On the 4th of December last year I decided to hop on a bus and go to Tongdosa to see the famous temple. Tongdosa is a small village about 45 minutes from Ulsan. This is the same village that we came to when we went to Tongdo Fantasia. The bus stopped about two blocks from the entrance of the temple grounds. Once you get to the entrance it is still quite a walk to get to the actual temples. Of course it is possible to drive there, but since I don't have a car in Korea I walked. The path for the less fortunate foreigner or the exercise consious Korean is next to a little river that runs through the temple grounds. Very beautiful and definitely worth the walk.
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| The entrance with the path starting on the right of the wooden sign. |
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| Layout of the temple grounds. |
I started at the bottom right corner on the map and only went to the middle part. I planned on doing the whole thing, but as soon as the sun started to set it got freezing cold and I was so smart to leave my gloves at home.
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| To little freaky-looking statues. |
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| The main temple. |
The main temple is quite impressive and there was an exhibition of a enormous Buddha painting inside when I was there. Unfortunately you are not allowed to take photos inside. There is also a little gift shop inside.
There are quite a few of there smaller temples. They are almost completely dark indside. I was very curious to see what they looked like inside and decided to sneak a few photos. There were Koreans were praying inside so I didn't want to be disrepectful by popping in and say: "Anyeonghaseyo", and snapping a few photos. That is where a good zoom function comes in handy. I was pretending to look at photos on my camera while was actually zooming like crazy to get sneak peak of Buddha.
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This is little pond is filled with coins. I also tossed a coin in and made a
wish for the winter to pass quickly, but clearly it didn't work. |
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| View of the temple from the other side of the river. |
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| Really freaky wood statue-thingies. |
On my way back in the dark I realised that I was the only person on the path and just as I realised it I saw these two wooden thingies next to the path. In a way it made me feel like I was on a remote island and expected a native person with a Kentucky Fried Chicken bone through his nose to come running out of the bushes and sacrifice me in some ritual. Exaggeration I know, but it was cold, dark, I was alone and they do look freaky.
When I got to the bus terminal I just missed the bus and had to wait over two hours for the next one. I was still thinking that the native person might come find me for snapping a photo of his statue thingies when I saw a bus going to the KTX station, which is half way back to Ulsan, and without thinking twice I hopped on. From there I took a limousine bus back to Ulsan. As soon as all the trees are green again and it's nice and warm I'm going back to Tongdosa to explore all of the temple grounds.
