Lantern Festival

Hello! The first week in May we had Thursday and Friday off, we had to work for three hours on Saturday, then we had Monday and Tuesday off for Buddha's Birthday. So it would have been six days off in a row, but we had to work for those three hours right in the middle of that break. But I'm not really complaining.



There was a huge parade full of lanterns and huge lantern floats to celebrate Buddha's birthday. I took many pictures, but a lot of them were blurry. I should know how to use that camera by now. I've had it for years.



After the parade finished, we went out in Myeongdong, a part of Seoul with many clubs and bars. There are no bars in the town I live in, so I was excited to get out and do something besides drink -- which is dance and drink.



We just got a hotel before we went out, which sometimes is hard to find because we were in the 'foreigner' part of Seoul and since the lantern festival brought in so many people to Seoul, I was worried that we wouldn't find anything. But we did, so we headed out.

I gave the key to my friend who was staying in the same hotel, because I didn't want to be responsible for it. So when we got off the subway station to head to the clubs, some people put their stuff in the lockers so they didn't have to carry their purses and sweatshirts with them all night. Whatever.

After being out for a while, around 3 o'clock in the morning is when I get bored, need to fall asleep, or need to change bars. I decide I just want to go back to the hotel and fall asleep. I ask my friend for the key and she tells me it's in her bag in the locker at the subway stop. I was a little irritated because you don't have access to those lockers at that time of the morning, because they lock off access to the lockers and the entrances to the subway. So now we paid 80,000 won for this hotel that nobody can sleep in.



So Korea has these saunas called jimjilbangs that are very popular because they are very cheap. They are about 8,000 won per night, but it's everyone just sleeping on mats on the floor; no bed, no blankets, just the mat and the floor. So we found one near our hotel and my other friend and I paid 13,000 won for this one and we got about two hours of sleep. We were crabby the next day.

Now I can look back and laugh at it, but I wasn't laughing too hard at the time. I remember I got back to Inje and slept for six hours, or something like that. It was a fun trip though. It seems like something like this always happens to me when I go to Seoul. So I think I need to plan my trips better...