Lotta Lotte

(click me and I'll get all big)

A week of fun and frollick in Seoul. I love doing new things every week. I love that I may never run out of new things to do during my year here.

This Friday me and Mike decided to cast off the shackles of the GS and explore the area a little. We decided to check out Boramae park. It's a large and wonderful place and all the stranger for being a mostly unspoiled park smackdab in the middle of the urban jungle. Kind of like Bowering Park: Seoul Edition, to put it in granite planet terms. A night of drinking in the park had some crazy charm, both nostalgic and on its own merit.

Saturday night a few of us had a little gathering on the roof of the apartment building where Mike and Ben live. We played roofpong and lost balls to the ground and probably risked doing the very same with ourselves. We graduated to tennis balls and the game got more random (both in concept and practice). Needless to say it was a pretty fun night, as random and impromptu as the stupid roof games played during it.

Sunday me and Mike and Seo Hee went to Lotte World. That was assloads of fun. See, Lottle World is kind of like the Korean Disneyworld. Well, maybe a bit more like Canada's Wonderland - but smaller (space comes at a pretty high premium in Seoul).

The place is a real smattering of indoor and outdoor attractions. Things that spin, things that drop, things that loop-the-loop. Typical theme park fair. The only odd difference is that most of the rollercoasters were indoors.

Actually, what the fuck am I talking about - this is Korea, of course there were other weird differences. There was an ice rink inside, basically the centrepeice of the whole inside area. You could drink anywhere and everywhere (this IS Korea, after all). The attendants were the most energetic people I've ever seen - possibly anywhere. They all waved with both hands. Some danced in synch with the rides they were attending. Not a regular dance, some sort of dancy-miming-traffic-cop kinda combo that's hard to explain.

When the lights turned low, the colours got prettier. At the end of the night, they had some strange laser lightshow and the globe in the centre of the park split open like the G.I. Joe Terrordrome and shot fireworks (indoors, no less).

There's a darker side, though. See, Lotte World's got a bit of a reputation problem here in Korea. Back a few months ago, a drunk passenger wasn't properly strapped into his seat and he kinda flew out of a coaster mid-ride. Before that,
(according to my students) a fire broke out and a bunch of people got caught on a coaster and kinda died, apperently. When I talked about going to Lotte World with my kids, all the older kids kind of gasped in awe at my bold disregard for my own life. It's all pretty blown out of proportion, though. You know what kids are like with stories and rumours of mortal danger.

Incidentally, the reputation issues haven't stopped the newer rides from having 2-hour lineups. We bypassed the two newest rides for that reason.

I'm currently getting things worked out for my trip to Thailand. Hopefully, I should be able to swing it. Looks like the most feasible route is going to be through Japan. That'll make the (simplified) itinerary look kinda like:
Train to Busan (Korea), ferry to Fukowaka (Japan), train to Osaka (Japan, duh), plane to Bangkok (Thailand), plane to Ko Sumai (also Thailand), bus to the shore, boat to the island.
Then play it backwards to get home. All the extra travel is more an adventure than an inconvenience. Even if it does mean almost as much time travelling as actually vacationing.

I was filmed for part of a Korean tourism video tonight. Three of us were interviewed about our opinions of a new tourism spot and our opinions are going to be shown to Korean government officials as evidence of how foriegners would react to the film. Admittedly, it was pretty damn well made, and at least as slick as a greased Pride Fighter.

I always try to go out on a joke, so here's a bit of Konglish (Korean bastardized english). This is everywhere, but it's kind of awkward to whip out a camera and take snaps of clothing and signs all the time, so I don't normally get a picture. Only one of these is real funny, the others are just full of bad grammar.


Oh, and just in case you can't read the shirt on the far left, it says:

"Whip it to me
Can I come?
HOLD BACK
I'm gonna come!"

You can be pretty sure that neither the girl wearing this nor most of the people around have any idea of what this shirt says. Hell, even if they can read it, they probably don't quite get what it means. Somewhere in Korea there's a collection of english silkscreeners with a sick sense of humour.

Then again, it's no better than the scads of Asian character tattoos people have everywhere in the english-speaking world. I wonder how many of those are terrible sexual refences?