Jinju Lantern Festival (Fall 2013 in Korea, Part 2)

On the second weekend of October, I went to Jinju.  Every year Jinju has a lantern festival.  While there are other lantern festivals in Korea (most notably in Seoul), the one in Jinju is by far the most popular and most well-attended.  I arrived on the same train as my friend, Dawn, and my friend, Adam, joined us an hour or two later by bus.  Additionally, we met up with two of Dawn’s friends that she had met on a recent tour.  Together we walked around a huge fortress in the middle of Jinju and right next to the river that flows right through the city.  From the fortress, we had some great views of the lanterns before they were lit up, as pretty much the entire lantern show took place on the river (stationary floating lanterns).  The fortress itself was also really nice.

As we were leaving the fortress and heading to the other side of the river, the sun was going down.  The first thing we saw after we crossed the river was a huge, long tunnel of red lanterns.  It was beautiful and a little surreal as it went on for probably the length of a football field.

After we walked through that for a while, we decided to grab some dinner and some dongdongju, which is similar to the rice-based alcohol, makgeolli, but a little bit more potent.

Following dinner, we walked up and down the river taking pictures of the lanterns.  The others were trying to take professional-style photographs, but I was just trying to take photographs for posterity.  I unfortunately got a little annoyed by how often we were stopping so the others could set up tripods and whatnot to get the perfect picture.  I felt a little selfish, but my patience was definitely at an end.  Since Dawn had already left, I convinced Adam to ditch Dawn’s two friends.  I felt a little bad, but I was about to “lose my shit” and needed to leave the crowds and the incessant photography.

Adam and I ended up in a university area and grabbed some more food and some drinks.  We had some good conversation, and it was nice spending some one-on-one time with a good friend. 

As it was getting late, Adam and I made our way to a jimjalbang that he had read good things about.  Unfortunately, we got there rather late so it was quite crowded.  We ended up sleeping in the “barbershop” (every decently sized jimjalbang has a small barbershop area), but were promptly woken up at 7:00 a.m. when the barber came into work.  We slept about 4 hours on the floor of a mini barbershop…certainly not the best sleep I’ve gotten! 

On that Sunday morning I took a train to Seoul and spent the afternoon in Seoul with Jayeon.