I went to like, a hundred museums

22.02.2013

I woke up not feeling too great, but I just decided to ignore it and continue with my adventure to Mokpo for the weekend. It turns out that I definitely was really sick, but I didn't realize it until I got there.

When I got on the train, I'm pretty sure the guy who sold me the ticket sold me a first class one without asking. It was way expensive and it wasn't even that much nicer than regular class. Jerk.

There are a bunch of museums all in a row on the same street, so I attempted to go to all of them. I actually made it through six of them, and then went home.

The first one that my guidebook recommended was the maritime museum, and yep, it was the best one for sure. There were three giant trading ships that they found buried in the muck under the sea from around the year 1200. They also recovered a lot of really old ceramics and pottery and money and things from China and Korea. So really good museum. It's free and includes an English audio tour.

Next, I went to the culture and art centre, which I also thought was free. But I was tracked down by the security guards after I was halfway through the exhibit and they demanded my 5,000 won. This is after I gave the ticket taking lady my coat and bag to check... No problem, chill out, here take it, you deserve it. Haha. There was a nice one on called "My Home", which is a bunch of photos taken from a helicopter down onto a bunch of different environmentally devastated landscapes all over the world. There were a few happy ones too, but it was mostly depressing. There was also an English documentary (!!!) done by the same artist, which was also depressing, of course. Exactly my style, thanks culture museum. OK, after that, onto the local history museum, which has a wide assortment of.... rocks that look like things that are not rocks??? I didn't know this was a hobby that people have, but it is. The security guards here were very enthusiastic (sarcasm). I thought about emailing their bosses, but then I figured their lives are crappy enough, why bother? There were also some impressionistic style paintings done by a local artist.

From there, my ticket paid for entry to three other museums, the natural history museum, which is just like every other natural history museum, except there were some fish there from the local area and some stuff about the tidal flats.

Then, it was the living ceramics museum, which I thought sounded lame, but it was actually kind of neat. There were lots of fancy ceramics and it showed how it is made and how the process evolved over time. Also there was a human size kiln that you had to walk through, but I thought that was a little grotesque, because it reminded me of holocaust ovens. And I'm not even a holocaust survivor... ehhh... weird.

Last was the literature museum, where there wasn't even a ticket taker man. I went around glancing at stuff but of course, none of it was in English. They celebrated the lives of three or four famous authors in this museum.

After that, I was pooped. I hadn't heard back from my couchsurfing hosts, so I decided to call it a day. My body was completely sore and aching and I could feel the fever coming on, anyway. I took the next train home, which was the mugungwha (slowest one). About 20 minutes into my ride, I had gotten as comfortable as possible, trying to keep warm against the chills and fevers, when some crazy old man started kicking the back of my seat and yelling at me in Korean. I assumed he wanted me to put my seat up. I just yelled at him, without looking back "I'M SICK" but that didn't stop him. This went on for about 10 minutes, until I guess he just gave up. That would never happen on a first class KTX train!

At Mokpo station