Buddhist Temple Stay- The Golgul Temple in Gyeongju, South Korea

Golgul Temple, Head Center of SUNMUDO, Buddhist Martial Arts

An Accidental Adventure

It was a frigid December morning when I stumbled sleepily to the bus station to catch a bus for another Adventure Korea trip, the same company that I went to Ullengdo Island with. I was all ready for a hike up Mt. Daedusan in the Joellabuk provenice; a gondola on the way up, and a 4 hour hike on the way back. Not being one for carrying much of anything, I bundled up and stuffed my pockets with what I thought I would need, water, Kleenex, and wallet. I found the bus, it looked identical to the last one I was on for the Ullengdo trip; same upholstery pattern, same curtains, tassels and TV screen. I walked to very back of the bus so that I could catch up on some sleep. As I dozed off I wondered why the fellow hikers on the bus packed such big bags for a quick day trip as the bus left 20 minutes sooner than it should of.
Two hours down the road we stopped at a rest stop and I chatted up with some passengers who went to Miami of Ohio University, a fellow school in Ball State’s athletic conference, and we talked about teaching and past Buddhist temple stays. Back on the bus, the tour guide was walking down the bus taking roll call, and when he came to me, he said that I wasn’t on his list.


“Of course I’m not, when I wired my money, you guys put me down for the DMZ trip, but I straightened it out last week, I’m on this bus for the day-trip hike” I said as if explaining how 1 plus 1 make 2.

“This is not Adventure Korea, this is an online Meet-up group,” said the tour guide. “This is a two day Buddhist Temple stay.”

I snapped out of my sleepy lull as a surge of panic flowed through me. “You mean I’m on the wrong bus??!” I fretted a bit looking for my iphone to try and contact someone when I realized I had no connection and no international phone plan anyway. I apologized for my mistake now that I was an extra burden to the tour guide. I tried to think of how I could get back, take a bus back to Seoul if they dropped me off at the next rest stop, or the KTX train. In my confusion, the tour guide said I could stay with the group but I would have to pay 41,000 won (36 US dollars) for the temple lodging. I had to throw the idea around for a bit, I had done a temple stay not even two weeks ago, and wasn’t ready to wake up at 3 am for a 2 hour mediation session again for a while. But if I left, I would have to figure out how to get home and be bummed out for not having any fun weekend trip. My Miami pals told me that they had to pay 89,000 won (78 US dollars) for this trip, and my last Temple stay was the same price as well. I started to realize that this was turning out to be a pretty good deal on my part. I offered to pay for the rest of trip, the bus ride and such, to the tour guide, but he said not to worry, so I decided to deal with my mistake and just stay with the tour group.                      

                                         

 It’s the best mistake I’ve ever made. . .

 There are 86 Buddhist Temples in South Korea alone, a fraction of them are in National Parks and only 1 of them is a Martial Arts center. It just so happens that this 1 Martial Arts temple was where I was stowing away, and this track girl-turned Taekwondo fighter would get a 2 hour training session with four Sunmudo Monks. Compared to my last temple stay, this one was pure magic. Sunmudo is the ancient Korean Buddhist Martial art style- it combines meditation, flexibility and high flying kicks in a martial arts style all its own. To me it looked a lot like Chinese Shaolin Kung-Fu; both styles share similar roots.
 
 

Instead of going right to the temple grounds, this tour group hit different stops along the way. First, we had lunch before we reached Gyongju at this road side restaurant that served so many dishes of food sitting edge to edge, the entire table was covered with them. Just when you thought another dish couldn’t possibly fit on the table, they bring 4 more. While eating, the tour guide went over out itinerary and then had everybody introduce themselves. It was then that I learned that this was not a tour group, nor was the tour guide a paid guide at all. He was actually a foreigner who led an online networking group from Meet up.com. He puts together events and weekend trips on the meetup site and the members of the site join in. This was why I wasent kicked off the bus, unlike what would have happened with any tour group. Of the people on this trip, many were young ESL teachers, some were older ex-pats who worked with Korean companies as an American link to the company. Three were college professors and a handful were travelers taking some time any from their home countries, visiting Korea. I introduced myself as the stowaway, and throughout the weekend, that’s what they fondly called me. “Is stowaway on the bus?” was a frequent yell at many departures.