Jinju Lantern Festival

If there's one thing Korea knows how to do, it's put on some incredible festivals. Just about every town has a festival of some sort, generally related to a cultural, historical or regional happening. There are literally hundreds of festivals that are put on throughout the year. Some of them are rather small affairs (the Mokpo Seaside Festival, for example), but some are of such a magnitude that they leave you breathless and wondering why more people haven't heard of them.

The Jinju Lantern Festival was quite possibly one of the greatest ornamental displays I have ever seen.

Imagine a river full of huge floating wire and paper structures. Pretty impressive, eh?


Alright... now light them all up as it gets dark.



Okay then... Make them breathe fire!



Hmmm.... still not impressed? How about if there are about a hundred of these things all along a river between two bridges with a 13th C palace on one side and an illuminated pagoda on the other?

With a 3-day weekend, and friends aplenty, we (Wim, Fallon, Zach, Terry, Ty and I) managed to enjoy ourselves immensely in a very familiar sort of carnival atmosphere. There were fried things on sticks to eat, and shopping in kiosks and in a huge flea market. There were fireworks and a huge musical fountain (like in Yeosu, Mom). There was a very small midway, and a lot of interactive fun things to do as well (and lots of opportunities for silly photos) like dressing up in traditional feudal clothes, floating a paper "wish lantern" down the river, hand painting a fan...

We kissed our way through the festival. I think the guy standing behind us was impressed.

Fallon and Terry tame a tiger...

We were joined by a few folks from Suncheon (Nina, Chris, Melissa and Patty) on Friday night, and even though our friends all left us on Saturday evening, Ty and I stayed on until Sunday morning, and made the most of all that this festival had to offer. We were a bit disappointed that both of our cameras died on Saturday afternoon, but I'll grab a few of the better photos from my friends and post them tomorrow.

It's great to continue to discover new events and things to do here. A weekend like the one we just had is almost enough to make a person sign on for another year (except that the Korean won is worth almost NOTHING these days... grrrrrr).

In other news, I've added Gohado photos to the previous post, so scroll down.