Lovely Lanterns

This weekend a friend and I went to Jinju, a city about 2 hours outside of Yeosu, to go and see a lantern festival that has been going on. My other friends who were supposed to come, were unfortunately sick this weekend (feel better soon!!) So it was just the two of us, and we hopped on the one and only bus that goes out there and got ready for a lovely day full of blue skies, sunshine, lanterns and festival food.

When we arrived in Jinju, the festival was incredibly easy to find for two reasons: first, it was right next to the bus terminal, and second because the displays were quite big and could be seen from a good distance (which we weren't by the way...like I just said).

The first thing that you have to do when you get to this particular festival is cross the river - because while there are a few things on the bus terminal side of the river (like constructing your own floating lantern (for a small fee)) most things (the food, lantern displays, music, etc) were on the other side of the river.  However, in order to cross the river, you have to walk across these floating temporary bridges that were put up for the festival - and they charge you 1000 won EACH time you want to cross a bridge.  I believe that there were about 4 bridges that you could choose from.

There a number of displays in the river itself, and one activity that you could do was ride a little boat that weaved in and out of the river displays.  Once you cross the river, you are faced with the option of either taking a stroll under the lanterns or walking in front of the tents where they had information, places to rest and were selling food and souvenirs.  Over the course of the day, we did both (multiple times as we were waiting for it to get dark so the lanterns could be lit up).

There were two different kinds of lanterns that were displayed - the majority were blue and orange - and they all looked more or less the same, other than the attached ribbons that had the names of the people who made/hung them. (not really sure)  The other lanterns were referred to as 'creative lanterns'.  These lanterns were pretty much all very unique as they were made by people (again, for a small fee) attending the festival however they would like.

In our wanderings, we found a path that went up to the bridge along the road - and walked over that bridge (for free!!) to the other side, where there was a sort of children's area and a musical fountain, which we timed excellently as the show started right when we were about to decide what we should do next.

So, yes, the majority of the day was spent strolling around the area, enjoying the sites of the lovely lanterns, trying out some food, taking in some sunshine and things like that.

Oh - and as a random side note - I saw a few people that I haven't seen since orientation - and had a little chat with a couple of them, which was also rather nice...

At 6:00 when the sun went down behind the mountains, the number of people at the festival area increased incredibly quickly, as the lights in the lanterns was turned on.

The two of us took a stroll through the lit up lanterns - of course taking many pictures, and then went back to one of the bridges (which at this point had a long line up to get across), so that we could go back to the other side to catch the last bus back to Yeosu.  This time, crossing the bridge was much more interesting though because since there were so many people crossing at the same time it was moving around quite a bit and you needed your sea legs to keep your balance!

Before we left we also watched people launching their floating lanterns for a little bit.
I'll explain a bit since I know at least one person (**Mom**) wanted to hear more about it.  So what they did was put a floating platform out on the bank of the river - and people would go onto that to launch their lanterns, and then the current in the river would carry them along under the bridge and down the river.  While a few of the lanterns did get stuck along the banks - that wasn't necessarily a bad thing because people were pulling them out to take pictures (mildly unsafe - but this is Korea...) or they were poking them with sticks to get them to continue moving.  Also - they had a few, let's call them obstacles, (they were really floating kind of platform things similar to what was holding up the floating displays) placed in the river along the path of where the lanterns would float, so that they would be forced to go around and not all follow the exact same path.

Anyway, I think that explains most of our experience so it's likely off to the beach to get some more sunshine today! :)

For pictures from the Jinju Namgang Yudeung (Lantern) Festival, click here.