Beomeosa Temple on a Sunday

Another lovely day and I was up early to get a good start to Beomeosa Temple. A little way out of the city it was certainly do-able in a morning and judging by the amount of Koreans decked out in hiking gear it was a popular destination. The temple was founded in AD678 although like almost all of Korea's ancient buildings and monuments it was destroyed at some point during Japanses invasions or wars and subsequently been rebuilt. It wasn't too far out of town to be easily reachable. The subway line takes you away from Busan centre and on to Beomeosa station, where you then exit into what seems more like a local village than a suburb of a city. I liked this. It reinforced my view that it is possible to live in a big, urban happening centre and yet within a half hours travel have peaceful and serene places to go and relax. Korea certainly doesn't disappoint with this. Cities and towns nestle quite happily beneath hills and mountains, so it is easy to leave the urban life for a day or afternoon and get back to nature.

From the subway station I took a walk up the hill to the centre of the village to catch the bus that went up to the temple. For all of my early start to Sunday, I wasn't alone. The temple is at the foot of Mt Geumjeong and this Mt with its many trails is a popular Sunday hike. I'm glad I took the bus as the road up was very windy. That's windy as in twisty-turny windy,not windy blowing-a-gale windy.. At the top there was a ticket office charging the princely sum of 1000W (50p) entrance. The bus dropped us all here and after a short walk up a steep path we came to the courtyard entrance of the Temple. I am sure that the locations for temples were chosen with certain criteria in mind. Perhaps the mountain has special properties, whether it faces in an auspicious direction or maybe it is the serenity of the area. This one definitely had the latter in its favour. Despite the other visitors milling around, the temple complex felt peaceful and you couldn't help but absorb some of that tranquility and calmness. Walking around the courtyard you could look out over beautiful mountain scenery. Steps at the far end took you up to smaller rooms where there were people inside praying. For all its apparent size there wasn't actually that much to see or go into. A lot of the areas were no go as it would have meant invading the monks private space. I took a walk around the outside of the complex and peeked in through a gate to see a cosy little courtyard area with the monks sat reading or playing badminton with a makeshift net set up. It looked like a perfect way to spend a Sunday. Most of the hikers were carrying on past the temple to the trail behind which led up to Mt Geumseong. According to the informative sign it promised to be a good 4 or 5 hour hike there and back. As I was only wearing inappropriate slip-on sandals I let myself off the hook for not undertaking the walk..... Shame! That evening I took a walk into Busan's film centre.. Every year it holds the PIFF. Pusan(Busan) Internation Film Festival. Having had intimate knowledge of the LFF, London Film Festival I was interested to see how it would compare. However the PIFF isn't until October so I'd have to come back. Busan does have its own equivalent of Leicester Square, along with movie star's handprints on the pavements, but I have to admit my ignorance at most of the names. I think Jackie Chan might have had one though.. Busan has a number of cinemas, not sure if this is because of the festival or is the reason for it, but despite even this I could only find one film to watch. In an attempt to restrict the amount of American movies, the Korean government decreed that a certain percentage of films shown in cinemas must be Korean. Its been a great boom for the Korean film industry and they are starting to reap the rewards for this overseas too, as Korean cinema seems to be the genre du jour. Anyway, all I could find to watch was the American remake of "The Grudge". I took my seat amidst lots of looks and giggles. I was starting to wonder if I was in the wrong screening, this was further compounded when a family group of three women; mother, young daughter and grandmother came and sat next to me. The little girl was quite keen to try out her "Hello's" on me. The mum cracked open the Tupperware and started passing around the kimbap and dried fish snacks, which very nicely she kept trying to make me take. But, fortunately (!) the film started then, and phew, I was in the right place as it was "The Grudge". I didn't think the little girl, or the nan, would actually like to watch the movie much, but she chirruped and giggled her way through it and seemed as sunny and unfazed at the end as she was before it started. Parts of it were quite scary aswell. I cant imagine that happening much in the UK; a family day out to a horror movie. They must be made of sterner stuff over here.

Despite the other visitors milling around, the temple complex felt peaceful and you couldn't help but absorb some of that tranquility and calmness