20 November 2022
Another day another world expo
Hanbat arboretum and world expo site
Today's rest day was very similar to a rest day I enjoyed in Daejeon last time I was here. I went to the Hanbat arboretum and looked at dead brown leaves and then went to the former world expo site and turned left instead of right like last time and went to a Shinsegae instead of golf world.
Korea is surely the king of world expos, and I do not get it.
When I was here in June I went to the former world expo site in Yeosu, and it is already rusty and falling down. Busan is currently competing with other great cities such as Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Gomel in Belarus by busting BTS out of the military to stage a concert to promote their bid. And back in 1993 it was Daejeon's turn, so long ago the city was still called Taejeon. Everyone surely remembers the lasting impression the wondrous event had on establishing them a place in the world's hierarchy of great cities.
Update: As I was sitting here typing this, the fire alarm went off, the manager came into my room pretty much straight away and asked me if I was smoking. He checked the alarm panel and said it was not me, apologised and left, I had no pants on but you know, I rarely do.
About 3 minutes later I heard full on yelling and doors being slammed. Then 10 minutes later I heard sirens, looked out my window, cop car arrived, then more yelling and scuffling in the hallway. So I presume they found someone smoking, who decided to fight the manager, and so the cops came and arrested him.
First photo is pre hanbat arboretum, and is actually the government office forest park.
Here is the art museum. There is a smaller building with a tin roof next to it called the general population art museum.
First photo of the arboretum area. Those colours are wrong. Quite a few photos today look weird.
I remember this sliding on rails aircraft hanger thing from last time. It is under refurbishment, those are rails on the ground. Last time there were teams of rollerbladers that were presumably practising for the winter Olympics ice skating here. This time, a few kids on bikes.
Bamboo forest was nice. Not dead yet.
From above it looks nice enough, but it is all kind of brown and dead as winter approaches.
This is new to me. They cover up the entire garden areas with bamboo mats.
It's fountain time.
Probably photo of the day. I took the same photo from the same spot last time.
Time to head over the big bridge to the world expo site.
I need to check, but that is a department store, Shinsegae, and I do not think it was there last time. As you shall see it looks brand new inside. Very strange location. Land would have been cheap in the former expo park.
Convention centre. A lot of the expo buildings have optimistically been turned into various science research centres, things like future energy centre or advanced robotics centre, but I think they are actually empty.
This tower was the centre piece of the whole expo experience in 1993. They flood the bricks in front of it so you can reflect on how great a time that was for Daejeon.
Inside Shinsegae now, and it is a department store, with 2 levels of a Westfield style mall on top.
The roof garden is really great. Over there is the science museum. I do not think I went there last time. It appears to have actual rockets! Probably the site of my next rest day activity.
The roof garden has nice trees. They probably had red leaves a few weeks ago.
There is also TYRANOPARK. You can go inside the orange dinosaur. It was excellent.
Daejeon main down town area across the river in the distance.
Last roof garden photo, hedge maze. Without a hedge.
I headed down to the basement food area, to discover it has an aquarium. That's a first.
The food area is vast, and strangely very busy at 11:30am on a Sunday. That is enough photos for now, I plan to do a longer walk this evening.