May 23, 2007

Buddah's Birthday


May 24th is officially Buddah's Birthday this year so to celebrate the city put on a street festival and lantern parade. The street festival took place around the Jogysa Temple in Insa-dong. There were crafts you could do, like making your own lantern, but we just walked around looking at the sights. There were various stages with Buddhist related preformances. At one point there was a big crowd of people on stage chanting 'Hari-Krishna' and dancing around. There were pulling people on stage to join them. We stood back from that one.
The parade goes from Dongdaemun to the temple, it takes about 2 hours to walk it. We just waited for the end of it. There were thousands of people holding lantern, it was really beautiful. There were also big floats lit up, one was a boat that shot fire out of the cannons. The mood was really festival. There were some university students running around trying to get pictures with all the foreigners...Its almost like being a celebrity!




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