The Giant Buddha

On the first day of my 3 day new year holiday I had planned on climbing Mount Palgongsan, another Mountain within the city, with some peeps. We also wanted to visit some of the sanctuaries and holy grounds of the Buddhist religion...but perhaps most importantly we wanted to see the biggest statue of Buddha in the world!

We had no idea the size of adventure this was, and had decided to meet around 11 at the main bus terminal. The bus ride to the mountain was quite a trip in itself and trying to find proper directions to get to the temple area was another difficulty altogether.

Pal-gong-san.
"Yongsan?"
Noooooo Paaaal-Goooong-Saaaaan!
"Yongsan?"


Errrrrr. Mountain (hand motions for something very tall).
"Yongsan?"
I finally resorted to looking up mountain in my handy pocket dictionary and showing it to him.
"ah Palgongsan?"
I swear to god that was exactly what we were saying, or a lot friggen closer then Yongsan. A lot of Koreans don't seem to throw us a bone when our pronunciation is a little off. A little frustrating. When Koreans randomly talk to me to practice their English, I can figure out what they want to say if its close. Perhaps that has something to do with me trying to teach English and them not trying to teach Hangul.
Anyways, I took a lot of pictures that you can find here, if you have me on facebook you have probably already checked them out. Not a whole lot more to post on the days activities. We visited some sanctuaries but didn't have enough time to actually do any mountain climbing. Hopefully some other time. There are a few other mountains in this area I want to tackle as well.

A couple interesting anecdotes from the climb were regarding the munks. There are pictures of a holy stone path that we had to hop over as only Munks were supposed to step on it. It was right near all the balloony lantern things. Also, someone was about to use their cell phone but thought it may be rude. They ended up using it hoping no harm would be done. A few minuetes later we found a Munk using a cell phone as well and didn't feel as bad.