[busan] day 6: busan museum, UN cemetery & haedong yonggungsa temple

27/03/2014 (thursday)

on our second and last day in busan, we first visited busan museum. we managed to experience to print on a rubbed copy. it's the traditional way to make copy and is called takbon in korea. you had to pay KRW2000 only to have this experience. first, you wet the printed block. and then, you put a piece of paper on it. after the paper is put, you rub it to stick to the surface by brush. once the whole surface is done, you use this special brush to put carbon powder all over it. and then it's done!

After the takbok experience, we got another chance to wear hanbok here for free once again. It's in this museum that we learned the different types of hanbok. the one that we tried here was for the royals or aristorats. after the hanbok, we began to explore the musem. there are several halls in in these museum:

• Exhibition Hall 1: Late Paleolithic Period, Samhan/Three Kingdoms Room, Unified Silla Room, Goryeo Room, Joseon Room-Public Affairs/Education, Joseon Room-Relics
• Exhibition Hall 2: Korea-Japan Relationship Room, Modern Room, Contemporary Room, Living & Culture Room, and Busan Folk Room
• Kiln Exhibition Hall: introduction to the process of making earthenware and tiles through kilns and displays tiles which visitors can touch
• Outdoor Exhibition Hall: displays stone monuments and statues (such as Dongnae Nammun Monument, Cheokhwa Monument, Yakjojechal Monument and Sacheoseokgyo Monument)
• Donation Center: displays items donated to the museum
• History Experience Room: Touching Relics, Printing a Rubbed Copy, Erecting Stone Pagoda and Wooden Brackets, and Trying Folk Crafts (Source: VisitKorea website)

our next destination is the UN cemetery.  The UN Memorial Cemetery in Korea honors UN soldiers from 16 countries that were killed in battle during the Korean War from 1950-1953. there was a hall here that shows a video  footage of the korean war. we watched the footage after strolling around the cemetery. it was a sad and tragic video. we learned a little bit about the korean war from it. once we've finished the video,we moved to our next destination, the haedong yonggungsa temple. on the train, we met this couple, an american guy and a korean lady. they asked us whether we're from malaysia and we said yes. it turned out that both of them had worked in perak for about three years, under some teacher programme. so, we talked for a while before they getting off at a station, earlier than ours.

haedong yonggungsa temple is is situated on the coast of the north-eastern portion of Busan and offers visitors the rare find of a temple along the shore line. Most temples in Korea are located in the mountains. it was first built in 1376. Many people often come to this spot on New Year's Day to make a wish for the new year as they watch the sun come up. there were a lot of tourists here.

since we still got some time before went back to the hotel to pack, we went to the shinsegae centum city.  is registered in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest shopping complex in the world. the only shop that we visited here is the kyobo bookstore, hehe.. the bookstore reminded me a little bit of kinonukiya bookstore back in klcc, malaysia. we then went back to our hotel to have lunch again at jagalchi market and to pack up since we got a early bus to catch tomorrow.