Haulin' Ass

Saturday was all about haulin' ass. My plan was to hit Haeinsa, one of the three "Jewel Temples" of Korea. So, my neighbor and her friend and I hit up the Seobu bus terminal for a good time. A good time we had, too. I tell you what, that bus trip should be added as a ride at Woobang Land.Just so you know what the interior of a Korean charter bus looks like. They love having curtains all over them things. One bus I was in looked like it belonged to a Bollywood pop star or something. Ridiculous. Anyway, that bus driver did not know what a brake pedal was. He hauled some serious ass the whole way down the highway, through the tunnels, and up windy mountain roads. Unforgettable.

The temple itself is really quite spectacular. We had the good fortune of coming on a perfect day weather wise as well as being less than a week from Buddha's birthday when all the lanterns are up, giving the whole place a much more colorful look and feel.History lesson: I will not sound like a textbook. Haeinsa is a still functioning Buddhist temple that was built as a symbol of dharma in 802 A.D. Sitting on the cusp of Gayasan National Park, the whole complex is pretty visually arresting. Dramatic mountains rise up from behind the temples, and it actually gave me a sense of inner peace. Beyond just aesthetics, Haeinsa is home to the oldest wooden sculpture in Korea (naturally, of Buddha).

The real icing on the cake is that Haeinsa is also the home of the Tripitaka Koreana, a collection of 80,000 wooden blocks of Buddhist doctrine. This may not sound that impressive, but think about how long it would take 30 men to carve 80,000 wooden blocks with over 50 million Chinese characters. That's on top of the process it took to get these wooden blocks. Finding the right size tree, chopping it down, soaking the wood for three years in seawater, cutting the wood into shape (and that's if the wood didn't have any warps or imperfections. If so, you just wasted three years on that log), boiling the wood slabs, then letting them sit sheltered from the sun and rain for another three years, and then carving tiny Chinese characters into them. Not only that, but this was done during a time of war, and there is not one mistake on any of the slabs. The most impressive part is that after almost 800 years, they have not deteriorated. They can still make perfect ink prints from the carvings, and it's all thanks to the way they are housed in the temple. The Tripitaka Koreana and Haeinsa Temple were almost destroyed during the Korean war, but the bomber disobeyed orders because he knew that there was priceless historical treasure below. What a tragedy that would have been.

Anyway, you're not allowed into the buildings where they house the Tripitaka and you're not allowed to take pictures of them, but you knew I would pull through for you, my readers. Right? I maybe sometimes pull through for you. Anyway, this is an authentic pic from my camera, I promise. It really wasn't that hard. You can see into the buildings through the bars and if you wait until nobody is around (or just play the clueless foreigner card) it's pretty easy to stick your camera in there and oops! My camera went off. Anyway, money shot.

So, Haeinsa was really nice. I liked this pic of the temple entrance.Apparently, Haeinsa is also renowned for having some good bibimbap and makkeoli. So, naturally, I had to try both. Bibimbap is usually a vegetarian dish anyway, but it differs in Haeinsa because they have to make it vegan for the monks' diet. It was pretty good. The makkeoli tasted like makkeoli. Maybe I don't have a taste for good makkeoli or something.

So, after hauling ass back home, I took it easy for a couple of hours in the apartment. At about 9:30 or so, I was surprised to hear the sound of rhythmic clanging and drums. I stepped out and I made out the familiar sounds of traditional Korean music. I followed it and soon stumbled upon a parade that I had no prior knowledge of. I'm assuming it was for Buddha's birthday. Now here's how this parade differed from any parade I've ever seen before (besides the obvious fact that there were only Koreans in it). Instead of closing off the street, they just closed off two lanes and had the parade on the side of the street. This made me realize two things:

1. Korea is so busy and crowded that they can't close streets to traffic. It felt like a perfect example of how old traditions are being overshadowed by global economic growth and prosperity. Korea is literally growing too fast to keep up with itself.
   
2. By letting traffic continue, the parade would have to stop at every red light, like traffic, and then haul ass to catch up to the back of the next section. I can't tell you how humorous it is to see a parade float holding Little Miss Daegu 2010 hauling ass down the street, blaring some extremely loud (and bad) Korean lounge music as cars honked and traffic continued mere feet away.
   

Anyway, that was more long winded than I anticipated. They had the standard boy scouts and marching bands (seen above) and PTA members or whatever. I think the best part was when a float came by with some other pageant winner waving, but the float has a giant paper mache elephant on it and every two seconds it plays elephant sound effects really loudly. She was probably deaf by the end of the night.

The rest of the night was a standard Saturday. We went to this bar/club/thing that was really unintentionally entertaining. It's a really bad sign when they have to post this on the wall:I mean, especially in Korea where they kind of just silently expect you to respect their establishment and respect is always given thusly. A sign like this means one thing: American military comes here. Imagine if you will a tall bulldyke making out with a very short but mean spirited bald guy, a very obese Korean girl being sandwiched on the dancefloor by two skinny army kids, and then a couple of random Korean dudes dancing awkwardly alone, yet surrounded by thugged out black guys. We literally just sat at a table and watched this scene silently for about 20 minutes before someone finally mentioned maybe leaving. I would complete the theme by saying we hauled ass out of there, but we had been drinking, so no hauling was to be done.

This post is getting really long, so I'll just finish by saying that today was spent leisurely walking around to places I've been to before (Seomun Market, Dalseong Park), doing things that I do every weekend (shooting heroin and soliciting hookers...erm, I mean petting puppies and eating ice cream).