Lotus Lantern Festival

Two updates in one day?! What's going on? Who is this? Who am I? ....anyway, this weekend, I was in Seoul for the Lantern Festival. This was part of the festivities for Buddha's Birthday on Friday, which also means a day off school/work, woohoo!

Warning; picture-heavy post!

After Korean class, me and Sam went up to the Bongeunsa Temple, which is near the (flipping massive) COEX shopping mall. It was pretty quiet, maybe because it was near the heat of the day and it was utterly gorgeous out but people were also preparing for the parade later on.

There were so many lanterns up, it was difficult to get a photo of them all! We walked around the temple and it was lovely and tranquil. It really didn't feel like we were still in Seoul, which was nice as a breather from the city.

Curved roof of COEX in the background

My first glimpse into Korea's punk-rock scene

This was hands-down the most interesting wedding reception party I've ever been to. I happened to see a link to this event somewhere only a few hours before it started. I'd been helping Steph to move in to her new place in Seoul and we wanted an evening out. A quick bit of googling later, found it was within walking distance, so was perfect!

The gig flyer (src; Chincha magazine's Facebook)

The bands that all played were friends of the bride and groom (himself, the vocalist of the band Rux). We  also saw No Brain, Gogo Star, Crying Nut and Galaxy Express. There's some more information from before the gig here including this from the groom, Won Jong-hee;

"One of my favourite songs from Rux is 'Our Life, Our Stage'," says Won. "Anyone can put their life on a stage.... So I thought why not get married on a stage too... After we chose to have our wedding on the venue's big stage, we had to decide on some wedding singers for the reception. So we said, 'F*ck it! Let's just have a big punk rock show instead.'"

There were clearly a core group of fans for each band present, but everyone was so easy-going and fun. This was the nicest mosh-pit I've ever experienced even though it still got pretty insane by any standards. We stayed a bit out of it and stuck to the main non-crazy-crowd standing/jumping. People were able to crowd-surf! And fans jumping up on stage wasn't a cause for being kicked out, it was all so... friendly?! I don't think alcohol was even being served and people were there just to jump/flail around, have a good time and rock out to the bands.

I took a fair number of photo's on my phone, more to test the camera than anything by trying to get at least one good shot of each band. Also, it was an attempt to remember who was who for when I came to (finally) writing up this post.

Any which way, me and Steph had a good time; it's always fun when spur-of-the-moment decisions work out well!

P.S; I'll update this with pictures later, but I just wanted to get this post published and feel like I've actually gotten somewhere with catching up on all these things I want to write about...

P.P.S; I just realised this was a month ago. Where does time go here?!?