Episode 46: In Which DFM Visits The Biggest Church In The World And Sees A Two-Headed Turtle

I was supposed to go rock climbing with a group from the Summit climbing gym this morning, but somehow when I was setting my alarm I forgot to finish the process so my alarm did not go off.  Oh well, carpe diem and all that, right?

Seoul is home to the largest church (by membership) in the World.  There are more than 830 000 members of the Yoido Full Gospel Assembly.  Since I had a Sunday off I thought I should drop by one of its five services.

The Yoido church is so big it has its own orchestra and choir.  And if that isn't enough for you, check out the size of that organ behind the choir!

I've said before that people will sell anything in Seoul.  Here the guy in the green shirt drove up on the sidewalk, pulled out a pallet, and then started selling large packages of toilet paper.  It doesn't even phase me any more.

After leaving the church and finding my directions I decided to walk back to the subway station.  Along the way I ran into a long, slim strip of paradise in the middle of the most expensive land in Seoul - Yoido Park.  The park runs the width of Yoido Island, and is easily the greenest place in Seoul.  I wish I could have spent more time exploring it, but I had to get to the COEX Mall to see the aquarium.

 

I finally got a good picture of that Glass Tower I talked about in my previous post on the COEX Mall back in March... and whatever that other building is.

I said last time that COEX Mall is completely underground, and here you get a good idea of what that looks like.  I'm standing on the ground level here, with the trees and the road, looking down on everyone entering/exiting the mall.  To the left you can see the Bee-bee-dee Bah-bee-dee Boo sign I snapped for the other post.  I sing the song for the kids at school and they think it's a gas.  "*Squueeeel* yung-uh sung-sayng-neem knows Bee-bee-dee Bah-bee-dee Boo" is probably what they're thinking.  ("Yung-uh" is English and "sung-sayng-neem" means teacher)

The last time I went to the mall, I tried to visit the COEX Aquarium but I was too late.  Now I'm kind of glad I didn't get in before.  I have been to the 63 Seaworld Aquarium and the Busan Aquarium, but the COEX Aquarium is bigger than both of those.  It would have been a real downer if I had seen it first.

I haven't seen a tarantula in person since I was eight, so this was pretty exciting for me.  Tarantulas generally just stand around I find, and they aren't really exciting unless you have them crawling on you (like I did when I was eight, hurray) but I still enjoyed seeing this White Kneed Tarantula from Brazil.

Here's a centipede from Haiti.  I've never seen one of these before, but I hear they can be deadly.  I had trouble telling which end was the head because the centipede took turns moving both ends independently from each other.

  

One section had a bunch of different fish tanks made from interesting items you might find in the street or at home.  There were post boxes, computers, chemistry sets, dryers, refrigerators and many more items all turned into fish tanks.  Here you can see a telephone booth tank and, well, I think you know what the second picture is.

This looks really sad, but I'm pretty sure that lizard burrowed himself under the truck, and not the other way around.

Now these fish are just plain silly.

A real live two-headed turtle!  And you thought these were a myth, didn't you?  I did.

Yet still more firsts!  This is the first aquarium I've been to that had Hammerhead sharks.  This was a real treat, I tell you what.

I'll finish up with what is probably the best shark picture I've ever taken.  The sting ray below the shark was especially playful, and wherever I would go to take pictures he'd come over and perform tricks for me like flapping up against the glass or showing me his belly.  I thought it was just good luck, but when I moved to the other side of the tank he followed me over and hung around until I moved back and then he followed me again.

I was initially skeptical about the $15 entry fee, but the COEX Aquarium is easily the biggest aquarium and probably the best I've ever seen.  The only aquarium that gives it a run for its money is the Busan Aquarium, and that's only because it was located right on a beautiful beach and I was allowed to swim with the sharks.

Episode 31: In Which DFM Has A Fish Gnaw On His Finger And Gets A New Room

Today was a very busy day.  I woke up early in the morning and went with Nelson to see his new gosiwon.

This gosiwon is much much nicer than my old place with nicer walls, nicer hallways, nicer bathrooms/showers/kitchen, nicer everything.  The most impressive part though was the view from the sixth floor (the rooms for men are on the fifth floor).  The sixth floor is a roof for drying your clothes, but residents can also come up here to gaze at Namsan Tower... or throw themselves off if life gets too tough.

After viewing the gosiwon I had to go shopping for some new shirts for work.  Since Itaewon seems to exist only for North American tourists, nearly every store on the street was a "big sizes" store.  I did eventually find some nice shirts on sale and a store that sells only Crocs.

Nelson had put a reservation on a room for me, but I needed to wait until 4:30 PM when he would come home from work and translate the owner's Korean for me.  Since it was now only about 10:30 AM I decided to do some more sight seeing and visit the 63 Building, with its 63 floors.

On my walk over to the 63 Building I saw this silver car pull up onto the sidewalk and start driving into the oncoming pedestrians.  I'm not sure what surprised me more though, the fact that the car tried to drive on the sidewalk or that no one seemed to care.

In between dodging cars I would slow down to enjoy the cherry blossoms on the trees.  Spring is here and all the trees are starting to flower and bloom, which makes the few streets that have trees quite pretty.

The 63 Building is simply massive.  As you can see from this picture it dwarfs any building nearby.  The 63 Building is the third tallest building in Seoul.

Inside the 63 Building is an art gallery, an aquarium and an Imax theatre.

I thought the Imax theatre would play some neat nature documentary, but instead it just played a crazy cartoon about a little kid and a woman who travel through space on a train to follow an alien to one of Jupiter's moons and try to save Earth from global warming.  I thought it was rather... weird for a Korean cartoon, but the credits confirmed my suspicions that it was indeed Japanese, and that explained everything.  At least the aquarium had to be better.

After my experience in Busan, turtles are one of my new favourite animals.  This guy spent at least half an hour trying to get out of his pool onto the fake, painted rocks, but flippers aren't nearly as good for climbing as fingers or claws.

"Do you know what those are, Highness?  Those are the Shrieking Eels!

Pass that, Grandpa.  You read that already."

Actually, this is an electric eel, something I've been waiting my whole life to see in person.

I don't know what this is, but it's a nice picture so I'm putting it up.

Introducing the new Roomba for your walls!  I don't know how they do it, but sting rays are one of the most efficient creatures I've seen.

Nothing beats a shark though.  Not in the Encyclopedia DFMtannica anyways.

It's tough to tell from this picture, but this is a herring fish that is 8 meters long.  It has many names, but its name here was the King of Herring.  It is the longest bony fish in the World.

This was probably the neatest part of my aquarium experience.  Anyone who stuck his/her fingers in the holes had a free finger cleaning by dozens of tiny Doctor Fish who would swim up and start nibbling rapidly on any fingers they encountered.  The fish only eat dead skin cells, leaving the healthy skin free to grow, and are often used in Turkish Spas to renew the skin of patients with psoriasis.

There was an otter tank at the aquarium too, but otters never sit still long enough to have their picture taken.  I filmed these otters for roughly twenty minutes and finally was rewarded with this great clip of an otter going for a loop around his (or her?) rather unique tank.  It may have taken all of my camera battery's juice, but it was worth it!

After my 63 Building visit I went back home to buy my new room (my current gosiwon is closing down in a week).

My room's price was $250 for the month (plus an extra week), but because Nelson had already brought over three people from our old gosiwon the owner gave me a deal and I only had to pay $220.  I still get free rice and kimchi, but now I also get a desk, and I can even fit a chair in between my bed and the wall!  Oh, and if I spread my hands out I can straighten my arms and only my finger tips touch the walls.  I also have a TV that gets Discover Channel and televised Star Craft tournaments now (the lack of which being my only complaint about my old place).  Yup, DFM is movin' on up.

What wasn't nice though was the move over.  I have purchased many souvenirs since I first arrived in Seoul, and so my suitcase was stuffed full when I tried to pack everything in.  It easily weighed more than fifty pounds (it was forty-eight on the flight over) and carrying it up 5 flights of stairs was really tiring.

The was hard work, but tomorrow is my big climbing trip and should be a great time.  I can't believe the week isn't over.

Episode 24: In Which DFM Comes Face To Face With A Man Eating Beast And Fish Learn How To Drive Cars

Wow, it's been a few days since I've posted.  My Internet went down again and so I was unable to update you on my adventures.  Time to make up for it, because today was the day I've been planning for all month - the day of the big shark dive!

I got up at 6:00 AM to catch an early morning KTX train to Busan.  The KTX train travels at speeds up to 305 km/h.  When it was first built it cut the time of the trip to Busan from Seoul down to 1 hour 50 minutes (from about 5 hours).  But, since its creation more and more stops have been added and the the trip now takes roughly 3 hours.

The train is a lot like flying in an airplane, but a bit less comfortable and only half as fast.  However, it sure beats taking a bus and it costs about the same price as a taxi to an International airport from the center of a big city.

My neighbour for the trip to Busan was Joseph.  Joseph is a bit of an anomaly in that he managed to pick up a perfect North American accent for his pefectly fluent English, without ever having lived outside of Korea.  Joseph was on a business trip this morning for his company which franchises English schools.  Joseph was nice enough to give me a strip of his pastry, since I did not think to bring anything for the trip, and he also spent most of the trip explaining to me the history of Korea from the invasion of the Mongols to the beginning of the Korean War.  Don't think he was boring me though, I was fascinated and kept begging him for more information.

I severely underestimated how long it took to get from Busan Station to Haeundae beach by subway.  Quite soon I realized there were far more stops than I anticipated, and that I was not going to make it in time, so I jumped off and tried to catch a cab.  I got in the first cab that stopped for me and tried to do up my seat belt  There was only a strap with a hook, but no catch though, so I just imagined a seat belt.  

The cab driver did not speak English, but he was so happy with my infinitesimally small amount of Korean and that I was Canadian that he phoned up (and woke up) his daughter, who had studied in Canada, to talk to me in English.  This has happened to me quite often since I've come to Korea and it is always awkward for both parties.  

The taxi driver then realized that I was speaking Seoulese (people in Busan speak a different dialect of Korean than do those people in Seoul) and decided to "correct" my Korean with some impromptu lessons, but I couldn't understand a word he was saying.  He got me to Busan Aquarium though, and that's all that mattered.

The Aquarium is located right on Haeundae beach, which is a beautiful beach in a beautiful area of Busan, which is itself quite a beautiful city.

When I was dropped off I was five minutes late.  I couldn't see any signs for the diving, and when I went to the front desk to ask where the shark diving was I was told that there was no shark diving.  Undaunted, I went over to the Information Office and was told that I should go under ground.  I went underground and someone pointed me up a set of stairs, but these stairs just led back out onto the beach.  Eventually, after twenty minutes of searching, I finally found someone  who could direct me to the course, which was in fact at Busan Aquarium.

After filling out the requisite paper work and watching some training videos the other four divers and myself got on our wetsuits and goggles and went over to the training pool.

On the way over we saw a separate pool of about eight Lemon Sharks swimming around.  Lemon Sharks are about 9 feet long and are aggressive hunters and they had been separated because they were eating the other animals in the aquarium.  These animals cost tens of thousands of dollars each, and the Lemon Sharks had caused an entire species of stingray to "disappear" from the aquarium as well as having torn the fins of and scarred the bodies of a number of the Sand Tiger Sharks.  The aquarium had put a number of giant tuna fish in to attract the teeth of the Lemon Sharks instead, but Lemon Sharks are smarter than that and did not touch the tuna.  We were actually one of the last two groups to ever see the Lemon Sharks, since they were being shipped to Thailand on Monday (this happened on Saturday).

This is my diving team.  Michael, the instructor, is on the left, and then there are Takayla and Jake from North and South Dakota (not sure whom is from where), Justin from Baltimore, and Maggie from Pittsburgh.  All four of the Americans are English teachers near/in Busan and probably had a much easier time getting to the aquarium than I did.

Justin teaches at a school for the children of rich parents.  Many of his students are the children of doctors or lawyers and are rather spoiled.  One of his students is the daughter of a Korean professional baseball player.  His classroom is wired by CCTV and the housewife mothers spend all day scrutinizing his teaching in the viewing room.  As stressful as that sounds he seems to have adjusted admirably and was very excited about the dive.  I was happy to hear from him later that two of his students were visitors to the aquarium that day and had waved to him through the glass.

We took pictures of the dive with Michael's underwater camera, but since they aren't up on the website yet I'll just show some of the best pictures of past dives with a few extras I found on the Internet of some of the other animals we saw.

The Sand Tiger Shark, which I shot afterwards through the glass from the outside looking in.  The Aussies, whom regular readers of this blog know are XXXX rated, only refer to this as a Grey Nurse Shark.

Lest you thought I was lying about being in the aquarium with sharks.

This is a picture of a Green Turtle, over some coral reef in Hawaii.  The Green Turtle was my favourite animal in the aquarium.  Apparently it is rather aggressive and thinks that every diver in the pool is going to bring him food.  Michael put him in a holding pen behind us while we were training, and when I was not being instructed I would turn around every chance I could get to look at the turtle who was always staring me right in the eyes and/or snapping its mouth at my face.  Being close enough to have my fingers (or nose) bitten by such a majestic creature was really exciting; it made my hair stand on end and my heart race.

This is a diver from another group, but I had a very similar experience myself.  After lowering down into the giant tank (a round tank of roughly 30 yards diameter and 8 meters depth) I knelt down to wait for the other divers.  While I was waiting I was welcomed by a curious Grouper fish.  This species of fish has been caught in the wild and found to have an entire human inside of its stomach.  Today it thought it would swim over and come within about two feet of my face.  I was so excited I forgot to breathe and thought something was wrong with my respirator.  How can a fish be big enough to eat a human, you ask?

This is how.

Obviously I didn't take this picture myself, but this is an exact reenactment of my first minutes diving in the aquarium, except I was on the other side of the glass.

After diving I was starving, so Maggie and I went over to an American pizza restaurant to indulge in some "Western food."  Back in Canada I used to love pizza, but after eating so much fantastic Korean food with its exceptional spices and exotic flavours I found pizza quite bland.  Maggie said that she used to love bacon but found it disgusting when she went home after her first year of teaching in Korea.  I'm going to go back home in a month and not be able to eat anything but rice.

After pizza we went back to the aquarium and our shark diving experience counted as admission to the aquarium as well, so it was "free."

These piranhas look like they've already finished their last meal.

Catfish are called "maggie" in Korean, so Maggie insisted on taking some pictures.

This Jackass Penguin (that's its real name) spent all day diving down into the water to look at the guests.  It was quite a hit with the children.

One of  the highlights was when I got to hold this real live sea urchin in my hands at the petting tank.  Maggie said that it was rare to find an urchin that still had all of its quills.  I guess they tend to get broken off by all the people handling them.

"Do you know what that sound is, Highness?  Those are the Shrieking Eels!  If you don't believe me, just wait.  They always grow louder when they're about to feed on human flesh!"

What do you get for the fish who has everything?  How about a car.  Hyundai shows what the inside of James Bond's Lotus should have looked like after he drove out of the lake in The Spy Who Loved Me.

Best day of the trip so far by a long shot.  If you're in Korea make sure you head to Busan for the shark diving experience.  You can find more information here.