Happy Birthday, Buddha (10 May)

Today is Buddha’s birthday and a public holiday in the ROK.  Since Buddhism is a fairly dominant religion here, there are guaranteed to be celebrations taking place at the various temples.  One of the closest major temples to Gunsan is Geumsansa where I did a temple stay in mid-February.  I meet Catfish, M and NZ1’s wife at E-mart at 10:00am and we head to Geumsansa for the day.

Disappointments and Creepy Men

Unfortunately, the temple is busy but rather disappointing.  There are hundreds of people and the temple has been decorated with many lotus lanterns but, if you’re not Buddhist, there’s little in which to participate at the festival.  Consequently, we take a quick walk around the grounds, take several photos and decide it’s time for lunch.  A brief moment of entertainment arises when an ajeossi strikes up a conversation with Catfish.  She manages to answer all of his questions in Korean and proceeds to do a happy dance to celebrate after the man walks away.  While I film the dance, he decides to return for a photo with the pretty blonde Migook (American) – creepy photos that he also asks us to take using his phone.  We don’t even want to know what happened to those photos….  Kudos to Catfish for still managing to smile and pose with this creep!

Lunch is a pleasant affair at T.G.I. Friday’s in Jeonju where M’s friend makes our second round of JuneBug’s even stronger than usual leading to a very entertaining drive back to Gunsan.