The second weekend of October met us with gorgeous early fall weather. We woke up and got ourselves ready to go out for the night (in hind sight we should have prepared some things the night before, but oh well, you live and learn!), and were on the road by 10 or 11 am. Ellora slept for awhile in the car and Joe and I chatted and enjoyed the scenery as we drove through the mountainous southern regions toward our first stop, Jinju. Our friends Nick and Becky and a visitor from home, Emma, were joining us there.
Luckily we had a GPS to follow because we decided to go to our pension first, to check-in, and then figure out the location of the festival from there. On the phone the owner of the pension described the location as only 15-20 minutes from the festival, but what we didn't realize was that the place was buried out in the country, so not exactly easy to find. When we arrived, we discovered that it was so secluded, they didn't even lock the doors or have a reception. I called the manager and she said just to go inside the room! I was a little disappointed when we looked at it. The website showed a really charming little getaway pension but our room was pretty bare bones. There was only one bed and the other three of us and Ellora had to sleep old-fashioned Korean style on the floor with very thin mats and small hard pillows. Good thing we were only staying for one night! The surroundings were really beautiful though, with large flower fields and pepper patches all around us.
Our pension.
In front of the door to our room.
The flower patch.
Our bare bones room.
The pepper garden out our sliding door.
Ellora playing on our floor bed. The thin purple sheet is our "mattress" and those red pillows were stuffed really full so they were hard.
We were still waiting for our friends to catch up with us so Joe and I decided we should go on ahead to the festival to start looking around, since it was already mid afternoon. Our drive had taken us around 2.5 to 3 hours to get there, since we had crossed almost the whole length of the bottom of the country, into the next province. We just guess-worked our way into the city and then to the festival site, and eventually found a place to park.
A description of the Jinju Lantern Festival:
One of Korea’s “Best Festivals” as designated by the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, the Jinju Namgang Yudeung Festival takes place in the Namgang River area in Jinju, Gyeongsangnam-do.
Not just a stunning display of light and master craftsmanship, the festival has a historic side as well. The festival was first held as a memorial event to pay tribute to around 70,000 soldiers who gave up their lives for the nation during the Imjin Waeran, the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592.
Despite these solemn undertones, the main highlight of the festival is the indescribable beauty of the multitude of lanterns, particularly the “wish lanterns” that float down the river carrying each participant’s hopes and dreams. The festival’s historic roots can be seen more clearly at the Jinjuseong Fortress, where soldier stand to welcome visitors in to see the lanterns inspired by the lives of Koreans from over 500 years ago.
In addition to the lanterns themselves, main festival activities include “making your own lantern,” “crossing the bridge of love,” and participating in traditional folk games.
Since we arrived in the day time, the lanterns were not yet turned on, but still just as fun to go around and enjoy. Here is a little photo collage of our day at the lantern festival:
Ellora up close and personal with a giant radish.
And now with a giant chicken.
Just your typical day when Joe is getting devoured by a dinosaur.
Mommy and baby love.
The river full of floating lanterns.
A map of the festival grounds, showing the various themed sections.
A guard enjoying himself on duty.
Ellora's zodiac, the dragon.
Pinning a message on the wish zodiac.
A big green paper dragon.
Traditional wedding scene: The bride is carried to the husband's family home.
Ellora has hoards of fan club members everywhere she goes. The usual commentary is, " OMG, so cute! She looks like a doll. Look at her big eyes. Wow, her eyes are blue!..."
Happy family!
At this point, late in the afternoon, we finally found our friends and decided to go for dinner. Having read online before the trip that Jinju is kind of famous for eel, we sought out a restaurant close to the festival grounds to try it out. Too hungry to shop around for prices and menu differentiation, we took a seat at a place that had tables set up outdoors. It looked busy so that must mean it would be good. We had a choice of sea versus fresh water eel, but now I can't remember which one we decided on! Which ever one it was, it was more fishy tasting than the one we like to eat in Mokpo, and also the dish was far too spicy. Since the portions were really expensive, we bought just two for all five of us to share. I knew it wasn't going to be enough so we talked about stopping in a grocery store on our way back to the pension later.
This is what an eel restaurant looks like.
Our getting set up for dinner.
Here's our plate of seasoned eel, cooking on our own gas burner.
Ellora ate with us too, though her food was much more bland.
After finishing up our food and drinks it was already dark. We re-entered the festival grounds to check out the lanterns which were all light by this time. These were the first set we came upon:
Ellora under the trees.
Cute kids posing with the herons.
We walked around almost the entire area we had covered earlier again, enjoying the scenes of animals and traditional Korea life. Especially this one:
What's so special about that, you may be asking yourself? Take a closer look.
Ta-daa! Of course the bull lantern must be anatomically correct!
Finally we crossed the floating bridge over to the opposite side of the river, to see the wish lanterns and homemade lantern contest entries. This was also where people were launching their mini-floating lanterns to gently glide down the river. It was much busier over there so a bit difficult to navigate with the stroller at times, and easy to lose sight of each other. But the lanterns there were well worth it!
The tunnel of wish lanterns.
Mini-floaties.
The river light up with colourful lanterns.
Contest entries.
This is one of my favourite pictures, with the more traditional Asian style lanterns.
This video shows a fire-breathing dragon lantern.
Feeling exhausted and still needing to find more food to fill the void left form dinner, we called it a night and made our way back to the pension. O think we got in somewhere around midnight and I was sure that Ellora would just drop when I laid her down on our floor bed, but no. No, no, no. She decided that midnight and a room full of tired people, was the optimal time and place for a loud shrieking play session. Since Joe needed to drive the car the next day, to our second road trip location, I was the lucky one who got to stay up and try to coax her to sleep!
The following morning, after far too little sleep for some of us, we had a nice breakfast together before hitting the road back west, to the Boseong green tea fields, where we were hoping to arrive in time for the supposed fall blossoms on the bushes.
Bagels and cream cheese, fruit, cheese and crackers, yogurt drinks and banana bread!
Yes, yes this is Ellora chewing the table.
We snuck in a quick photo shoot in the flower fields first, though:
Such a wonderful colour!
Our flower girl.
Fun in the swing.
Mostly it's just a nice place to go for a scenic walk and buy some organic tea products. They also sell some really beautiful tea service sets in the Korean style. In the lower parking lot there is a soft ice cream cone place with, in my opinion, the most delicious green tea ice cream! Not like that garbage they serve at Baskin Robbins.... We, Joe and I that is, have visited this place several times before, but it was a first time visit for the rest of our group. Too bad we had to walk around separately, since I couldn't manage walking up the hills with my running injury. Joe and Ellora and I still hobbled around a little and this is what we saw:
I loved the way the light was hitting this trees stump and highlighting the rings.
Ellora's favourite toy of the day, an empty wet wipe package. Why do we bother to buy "educational" toys?
I really see Joe's dad in his face and body stance here!
Sweet bear hat miss!
Fall tea fields. Seems we were a little too early for the blossoms.
Father-daughter time, because Mom's muscle injury was too sore to carry her around!
Initially the plan was to carry on to the beach not far from here but again time was against us and it was already much later than we planned to get going. From here the group split ways, us back home and the other to the beach. All in all it was a really great weekend with fun adventures and good company!
