Tag Archives: Daegu

Dalseong Park – a sort of kind of zoo

On Sunday I woke up at about half past 12 (midday). I was lying in bed reading about half an hour later when I got a text from a friend. She was bored. I sent her some ideas of things to do and found myself suddenly drawn to the possibility of a Sunday afternoon adventure, even over the temptation of spending the day in bed. A quick check of the usual internet sources revealed at least two parks in Daegu that I hadn’t yet visited. One, Mangu Park, sounds exciting and historical but the one that caught my attention on Sunday was Dalseong Park, just west of Downtown, and it caught my attention largely because it has a zoo.

I know some people dislike zoos but I’m not one of those hippie-liberal-vegetarian-bunny-hugger types who thinks all zoos are cruel. I think zoos can, and often are, be well-funded, state-of-the-art facilities that play a vital role as sanctuaries for rescued animals and breeding centres, particularly for endangered species. This was, unfortunately, not one of those zoos.

The trip to the park was about as eventful as usual. I caught the #403 bus, which I’d discovered while trying to find the Opera House on Thursday, and then switched over downtown to the #939 bus, overshot the Dalseong Park by two or three stops and ended up backtracking about 7 blocks to get to where I wanted to be. Following the signs to the park, I found myself facing a large, solid building through which, according to a large sign right above me, I was supposed to walk for 300 metres. I ignored the sign and headed around the corner to find the Park.

Dalseong is a Park in that it is an open area with neatly-finished lawns and rows of cabbages in pot-plants – don’t get me started on the cabbages. There are, however, two things that distinguish it and make it more interesting than some of the other parks in the area. The first is the Earthen Wall. Surrounding the park-area, there is a raised area that looks like a naturally-occurring hill except that it is a fairly constant height and forms an almost perfect oval with a circumference of roughly 1300m. It is, in fact, the wall of one of the oldest earthen-mound fortresses in Korea. It is assumed that the first walls were built by the villages of the area in the distant, and now largely forgotten past, and subsequent generations and rulers added to, repaired and improved them. One estimated date of construction is 261AD. On one part of this wall stands the Gwanpungnu Pavilion, which was an important site to the history of the administration of the province and a place used by the governor to look out across Daegu and see what was happening downtown during the later part of the Joseon Dynasty.

All this was fascinating to see and made the historian in my particularly happy. The other reason I’d come to the park was to see the animals. It may seem odd to people who have grown up in cities, and perhaps those who have grown up in countries without many large mammals, but the lack of animal life in Korea has been nawing at me. This is one of the reasons I wanted to go to this zoo, which the internet told me had all sorts of animals from elephants to fur seals. I hoped they would be African elephants.

As it turned out, I didn’t see the elephants at all. I must have arrived close to feeding time because all the large animals were agitated – at least I hope that is why – and by the time I reached the elephants’ enclosure, they were nowhere to be seen and the door was closed, I assume for feeding. The same happened with the lions. And the fur seal enclosure had been taken over by a gaggle of white geese. I did see plenty of other animals, though.

The zoo has an odd mixture of creatures. There are lots of birds, including peacocks (blue and white – which I didn’t know existed), pheasants, waterbirds like ducks, ostriches, what looked like some turkeys and a few birds of prey. I felt a bit sorry for the birds of prey because their cages didn’t seem very big. They were beautiful, though, particularly the owls and the vultures.

In a large enclosure with a mossy, empty moat around it, two beautiful Bengal tigers paced and roamed, clearly waiting for something. They really are beautiful, powerful animals. Strange how I often forget how much more fierce and unfriendly their faces are than those of lions. There was also a very lonely and not-particularly-happy looking brown bear, pacing around in circles, all by himself in another large enclosure. He was rather good looking, too.

Near the entrance there were llamas. One of them – a large brown llama was in a pen with a whole bunch of other deer. Another – a pale tan-coloured, slightly smaller animal – was in a separate pen on the other side of the fence. At first, I didn’t even notice the second one. After watching for a bit, however, it became clear that the reason I hadn’t noticed it was because it had been busy trying to find a way to get under the fence at the far side of the pen. Once it gave that up, it raced to find the brown one and the two of them rushed up and down the fence on opposite sides, trying to get through. Amorous llamas.

Although the bear looked a little miserable and the llamas would clearly have been happier on the same side of the fence, I think all of these animals were probably okay. Or at least, far, far better off than some of the others. In front of a glassed-in (perspex-ed-in?) cage the size of a large room, with a few branches and bits of rope, was a sign indicating that this was the chimpanzee enclosure. I couldn’t help thinking of the huge chimp enclosure at Monkey Town in Somerset West. Perhaps I am just more sensitive to big apes, having grown up in Africa, but that enclosure made me feel genuinely miserable. I didn’t actually see a chimp, so maybe it is mercifully empty. As I said, some of the other animals looked fine but things like this make me wish that someone would close the place down. The zebras were also penned into a rather small area. When I close my eyes, I can picture zebra running across the veld. It was strange and a little unsettling to see them in so small a space, although the two of them seemed perfectly active and interacted with many of the people who walked by.
Not very far away was a sight that made me even more angry and sad and definitely makes me think that this ‘zoo’ should be closed down. In a tiny, glassed-in cage, about the size of a single university res room, pacing up and down in what looked like anguish, was a beautiful big cat which I initially thought was a leopard but the information board informed me was an amazon jaguar. It was exquisite: thick, rich fur, huge feet, wide eyes. It paced backwards and forwards in this tiny space, muscles taught, eyes searching and my heart went out to it. I wanted to stand there and watch it all day or find a way to free it, or simply talk to it, get its attention. A few cages along were two timber wolves, the larger also pacing backwards and forwards. I hope that what was actually going on was that they were about to be fed, and not that this pacing is what they do all day long. Either way, the cages these beautiful animals were in were way, way too small. It’s hard to imagine a country where people don’t object to this kind of thing. It’s not even as if the motive is minimizing costs in order to increase profit – the zoo and park are free and open to the public.

The conditions in which the jaguar, wolves and possibly chimps were kept marred my experience of Dalseong park. My feeling is that someone should do something to limit the number of animals they can keep so that each is able to live in appropriate surroundings. The rest of the park was interesting and it was great to see animals, but I wish they didn’t feel the need to spoil it by doing things like that.

In search of an Opera House

You’d think an Opera House would be the kind of thing that wouldn’t be hard to find. Particularly when the Opera House in question is, according to their own website, ‘shaped like a grand piano’. It’s not quite as bizarre as the images this concept may conjure up, but there is definitely something grand-piano-esque (without the legs) about the building,  as I was aware from the glimpse I’d caught when we drove past one time and a friend pointed it out. Last week Thursday I went looking for it and proved, quite conclusively that knowing what a building looks like, even one as distinctive as this, is no guarantee at all of finding it.

I had originally intended to go to the Opera House on Monday for a show but chickened out at the last minute, partly because I was tired but mostly because the task of finding a building I’d never been to first thing on a Monday morning was overwhelmingly daunting. This is why I set off on Thursday on a bit of ‘advanced recon’.

According to the Daegu tourist information website, I should have been able to reach the Opera House simply by taking bus #403 and getting off at the ‘Homeplus’ stop. This was particularly convenient because but #403 stops near my flat.

After 45 minutes of watching anxiously at each stop for anything vaguely resembling a ‘Homeplus’ (whatever that was) and a bus rapidly filling with people – I eventually stayed standing to get a better view of the names written on the stops – I found myself near Kyungpook National University in what I was fairly sure was the wrong part of town. I assumed I’d missed the stop in the bustle of the crowded bus, so I got off and crossed the road to get the same #403 bus going in the other direction. A quick look at the list of stops on that side didn’t turn up what I was looking for but I figured the ‘Homeplus’ stop could be called something else (as often happens), so I stuck to the plan.

While I waited, I had the most gorgeous view of a river and a park. I’m increasingly delighted by the long, narrow parks – complete with walks, exercise equipment, jungle gyms and the occasional basketball court – that run alongside most rivers and canals in Daegu. This river sparkled and danced in the weak, mid-afternoon sunshine, as children played and people walked and ran alongside it.

The bus arrived and I climbed aboard and determinedly claimed a seat with a good view of all the stops so that I couldn’t miss mine again. By the time we had wound our way back to the subway station that I normally get off at for Sam Duk, have traversed downtown a second time, it was clear that bus #403 does not in fact go anywhere near the Opera House. Disgruntled, I got out and crossed the road to see if I could find any sign of another bus that might take me there.

As luck would have it, my slow and careful deciphering of the list of bus-stops for the Rapid 2 bus (a bus none of the websites mentioned) revealed that this bus went to had a ‘Homeplus’ stop listed. Just to give a proper idea, Homeplus here spelt 험플러스 which ends up being something like hom-peul-leo-seu. I had just missed one of these Rapid 2 buses so I had to wait 15 minutes for the next one.

After crawling through downtown traffic we reached the right stop. Homeplus, it turns out, is a rather large (multi-storey) department-type store. Except not a department store. It’s actually Homeplus TESCO, so it’s an actual hypermarket.

Once off the bus, I walked to the traffic light/pedestrian crossing, from where I could see along a side-road and there, just a block away, was the Opera House. I went along the road just to make absolutely sure I was in the right place but it was, indeed, the place I’d spent the entire afternoon failing to find.

Since I was there, I popped into Homeplus to have a look, too. It looks like a great place to find reasonably-priced clothes. I didn’t find the groceries – despite large adverts for specials on things like cabbages – but I’m sure they must be there somewhere (in one of the 7 storeys). And maybe they’ll even have cheese.

Now that I know where it is, I plan to return to Homeplus and do a proper shop sometime. Now that I know where the Opera House is, I can finally get organized and make my way there for one of the many shows they advertise. And finally enjoy some of the high culture the city has to offer.

Journey to a place far, far away

In the last 24 hours, I have managed to get a little bit lost in three different major international airports. Not sufficiently lost for it to be a real problem, just lost enough to wander around reading all the signs with a determined expression and a little bit of a hasty step (particularly in those airports that are big enough to house an indoor marathon).

The most panic-stricken part of the whole journey was probably at the beginning. I know what everyone says and that it’s supposed to be relatively simple to get through check-in, customs, security, etc. and get on the plane. In fact, for most people, I think the plane ride is probably the most annoying part. I think this is partly because they have either forgotten or were too young to remember their first experiences of the terrifying bureaucracy. I hate doing this sort of thing for the first time – when I don’t know what I’m doing and I am terrified of something going wrong. Yes, I’m paranoid. The marvellous friend who took me to the airport just about had to push me through the door.

Once I was on the plane I was fine. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a window seat for the first stretch. I am very partial to a window seat. But I was on the aisle and Emirates has a wonderful entertainment selection, so I happily whiled away a good eight hours catching up on movies (Madagascar 2 – finally – and duplicity) and various series. Oh, and good food. And wine. I tasted foreign wines. In the duration of the trip, I tasted an Australian Chardonnay and a Chilean Chardonnay and a French white, the name of which is lost in the mists of time-zone changes. I liked the Australian.

Landing at Dubai was a pleasure, if rather warm. I found myself wandering into the terminal humming ‘hot in the summer’. And then down the stairs. And round the corner. And up the stairs. A bit of a round-about route to get to the departures area when you’re in transit there. That said, Terminal 3 at Emirates is beautiful. It has a beautiful water-feature, elegant design, sunning, high ceilings and beautifully etched windows reaching from floor to roof. All they need to do to make it perfect is get rid of at least half the shops and most of the people. I’m not particularly interested in shopping when in transit. I suppose really, it’s that the thing I love about airports is their emptiness and elegance, and masses of people spoil the effect somewhat. I spent quite a lot of the 3-hour lay-over at Dubai wandering around looking at the building and out of the windows and being looked askance (skeefed out) by slightly more seasoned and shopping-approving flyers. Things became more exciting when I missed an announcement that my gate had changed and returned from my wanderings to find no-one there. A frantic hustle (through the crowds) to the departures board sent me racing from a gate in the 200s to find one in the early 100s. Those who have walked the length of Dubai airport will perhaps understand that this did require some racing. Ok, it probably wasn’t that bad. I was disappointed, however, that I ended up racing past so many of the fascinating and bizarre other sights without being able to take the time to really look. The rest of the airport seems to have picked odd over spacious and elegant, but perhaps that was just my rushed impression.

Having checked my bags right through to destination (again, thank you Emirates), boarding was easy. Although, they do that silly ‘boarding by zone’ thing the Americans do. I’m absolutely unconvinced that it speeds things up in any way or makes them any more efficient. Given that this time I did have a window seat, as well as an empty seat next to me, I got over it quickly. This second flight left Dubai (a whole 15 or so minutes late) at around 3:15am local time. Flying from Joburg to Dubai had eliminated 2 hours (as far as I could figure out) so it was sometime around the middle of the night. It was also sometime around the middle of the night after quite a lot of stressful anticipation and a day of customs and SAA ground staff (my first flight was a code-share), so I was pretty destroyed. Luckily I can sleep on planes. I did. For two whole hours. At which point the sun came up and they woke us up for breakfast. My body was still trying to convince me that it was 3am in South Africa in winter, so it took a few befuzzled moments to figure out what was going on. At which point I got to watch a stunningly beautiful 33 000ft sunrise over the very edge of the Indian subcontinent. Sometimes travelling is amazing.

Once the sun had risen, unfortunately, the airline staff insisted that all the window blinds be closed. This irritates me no end – partly because I’m slightly claustrophobic, mostly because I like watching the pretty world go by  below, and a little because staying awake from sunrise while travelling East seems to me to make sense. When they finally let us open the blinds again – I lose track of how long that took because I was fast asleep – we were flying over China. The second amazing sight of the day, partly just for the bragging value, was watching a huge thunderstorm front develop over China and the Yellow Sea. If you’ve never flown through a thunderstorm that is developing, you can’t imagine the magnificence of the anvil-shaped billows, the light and shadow playing around the edges of this incredible force of nature.

The descent into Seoul (Incheon airport) was quick and steep but not quick enough to prevent my stomach knotting itself into knots of terror. Not because I am scared of landings – and in fact this wasn’t a bad one – but because of the more bureaucracy. In fact, the immigration and customs points were almost disappointingly quick and boring. Almost, not quite. The most entertaining part was a particularly overzealous security guard at immigration who kept moving people from one queue to another to make them get through more quickly. Which was fine but whenever the immigration people sent someone back to be checked through the security point (which was to one side before the counters), this over-enthusiasitic security guard would shout at them in Korean and try and make them get back into the queue. I giggled quietly to myself and exchanged amused looks with the British girl in the queue in front of me and tried not to laugh out loud in case it offended someone and jeopardised my chances of getting into the country.

Incheon Airport feels like it is designed to keep you inside forever (cue sinister music). Seriously – and keep in mind that I’d lost many, many hours and not had much sleep by this stage – we arrived and went along a corridor, along a travellator, down two escalators, into an underground train (Incheon airport has it’s own subway system) and up the steepest, longest escalator ever which makes you feel as thought you’re ascending into some sort of upside-down underworld (c.f. Various world belief systems that think heaven is underneath). Eventually through immigration and baggage collected – perfectly in one piece without wrapping pierced at all – and through customs, you emerge into the less sinister and worrying arrivals area – with actual doors to the outside. At this point, I headed off to find the domestic check-in area to get ready for one more flight. Perhaps I should say at this point that Korea is not really an air-travel-addicted nation. At least not internally. They have a super express and almost-express train system, I am told, as well as regular buses, and the country is actually quite little (smaller than the UK – the South, I mean). So they don’t fly that often. Which means that there aren’t very many domestic flights. It does not mean, however, that there aren’t many check-in counters/areas/black-hole-like-expanses. Because Incheon is a popular transit airport and Koreans generally fly to get overseas – the land route requiring transition through the North and the rest being sea – there are many, many international flights leaving from there, so it is a bit of a needle-in-a-haystack situation to find the one small area dedicated to the few local flights. Particularly when at least 65% of the signs are not written using Western characters – never mind in English.

Standing around looking lost works wonders, however. The friendly staff were able to speak English and point me in the right direction. Eventually I boarded my last flight for the day, this one a Korean Air flight from Incheon to Daegu. It was a 737, which always makes me happy. I realise  it’s a bit odd to have a favourite aeroplane but I’ve just spent so much time flying on 737s that it’s become my happy-plane. I was rather tired by this stage and thought I must have dozed off because after what felt like a ridiculously short time, I opened my eyes and we were on the ground. Turns out we hadn’t taken off yet. I began to wonder if we were taxi-ing to Daegu. By the time we landed, about 35 minutes later, I wondered if it wouldn’t perhaps be less costly and air-polluting to have done so. Daegu airport is about the size of PE but has three sky-walks and is all  glassed in corridors – which appear not to do much other than force you to walk the perimeter of the airport to get to the one luggage carousel (ok, smaller than PE). There is also a military base there, apparently, which would explain the large and army-looking helicopter I noticed on the way in.

Daegu was the end of a rather long and tiring, but largely hassle-free trip to Korea. I’m now here and looking forward to a good long sleep in a non-moving bed – with no midnight stops in the Middle East to change planes