Haedong Yonggungsa Temple (aka Water Temple)

Saturday adventure round 2!  Nicole and I made plans before Saturday this time!  We meet for lunch in Haeundae (near a famous beach here) to go to the Haedong Yonggungsa Temple, or what I knew from research before coming to Busan as the temple by the sea.  

Emily met with us for lunch but wasn't feeling well so she didn't join us on the trip to the temple.  Monique had sent us a link with directions that we followed.  They included a hike to the temple.  Below are the directions along with pictures of what we guess/found on our hope to find the temple :)

Take the 181 bus from Haeundae Beach Station (out of exit 7, straight on 10 yards to the bus stop). Get off at the 송정해수욕장 Songjeong Haesu-yookjang stop. Walk straight until you reach the harbour. Directly in front of you should be the harbor, and to your left is a small bridge that is bordered on the right side by concrete wave breakers .

Small harbor - check!

Cool old boats at the harbor :)

small bridge???  It just goes to the light house but okay. - check!

Or from Seongjeong beach, as you are looking at the beach, turn left and walk up the road until you reach the small bridge with the concrete wave breakers on the right hand side. From the bridge, walk straight by the road, (a little tricky in places as the sidewalk is only half built). 

Sidewalk and bike path along the way.  It was never tricky.  Maybe this was an older article :) - check!

You can walk onto the small island to your right from here, and watch the locals fishing, continue around the island and you should be able to see another harbor on the other side. Aim for that, picking your path carefully as you go. 

Island??  Not really sure what this means....

Once you get to the strange metal fish house on the right side of the harbor, that is the beginning of the Galmaetgil trail, or at least the beginning as we found it. 

Strange metal fish house???  What exactly is that?  Second harbor?  Um...how long do you walk until you find these things?

I looked at this briefly and kept walking.

Is this our trail?  NO CLUE!  We don't speak Korean :)

But I turned back and found this little sign.  Thankfully I had looked at the directions and knew the name of the trail.  So we headed down the trail.

Side note: At this point we have not seen a strange metal fish house or a second harbor.  But we followed the sign because it was the name of the trail.

From here, the way is pretty much marked for you with the trail markers, on the sidewalk they are spray-painted on, and follow the paved path around the harbor, and then the path taking you round a small headland to the left of the harbor. Part of the walk just before you get to the woodland is across a really dodgy looking construction site, I think they are putting in some sort of tunnel.  Just keep heading across that to the forest and from there it’s easy.

We found the trail and just guessed we would quickly find the second harbor and such and like the directions said it would be easy...

A trail marker!  Yes!  We are on the way!

Somehow I didn't get a picture of the restaurant that we walked through to get to the rocks on the shore that we randomly followed until we got to a trail.  No pink and blue markers though.  But we did get some awesome views along the coast :)

The rocky random trail that we were following...yeah easy...yeah right!

But so pretty!

Um...yes this is a gravel-filled empty lot that has a tarp on it and then a cargo net.  Yes we walked across this.  There was a trail on the other side!

Still following a trail.  It's beautiful!

The second harbor!!!  Problem...our trail was at a dead end on a cliff.  So we opted to walk back how we had come to the main road.

Nicole suggested we follow a different path that looked like it circled behind the bathrooms that were in front of us.  It did but on the other side was a pink and blue ribbon!!!  Can you see it in the trees?

Yes!  There is still hope!

We were both pretty excited!  Our adventure was turning out to not be doomed in a dead end at a cliff looking at the second harbor :)

And from there it was easy.  Pink and blue ribbons were on the lampposts in the little village area.

We walked around the second harbor.

At this point we were following some Koreans and not looking for pink and blue signs.  But we totally walked past these signs.

Danger.  Keep Away.  The Koreans walked past them so we did too!  After taking a picture of course!

Random small beach that was deserted.  Not super clean but nice and quiet.  It was wonderful to hear the waves hitting the beach.

The construction site with the tunnel like thing.  Maybe the directions weren't so old after all.  Or it's just taking a long time for them to finish the construction here.

 

From there it was a beautiful hike along the coast and around the island.  We lost the Koreans we had been following.  For the next hour, we were in a city of 3.5 million people but probably saw less than 10 and they were fishermen and mostly on the rocks below us.  

Random firewood stacks covered in tarps were everywhere.  No clue why or who put them there.

The trail was really well marked after we walked past the beach.  The ribbons were easy to locate and many times included a plaque like this one with the name of the trail on it.  (The first sign way back at the sidewalk included Korean and English so we figured out the Korean from that).

The Korean name of the trail and the wonderful trail markers that guided us towards the temple.

Then we came to this site.  Razorwire surrounded these buildings and they looked abandoned and yet possibly still being used.

Including an old army tent.

and many areas fenced off with razor wire.

Maybe this sign would have clued us into what we were seeing.  Maybe in another 10 years I can read and understand it.

This area has some steps to the top of the hill.  It really looked like an area that we were not supposed to be in but we walked up the hill any way!

Antennas and in the back a look out post with sandbags holding down the roof.

The view was pretty though.  

New places kept popping up everywhere we looked around this hill.

But the views around all of this stuff was pretty awesome too!

It really looked like people quickly left this area and just left all kinds of stuff behind.  Like the tent and this hammer.  It has been there for a while judging by the rust on the hammer.

The hammer was left near this antenna.  It's like they installed the antenna and quickly left.  All so puzzling!

From the army stuff we walked up a pretty steep hill and found the back side of the temple!!!!  We were so excited to have made it!  I mean we had been walking for a while with nothing but pink and blue ribbons to follow and hoping that we were indeed on the trail that was talked about from the website.  It was exciting to know we had been successful yet again in finding our destination.

But I saw this sign just down from the corner of the temple.  So we momentarily abandoned the trail we had been on to see what was down here.

It was a pretty awesome view.

That had faces in the rocks!

Sad faces too!

And these.  Temples, rock formations??? No clue but they were pretty and incredible to see how smooth and precise they were without cement holding them together (well at least I couldn't see the cement).

Then on the pile of rocks I noticed all these little statues of a young Buddha.  They were everywhere.

I turned around and found all this writing on the rocks.  I did a little rock climbing to get some better pictures. 

I explored a little more to see if we could go behind these and down to the temple.  But, no.

Instead, I realized that the temple, rock formation things were covered in little Buddhas too!  I was surprised!

Then we went back up to the trail we had been following to follow the back side of the temple to the entrance.  Only to find a locked gate!!!

Nicole is able to express how we felt at that moment.

I couldn't make a sad face.  I could only laugh!  I mean really.  We just hiked for over an hour to only arrive at a locked gate!  Surely the original blogger would have said something about don't take the hike!  It only ends in misery and a locked gate!  So close and yet still unsuccessful.

Since Koreans were starting to take pictures of us looking all sad on the wrong side of the gate.  I started to walk back towards this rock gutter thing and google more of the directions (so far we had been reading the directions from Nicole's screen shot of them and not actually using the internet).

While I was searching on my phone, Nicole looked just to the side to find a path and a pink and blue ribbon!  Success!  I shortly thereafter found more directions on a different site.  Those people had the same thing happen to them.  Walked to the locked gate but then found the trail beside the huge gutter looking thing.  Ahh...Success!

The temple was nice to see.  But honestly, it was a temple.  My heart was saddened to see people worshipping a statue.  Many of the people there seemed to be there, like us, just to see as a tourist.  But there were definitely people worshipping too.  The more temples I visit, the harder it is for me.  It's just not a cool looking place.  It's a place where many who have not placed their faith in the one and only Triune God are worshipping something that will only lead to their destruction.  The Word of God needs to be spread far and wide.  It reminds me that I'm here for a reason.

It is the temple on the sea for a reason.  But honestly, this was the only good view of the sea.  I had much better views on the hike.

Nicole and I both quickly realized that the hike was so much better than the actual temple.  We looked, we saw, we took some pictures.  Then we decided to hike back to where we started instead of taking a taxi.

I did find this climbing rope on the way back.  I tested it out a little bit :)  It went up a good ways.  No way I would have made it up to the top. 

Evidently there are like 3 of these lookout posts that are down the coast from all the other army stuff.  They are left in great condition, ready for use.  All a little strange.

But it did provide a nice place to sit and talk for a while, with a pretty awesome view.

Back at the second harbor, I looked up to see these boats, up on the hill, abandoned.  Looked pretty cool to me.

A long hike and a successful adventure deserved some kind of treat at the end.  Our treat of choice: milkshakes in a bag.  Nicole's first, my second.  They really are delicious and only a $1.

Another adventure to learn about Busan was successful.  The journey far better than the destination.  Thankful for a friend to explore the city with and to just go even if the directions are not super clear :)