Soyang Dam and Cheonpyeongsa Temple (Part 2)

Once we got off the ferry, we began our walk to the temple. It is about a mile to the main part of Cheonpyeong from the ferry dock. Once on the main land, we passed several restaurants and food stands and this got us hungry. We found some benches and had our packed lunch: cheese gimbap, grapes, kiwi and yogurt. This fueled us for a while and eventually we made it to the ticket booth about a mile later. Admission was 1300 a piece.

The climb to the temple was beautiful. We got to see Guseong Waterfall, which apparently makes nine different sounds.

The temple is one of the oldest things I've ever seen. It was first built in 973 during the Goryeo Dynasty. A lot of it was destroyed in the Korean War in the 1950s, so I'm not sure which parts of the temple are original and which parts are rebuilt.

After reaching the temple, we decided to hike a little further up Mt. Obongsan to see some more stuff mentioned on Korean maps. I don't remember reading anything to say what these places were called. In the stream that follow the trail was a monk. He was chanting and saw us walking and said hello to us, "Annyeong haseyo!" He followed us for a while in the stream and then went back to his chanting.

The paths up the mountain become more and more trecherous as you climb. Parts of the path disappeared and we had to guess which way to go. On our way up, we passed some hikers who told us that we had gone a long way. We climbed a little further and started to get tired, so we decided to turn back. It was easier climbing down, but it was still quite a climb back. We walked back down to the ferry dock and headed back to the dam.

On our way back to the bus, we stopped at a vendor and bought some snacks. We got some sweet potato sticks, that were fried and very crunchy. We also got some steamed nuts. The food was not very good, but this is what everyone was selling here (and what everyone was buying). The bus back to the city center was very crowded. We had to stand for about 30 minutes until the bus cleared out a little and we only were able to sit for a few minutes and it was our turn to get off the bus. We walked to the taxi stand outside of the bus terminal and went home.

It was a good, but long day. I took a lot of pictures, so here is a link to the album:

From Soyangho