Nak-san Temple

Sokcho Diary

8.10.06



Just down the coast from Sokcho is a rarity in Korea, and well, Asia, a Buddhist temple that sits on the sea. Most temples here are set back in the mountains, at the back end of deep wooded valleys, or even in cities, but Nak-san is different.

Nak-san temple was first founded about five hundred years ago by a group of monks seeking a place of quiet contemplation. Only they know why they choose a pleasant bluff over looking the sea in the town of Nak-san, or even if the town existed at that point, they just seemed to like the area.

I went down there with Kelsey and her friend Lara. Lara is a pretty neat girl, about my age, a single mother, she has never before been out of America and chose to come to Korea for a long weekend, about four days, to hang out with her college friend Kelsey.

We had made plans early last week to head down to the pek-ban restaurant for lunch. This restaurant does not serve main dishes, only side dishes, usually about twenty, with a small main course of roasted mackerel for each person. What is really cool is that you can get refills of any dish you want, except the fish, and it all only costs seven thousand won.

After eating we walked down to the bus stop and took the number nine out to Nak-san, about a half hour down the road. I had been to the town before with my friend Matthew but we had never made it to the temple itself, instead we had stopped at the local Family Mart for a drink and never made it up to the temple.

The temple sits on a bluff that looks over Nak-san beach, a very popular place for vacationers from Seoul in the summer. Today, even though it was a beautiful day, it was almost deserted. There were a few boats pulled up on the sand but no people along its entire length. We stopped about half way up the hill and watched the big breakers role in for a time before hitting the temple itself.

When we reached the temple, again, me for the first time, I was struck by the fact that almost all of the buildings were new. It turns out that Nak-san had had a tragedy here about two years ago when a forest fire had swept through the five hundred year old temple. All the buildings were lost, a thousand year old bell had melted and the only things that had been saved were a few handwriting sutras from the seventeenth century and some beautiful old paintings depicting the monks of Nak-san at a funeral and offering gifts to the gods of the sea.

The buildings of Nak-san have been replaced by cedar ones, I don’t know if they look anything like the original but they are pretty. The logs have all been peeled and set into white frames and the insides smell of fresh cut wood.

The temple grounds consist of a small plattue that has two buildings, a gift shop and a small museum, where the few relics that had been saved by the fire were displayed in glass fronted cases.

At the end of a small path that led to the edge of the bluff was a tiny pavilion, brilliantly painted, as are almost all Buddhist buildings, in reds, greens, and blues with orange lotus flowers on the end of the roof beams. From this point one looks down almost five hundred feet to the bottom of the cliff where there are jagged rocks that break up the waves. To the south, the right, stretched Nak-san beach, almost as far as the eye can see, and to the left, the north, you can see Sokcho city.

Walking out of the pavilion there was a small path to the right that led to a tiny shrine with a small gold Buddha. Inside the building there were several ajummas, older Korean women, bowing and praying to Buddha.

Walking back up the path we turned right and went to the top of the hill where the two main shrines are.

Below the summit of the bluff was a huge building, again painted in reds and blues with something that I have never seen before on a temple, dragonheads at the end of the rood beams. I don’t know why they were there, maybe to ward off evil spirits, maybe for luck, but they were just as colourfully painted as the rest of the building.

Inside were icons of the seven Boddihistavas, man I wish I knew more about Buddhism, and other icons, all over the walls. The floor was old, maybe ancient, and you could tell that either it had been salvaged from the fire or been brought in by another temple, it had not been made in the last hundred years, it was almost black with age.

Along with the usual burning joss sticks, for luck, were candles and people praying in typical Buddhist fashion. Some of them had mats on the floor to help protect their legs but others did their prostrations without them, rising and falling in the seven ritual bows.

Alongside the walls were gold inlays of other gods and deities; all sacred and holy in one way or another, and on the ceiling were little tags with the names of people who had donated money to the temple.

Leaving the most holy shrine at the temple we headed to the highest point on the grounds where there is the only Buddha statue in Asia that looks out over the sea, or at least that is what I had been told.

When we reached the top Lara just sat looking at the white statue while Kelsey and I just stared at the ocean, talking a little, but mostly just staring out at the blue green waves moving over the surface of the ocean, breaking on the rocks below.

Pictures

1. The outside of one of the shrines at Nak-san

2. Waves breaking on the rocks

3. The roof of a building at Nak-san

4. Looking down at the small pavillion that overlooks the sea from the top of the bluff at Nak-san

5. The inside of the roof at the Nak-san pavillion

Chuesok

Sokcho Diary

7.10.06

Chuesok- A noun denoting the biggest Korean holiday of the year. For this holiday, almost every Korean goes to their hometown to do several things: Commonly called Korean Thanksgiving, it is a lunar holiday that shifts year by year with the moon phases.
1. Pay homage at the graves of their ancestors.
2. Eat
3. Eat some more
4. Settle family business


The Craziest Bus Driver I Have Ever Met

For this Chuesok, like the last one I was in Korea for, I was invited to my old bosses family residence in the tiny town of Go-Sak, about five miles outside of the first town I worked in, Heung-hae.

I left Sokcho on the 9:10 bus, right after my last class. I had packed my bag and taken it to school with me, so I was totally prepared. Because of the holiday, when travel of all kinds in Korea is very hard to get on, I had bought my ticket the preceding Saturday. For the low, low price of 32,000 won I was given the privilege of meeting the craziest bus driver I have ever met.

He was a pretty young guy, the driver of the express bus to Pusan and Pohang. Probably he had only been out of the army for a couple of years, and he still showed enthusiasm for the job.

I got on quick and found my seat, about two rows back from the door, thankfully a single, and stowed my bags. Looking around the bus it seemed pretty full but not totally with a mix of both waygooks and Koreans.

We pulled out of the bus station with a lurch and I was thrown into my seat with the sudden sensation of speed as the driver stomped on the gas and shifted from first all the way through to fifth in about three seconds, running the red light at the corner and flying around a curve on the way to pick up the main road out of Sokcho.

We blazed through downtown, past the busy shops and through the waves of neon lights without stopping. Red lights did not mean anything to this guy and we hit Yang-yang, usually a forty-five minute drive in thirty minutes.

The road south from Sokcho starts out as a four-lane expressway all the way to Donghae, about one hundred and fifty kilometers down the coast but that is it. While a new highway is being built to link Pusan with Sokcho by expressway, the road is mostly a twisting and turning run through mountains along the ocean.

Four the four hour run from Donghae to Pohang I alternated watching the squid boats on the ocean and gripping my seat in fear as my driver passed on the yellow line, around curves, going up hill, sounding his horn like the hounds of hell were after him, telling everybody in his way that he was coming through in a ten ton bus and it was up to you to get out of the way in time.

The other sight I had outside of my window was much prettier. The whole way down the coast, and the road hugged it for about eighty percent of the way, you could see the full moon shinning on the water, and far out to sea you could see the lights of the squid boats shinning like little cities in the night.

The boats ran in an almost solid line from Donghae to Pohang. Some were closer in shore than the others but all of them had their bright lights shinning on the water to lure the squid up to the nets.

The boats, even though they could see each other seemed like little planets on the ocean. Small worlds were nothing else mattered, only the men on the boats and their catch. It was like looking at a satellite picture of the world at night but instead of looking down at it you looked across it, like it was three-dimensional.

You could picture the men sweating and working the nets, talking in Korean, listening to their captain shouting directions about where to place their gear, all the time pulling, tugging, the nets into the boat, laden with the catch of the sea.

I finally got to Pohang about one thirty in the morning and walked off the bus into a bus station that I had not seen for almost two years but remembered it like it was yesterday. I walked to the right door and immediately veered right to the taxi line and went to the head of the row. I looked the taxi driver right in the eye and said, “Heung-hae”.



Heung-hae

I always knew that I would come back to the little town that I had called home for a year, my memories of the place where too good to be ignored and forgotten.

I checked into a pretty run of the mill Korean hotel about two in the morning and watched the Twins lose live. I had to get up around ten to meet Greg so I only watched through the fifth inning.

When I got up I headed into the bathroom to wash the travel grime from the night before off of my body but of course, in this very mediocre motel, my opinion of this place was going down by the second, there was no hot water. That kind of sucked because it meant the last real shower that I would take for three days was on Wednesday morning.

After my unfulfilling shower I headed into Heung-hae proper to meet Greg who I had not seen for over a year. Unerringly I found my way through the back alleys and side streets that I had walked and wandered through for a year on foot and on my bike.

I looked in the shop windows where I had gotten my haircut and bought some clothes. I went by the now closed bookstore where I had looked in vain for any sort of English novel.

Lots of businesses that I had gone to had failed or moved but some were still there. The man I had bought my fruit from, religiously every Friday still ran his stall but had obviously prospered as he was not selling out of the back of his blue truck anymore. The old crone that I had bough my eggs from remembered me and gave me a ton of garlic for one thousand won.

My Family Mart, a place that I had bought many bottles of soju and makju from had been replaced by a L.G. Telecom outlet, but the lady who sold me deep-fried chicken balls was still there. Most importantly, to me anyway, Mrs. Park was still running her mudfish soup restaurant deep in the market.

After fortifying ourselves with a few bowls of the excellent soup flavored with leeks, garlic, hot peppers, and who knows what else we each drank a big bowl of makgoli and headed into Pohang to hit the market and buy some supplies.

We took good old bus 107 into town, from the same bus stop that I always went to and drove to Pohang. On the way I was able to point things out to Greg that I remembered seeing on my many treks through the neighborhood. The leper town was still there, we could just barely see the ruined church, and so was the apple grove and the driving range that I always wanted to go to but had never been to, if that makes sense.

Downtown Pohang had not changed much, the main market not at all. There were still crowds of people jammed into a very small area, each one hustling and bustling to gather supplies for Chuesok. The fish market was the same, the floor still covered with slimy water and floating guts and heads, the whale vendor was still on their corner with lumps of baleen and meat for same at ten thousand won for a few small slivers. Even the smell of the fish was the same, and why wouldn’t it be? Rot, decay, death, salt, all mixed together to from a potent scent that permeated the air.

After wandering around for a while, we headed to E-Mart. It was our job on Friday evening to cook up a big pot of pasta at the pension that Mrs. Kim had rented in a little fishing village.

After gathering our ingredients we headed back to Heung-hae and had some of the worst sundubu that I have every tasted and proceeded to drink ourselves silly until the wee hours of the morning.

After stumbling home around one I had to get up early to fetch Greg and head out to the village of Gok-san where Mrs. Park would be cooking the very traditional feast.

We hopped in a cab about ten to eleven and headed out into the country. Again I was able to see places and things were I had spent a lot of time. The rice was golden and about ready to be cut, just like I remembered, and look, there is the first mountain I climbed in Korea with the thousand year old grave stones out in front of it

We went through the small village that I had hiked through on my first quest to see the blue green waters of the Pacific and under the irrigation system that I climbed to get to the top of a mountain. Past fields, ponds, and little streams that I knew intimately from bike rides and walks taken, well it seemed like yesterday.

When we arrived at Mrs. Parks the food was all laid out for us to eat. We had fish, both cooked and dried, squid, octopus, sweet potato, kimchi, two kinds of soup, bean sprouts, fruit, a real spread. Everything was fresh cooked by Mrs. Park using nothing but a rice cooker and a two-burner gas stove.

We left after just an hour, the family had business to take care of and I think Mrs. Kim felt we were intruding a little bit, and we were, but it was a nice gesture to invite us to such a pleasant and traditional holiday.

Mrs. Kim had a really nice surprise for us after we ate. She had rented a large room in a really small little seaside town for us all to spend the night in. It was so incredibly pretty and relaxing to smell the salt air and feel the power of the ocean so close to us. We alternated between playing spades with the girls, talking, walking on the little beach and just staring from the balcony as the huge swells that rolled in, ten footers at least that came crashing over the breakwater with a roar like a train, the foam sliding off into the inner harbour.

The night was so pretty that after watching the moon rise and eating the pasta that the girls had helped to make that I took my blankets and thin foam pad out to the balcony about one in the morning and made a nest to sleep in where I could hear and feel the waves while the smell of the salt tickled my nose.

When I got up on Saturday morning I went for a walk. It was early, around seven, and the sea was still breaking hard against the breakwater. I sat for a long time on a hard cement post facing the ocean watching the waves roll in, one after another. They kept crashing against a group of rocks that jutted out from the shore and the water from the curl at the tops of the waves ran over them and down their backs with a sound just like a running tap in the bathroom.

The Stupidest Bus Driver that I have Ever Met

Saturday afternoon, I met probably the worst bus driver that I have ever seen.

I got on the bus in Pohang around two fifteen to head back to Sokcho and I new immediately that this would be the worst bus driver that I had ever had.

The first giveaway was he let some guy come on board to try and sell cheap watches to the customers, not a good start.

The torture continued as we had to stop every hour, on the hour for the guy to have a smoke, and it wasn’t like we stopped at places where the rest of the passengers could get off and do something, no we stopped at random bus stops, wide spots in the road, you name it we stopped at it.

Constantly riding the clutch and the brake we gradually weaved our way up to Sokcho. With the horrible driving skills of the old man at the wheel it turned a five-hour ride into an eight and a half hour torture. The less said about it the better.

Pictures

1. A traditional Chuseok meal laid out on the table

2. Waves crashing over the breakwater

3. Red peppers drying in a wooden boat that has not been used in years

4. The full moon rising over the harbour Chuseok night

5. The girls wearing Hanbook, traditional Korean clothing made from hemp, back left Sandy, back right Laura, center, a cousin