33. Martine and Ross

The bus ride to Deagu took longer than I had expected, and so instead of around five as planned, I arrived after dark, around eight. Daegu has several bus terminals, most of which are reasonably near downtown - except, of course, the one at which I arrived. In addition to that, it seems to be little frequented by foreigners, so that the only English I heard or saw, was an invitation to buy some authentic Indian food. I politely declined, and continued my search for a public phone. I found a number of them tucked away by the side entrance of the terminal, brushed away some cobwebs (clearly most Koreans own a mobile phone), and called Ross. He was at a wedding reception, but very kindly explained where I should go to meet up with him (a landmark building run by one of the big hotel chains), and that I should make the taxi driver call him, if there should be any problem. And sure enough: I approached a gaggle of taxi drivers, and said just the one word in a questioning tone; much puzzlement ensued. They started throwing hotel names back and forth between them, all of which sounded distinctly not like the name I had given them. Finally, one of them waved me towards his car, we got in, and he drove off. In safe distance from the other drivers he asked me for my destination again. I tried finding the place in my guide book, but without success. Finally I pointed to his phone, typed Ross' number in for him, and so for the third time, my couch surfing hosts had saved me.
As it turned out, the wedding reception did not take place at the hotel at all, but Ross had simply chosen a big enough landmark form me to find. From there we took a short walk to the bar where the reception was still in full swing. I waited downstairs for Ross and Martine to say their goodbyes, but I hadn't even taken off my backpack, when Ross reappeared: I had been invited to join the party! The guests were a good mix of Koreans and foreigners, including a group of couch surfers. I won't go into the details of the party - you've probably been to a couple of them yourself. Only this: apparently, belly dancing is all the rage in South Korea.
The next day I went to visit the nearby Haeinsa temple. It houses the Tripitaka Koreana, a huge collection of buddhist scripture carved into wooden blocks, dating from the 13th century.


Haeinsa is very popular among Koreans, at least on a Sunday - instead of finding serenity, I ended up being part of a huge mass of tourists. And of course the wooden blocks aren't on public display, instead they are kept safely in the original storage, which provides the perfect storage conditions that apparently modern science cannot. But I was impressed by two things. Amid all the people, in one of the side temples was a monk, chanting, without a sign of distraction. And between the first and second gates stands the trunk of a roughly 1000 years old tree, according to legend planted to commemorate the foundation of Haeinsa in 802.