Day 3 of The JK Epic Adventure: Yeosu 2012 World's Fair

On our third day, we headed south to Yeosu for the World's Fair Expo. I took a tourism class for my anthropology senior seminar last year, and one of the other students did a project on mass tourism. Mass tourism is when one place recieves a large amount of tourist at one time for a specific event. So the Olympics would be part of that category, but she also talked about World's Fair. People don't really talk about those anymore. People, or at least I did, thought of them as things that happened in the past. In her presentation she had mentioned that they are still going on, that they still occur today. She also mentioned that the next one would occur in Korea. By this time, I had already known that I would be coming to Korea. So, I was super excited and had decided right there in class that I would go to it no matter what. Then, when I told Jessica that there would be a world's fair, she also wanted to go. So, we both planned on going when she would be in Korea.

We both stayed at a hostel near the Seoul train station. Then we had to wake up at around 4:10 am. We had  to walk to the train station for our 5:10 am train to Yeosu. We took one of the KTX bullet trains, so it took about 3 1/2 hours to get to Yeosu. I think the fastest speed we got was around 294 kph (~182 mph). The distance between Seoul and Yeosu is bout 377 km (~234 miles).

Route map from Seoul to Yeosu, the purple route. Taken from the KTX website.

On the train!

We arrived at Yeosu just before 8:30 am. We got our tickets, which were niffty, little cards and waited in line to go inside. They started letting people in at round the same time, so we got in without a problem. The only thing was, nothing inside the expo opened until 9 am, which was fine because we had no idea where to begin. It was so big and there were so many things to go see. We ended just walking in one direction and if we saw something cool, we stopped and got in line for it. The theme for the Expo was "The Living Ocean and Coast."

Our tickets

What we saw when we first walked in. A giant screen on the ceiling of this building.

We decided to head into the Lotte Pavilion first. If you know anything about Korea, you'll know that Lotte is this huge conglomerate company. They have movie theaters, theme parks, food, shopping malls, and hotels. At their pavillion, their theme was "An Incredible Enchanting World." They had this giant hot air balloon in the middle of the room, which we would eventually end up inside. But before that, they had a little performance for us to watch in their "Fantasy Garden." It was a cute little show. Then once we got inside of the hot air balloon, we had to hold onto some handlebars that were lined up inside. There was a screen all around us, and then we proceeded to go on a hot air balloon. It was actually kind of fun. There entire room was moving as well, and then we had a video all around us to take us on out journey.

In the fantasy garden watching the performance

There were smaller hot air balloons everywhere, as well as the big one one on the left.

We went to some of the other pavilions as well, such as the LG Pavilion, GS Caltex Energy Field, and the POSCO Pavilion but they weren't as exciting as the Lotte one. After we did the individual company pavilion, we headed over to the Marine Civilization & City Pavilion. It's theme was "Humankind's Challenges and Achievements with the Sea". At this pavilion they had a depiction of a realistic marine environment including a wrecked ship and models of future cities based entirely from the ocean. They also showed us legends and life arising from the sea as well as new uses of the sea and aquatic areas.

A model of a futuristic city or home (I can't remember which) that will be based on the ocean.

After this pavilion, we headed to the Internal Pavilion, where countries from all over the world were able to present how they are involved with the future of our oceans. This was my favorite part of the whole expo. We were able to tour all around the world without going to far. I only wish we could of gone to every single county, but we didn't have time. There were so many countries there.

All of the countries I was able to take a picture of

We also explored the Theme Pavilion as well. I had made reservations for it, which is a good thing too, the line was very long for it. The Theme Pavilion was about "The Co-existence Between the Sea and the Human." There were a couple movies based on a story of the sea being under threat of losing life due to global warming and maritime wastes, which poses a threat to human beings as well. It wasn't super exciting, mainly because it was all in Korean. Some of the movies we had seen before had English as well, but this was all in Korea.

After this, we headed over to the Big-O for the Ocean Show. We weren't able to get very good seats, and then when we did sit down, several ahjummas nudged there way to sit in front of us and even almost on us. They were very rude. So we weren't able to see a lot of the show because of them. But there were many beautifully dressed people. The show was a bit interesting as well, even if we had no idea what was going on most of the time.

After this we headed back over to the International Pavilion, where all the different countries were. It was a good but long day. I wish we had more time to explore everywhere, but we couldn't. We did see a robot band, that was pretty cool. 

The day was beautiful as it progressed. When we first got there it was cloudy and hot, but as we were heading back to the train station, the clouds went away and the sun came out, but it was still hot.

The Theme Pavilion with Odong Island in the back

That was our day. There will be more pictures on my Flickr account.