Pohang and Bokyeongsa

Ana and I escaped Daegu for one night and headed by bus out to Pohang. It was about a 1 1/2 hour trip, I spent most of it huddled in a ball on my seat with a yucky headache, while poor Ana was so excited about Pohang. (ahhh, drugs, the pain killers soon set in). We arrived in Pohang at about 5pm, and following the great Lonely Planet guide, headed outside to wait for bus number 105 which would take us to Bukbu Beach. Well, what my faithful Guide didnt tell us was that we needed to catch the 105 bus from the other side of the road, so we headed east instead of west, and went on a lovely tour of Pohang's suburbs, all the time stressing about where the hell we were going. Over an hour later we arrived in Bukbu, found a hotel (pretty cheap and suprisingly nice!), and then headed to the beach armed with chips, chocolate, and a Vodka Cruiser each - classy! We sat on the beach for a while watching all the kids going nuts in the water with their water wings and tubes, and walk for a lovely walk along the beach, and then we went to try and find dinner. Thank goodness for the Jade Garden Chinese restaurant and their veggie spring rolls, every other restaurant was all about the seafood - most of it swimming in the tanks outside just waiting to be eaten - yuck.
Then after dinner we went to go and sit on the beach and listen to the hideous concert on the beach. Some of it was ok, but some of it seemed to be kareoke, and anyone, regardless of their lack of talent or shame, was up there belting out tunes. Most of them we didnt know, but one guy did try to sing "take me home, country road", which had Ana and I in stiches.
We then got chatted up be 3 Korean guys, who bought us beer and chips and asked as many strange questions, it was so random. And that was pretty much all we did at Bukbu Beach.


This morning we left Bukbu Beach and headed back to the Pohang bus terminal in search of the bus to Bokyeongsa, one of the really nice temples in the area. The information kiosk guy told us that we wanted bus 500, but that only 10% of these actually went to Bokyeongsa (??). An hour later we caught our bus, and then spent a very hot and bothered hour trundling along on an absolutely full to the brim bus. It was totally worth it though, Bokyeongsa was beautiful. I thought it would be just one temple, one building, but it was a whole compound of buildings, about 10 in total, all intricately painted. I'll post my photos when I get back to school on Thursday. Then we headed out into the mountains behind the temple to find the waterfalls...... and about an hour later we did, and they were totally worth it too! We gave the rest of the Korean tourists quite a shock by going swimming in our togs (Korean people, even at the beach, swim in their ordinary clothes, some of them even swim in jeans!). They were taking photos of us in our togs, it was hilarious.
After missing our bus back to Pohang, and not willing to wait for next one which was 90 mins later, we hitched a ride on a fancy bus to the main road, and then caught another bus back to Pohang, and got there just in time to catch our bus back to Daegu.