dino-mite!

when we heard about the world dino-expo in goseong, we were all very enthused. a triassic exhibit in the heart of a local dino-dig seemed right up our alley. but if we expected a cerebral safari, what we got leaned more towards a prehistoric version of "hello kitty". trying to recount this experience feels somewhat like trying to verbalize the events of a puzzling dream- though it may be possible to provide an accurate narrative of what took place, the resulting account seems flat and lack-luster for the inability to convey the associated senses of confusion and disorientation.

we walked in on a parade in progress, which i can only describe as "it's a small world" on ritalin and pseudoephedrine. the dinosaur theme was largely prevalent, although i can't explain the eastern european girls carting the rickshaw, the green chick, or why the dinosaur emerging from his egg is holding a diploma. i will warn you now to turn your computer's sound off- a month later, this song is still stuck in my head...

since we arrived at lunchtime, we headed for the concessions. to appease the kids' domesticated pallets, we chose the "international" food station, looking for a hamburger or some chicken fingers. apparently, we were looking for a "global" food station- the "international" featured the far reaching cuisines of korea, japan, and china. while there were limited fossils to be seen, the dinosaurs at the park were largely animatronic or fiberglass- and many of those, florescent.

i must also share a bootlegged clip from the orientation video to one of the animatronic exhibits- i have no idea what is going on here, but i think the idea is to so completely befuddle your sense of reality to the point you believe the moving dino-puppets are actually alive.

then, it started to get weird.

we took a ride on the roller slide...

...all the way down a mountain...
...and were deposited for all we could tell in the middle of nowhere. we were in a field with no designating signage, no park employees, no signs of dinosaurs anywhere, and thankfully, no more music. the field we found ourselves in lead down to the coast, so we took a walkout to a sandy beach where we found to our great surprise, a decommissioned korean war era u.s. battleship.

perhaps the naval distraction was meant to bring park visitors down slowly from the dino-high they encountered at the expo, maybe we were supposed to imagine that the craft was an aquatic super-fortress built for safe neanderthal passage across icthyosaur-infested waters. maybe like the avant-garde art of christo and jeanne-claude, the true focus of the exhibit was in its human interface, as each individual looked within to find meaning to the stark juxtaposition of such contrasting worlds.

personally, i just didn't get it.

i walked away from the expo feeling puzzled, unsettled and slightly nauseous. amongst such personal turmoil, i was, however, able to glean one important piece of information from the outing- when navigating the south end of the korean peninsula, no matter how many times the dash-mounted gps belittles your personal decision making like an east asian hal-9000 trying so desperately to fulfill what it believes its mission to be, take the west road around masan. you'll kill yourself in traffic just to save a couple of miles in that town.