The Yeosu Expo 2012 is being held under the World Expo umbrella organization. Yeosu is a city and the name of a peninsula area in southern Korea and west of Ulsan. The theme is “Living Ocean and Coast.” Michael and I left on a Wed. morning and came back late Sat. night. I wrote an article for FLiK, the foreigner compound magazine, which I copied to "Part 2" of blog. But some other details are that we took two intercity buses as part of getting near Yeosu for about 3 ¼ hours of bus time. We stayed at Namhae island, accessible by bridges. Namhae is beautiful: mountainous, rural (many rice fields) and not crowded. We took a couple of taxis for sightseeing Wednesday. Our first stop was the Garlic Museum (a main agricultural product). We were the only ones there, not even staff (it was a national holiday), so we called a taxi (luckily the hotel gave us a taxi business card) and just said “Garlic Museum” in Korean. Then we went to a well-known spot with a walk way to rocks by the sea and terraced farming. It’s common to see this area in picture highlights of Korea. Finally, we went to dinner at the Hilton resort. The pockets of houses, restaurants, etc. are so spread out that even though we could read our map and figure out the restaurant guide, it seemed like a risk to head somewhere not knowing for sure if it was still open, etc. The Hilton is near the place we stayed, the Namhae Sports Park Hotel. The sports park hotel has large grounds and soccer and baseball fields and seems to house teams for spring training and might hold a soccer camp, but it’s not clear either of these has happened recently. This place was memorable! I booked there with the help of a Korean because it had the benefit that we could walk to the ferry terminal where we could go back and forth to the Expo. But we think we were the only ones there the first night. It was clean, and the people working were very kind. The second night 3 tour buses of Koreans going to the Expo stayed there (but the place was still very quiet). There was a menu downstairs that said there was Korean breakfast, but there was never any sign of life except for the tour bus people eating a buffet. So, we ate all three meals at the expo!
The ferry terminal people and the men working on the ferry were very nice, especially to Michael. The terminal seems to have been spiffed up for the expo. Our plan had been to be at the expo TH and FRI, but there were still a couple things we wanted to do. So we went back SAT for the morning. Michael had seen 6 of the 7 Korean business pavilions; how could we leave without #7?! We had split up on Friday, and he concentrated on those pavilions while I spent most of my time at the international pavilions. At the FRI evening concert, Michael bought me a pad to sit on. It took a minute for us to understand, but the elderly couple near us asked how much it cost and then gave Michael the money to go buy two for them. They were very gracious and the woman offered us a treat she had in her bag, but we passed when we saw it looked like dried octopus. So, finally we are heading out of the expo SAT on the 12:50 ferry. But there was an engine problem so we just sat there about 90 minutes. There were not many people leaving that time of day, but one guy spoke English well and translated any updates. I said, “Koreans ought to be very good at fixing a broken ship.” And so were off to Namhae and then to the bus station and then to Masan, where we transferred buses. We had heard of a supposedly great Mexican restaurant in Masan, so we went by taxi to the drop off spot. Then at a convenience store in our broken Korean we asked the location. In true gracious Korean style, the person walked us through a couple side streets right to it. It turned out to be about the worst Mexican we have ever had, but we didn’t care that much. It’s all part of the adventure. We got in a taxi to head back to the bus station, and as is common in Korea, there are two bus stations in town. We thought we communicated which one by including in Korean that “we go to Ulsan.” We could tell we were going the wrong way. So a couple more times we said “we go to Ulsan.” Finally, the driver had us write it down: 울산. “Ahh, Ulsan,” he said, and then we got going to the right terminal. We had put our bags in a locker (good experience for Michael to figure that out) and for some reason I had the idea that a bus was leaving at 8:00 (no good reason), and we had lost time with the mixed up taxi. So right about 8:00 we bought our tickets and thought the ticket seller was indicating to hurry to make the bus. We got outside and there was no bus. I went inside and asked “Ulsan. What time?” 8:30 (all in Korean – we are pretty good with numbers for time and money.) So I went back out and told Michael. We laughed, and I said “Let’s go get an ice cream.” We were glad to get home after a really great time at the Expo.
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