Woobang Land
The premiere (and only) amusement park in Daegu! Built about a million years ago, and has not been properly maintained since. Fuck yeah I'll go! Can I do it when I'm hungover and forgotten my camera, so I have to take photos with my cell phone? I can?!
There it is, in all its pink majesty. Burning my booze-soaked retinas on one of the last sunny days of fall with its garish quasi-Disney trappings. Magnificent.
Looks like the Woobang Land Beanie Babies store isn't doing so hot. Saying anything more just feels like a cheap shot.
(Seriously, you guys aren't even going to take down the decorations? Like Beanie Babies are going to make a huge Asian resurgence after 10 years? You're better than this, Woobang Land.)
There was also a pool where kids got to play in gigantic plastic bubbles. I think we were all halfway ready to knock 80 kids the fuck out so we could get in one.
This was one of the main stages, where Eastern Europeans could pantomime virtuoso violin solos in costume for the dozen or so Korean adults who would clap for just about any goddamn thing. Oh, I didn't mention the Eastern Europeans? Apparently they are the Korean theme park equivalent of Hispanic day labor. Wearing all the costumes, performing all the shows, don't speak any English. But if you're white they will smile at you and wave, this I can verify.
This is me on a merry-go-round, being the most handsome motherfucker that ever lived.
After riding a bunch of rollercoasters with 30-year old safety measures and eating crazy theme park sidewalk stand food, it was getting pretty late. So we took a gondola up to Woobang Tower, which is the tallest tower in Daegu, or the world, or something. There's a view of the bigger stage, where some sort of dance show was happening.
And there's Woobang Tower, lit up all pretty and phallic-like.
Inside Woobang Tower: Piranhas! Fucking piranhas! Also an aquarium full of other shit, but let's be real. Piranha 3D was the best movie of the summer AND the decade, and these guys are finally hitting the big time. Although all they do is stay in place, completely motionless. Watching. Waiting.
And the best attraction of all, at the top of Woobang Tower: SKY TOILET!
Look at that urinal's view. Breathtaking. Like you're peeing on all of Korea.
And yes, I did wait for other people to leave so they wouldn't hear me taking pictures of the toilet stall.
Now for Seoul's main amusement park (besides Lotte World) (and it's not technically in Seoul) (that I only went to because a bunch of my 10-year olds said it had the best rollercoasters):
Everland!
As I briefly mentioned about a week ago, we went to Everland before the Flaming Lips show, which was primarily the reason we were so late, because it takes so goddamn long to get there. But along the way to the bus stop we did see some Art:
Like, this. Sculptures of a couple shoes, and someone has actually left a shoe on top of one. Probably meta? I don't know.
And this exquisite work. A cow and a mouse hanging out, laughing and giving the peace sign, with a giant pile of shit in front of them. The things they don't tell you about in Lonely Planet.
Oh yeah, and here's Everland. The happiest place on Earth to infringe on copyrights.
Also weirdly into Adidas. At least this place was still in business, unlike a certain Beanie Babies emporium I could mention. But that also makes me wonder who is going to a theme park in the middle of nowhere and buying Adidas crap. Or it's a front for a meth lab. The happiest meth lab on Earth!
November and already everything is Christmas-themed? You guys sure have our number.
Just in case you missed it, the theme park is called Everland, and all the generic mascots are anthropomorphic animals that definitely do not include mice, or whatever the hell Goofy is.
Oh man, did my students not let me down. In the background there you can see the T-Express, supposedly the steepest wooden rollercoaster in the world, according to the theme park or elementary school kids or wikipedia or something.
Yeah, there's the steep bit. 40 minutes in line, and worth every second.
Unfortunately, we were short on time, and riding the T-Express meant we couldn't go in Safari World, where they apparently had a fucking Liger, and an elephant that could say "Hello" in Korean. Things which any red-blooded American needs to see, but there was the matter of this:
The line. Half a million liger-hungry children who've been fed nothing but fish eyes and kimchi liver and soju cereal all day? Not a crowd I want to tangle with.
So instead we checked out the other zoo sections. Welcome to Adorable City, population: Us.
What's everyone looking at, instead of these lame kangaroo-wannabes?
A Korean baby feeding an actual kangaroo. Whether you've been reading my blog for ages or this is the first picture you've ever seen, regardless, you just won. Congratulations.
We thought these wallabees were having sex, but it turns out they were just grooming each other. Photo: wasted.
They also had these cool ladders going every which way, because I guess lemurs are secretly in charge on Everland.
Before you go any further, you may want to curb stomp a homeless person just so you have enough contrast to properly handle how cute the following photo is:
Did you actually curb stomp a hobo? You're a sick human being.
Baby tiger, gnawing on the bars of his crib. Makes you want to punch a girl scout.
Right now I am looking for a girl scout to punch.
Oh, and in the adjoining room were two slightly older tiger cubs, who play-fought for about 5 minutes.
What's that you say? Why couldn't I have caught something so head-explodingly cute on video?
Well I did, motherfucker.
Then there was a big show where they got audience volunteers to come up and stick their arm into the big cage painted with a question mark. Having been raised on terrible game shows, I could not resist a giant red question mark and stayed an extra 20 minutes that we could have been using to be at Flaming Lips.
They were touching a gila monster, I guess. That's what that thing is, right?
There was also a beaver cleaning itself. With its widdle paws, and its widdle face.
The carp at Everland were not your run-of-the-mill, low-end, piece-of-shit, sand-bagging, jalopy-loving, gas-station-bathroom-frequenting carp that you might be familiar with. These were Fancy Carp. And I think I just used my allotment of hyphens for the rest of forever.
What's this?! What's got all these Korean nuns so riled up and engaged?
Oh. A sloth. Seriously, nuns? This is probably like a metaphor or something. For your weird, terrible interests, and attention spans.
What was way cooler than sloths were these fucking giant tortoises. I told Sarah we should end our visit by getting kicked out, and she thought I was joking. I was going to ride the tortoise.
Sure, Everland has the steepest wooden rollercoaster, and ligers, and talking elephants, but what they don't advertise is they also have the ugliest bird in the freaking universe. This is the stork that brings all the arsonist babies to lucky inbred cousin-parents.
And in the next room we have runner-up for Bird Most Likely To Inspire An HP Lovecraft Short Story. It's hard to see from the photo, but that red thing on its neck is where it stores all the hate and misery in the world.
And now we leave the Wild Babies section, on our way to Friendly Monkey Valley. But first: posters for Korean Peter Pan and Korean Captain Hook! And a monkey. I don't know, I've never read Peter Pan, maybe there's a monkey.
Fuck ligers, I can't believe I never saw this.
This poster is making a lot of promises that I am hesitant to believe the chimps in this fake valley can fulfill. But let's give them a chance PHOTO MONTAGE STYLE:
I...guess they're not un-intelligent. Check out the ass on picture 3. (And yes I know the first two are a baboon and orangutans. That was a test.)
Not ligers, but at least we did get to see the white tigers of which Korea is so proud.
And then on the way out we passed their Go! Africa exhibit. I wanted to go inside and see just how racist a theme park could be when really challenged, but again, no time. So we just had to pass by the non-racist outside-
-Yes! Score!
So that was Everland. I'm not sure why a lot of their faux-architecture was styled after Russian cupolas, but I guess they really don't have a lot to work off of.
So there you go, visual readers. A shitload of pictures from the two Korean theme parks I went to. Seeing as how I am not actually in Korea anymore, the next entry I make will likely be my last, and thus even more filled with pictures and stupid stories that sound funnier in my head than they actually are. BE THERE
I think you got ripped off. Those baby "tigers" have spots...! -- Eddie
ReplyDeletethey could have been baby ligers? i don't know anymore.
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