two here)

Day three began with rain, which put a spanner into our schedule. We had cafeteria breakfast and headed to Bulguksa, but by the time we got there it was pouring rain and an executive decision was reached to go back to the hotel and shoot a series of interview shots. This lead to Sanjay, perching like the Skinny Buddha, on a rock in the middle of a pond behind the hotel. By this time we were getting pretty accomplished at this, so the shots went quickly, though there were a lot of them.

This took up most of the morning and then it was off to a Gyeongju sambap (The first night we had Gyeongju Bibimbap, so we were 2/3 of the way to the Gyeongju food trifecta) restaurant where, to my substantial surprise (and his) I ran into the estimable Brother Anthony in the parking lot! Not only that, but he was in the company of Christopher Merrill, the Director of the University of Iowa International Writing Program.

After lunch we headed off to a traditional tea house just around the corner. I was kind of hoping to see Brother Anthony there, as he is an expert on the Korean way of tea, but alas he was not there.

Brother Anthony and Christopher Merrill

While we were drinking tea and chatting a Buddhist monk/doctor came in to look at the owner’s son, and also volunteered to give us all readings.

The first question he asked about me was if I smoked(?), but he went on from there to say that my kidneys are week, my digestion is bad, computers are bad for my brain and back, and I should see a doctor when I got back to Seoul. So, basically, I’m dying if not dead.^^ He had also given me a Buddhist wristlet, which he said was made of meteorite rock, and would help my health. He also “adjusted” the neck and back of several of the Korean crew, one of whom was in pain for the rest of our trip^^. He also did a “duodenal massage” on several of the crew, which looked extremely painful, and apparently was from the grunts and hollering that the crew did. A few seconds of that are here:

Still, it was an awesome moment of “WTF?” in the middle of the day, and we stayed a bit longer than we probably should have.

Next we visited the Tumuli Park in downtown Gyeongu, and I took a picture outside:

A Husband/Wife Tomb

And took ruthless advantage of being with Arirang (who had a photography carte blanche) to take a picture inside the one tomb that is open (photographs are normally forbidden here):

The King is dead!

After the tomb, we stopped to take some film of other tumuli, and took that opportunity to buy some Gyeongju Bread, thus completing the Gyeongju representative food trifecta! Sanjay had never eaten it before, so he took particular interest.

Then it was off to GeumJangDae, which is a new pavilion overlooking Gyeongju at the confluence of the Seocheon and Hyeongsan rivers. This pavilion also overlooks Yegicheongso, a pond below Geumjangdae Pavilion, which features in Kim Dong-ni’s short novel Munyeodo (Portrait of a Shaman,  or Tableau of a Shaman, 1936), as the site of the Shaman’s final, and surprising, ritual. Writers and poets who have visited Geumjangdae Pavilion have recited poems here, and it was the site of a PEN reading during the 2012 78th International PEN Congress.

Geumjangdae

So, not just a beautiful place to visit, but also deeply tied in to the literature of the area and early last millennium.

Then, it was off to our last night’s dinner, at which we ate samgyeopsal and, for the first time on this trip, drank.

Drank too much, in fact.^^

But it was awesome.