Day 9: COEX Aquarium

When I went to Tokyo a few years back, I went to an aquarium but left underwhelmed because it didn’t have features that I was looking for like an underwater tunnel and such. For my trip to Seoul, I had a couple of aquariums on my itinerary, one in the 63 Building and one in the COEX Mall. I had gone to the aquarium in the 63 Building once before when I was very little (though I don't remember much about it at all now) so I decided to check out the COEX Aquarium, plus there were several other attractions conveniently located in and around the COEX Mall that I wanted to visit also.

My Lonely Planet book grouped the entire district of Jamsil as one but because it is quite a large area I divided it into two and created my own West and East Jamsil. I was going to visit the West Jamsil sights today. I took Line 3 from Dongnimmun Station to Seoul National University Station and transferred to Line 2 and took that to Samseong Station. Aside from going to Incheon yesterday, travelling to Jamsil was going to be the farthest place away from “home” thus far that I was going to go to.

The station is connected to the COEX Mall so you don’t have to go outside to get to it. The COEX Mall as I far as I remembered was pretty much all underground and in that sense it kind of reminded me of the PATH in downtown Toronto which is an underground network shopping complex. It felt very spacious, elegant and a little maze-like as I followed sign after sign after sign it seemed to finally get to the aquarium. On the way there, I passed by many clothing stores and restaurants where I swear I saw Shin Ji of Koyote in one of them eating lunch. Maybe I should have taken a picture from a distance. There is also a movie theater complex if you are interested in catching a movie.

I saw a Nike Store so I decided to check it out to see if I could find a Korean Soccer jersey for my brother. I found you could only buy National jerseys from Nike as they were the official makers. I tried Nike stores in Jongno, Myeong-dong and Shinsegae earlier in the week but at this time of year, they had none left. I found one at this Nike store albeit a little on the smaller size but bought it anyway thinking that I may not find another one again. It turned out that the Nike Store in the Hyundai Department Store near Hongdae had all kinds of sizes so I ended up exchanging what I bought today for a larger size later in the week. The jersey is made of excellent quality and looks really nice in person with it’s crimson red and blue colours. It’s actually a Nike Dry-Fit shirt also. It didn’t have any player lettering though so it was a blank jersey.

After what had seemed like a long walk, I finally got to the COEX Aquarium. I didn’t really know what to expect to be honest from the aquarium because I didn’t look up any details prior to coming and whether it actually had an underwater tunnel I was looking for or not!

It turned out that the COEX Aquarium was all that I hoped to find! It is a pretty comprehensive aquarium that has numerous sections that cover a whole variety of sea and ocean environments as well as all kinds of water life forms. I came here on a Tuesday just before 12:00PM and almost had the whole place to myself. There were a few people here and there and I saw a class of kids outside but they must have just been leaving when I arrived.

The COEX Aquarium is broken down in to about over 10 different sections but I definitely had my favourites. My first favourite was the Aqua Gallery. The Korean name for this section is “이상한 물고기 나라” whose literal translation to English is "Strange Fish Land" which I think is actually more suiting. This section was very cute and devoted to fishes living in every day items like computers, refrigerators, washing machines, and even inside the pop vending machines they had. Here are some of the exhibits from the gallery. The following is a computer that had eels swimming around at the bottom near the monitor and a mailbox that had little fishes swimming among Spider-men dolls.

This harp was equipped with various sensors that would play a note every time a fish swam by it.

The warning on this sink says “For Viewing Only”.

Are you thirsty for some Coca-Cola or Pocari Sweat?…fishes not included.^^

In this area, they also had a couple of cute prairie dogs (at least I think they were prairie dogs). They were cute because they would stare and be all serious for a moment and then move around and then stop and stare again as if they were always on the look out for predators (or tourists ^^). I first liked prairie dogs when I saw them on Youtube when a whole sensation of dramatic prairie dog clips were spawned from an original clip from Japan. Here are some clips I took, mostly in the Aqua Gallery but a little from other parts as well.

While in the Aqua Gallery, they played some cheery music in the background (which you can hear in the video above) that I found went really well with the exhibits. When I got back to Toronto, I searched high and low for the name of the song and after a while, my perseverance paid off as I found it! The band is FreeTempo and they were playing music off their Oriental Quaint album and the song in particular was Immaterial White. When I listen to it, it makes my head bob from side to side.^^

I moved on to the next areas which included an Amazon World like recreation and exhibits of eccentric looking fish from all over the world. I didn’t spend too much time in the Amazon section which had forestry and animals and fishes that would live in that kind of environment. The fishes from all over the world included things like piranhas, seahorses and crazy and colourful looking fishes in general. The middle of the course had a section catered towards kids and an area for them to play and rest.
When I came to the manatee and sea lion exhibits, I felt kind of sad because I found the manatee just laying there still on the aquarium floor looking sad. He had his eye open and then it slowly closed. Perhaps he was just tired and it was sleeping time. I just couldn’t help but feel bad for him though for some reason. Cheer up manatee!

Then when I saw the sea lions, it was kind of funny and sad at the same time. A couple of the sea lions had their heads stuck in a crevasse. Their heads weren’t stuck stuck like they couldn’t get out but they were doing it on purpose. Perhaps it was sleeping time also and they just needed some privacy and peace and quiet.

The Ocean Kingdom section was really cool and it was really the showcase of the COEX Aquarium for me. There are several separate exhibits throughout this section but if I’m not mistaken it seemed like one massive tank of water that immerses you in the ocean kingdom. All within this one tank, they had schools of fish in tornado formations, sea turtles, all sorts of different looking stingrays and fishes and of course sharks, all swimming around in the same environment co-existing peacefully together. They played classical music in the background which went well with the slow and deliberate movements of the creatures of the sea. Looking through the waters and to the other end of the massive tank, I could see the underwater tunnel in the distance.

When I finally got to the underwater tunnel, they were playing Jaws like music in the background and had slow moving floors all along the glass. Seeing the tunnel in person was very beautiful and it was nice to be able to see all the fishes up close, particularly when they swam right overhead. I don’t really have a fear of sharks or anything like that when I’m watching them swim past behind a thick plate of glass. There was one shark however that I was tracking and when it swam right above my head it kind of freaked me out seeing how big it was up close. I always thought to myself that if I was ever attacked by a shark, that I would be able to wrestling with it but seeing it in person made me think how silly my thoughts were.^^ While in the tunnel, I had these thoughts about what would happen if the glass cracked and the tank exploded and I found myself swimming with all these fishes and sharks. I know that sharks have a bad rap and are usually portrayed in the media as vicious savages but I’ve seen enough to the contrary (like the documentary SharkWater) to know that they are just like any other animal in that they will usually leave others alone. The sharks there weren’t attacking the other fishes or stingrays or turtles so I figured that they would probably leave me alone too if that ever happened.^^

Here is a collection of videos I took from the Ocean Kingdom, the Undersea Tunnel and Deep Blue Sea.

My favourite things in the Deep Blue Sea section were these vibrant red coloured jelly fish that had stringy trails of organic matter that hung off them. It was both beautiful and mesmerizing to watch their movements and how they propelled themselves through the water.

I was very pleased with the aquarium experience and would totally recommend going, especially if you have kids. There's a whole lot more to the aquarium than what I wrote about including penguins and an area where you can touch marine life. The aquarium is awesome but you also have the COEX Mall as well so that’s a double bonus in my book.

After I left the aquarium, it was past lunch and I was hungry. Though there were a lot of sit down and fast food restaurants in COEX Mall, I continued to the next attraction on my itinerary as I had specific plans to eat somewhere later…