Working our way south through South Korea, this leg by a 5-hour bus journey, our next stop was Gyeongju, which is a city on the southeast coast. It was the capital of the 1000-year long Silla dynasty and is known for its extensive historical remains.

Trip advisor calls the city "a museum without walls" and claims that it has more tombs, temples, rock carvings, pagodas, Buddhist statuary and palace ruins than any other place in South Korea …….We did our cultural duty and visited the key sites, the most impressive being the Bulguksa temple, which was several kilometres out of town and demanded some skilful manoeuvres on local buses with unknown protocols and inspired guesswork involving destination identification. The temple features twin stone pagodas, a series of wooden staircases and a large bronze Buddha ….. the nearby Seokguram grotto houses a towering seated Buddha and apparently amazing panoramic views of the sun rising over the Sea of Japan - We didn't witness this, sunrises are not really us …. We are sunset people.

The town itself was interesting and had retained much of the old architecture and street formations - One of the more interesting buildings housed a Starbucks franchise, the Silla dynasty had been overtaken by American capitalism ……. The coffee was quite good though.

Whilst on the subject of food and drink, we had been told of a "must have" Regional speciality meal called "Ssambap" ……Never would we back away from a culinary challenge, we ordered it that very night …… The waiter brought an extra table alongside (must be a group feast with other diners - seems sociable) No more diners joined us but both tables were filled with food - It was very good but it took about two hours to eat and although it filled our stomachs….it emptied our wallet.

Another curious feature was what appeared to be giant molehills, around 25 feet tall. Before we got too scared about the prospect of being attacked by giant mutant moles, it was explained that these were tombs dating back to the Silla dynasty in the 5th and 6th century.

Cultured-Out after two long days, we decided to move on to our final South Korean destination - Busan.