The Mike and the Mia is in the Jew

Volume 3: Children's Grand Park

Our latest and greatest took us to the Children’s Grand Park near Konkuk (yes, we realize that we’re not children. Or grand. Whatever. We heard there was a dog petting zoo). We met at the park, after I spent about 3 hours on the subway (3 transfers! Ugh!). Directly out of the subway there’s a woman who sells rabbits, chickens, hamsters, mice, etc, etc. She just sits on the ground with cardboard boxes full of animals and sells them to hapless passerbys. Humane? Not really. Legal? Probably not even that.

We directed our attention, however, to the nearby vendors of street meat. We were both on the hungry side, so we tried our luck with one of the ladies. I’ve managed to avoid street meat, except for that one wretched temple corndog, so I was pretty surprised that it was actually sort of good. For something on a stick that you buy from a lady whose neighbor sells boxes of animals.

So we set off exploring the park, and first came to an elephant show (something completely different than the Donkey Show somewhere in Hongdae that I still want to go to--). We paid and went in, and the elephants are RIGHT THERE! You can touch them and everything. Their outfits are pretty lame, but it’s cool that you get so close. The show proper was pretty amazing. The elephants can do all sorts of tricks: some of them kick balls, some throw darts, and two of them even paint!!

Probably the funniest part was when the elephants were twirling a giant jumprope, and this guy from the audience was trying to jump it. It kept smashing him, and he kept falling, and yet he just kept getting up and trying it over and over. He’s either really dedicated, or the elephants whacking him gave him some sort of brain damage.

All was well and good, until… One of the elephant’s tricks is to PRETEND TO DIE. Which is NOT a funny thing to do in a park full of children. It was running across the thing kicking a ball, and it “fell” over and lay in the dirt, not moving. The… uh… cowgirl, who was the hostess, ran off and the music stopped, and literally no one moved or breathed the whole time. Then one of the other elephants came in wearing a giant nurse costume and poked the dead one with a giant syringe. Bree Teacher and I were FREAKING OUT.

After the elephant show, we found the reason we came to the park: the dog zoo. [Sidebar: the real zoo was actually pretty fun, too. They had “kanbgaroos,” “domestic ass,” and a horrible translator]. The dog zoo is basically a pen you pay to go in and see the dogs. Since dogs bigger than toy poodles are generally eaten in Korea, this is one of the few places to see them. Since their entire day consists of getting petted by annoying, sticky children, by the time we got to see the doggies, they were all pretty tired, and didn’t really move much. They did have some killer tattoos, though.


Our next portion of weirdness came courtesy of Anistory (which is quite possible the filthiest unintentionally filthy name I’ve ever heard). It’s an animal show like nothing I’ve ever seen anywhere. Or even heard of. Or imagined could exist. The plot, as far as I could tell, went something like this. The giant, strobe-lit evil witch gave a poison apple to someone who looks as close to Snow White as it could get without infringing copyright. Only... You know... Asianer. Also, Snow White trains birds. The only people who could possible save her? Rival seal trainers, of course. They have their seals do tricks to prove who is more manly. One of them rides a tiny horse, and the other got beat up by a monkey in a chicken costume (to the strains of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme), so neither of them, really—

A few elements that I couldn’t fit in anywhere: there were several monkeys wearing costumes. Were they playing monkeys wearing costumes? Or were they playing other animals. Then there were about 100 guinea pigs that ran through a tunnel and were never seen again. And some real pigs ran across the stage, too. Oh, and at the end, to celebrate Snow Beige’s resurrection, one seal played xylophone, and one played bass drum. There’s probably more, but it’s too much to try to explain.

Next (and last) we found a park-within-the-park. With rides! We tried the roller coaster, since it looked remarkably awesome. AND IT WAS. Mostly worth the price of admission just to hear Bree Teacher screaming anytime anything happens. Or just in anticipation of something happening. Totally worth it.