Jinju Lantern Festival - A Very Straightforward Post

One of the many great things I've come to enjoy about Korea is its vast array of festivals and events. On almost any given weekend there's bound to be something to do somewhere in the country, and as fall approaches and the weather gets cooler, I find myself wanting to squeeze more of it in before the leaves start to change and my weekends are taken up by hiking. In two weekends we have the Busan Fireworks Festival, and the weekend before last was the Jinju Lantern Festival. Thrown into the shuffle was also the Gwangju Kimchi Festival (which I regret to report, I missed) and my own town's Korean Folk Music Festival. Coming up further along still is another one dedicated to autumn leaves.

So Jinju had a lantern festival. They held it on and around the river running up the middle of the city, and as one would expect, there were quite a few large-scale lanterns bobbing around on the water, as well as the option to set your own smaller version down the river for the low price of 1000 won ($0.96), which included a complimentary wish fulfillment if performed properly. The problem was, as we found out later in the evening, that at night the access to the water was blocked off in order to charge admission to go down there. I wished for that to not be the case, but since a wish-lantern is only effective once it's been deployed on the river itself, this did me little to no good. Instead, several minutes of jogging and dodging crowds of Koreans took myself and a like-minded friend further up the bank of the river to a place along the fortress walls where we could squeeze through, thus avoiding the toll, and most importantly, the line. So we placed our lanterns onto the water where they floated downstream, the candles glowing behind the white paper, symbolizing the steady progress of the inevitable realization of our deepest desires and aspirations. Or perhaps they would have, if the Koreans hadn't constructed a temporary floating bridge about one hundred feet down the way, effectively serving as a damn. Not that it wasn't a perfectly pleasant looking bridge, but it definitely killed the moment. The best part was that to get on the bridge, which was lit up along its length from one side of the river to another, you had to pay a toll. It wasn't expensive, but it was a humorous sight to see that the bridge had a line of people waiting to get on it that was considerably longer than the bridge itself, which is at the end of the day simply another form of line, but on some water. So people waited a couple of hours in one long line, paying to experience a segment of that line, and then going on their way, perhaps to pay for another line a short distance down. Here are some pictures.

 Turtle ship float

 A brief parade of elderly women

The unhappiest looking person to ever ride a small horse in a parade 

 Just starting to light up

 A solemn tribute to the proud history of beating someone's ass with sticks

 Lanterns and sunsets go well together

The pictures didn't turn out too well after this point, and everything just ended up looking like nondescript patches of light

The Best National Foundation Of Korea Day I've Ever Had

There's a beauty to mid-week holidays that goes under appreciated. Sure, it doesn't extend your weekend, and you have to go to work the next day (to sit there for 8 hours dealing with tech support), but it carries a novelty that extended weekends don't seem to share. So last Thursday was the National Foundation of Korea day, and in the spirit of this great country we hiked a mountain and relaxed with beers in a spa. Honestly, the things I get to do on a regular basis here astound me even still.

So we began the day by walking over to a local mountain for a hike up to a temple (temples love mountains), and then proceeding to work our way to the top up a steep trail. I think it's my regular diet or something, but I can hike mountains for hours without getting too tired, and since I exercise even less here than I ever did at home, I can only assume it all comes back to how I eat. I'm starting to rethink how I eat these days, usually finding that if I do indulge in some western food, I feel noticeably shittier. You really don't have to exercise all that much if you just eat well, and that's a lesson I've taken a long time to really grasp. Anyways, let's see some pictures, because words are hard. These are all from the top of the mountain, 'cause who the hell has time to take pictures as they're hiking up a mountain? Not this guy.

 Close to the summit, where a few people were setting up for paragliding, which looks fun as hell

 The temple at the top of the mountain. Definitely one of the coolest ones I've seen so far

You can buy a tile and do it up however you please, then stack it to build the wall up higher 

 It's got sort of a nice view, I guess, if you're into that sort of thing.. 

This monk was just hanging out in the temple chanting over a PA system. You could hear it through the trees in the forest on your way up, so it set an effective mood. He doesn't take requests. 

 Zac setting up his hammock before a celebratory mountaintop makgeolli session

The lookout pagoda at the very top

We could have just stopped after the hike and still have had an unusually pleasant day, but after a hike not a whole lot sounds nearly as good as a few rounds of hot tubs and saunas in an outdoor spa with beer and pools scented like peppermint and rooibos tea. Not a whole lot ever sounds as good as that. So we grabbed some Chinese food and headed to the spa.

I've been to spas where there's a common area for men and women (and the child equivalents) to congregate together, but usually it's an area separate from the pool area itself. Typically you'll spend time together in the sleeping/relaxing zone in your spa-assigned linen shorts and t-shirt, which are shockingly comfortable. Here however, the common area outside had a bunch of hot tubs and cold pools, so we got to experience public bathing in Korea. It's not nearly as interesting as it could have been, because they make you wear the same sort of linen shorts and t-shirt as a bathing suit. Men, women, and children all wear the same gear, and coming from a country where bathing suits are normal to see and people bathing in regular clothing isn't, it was a little unusual. The other guys with us brought their own bathing suits, and I just opted to keep the spa shorts and ditch the shirt, which made us stand out all the more (as if that was possible, really). I'm still unsure as to what degree that would be considered socially inappropriate, since literally zero Koreans had made a similar fashion choice. As a people they seem to possess an unusual blend of modesty and complete comfort with their bodies. Gender is more segregated here than it is back home, and any sort of intermingling feels very rigidly constructed. If you're a man at a spa, you're going to see about three dozen pairs of balls in the sauna area, each displayed as openly and in as well lit an environment as if each was part of the latest exhibition at your local public arts museum. They will scrub their nethers with more gusto and pride than most people in North America will dedicate to raising their own children. Yet, they will dress themselves in bathing clothing that, with its material and total surface area, would make drowning a certainty if the pools were deep enough. I love this country.