Temple Stay in Gyeongju City

As part of the summer programme (SPIKE) at UNIST, we went for a 2 day 1 night temple stay in Gyeongju City. Temple stays are getting more and more popular as a tourist activity in South Korea. We did not get to sleep in a real temple but we had to eat vegetarian food for the two meals there and we had to attend the evening and morning prayer sessions.

All the happy faces.. not knowing what they will be facing the next morning...

There was an English-speaking monk that showed us around the area.

Then, we were led into a hall to watch an introduction video (in English) on how we should behave in the temple, how we should always be silent and only speak when necessary...

At night, we were brought to this.. location. I have no idea where this is because half the time I was busy snapping pictures instead of paying attention to the tour guide (aka the monk). It is a pretty romantic site, very suitable dating location for couples to go after sunset. I wanna go there again with Kimchi boy!!

As an amater, I am satisfied with the pictures that I have taken ^o^ HAHA. I'd only own my camera (Fujifilm Finepix s6800) for about 2 days and all pictures were taken using the auto mode.

The next morning we had to wake up at 4am to attend the morning prayers. Everyone had to bow 108 times (because according to buddhist teachings, there are 108 sins in this world), except the christian and muslim students. We just sat at a corner and watch them. It was no kidding... Imagine bowing 108 times while being half-asleep at 4 in the morning.

After breakfast we did some yoga. As you can see, the morning yoga session was the highlight of this temple stay. At least for me. This is the view from my yoga mat.