Nic Trips

On Sunday, March 22nd,  the other half of our weekend trip, we headed back towards the east side of the country towards our giant neighboring city of Busan. On Haeundae Beach on the southeast side of the city, there was a giant celebration for Holi Hai. Holi Hai is an ancient Hindu festival held in spring. It's also called the 'festival of colors'. It primarily involves a massive singing and dancing party while colors are thrown and rain down everywhere. People use powdered colors as well as colored water or even wet paint to throw at other participants or just into the air to rain down on everyone. There is a large population of Indians living in Korean that likely brought this festival to Busan every spring, but in recent years the celebration has become very popular among other non-Hindu, southeast Asian countries and of course the many open-minded and adventurous foreigners that travel there.   I left my camera on the bus because I didn't have any...

Two weeks before the event itself, the landlord of my apartment (whom I know very well and am friendly with) messaged me to invite my neighbor and I to his son's wedding! This surprising method of invitation was the first of many things I would learn about Korean weddings. Firstly, there are 2 types of weddings: "traditional" and "western". Traditional weddings are extremely rare, barely anyone opts to have them anymore, but many of its little practices still show through in the Korean interpretation of the "western" wedding. This is the wedding hall in which I attended the wedding. As you can see, it's very showy. The center aisle and the front area is actually a stage. These giant halls are rented for just the ceremony. A business or building that runs them usually has several and on a given day (especially Saturdays), there are usually many weddings going on at the same time, and 3-4 lined up in the same event hall for the same day, get...

Korea is home to a plethora of unique and exciting festivals that I didn't learn about until coming here. One of which, we traveled nearly 5 hours in a bus to the other side of the country to experience on Saturday: the Jindo Sea Parting Festival. Jindo is an island in the southwest corner of Korea, connected to the mainland by some bridges. It is surrounded by many other smaller islands, one of which famously forms a "land bridge" each day, just as the tide changes to it lowest point. Although this formation happens twice a day, all year long, the local residents host a festival once a year to celebrate the natural phenomenon and the ancient story that accompanies it. In order to experience this festival we had heard many good things about, we booked a tour/trip through EnjoyKorea. This 2-day trip also included lodging and transportation to a festival in Busan that was happening the following day. My friends and I had done a ski trip through this company in December...