Cheonan, Part 1: The Big Buddha

On a particular Thursday in February, Brenden didn't have to work for a few days, and I had the day off due to graduation, so we decided to go to Cheonan. It had been a while since we traveled last, and I suddenly realized how long we'd been in Korea and how much I still wanted to see. So we woke up and headed out to Cheonan for a daytrip. The first item on the agenda was a big Buddha statue next to the temple Gakwon-sa. The temple was basically like most other temples in Korea, but the statue was something else. As it turns out, finding the statue would also be a challenge!

We arrived at the bus station, ate a quick early lunch, then looked for bus 102, which our guidebook said went directly there. We found bus 102 on the schedule, but it only left 4 times a day, 2 very early in the morning and 2 at night. However, saw the bus pull up as we tried to figure out what to do, so we went up to the driver and asked, "Gakwon-sa?" He shook his head, so we were on to Plan B: ask a native. The first few people we showed the picture to just shook their heads, but after a minute or two, a nice man told us the bus number in English and showed us the bus stop, across the street. As we walked across the street, the man ran after us to let us know that the bus was coming, so we should hurry up. We made it over in the nick of time, and only as we got on the bus realized we didn't know where to get off. We figured we'd get off when we saw the Buddha or a sign for Gakwon-sa. Neither happened, but after 15 minutes, we came to the end of the route. We asked the driver, "Gakwon-sa?" and he pointed up the road, so we walked on.

We passed a lovely green lake, and then saw the stairs leading up to the temple grounds. After huffing and puffing up the stairs (there were a lot of them, and they were very steep), we saw the Buddha in the distance. It was pretty incredible, even from far away. At 60 tons of bronze, it should be (the ears are almost as long as I am tall). It was really cold (a lot colder than I'd thought when we left Seosan), so we hustled along as we took pictures, observed the candles burning, and then went off to explore the temple grounds.

There was a lovely wooded area that might have been nice to explore, but it was too cold to explore, and anyway, it was getting late and we had another destination planned on our daytrip. We hurried back to the bus stop, only to find it would be a hurry-up-and-wait situation on a cold bus stop bench (the bus was there, but the driver was sleeping in the bus, so we weren't allowed inside). However, soon we were back at the express bus station again, and the adventure began all over again! This story to be continued in the installment tomorrow...

But for now, here are some pictures of the Gakwon-sa Buddha and surroundings, beginning with the lake:




- Carissa