Korean Adventures: Parade, Fireworks and Fish

Well it's been a while since my last post! The post-holiday depression after Thailand and the empty wallet situation made for some boring weekends with nothing to post about. But now that's over and life is back to normal, so here I am again.

Busy busy weekend. Saturday was the Suwon Hwaseong Cultural Festival. For those of you who don't know, Suwon has a fortress, Hwaseong, that winds through the centre of the city. It's Suwon's major tourist attraction and was built a couple hundred years ago (most of what stands today is not original) by King Jeongjo in memory of his father who was killed by HIS father. So the festival celebrates the Fortress and the cultural heritage of the city. On Saturday there was a parade reinacting King Jeongjo's visit to his father's tomb. So we went to check it out, and were very much entertained.

We saw....

Many pigs being roasted on spits.

Guys in poofy hats playing drums.

A yellow band.

Beautiful flags.

Warriors on horses.

A troupe of garden gnomes.

King Jeongjo himself!!!!!!

And his mother. (Who got accosted by someone in the audience--a random guy walked up to here and shoved a piece of paper in her face. Very strange. And no one did anything about it, he just walked oh-so-casually away.)

And--the best part if you ask me--the Homeplus float!!!!! Well it wasn't actually a float, just some Homeplus guys in their lovely supermarket vests. But still.

After the parade was over I decided to go to the International Fireworks festival in Seoul. So I hopped on the subway where I had to transfer one stop before the stop that would take me to the fireworks. The station was so packed it took me over half an hour to get shoved onto a train. I stole some pictures from a friend who was there (thanks John!!!!) to give you an idea of what it was like, but even these can't capture the terror of it all.

For those of you who don't know, I am more than a little claustrophobic, so this was a nightmare for me. People were shoved in as tight as could possibly be and every time a train came they would start screaming and pushing and the subway officials were blowing their whistles and the sweat and noise and people and babies crying....I just looked at the ceiling and concentrated very hard on not decided I needed to get out, which would have been impossible. Finally I got shoved onto a train and after one stop made my escape.

But the nightmare didn't end there. The crowd continued out of the subway and all the way up this hill that led to where the fireworks were. Half way up they started and the people started running to get a look. Running crowd--even more terrifying than pushing screaming one!! It was impossible to see the fireworks due to all the buildings in the way so I tried to elbow my way closer, but gave up and followed the trickle of people who were moving the opposite direction. After watching the fireworks for maybe 5 minutes, being shoved and man-handled the whole time and dodging guys on scooters--who rides a scooter through a crowd of people? seriously--I decided that it wasn't worth it for a half-seen show of fireworks and that I would make my escape before all these billions of people decided to get back on the subway. I'm really glad I did, I don't think my heart could have handled another controlled panic attack.

The next day we went to the COEX Mall, which is, as it's name may suggest, a big shopping mall. But they also have an aquarium inside, so we checked that out. I think I have been ruined for all aquariums but the Vancouver one, maybe because without an adorable neice to show me around it's not nearly as much fun. But we did see some really cool things, though the theme of this particular aquarium seemed to be "how many wierd things can we put fish in?!" rather than "Let's educated people about marine life." I don't know why I'm surprised. I am in Korea after all.

Here are some highlites of the trip: