Yeosu World Expo 2012: The Living Ocean and Coast

I had a fabulously fantastic summer break. Six days packed with fun and sun, all spent in Korea doing exactly what I wanted to do: Yeosu Expo, Busan, and two different beaches.

After getting last minute train tickets to the Yeosu Expo (which, believe me, was no easy task) my sister, Elizabeth, my brother-in-law, Joseph, and I took the train from Daejeon to Yeosu and got in late Friday night. We hadn't done any advance planning, yet we were still able to find a hotel room in the city, and even with prices hiked into the heavens for a typical Korean love motel, we were still able to find a 'deal'. Not too bad, and we found out the following day that it was near a free shuttle bus route to the expo. 

After getting some much needed rest Friday night, we woke up refreshed on Saturday morning ready to hit the expo. We caught the shuttle bus and got to the expo while the ticket lines were still pretty small. When it was time to purchase tickets, we were all shocked at the price: 3,000W each. All of the pricing information we had seen had told us our tickets would either cost 33,000W each for the standard adult day pass, or 10,000W for the foreigner day pass. 3,000W was quite a nice surprise! We hurried off with our tickets before they changed their minds. 

Security upon entrance into the park was much like Disney, where you had to hand your bag over for a quick inspection and walk through metal detectors. Quick, easy and painless, we were into the park in no time. 

There are a few main areas of the expo, and we started at Gate 1 near the aquarium. (We never actually made it into the aquarium because, even near closing time, the exhibit had a 90+ minute wait. I suppose I'll have to go back again post-expo.) We walked around a bit and snapped some photos, saw the near-replica expo hotel of that sailboat hotel in Dubai, and then came to our first exhibit, the Theme Pavilion. 

On-site near-replica hotel of that one sailboat hotel in Dubai

The Theme Pavilion was a really cool exhibit. We first walked into a room where we saw a short video about our oceans and how important they are. A few minutes later, we all went into another room where we sat on the floor and enjoyed an 'interactive' video with a cartoon baby beluga whale telling us (mainly in Korean) about the pictures we were seeing and how important it is, and how it's everyone's responsibility, to care for our oceans. After that, we all went into another room where we watched a short semi-theatrical performance/video of a little boy being taken around through all the world's oceans on the back of the baby beluga wale and seeing the wonders, and tragedies, of our oceans. It was really cool. 

Outside Theme Pavilion

Theme Pavilion

Theme Pavilion and Yeosu Expo 2012 Mascots

Upon leaving that pavilion, we spotted the International Pavilion and decided to head over to it. It was three stories of country exhibits, similar to Epcot Center, and we spent nearly four hours checking almost everything out. We saw a traditional music performance in Cambodia, ate cheese-filled empanadas in Argentina, did vodka shots in Russia, drank coffee in Turkey, saw traditional art in the Democratic Republic of Congo, learned about diamonds in Belgium, saw a water bar in Denmark, saw water taken from hundreds of different places and depths of the oceans in another country that I can't remember... the list goes on. 

International Pavilion

Traditional Cambodian Musical Performance

Outside the Vietnam Exhibit

Brunei Darussalam

USA!

Indonesia

Australia

No idea who these chicks are, but they made a great photo! Love the poses.

From the 3rd level of the International Pavilion

Elizabeth and the HomoCatodicus (French street comedians 'Hitech walking comedy')

Please let me know if you remember what country this was in. I LOVED this exhibit. Just beautiful. On each tube was printed the coordinates and depth of where the water sample was taken. 

Nigeria

Angola

Maserati, just outside of the Italian exhibit. L O V E   I T.

Belgium,  with diamond info from the center in Antwerp

International Pavilion and the Digital Gallery

When we left the International Pavilion, it was getting late and we only had about an hour or two left before closing. Many of the other exhibits, such as the Sky Tower where we could see a view of Yeosu, the aquarium, and the Korea Pavilion, still had 90+ minute waits, so we decided to skip those and wander over to the company pavilions. Samsung, LG, Hyundai, SK (South Korea Telecom), Lotte, Poscom and GS Caltex Energy all had an exhibit. The lines were all excessively long as well, so we walked around and saw what there was to see. The coolest company exhibit, by far, was the GS Caltex Energy exhibit. Outside of their building, which we couldn't even see, was an energy field of tall thin cylinders that looked like bamboo and lit up different colors. It looked even larger because the outside of the GS Caltex building was covered in mirrors to give the appearance of the energy field going on infinitely. Pretty amazing.

Korea Pavilion and World Flags

Sky Tower

GS Caltex Energy Field

GS Caltex Energy Field

We walked around a bit more and then headed back to the gate to get the shuttle bus back to the hotel area around closing time. It was a pretty educational day filled with a ton of sights and a lot of memories.