Rich and I, along with Paige and Forrest got some free tickets to go to an International Book Fair at the Coex Mall. To get to the Coex Mall, you need to get onto the green line on the Seoul subway (line 2) and get off at Samseong station. Take exit 5/6 and you are there.
The Coex Mall is huge. Lots of shops, alot of it is underground so we were pretty shocked at the end of the day when it was 8pm but felt like 3pm, because there is no natural light there. It is also very busy (it didn’t help that we went on a Saturday). Here is what I mean:
We wondered over to the “International” book fair. It was OK. By “international”, it was more like foreign books translated into Korean, rather than books in English so there wasn’t too much to choose from. However, I did buy a small Korean bird books for 3000W (£1.50) as a nice souvenir. And yes, it’s all in Korean. As we were exiting the book fair, we stumbled upon an amusing situation:
We wondered round for awhile and looked at some shops but Rich really wanted to go to the aquarium that is in one end of the mall so we went over there. It’s really easy to find, just follow the signs in the mall.
It costs 15,500W (£7.50), which in reality, is really cheap and in typical Korean fashion, signs are badly spelled for added amusements. Also the name “aqaurium” is a bit farcical as they had prairie dogs, rabbits, chipmunks and so on….
Of course, I got many pictures so here goes:
Lion fish are very pretty. We also saw some pufferfish. I didn’t get a picture, but keen-eyed Rich took one of the sign about them:
Don’t we all?
As you walk through the aquarium you go to different zones. They had a really pretty mini building with lots of goldfish:
Thank God there was a sign saying we couldn’t cross the mini bridge:
We then entered a pretty weird area where there were fish mixed with regular household objects. Think I’m joking?
Also, in strange Korean style, they just had a random phone box filled with water, with a scuba diver in, with fish:
I said there was prairie dogs:
He’s trying to climb the painted cactus in this one:
We then saw a freaking huge toad:
There were bats, some monkeys (yes I know, not fish) and some big turtles:
They had some huge sturgeons and some funky white fish that try to eat you when you put your fingers near the glass:
More hilarious konglish ensued when we reached the earthworms section:
We saw some sparkly, gold piranhas, which were pretty cool up close too:
There is also a creepy two-headed turtle that lives there. Seriously. And of course the English explanation is funny as hell too:
Rich was shocked by some of the big fish we saw:
There were also a collection of albino fish and turtles:
They had some otters and beavers but they were a little difficult to photograph. They also had an evil, wise-looking iguana:
They had two shark tanks, one big and one small. The small one was still good and you could look down over the water:
There was also a hilarious ray that looks like Rich:
At this point my camera battery promptly died and so I was unable to take photos. Damn.
Overall, the COEX aquarium is pretty awesome….so good it has taken me over 2 months to post this blog.
