Dino-tour and other events

Greetings!

Well it has certainly been a week for events here on the Korean peninsula. You have likely heard on the news that North Korea conducted nuclear test (exploded a bomb underground!) on Monday and has since test fired a few missiles into the Sea of Japan. Although recognised as a major event on the world political stage, we haven't noticed much worry about this on the street (probably because we don't really understand what most people are saying on the street!). It may be because the country is mourning the sudden passing (suicide) of the previous President of Korea, Roh Moo-Hyun this past Saturday. He was being investigated for accepting a bribe(s) while in office; apparently prosecuting past-presidents is a relatively common occurence here. The nation was shocked and saddened by his death, but perhaps not totally surprised. All week Deb and I have noticed an increase police presence downtown where we go to language school, but no sign of any actual demonstrations. I think there may be some concern that, as the city gets prepared for his state funeral on Friday, the past president's supporters may demonstate because they feel the present government is at least partly culpable in his death. We'll watch how this develops.....from a safe distance. So that's the big picture, now about our own exciting times.

This past weekend we were all supposed to go on a tour run by the Royal Asiatic Society to the town of Goseong, on the south coast of Korea, to see the a Dinosaur Expo and Museum and to see actual dinosaur footprints. Unfortunately Jin developed a very high fever on Friday, so Deb stayed home with her, and Lili and I went on the tour. Saturday morning Deb took Jin to an International Clinic (where they speak English!) at the nearby hospital. She was prescribed antibiotics just in case her ear and throat infection was bacterial in origin. We saw the doctor again this week and he was happy with her progress. She is much better now, but dissappointed she missed this trip.

Lili and I got up early on Saturday (even earlier than ona school day!) and took the subway to nearby Sin-Yongsan Station to meet our tour bus. Our bus is the yellow and green one below, waiting in the rain to leave outside Yongsan Post Office. And here is shot of Lili whiling away the hours on the bus, drawing on her aqua-board. It took about 4 hours for us to get to Goseong travelling on a major expressway most of the way.


The weather got much better as we drove south. By the time we got to our hotel, the Prince Hotel, in Goseong (Lili is demonstrating some taekwondo in front of it in the photo below left), it was sunny and in the mid 20s. We checked in and then drove about 20 minutes to the Dinosaur World Expo, where our group was warmly welcomed by Miss Seo, a very nice and most capable guide who would travel with us for the rest of the weekend.

This event, billed as a "World Expo", was basically a theme park with a some extra exhibits of dinosaur skeletons from China and exhibits on the dinosaur trackways (footprints) in Korea. The Expo grounds were teaming with thousands of people. Music BLARED from speakers which were everywhere. Dino-characters paraded through the grounds every half hour. Kids could paddle around in little dino-paddleboats. And there was an amusement park which we managed to miss.


They did have some amazing life-size models of dinosaurs. Here is Lili checking out a few.

In the 2 main exhibition tents there were all sorts of dinosaur skeletons and exhibits, including some hands-on activites. Here a young paleontologist "discovers" a skeleton.

The above right photo shows Lili standing in front of the theatre where we saw a very scary 3D movie. The seats in the theatre shook when the big dinos walked, jets of air shot in our faces when the scary ones snorted at us and we could feel their breath on our backs as they chased us. It was a little too scary for the little ones. Lili much prefered this almost cuddly green guy she met outside after the movie (below left). There was food on-site: Korean, western and international. We had mandoo (steamed dumplings) for lunch and then some Japanese/Korean (udon soup and donkasu) for dinner. Lili is starting to get the hang of chopsticks. Here she is working on the mandoo.

The dino-expo park boasted the longest slide in Korea; 114m I think. It is a roller slide with a pretty low grade. There were sections where we had to pull ourselves along and others where we slid along at a good clip. Lili went down it twice. She was in slide heaven! I went once....the rollers were a bit rough on an old butt like mine. There were some other interesting playthings there, including log swings and log bridge.

Yes the building above is called the "Triceratops Toilet". I don't know how those dinos could get in the door. Wonder how big the brachiosaurus toilet is?!!!

Below is photo of a typical outcrop in this area. It looks to be shales with thin, lighter coloured limestone beds. There were supposed to be some dino-tracks at this locality, but we didn't see any. Will see them at the museum on Sunday. There were lots of pieces of petrified wood around the grounds (below right). I don't think they are from this locality. May have been brought in to give the park a "Cretaceous" look.

Here are a couple photos of Lili with some new dinosaur friends.

It had been a long day and we were all pretty tired. So it was a blessing in disguise that the nightly fireworks at the Expo site were cancelled out of respect for the past-President. So we headed back to the hotel around 8pm. After calling Deb to confirm Jin was feeling better, Lili and I quickly fell into a nice deep sleep. Surprisingly there were no nightmares after the scary movie!

On Sunday we drove to a nearby mask museum, then to lunch and then to our final destination the Goseong Dinosaur Museum. Here are Lili and her new friends, Grace, Alan and Jess in the back row of the bus, the "kids zone".

The Goseong Mask Museum had a great display of Korean totems out front. These we were told were designed to scare away evil spirits, particularly spirits of ancestors that may not be happy with you. The kids had some fun here playing around outside before we went into the museum. There were rocks to climb on, totems to mimic (scary!!!) and they even brought out a large game of yut nori (a traditional Korean game sort of like "Trouble" - will explain another time). Here Grace tosses the "dice" or "yut" with her mom.

Inside, the Director of the Museum, Mr. Lee, with the assistance of our guide, Miss Seo, provided some background on Korean masks and mask-making and the symbolism that they represent. He made all of the masks in the photos below, except the shell mask. They also had masks from all over Korea and around the world.

Mr. Lee even took us down to his workshop where he explained a bit about the mask-making process. He explained that designing a mask is a long process involving the use of a "dictionary" of ancient symbols. He writes the symbols on totem-like poles and then distills the mask designs from them (you can see the distillation progress from right to left in the photo below left). It was all very fascinating, but I think Lili and Grace were more fascinated with baby Charles, the youngest member of our tour group.

After the mask museum, we drove down a very windy but scenic coastal road, and then stopped for lunch at a restaurant in a village somewhere between town of Goseong and the Dinosaur Museum. Arrangements had been made ahead of time, so they were ready for us when we arrived. Low tables (we sat on the cushions on the floor) in a side room were covered with so many dishes there was hardly room for our bowls. The spread included: cold pumpkin soup (looked like egg yolks, but tasted pretty good), cold sea weed soup (really good, very subtle vinagery flavour), spicy tofu soup (very good), bulgogi (grilled beef strips), raw fish (slices of fillets), grilled eel (with and without spicy sauce), jap chae noodles, lettuce and other leaves (for wrapping your food up in a sort of "Korean taco"), and numerous small side dishes, like the ubiquitous kimchi, garlic cloves and green peppers, hardboiled quail eggs, corn, cherry tomatoes, small clams in spicy sauce, snails, acorn jelly, gochoojang (hot sauce), sesame oil and lots of other little tasty items. It was all great, until I tried a little bit of some stuff that looked like horse radish. It wasn't horse radish, it was something far stronger, the hottest thing I've eaten in years. Eeeow!!! Lili and the other kids steered clear of the spicy stuff, enjoying steamed rice, soup, bulgogi, tomatoes and watermelon. Here is a shot of the meal laid out for us and of the village below the restaurant.

After that sumptuous lunch we travelled a short distance down the coast to the Goseong Dinosaur Museum. The museum is located west of Goseong, just southeast of Sacheon. It sits on a ridge overlooking the sea (below right). A giant metal "longneck" (sauropod) statue faces the main museum building. There are gardens, dinosaur models and play structures all over the museum grounds. A good paved trail and then stair case leads down to a long wooden boardwalk that runs along the shoreline rock outcrops that host the dinsoaur footprints.

With all the time we spent at the mask museum, enjoying our great lunch and driving along the windy shore road, we had only a short time to tour the museum. It is well laid out with lots of good educational displays and of course dinosaur skeletons. Lili liked the model mommy dinsoaur sitting on her nest with little hatchlings running about.

Through a "sharp-tooth's" (T.Rex?) mouth there was a darkened hall with robotic dinosaur models.

They even had a model showing paleontologists at work, digging up dino-bones. After a quick walk throuh the museum we went outside to the trail down to the shoreline. Along the way Lili managed to find one of her favourite things.....a slide. Look who slid out of the dino's mouth!

The outcrops along the shoreline were very scenic and hosted numerous dinosaur trackways. At last!!!! For the most part though, we were restricted to a boardwalk, so it wasn't really possible to get down on the rocks close to them (this is a UNESCO World Heritage site, so the trackways do need to be preserved from hordes of modern feet walking all over them). There were interpretive signs along the way, explaining what sort of dinsoaur made each set of tracks we could see, and explaining a bit about the rocks (including some volcanic dykes and sills) and the paleo-environment. I should mention that these tracks and rocks are from the Cretaceous Period, somewhere between 145 and 65 million years ago.

There appeared to be mainly 2 types of prints here, round ones and three-toed ones. The round ones were mainly sauropod tracks (large plant eaters like brachiosaurus) and the 3-toed ones were mostly ornithopod (bipedal plant eaters) tracks. You can see some round ones above (right) and a nice example of 3-toed prints below.


Here is a shot of our happy group of tour-goers. And another of "someone" who tagged along on the ride back to Seoul. ROARRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, almost forgot to wish everyone back home a belated happy Victoria Day (thought this past weekend was the long "May 24" weekend, but now realize it was the prior weekend). The Canadian Embassy here celebrated Victoria Day on Friday the 22nd with a BBQ party. We were surprised and very dissappointed, however, to find out that is was a "no kids allowed" event. How bizzare?! May 24 BBQ featuring hotdogs and hamburgers with NO KIDS?!?! Turns out it was just as well for us, with Jin's illness and our need to prepare for the trip to Goseong on Saturday. Maybe we'll just stick to doing Korean things here and do Canadaian stuff when we get home.

The Goseong Dinosaur Museum and trackways are definitely worth trying to get back to. Lili and I will have to take Deb and Jin there sometime.

That's all the news from here for now. Will try to write up a quick update on recent events here shortly.

Bye for now. Annyeong haseyo!

Derek, Deb, Jin and Lili

p.s. thanks for the lovely comments!