88 일째 – Cheongdo 청도 – Unmunsa Temple (운문사)

Day 88!!!!! I made it … or did I … or is this really my last day?  On my supposedly last day in Korea, I went to Cheongdo to meet up with a friend.  She lives in Yangsan and I lived in Gyeongsan, so naturally, we met at the halfway point, which was Cheongdo.

Unmunsa Temple

Cheongdo is as small as Hapcheon (probably) and is made up of a lot of smaller town and villages.  It is most famous for a bull fighting contest in May where bulls are pitted against one another and I heard it gets pretty violent … However, my friend and I are here for a much peaceful retreat – a visit to the Unmunsa Temple.

Train 

First thing first, I had to get from Gyeongsan to Cheongdo and luckily, there is a train that goes straight there in 15 minutes.  The difficult part is just catching the train, but even that wasn’t too difficult as there is almost one train every 15 minutes.

Arriving at the Cheongdo Station, there are already some interesting items on display 🙂

The Cheongdo Station …

Cheongdo Train Station

Outside of the station are a lot of restaurants but they all sell the same thing – Chueotang 秋魚湯. It is loach fish and my friend doesn’t like eating it because of its texture.

Therefore, we went and ate kimbap.  This place is special because you can do take out kimbap!  It was quite tasty but also very, very spicy 😦

We actually ate the kimbap at the bus station because the bus was scheduled to leave soon.  The bus terminal is quite interesting in itself … the place was dark with only a souvenir store.  The man selling the bus ticket was probably in his 70s and he doesn’t have a very good hearing.  Sometimes, he would walk off and the station becomes unmanned.  This older lady had barged in and kept banging on the window but got the attention of no one 😛

It turns out that we can actually use my t-money card to pay and we could have even saved 100 won!

Unmunsa Temple 

The place was literally in the middle between Gyeongsan, Ulsan, Gyeongju, and Cheongdo.  It took almost an hour because the roads are hilly and they have to go to almost every town and village along the way.  It was interesting … actually seeing really rural areas in Korea.

Unmunsa Town

I was expected to be dropped off in some random place in the middle of nowhere but this place turned out to be quite vibrant with many, many restaurants in the area. There were many people in hiking attire, all in all, it turned out to be quite a popular spot!

There is a 2000 won admission fee to enter and a 10-minute walk from the entrance.

The temple was built in 560AD but was destroyed during the Japanese invasion of Korea in the 16th century.

Currently, the temple is the largest nunnery in Korea.  Therefore, some of the areas are restricted for tourists.

After, we made our walk back down to town to get some coffee and back to the bus stop 🙂  As mentioned before, since my friend cannot eat the loach soup, we ate Lotteria.

By the way, I was reading this travel book at the cafe and it was quite interesting!