Jinju Lantern Festival

How we spent our Thanksgiving weekend...

I found online that there was a big lantern festival going on in Jinju. We had stayed home last weekend, so we figured we deserved a treat this weekend and went to check it out. We hopped on a train Saturday morning and arrived in Jinju early afternoon. It wasn’t hard to find our way to the site as there was huge balloons flying in the sky anchored at the banks of the river where the festival was happening. We quickly found a hotel - a Love Motel, which is exactly what it sounds like! The rooms are often rented out to lovers who are hiding their affairs or young people who need to escape the watchful eyes of their parents. Travellers know though that these are also cheap, clean places to stay since they pretty much consist of no more than a bathroom and a bed. We checked in and dropped our bags and headed out to join the festivities.

The festival is held to commemorate the 70 000 fallen soldiers in a battle with Japan in the 1500’s. Our first few views of the festival were from the palace that sits up on a hill overlooking the river where all the action was. When I say lantern festival, you are probably picturing small paper lanterns lit with candles that light up the night. They did have these, but they also had a most impressive display of colourful floating lanterns. There was also a wall and tunnel of smaller hanging lanterns that we knew would be even more impressive at night. There were small paddle boats that you could rent to get closer to the lanterns and small boat cruises too, but Milton and I stayed onshore and kept busy with other activities.

Our first bit of fun was had as we dressed up in old traditional Korean costumes. Since we paid as a couple, we were given the couple costume…King and Queen! Milton got dressed first and I thought maybe they had our costumes mixed up because they started dressing him all in pink! Pink pants and a pink shirt, but it was no mistake. The boots were hilarious and so was the head gear. Milton had his turn to laugh too when he saw the hair they had me put on that weighed about 10 pounds. Not sure black hair really suits me ;)

There was a huge market that was said to be a “Korean products market”, which pretty mush meant tons of dried fish and other food vendors, and a few stands selling knock-off sportswear. We didn’t buy anything.

We stepped away from the action for a while to have dinner while we waited for it to get dark and for the fireworks to start. We ate a restaurant that said “country kitchen” on the sign, but that played nice jazz music and served Italian food. An interesting combo, but the food was good.
We quickly headed back to the hotel to get sweaters and then to the bridge over the river where we thought would be the best view of the fireworks. The fireworks were good – I always love fireworks, but I’ve been spoiled by seeing several of the firework competitions held in Montreal every summer and so this display was nothing to brag about. I think we missed the best part from where we were too, because we were on the bridge and couldn’t see at one point when they set off a bunch that were attached to the bottom of the bridge and created like a waterfall of white lights falling into the river (we could only see the reflection).

After the fireworks, we went back down to the tunnel of lanterns to see it all lit up, and also to see the lanterns that were made during the day as one of the festival activities. We also got to “make our own floating lantern” (it was made already but we attached pieces of paper on which we wrote our wishes) and then we sent it down the river.

This was the highlight of the night for us because there were two guys filming us as we wrote our wishes and then found us when we set our lantern afloat and asked if they could interview us. We of course were quick to agree thinking this was our big chance to make it big in Korea (yeah right!) and we did short interviews to speak of our impressions of the festival and they told us it would be on cable. We have no idea what channel or when but we are still saying we are stars! I also felt famous for a moment after that when some man begged me to pose in a photo with his three kids – for some people it is just so rare to see a white person, especially a blond. So see, I told you I am famous – there will be photos of me framed and hanging on the walls in houses all over Korea!

One last stop before we headed back to the hotel, Milton's favourite part of the night... the Princess Hotel cafe. Alright, i had to twist his arm a little bit, but he was a good sport and let me go into this cafe that any girl would love! The best part of it was that if you order a drink you get waffles and ice cream included in the "service". Korean are always giving away free food as part of what they call service, but this was a bit more generous than anything we've ever been given so far (usually its a free drink refill or maybe side dishes). So we paid $8 for my cappuccino and Milt's ice cream parfait, and the waitress brought us this plate of waffles and ice cream for free!

Sunday morning we had breakfast sandwiches at Dunkin’ Donuts (yum! A small taste of home) and then headed back to the grounds of the palace that we hadn’t had a chance to explore on Saturday. I was pretty impressed by how beautiful the grounds were but I think Milton was getting a bit bored. While I was trying to capture some of the beauty on camera this is what he was doing…

…trying to ruin my shots! He says that he felt inspired by the setting and that he was trying to imagine how it would have been to fight the invasion of the Japanese and that this was how he would fight them! We had a really good laugh and then got on our way.

Back home late Sunday afternoon and off to do groceries so we could make a thanksgiving dinner. It was a bit smaller than the meals we missed with our families and a bit quieter too, but it’s the best we could do. A whole roast chicken was stuffed as the substitute for turkey, and I made the Swiss Chalet sauce I’d been saving since we got here, so the meal was pretty darn good! We have no pumpkin pie, but pain perdu dans du crème a sucre is just as good, if not better!

It was a fabulous weekend and we are hoping that all of you are having a great thanksgiving weekend back home too!