Just back from my field trip to Gyeongju , a free trip organised by the OIA.
It was a fulfilling fieldtrip , the additional plus was that it was completely Free!
The accomodation , transportation, food, etc was paid by the organiser.
I kept thinking that, since its free, they would probably want us to write a reflection or report on it as a win-win situation for both the organisers and us, but i was surprised that we did not have to do that! But even if they want us to, i would do it.
Well im doing it now i guess, since im blogging about it, haha.
Firstly, how did i get to know about this fieldtrip?
My friend gave me the link and asked if i would like to go. Upon checking the details that it was free and it was to a new place, i immediately signed up for it. But alas, she couldnt make it as she had lessons. So in the end i went with my Singaporean friends.
If you are interested in OIA events, click HERE
I was lucky that i managed to secure a slot even though there was 300+ hits when only 40 slots were available. I reckoned that most of the people couldnt go as they had Membership Training instead. Heh, being the aunty me, i decided to go for the FREE trip. you know, FREE FREE!
And here is the itinerary:
Day 1 (September 27, 2013)
7:30~12:00 Meeting at the main gate of SNU and move to Gyeongju
13:00~13:40 Visit Cheonmachong
13:40~15:30 Visit Anapji
15:30~16:30 Visit Gyeongju National Museum
16:30~18:00 Move and visit Bulguksa
19:30~21:00 Watching the musical MISO2
Day 2 (September 28, 2013)
8:00~10:30 Move to Andong
10:30~12:00 Visit Andong ConfucianLand
13:30~15:00 Visit Hahoe Village
15:00~16:00 Hahoe Mask Museum
16:00~19:30 Coming back to Seoul
On my first impression of it, i was like, woah thats pretty packed. I was hesitating whether to back out since i dont quite like package tour because they always rushing you to the next destination. But then again, its FREE. So i decided to just go for it 😀
Here we go!
Boarded the tour bus and i kept sleeping in the bus. The staff brought a lot of food for us, muffins, packet drinks, snacks, nachos. Love love love the nachos. The cheese taste wasnt very strong.
FOOD FOOD AND MORE FOOD 😀
We arrived and had our lunch. swollen faces. just woke up from my slumber
lotsa food, but it didnt really fill me.
After our lunch, we went to our first destination :Cheonmachong
Our friendly tour guide
the royal tombs
bamboo trees
the tree that shivers when you tickle its branches
isnt the sky gorgeous? couldnt help but to take random photos of it
The heavenly horse tomb
maintaining of the tombs. pruning the grasses.
After that we went to visit the Anapji , at every place we went to, we saw children going on school excursion trips to these cultural areas. It is good to inculcate the children when young, instill values in them.
The little girl dressed differently from the rest. She super photogenic. When she knew i wanted to take a photo of her, she posed . Unfortunately, my hand shook and the photo came out crappy T_T But oh boy, she damn good at posing!!
the unique dice that the Royals use when having drinking games(if i dont remember wrongly).
the sky was a pretty blue.
Here, the royals held leisure activities, parties. A walk back in time, imagine hundreds of years ago, the royals were standing on the very ground i was standing on.
wah , the lives of the Royals, shiok sia. Enjoy scenery while partying.
The place was rather huge! Sin Lee and i were wondering about the King and Queen paktoring here. Under the moonlight, wah shiok. It is a good place for couples to come (;
So here is where the water flows from, but the source of the water is unknown. There is some significance to the base of the water containment area but i cant remember T_T something about preventing the soil from erosion that makes the water dirty–to ensure the water will be clean.
I was wondering where were the rubbish bins and then the tour guide told us this is the dust bin. Super creative. It looked like just a normal boulder. Fits in well with the surroundings.
I love the picturesque sky so here are the photo spams of it.
After that we moved to the Gyeongju National Museum!
Kids again. Super cute!
Here is the Korean version of Dharma bell
Korean’s Dharma bell distinct features:
1) the bell connector used to hold them is not a two-headed dragon of the Chinese style , but a dragon extending its head and legs robustly.
2)they have an addition of a sound tube(refer to the arrow)
3)they have a band of vertically-carved patterns and 4 nipple cases on the bell’s surface, all of which are absent from/different from the Chinese and Japanese bells
the sun rays on the pond, beautiful though glaring to the eyes
In the Center pic, the arrow points at a upside down ladder. Purpose of it is to increase the strength of the structure. And in the last pic, notice that they actually cut the structure so as to fit to the shape of the boulder, this is to ensure the structural integrity of the temple. I was awed by the creativeness of the way the temple was built.
I cant really remember the details of this temple but i think this is the non-verbal temple whereby no one talks in it at all(please take it with a pinch of salt, considering how forgetful i can be).
the stairs were extra steep, there is a meaning to it but i cant remember T_T
After our temple visit, we had dinner ,after which we went to catch MISO!
As i didnt know that MISO is a non-verbal musical, i kept waiting for the performers to sing but to no avail. Only when in the bus, i was mentioning it to YH then she told me. I was like sudden realisation. The musical lightings were damn superb but i guess i was too tired from waking so early in the morning that i fell asleep at some point. But i quickly woke up to watch as i felt disrespectful. I was slightly disheartened when the theatre we went to was only filled by our tour group and a group of children in the centre portion. As for the sides of the theatres, there was no one. Not too sure if it was because it was unpopular or not because when i watched the musical, seeing the effort that the performers have put in, the sound and lighting effects, i felt that more people should watch it.
According to our schedule, its supposed to be 1.5 hours long but it turned out to be only 1hour. Good for me i was feeling super tired after a long day. We went out of the theatre and the performers were already posing beside their advertisements(that was fast!) and everyone started to rush to take photos before we had to board the bus.
I dint have time to take a nice photo with them because by the time i returned from the toilet, all the performers were gone. Right, that was really fast too.
After that we went to our hotel.
Looks pretty majestic eh? Considering it was a free trip by OIA, i didnt expect much so when i saw such a grand hotel, i was very satisfied. I was expecting only a 1 star hotel. Initially i wanted to sleep , but as the rest wanted to go noraebang, and i have yet to try out Korea’s version of kbox, i decided to join them.
우리호텔 근처에 노래방 하나 갔습니다. (We went to a noraebang near our hotel) The rate was 1hr for 20000won. I didnt know what was the market price like so i thought it was cheap as it was only 2500won per person. Furthermore, as compared to Ksuite-3hours:SGD10 , I thought i scored a deal. In the room,disco lights were still used. All the song books were in korean. Unlike Ksuite that doesnt have a song book for you to chose a list of songs that you would like to sing, in korea, they do provide, albeit a super thick one. But i didnt quite enjoy the noraebang much as the sound system was rather crappy, my ear didnt feel good. So it was good that we only sang for 1hour. But i got high when singing my favourite songs. It was quite funny seeing everyone loosened out and sing their hearts out, but 1hour was definitely not enough for most as there were around 9 ( or even more) of us , but nevermind, we can always go another time, perhaps in SNU or Nakseongdae.
Well thats all for today, gooodddd nightttt
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