For Buddha's Birthday, Nuran, his friend Andrew, my friend Chuck, and my boyfriend and I went to visit Hwagyesa to partake in the Buddha's Birthday festivities.It was great that Nuran and I could meet up another time before he headed back to Canada. It was way strange seeing him in Kyeongju the week before, I mean, we hadn't spoken in like 5 years! Random.
Hwagyesa's a large Zen Buddhist temple near Suyu station in northern Seoul. Despite still being in the city, it has quite a number of trees and wooded paths to walk around in.
dances and the fan dancing.
Before we'd gotten to the temple proper, there were lots of vendors of all sorts. Chuck and Aaron braved having some bondaegi, or silkworm larvae. I could not bring myself to eat bugs, sorry.
It was fun to wander around amongst all the colours of the lanterns. Each lantern can be bought for $50 or something around that. It's kind of like temple day for half-hearted Buddhists. Kind of like how lots of Christians only go to church on Christmas and Easter.
We wandered down from the temple to get some food, and we found a restaurant with the usually helpful "Good Restaurant" white flower sign. It turned out to be a place that sold pig organ soup. Andrew just loved the stuff, but I had a lot of trouble. Aaron said he looked at me from across the table and did his best not to laugh at me I was so green! Ah, not a good food day for me.
Unfortunately and shockingly, Nuran had his camera stolen while we were eating. It was really terrible. The camera itself could be replaced, but the restaurant wasn't even crowded. Korea's really good for low crime, and I'd just never heard of someone having something stolen like that. Too bad.
We headed back to the temple one last time to catch it lit up and to see a mini lantern parade. All in all it was quite a nice experience. I'm quite fond of going to temples because they are so brightly painted and interesting.
Don't forget to turn on captions!
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