After hiking almost to Ulsan on the Padosori-gil we headed to the road to catch the 150 back the way we came and to get off at the Underwater Tomb of King Munmu. We settled in at the bus stop and waited, and waited, and waited. Probably because it was Chuseok, the bus seemed to only come by once every hour. So we were a bit cooked by the time the bus arrived and were probably overly enthusastic with our imaginings of an “Underwater tomb”. It was a reaccuring problem.
We got off the 150 and headed towards the ocean, following signs to a rocky beach and looked out at a pile of rocks. It was underwhelming.
The little island, or Great King Rocks is the resting place of King Munmu, who united three Kingdoms and was a king of Shilla, he requested to be buried in the eastern sea so he could become a dragon and protect his people from Japan.
We were disapointed and ended up just enjoying the beach like everyone else, settling on trying to skip rocks into the ocean. Which I’m proud to say we accomplished like pros, and we ended up having a lot of fun. We even managed to time it right so we caught the next bus back in Gyeongju right when we headed back to the bus stop. It, however, just didn’t feel worth the long trek out and back that ate up most of our day.