12 June 2022
Exposing the exposition
Yeosu to Seoul on the KTX
Now I am back in Seoul. Gangnam to be precise. It took a long time to get here. But before that, lets talk some more about Yeosu.
I have made fun of the 2012 Yeosu all the worlds fair and general exposition many times while in Yeosu. Today I got to the train station too early because nobody got into a fight on the bus, so I had time to explore all its amazing abandonment. It is at the point where it is actually dangerous! Everything is abandoned, there are fences stopping you from walking on wooden decks with holes in them through to the ocean, amazing rust, escalators with rocks holding down shade cloth on them. Photos below.
The moral of the story is, if a guy in a fancy suit comes to your town promising to put it on the map by hosting a world expo, strap him to the catapult immediately.
Now for my journey. I guess I started at about 10am, and did not get to my hotel until 4:40pm. That is a long time in Korea. First I took a bus to the Yeosu station, I ran to get it so I was ahead of schedule. Then after the expo adventure, it was about a 90 minute ride to the transfer at Iksan, in the middle of the country. I had to walk the entire length of a bullet train, to the escalator to change platforms, leaving me just a few minutes to walk the entire length of the platform to the next train, do not under estimate how long these trains are.
This meant I had no time for food and water, and on the train it is basically not allowed, you are not supposed to remove your mask at all.
So then from Iksan to Seoul it is about another 90 minutes, but then I have to get to Gangnam. I go down to the subway, and the track is shared with normal trains. This was a bit confusing, so 3 subway transfers and many stairs carrying my bags later I arrive at my hotel, where they are resetting the lifts, all the lifts. This took a good half an hour or so before I could get up to my room, all the while some guy was going crazy that he could not take his wife the iced americano she demanded before the ice melted.
Now for some pics.
I was up super early and went for a walk along the shore of Yeosu. Very clear skies today, so a few more pics were in order. The first one is an interesting choice for a sculpture, as diving boats with tourists leave from where this is!
Clear view into the early sun.
Very clear. This photo is noted for the clearness of the clear.
In the middle of nowhere is this hotel. It is up a long private driveway from the road (I walked along it followed by security). Look at the weird sky bridges between different parts of the building.
These are the last fishing boats you will see on this trip.
Now for the expo. Here is the main entrance, you are greeted by a giant brown small wooden boy. This is a Korean welcome to country, and the boy does represent a native group that lived near here. I have never seen anyone resembling this boy though, so I presume they are extinct.
There are lots of escalators. They all look like this. I would assume they would have been worth money to pull out and sell, but I guess that would be admitting the expensive buildings erected for the month long expo are now useless.
I think this was a combination fountain and laser show. Look how rusty it is.
Everything was rusty. There really were wooden decks with big holes in them, stepping on them would have you fall into the ocean.
OK, enough expo, onto the station. 4 bullet trains waiting to go. While I was here huge numbers of people got off incoming trains, and then raced to store their baggage. I assume they come all the way from Seoul for a day trip. They are probably on their way back now as I am typing this with suitcases full of live octopusereses's.
A view of Iksan. As soon as the train departed Yeosu it got very grey, and it is still grey now here in Seoul.
Iksan station is well appointed, all the high speed lines meet up at this station.
And here is my hotel in the Gangnam area of Seoul. It is a Dormy Inn. It is just like the Japanese Dormy Inns with the free ramen service and bath house etc. I have stayed here before. It is cheap because there is a lot of hate directed at Japan lately in Korea (I may have mentioned that?), so no Koreans want to stay here and there are not many tourists, although more on that below.