The Garden of the Morning Calm has been on my list of places to see for a long time, but I’ve never had a chance to get there because it’s pretty out of the way. Having a car in Korea can be really liberating so when we had a three day weekend we decided to make the most of it and explore some of the northern parts of Korea that we hadn’t previously visited.
My first experience at the Busan Fireworks festival was back in 2011. I remember thinking we had really lucked out with the weather. The temperature was nice during the day and even though it was cloudy, it wasn’t raining. I must have been feeling really optimistic when I left my apartment because I didn’t even bring an umbrella. Continue reading
This past weekend Dave and I didn’t have any plans so my Korean tutor recommended we go to a two places: Jusanji (주산지) and Juwangsan (주왕산). She said she goes every autumn and it’s really amazing. She couldn’t have been more right!
We woke up at 3:00am and drove 3 hours to get there. I knew it was up in the mountains so I took a motion sickness pill before we left. During the drive I tried to stay awake as long as possible, but around the halfway mark, I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer and I slept for the rest of the drive. I felt terribly guilty, but Dave was such a good sport about driving while I snoozed. Continue reading
The Busan International Film Festival started back in 1996 and now it’s one of the best film festivals in the world. Up until 2011 it was called PIFF, but they finally changed it from Pusan to Busan. They also changed the location from PIFF Square in Nampo-dong to the Haeundae area (Centum City/Shensegae). They built the new Busan Cinema Center especially for BIFF. It is really spectacular!
The festival runs every year in October and the opening film sold out in 7 seconds this year! Weekend tickets are also hard to come by. Your best bet might be trying to go to a film during the week. Getting tickets can prove difficult for foreigners so it’s helpful to have a Korean friend buy tickets for you.
One of my favorite festivals in Korea is the Lantern Festival in Jinju. It is fantastic. They have lanterns floating in the river, and decorating all of the surrounding areas. Unfortunately, I didn’t arrive in Jinju until quite late at night, but I heard it’s really beautiful at dusk and we have plans to go back in 2013 to find out!
Location: 626, Namgang-ro, Jinju-si, Gyeongsangnam-do
Date: October 1-13, 2013. (It’s around this same time each year)
Website: The official website still has last year’s dates up, but you can use the Visit Korea page about this festival for more details.
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