Expedition to Daejeon

After a massively hungover and sleep-deprived day where we were lectured by incompetent desperado English "teachers" who have washed up in Korea because their lives are even more hopeless in their own countries than they are here and who evidently have nothing to go home for so are trying (and failing) to make the best of a terrible, terrible situation, and dragged round the world's most boring temple by Chae Chong Lee and his posse of young, incompetent Korean women(they take about an hour to do take a register on a bus - no joke!), we set off on the long, arduous journey to Daejeon and arrived on Friday evening.

Rubbish temple (note kid in mask and Burberry scarf - Korean chic!)

We like Daejeon.  The Homeplus(Tesco) has a McDonalds(unlike the 2 in Jeonju which only have Lotteria - see above - , albeit, Lotteria's that serve fries) and the motels are cheap.  Best of all, we finally got a round bed!!!!!!!  Our initial excitement was somewhat crushed when we discovered how uncomfortable and impractical said round bed actually is.  The motel was also a dive and began collapsing on us just before check-out this morning(we narrowly escaped some metal bars to the head).

On Saturday we went to Kumdoriland, a bizarre, alien-themed amusement park that's home to the biggest roller-coaster in Korea.  It was cheap and fun and really quiet(the abandoned expo park and science park next door had a bigger crowd than the theme park) and we go to watch an alien singing "Maria" by Blondie which was surreal and fun.

Performing alien

Katherine conquered her fears and rode the Horror Express/Black Hole Express, the giant, 5-looping roller coaster and we hugged some Koreans in alien costumes.

Katherine makes her first friend in Korea

Looking cool(especially me!)

  We also saw a dog.  Speaking of dogs, the girl in front of us in the queue for the kiddie roller coaster was wearing trainers emblazoned with 'FAT DOG'.  Only in Korea!

Saturday night took us to Katherine's favourite thing about Korera, the American-owned, Irish-themed Bennigans where kimchi isn't on the menu!

[Katherine]: After our Kumdori Land adventure, we hit the abandoned Expo Park next door. It was created in 1993 for the International Expo and is full of really cool, modern looking buildings. However, as is the Korean way (they don't know what they're doing) the government seem to have left half the park to rack and ruin and still use half of it as a tourist attraction. Therefore some bits are really busy and some are really creepy and desolate. The creepiness is also increased by the fact that there is eerie music coming from speakers around the park.

Expo Park with Obligatory Aliens

We had read about Robots in the Expo Park in another blog, and Greg was desperate to see them, so we searched the whole park! Unfortunately, we didn't find the robots, but we did have a fun time in this weird place.

I got attacked by a bear:

Greg got eaten by a hippo:

I made friends with a Polar Bear:

We saw a 'Yonguk' flag, woo hoo!!

Greg got attacked by a giant ant:

We saw Archimedes' bare arse:

We watched people ride on these bikes things but were too lazy to rent our own:

As you can probably guess from the wide selection of weird photos, this place is the kind of place that Korea does so 'well'. In that it makes absolute no sense, has no logic to it and wastes a ton of cash!! We liked it though and I think we learned something too (I'll get back to you if I ever think what that could be)...

Today we planned to go to O! World(the new name for Daejeon Zoo) but the weather has turned nasty so we're currently sitting, cold and wet, at Daejeon bus terminal waiting for the bus back to Buan.

Nonetheless, we had a fun weekend!