Beomeosa & Godang Peak

September 25, Sunday – Early in the morning, around 9am, BJun, Ern Yu, Shu Yu and I departed to Beomeosa(“sa” means temple). We planned to go to 3 places on this day, Beomeosa, Geumgang Park and the Botanical Garden. However, the plan was a bit off. We took the subway to Beomeosa station. Then, we walked up a bit to the bus station and took bus no.90 up to Beomeosa. The bus was very pack. Many people were heading there as well I guessed. The way up was quite steep; luckily we took the bus instead of walking.

The admission fee is 1,000 won each. There were many lanterns along the way. We need to walk up a bit before reaching the temple. We were welcome by some sort of statue at the entrance. It looks like a huge graveyard. There is nothing much special about this temple. It is any other temple I had visited before. However, this temple is not concentrated at one area. It has 5 temples altogether, 1 mother temple and 4 other small temples. We visited the mother temple at first. There were many halls inside. The scenery of the mountains there attracted me more than the temple itself. A small portion of the trees have begun to change colors. It must have been really beautiful here during mid autumn. Too bad we will be returning to Malaysia before that.

After visiting the main temple, we headed for the hiking trail to Geumgang Park. There were a lot of people taking that way as well. I guessed we were taking the correct way. We took a rest at the rocks beside the mini river, along the hiking trail and had some bread and biscuits for lunch. It was very shady and cooling there.

We continued our way up after that. We realized that we were actually heading the wrong direction as we were hiking up halfway. We visited another small temple which located on the way up instead. This temple is small but nice. It is very quiet and not so crowded compared to the mother temple. There is more greenery there as well.

We headed up after visiting the temple. According to the ajesi(uncle) that we met on the way, the view at the peak is very nice, we will be able to see the whole Busan from there. I wondered how true it is. We reached Nanmun(the North gate) after more than one hour of walk from the mini temple. The view there is very nice. We were able to see mountains and a bit of sea view. There were a few stalls selling instant ramyeon and some hawker food there. But, the place was crowded with many people. Maybe it was due to the fine weather on that day. We had a rest there. Ern Yu and Shu Yun took some oden(something like “lok lok”) as they were hungry.

There are a few roads heading towards different destinations from the North gate. We took the shortest route, which is only around 800 meter from there. The destination is called Godang Peak, the most popular route taken by the crowd there. The way up is quite park. But, the road up is tough when it almost reaches the peak. There is no proper road up. We need to make use of the nature of the stones and with the help of rope to get up. It was cold at the peak. Many Koreans were having a picnic up there. The scenery is much better, breathtaking compared to the mountain behind the dormitory. We were able to see different views from there, ranging from mountains, rivers, islands and Gwangan Bridge. It was misty at times, making it mysterious but beautiful. We stayed up there for quite some time before heading down to Nanmun again.

We headed back to Beomeosa at around 4+pm. It was getting a bit dark at that time, luckily we departed earlier. We took the bus back to the bus station near the temple. We had our dinner at a restaurant near there. Then, we took the subway back to Naengjeong.

p/s: I will upload the pictures soon, please be patient ^^