Stories and Adventures...: The COEX Aquarium, or where I became obsessed with goldfish

Last weekend, I went to the COEX aquarium.

Then, I went again 3 days later. Hence the 5 million pictures. And the pictures that seem a bit out of order.

The aquarium is at the COEX mall, which is enormous. I had been there 2 other times. One time my first day in Korea, when Elaine needed to get a purse and we ate lunch. The second time for an art show with Blossom, Bree and Craig. This time, for the aquarium.

The first thing I noticed when I arrived at the mall was the enormous Mario advertisement, which made me realize even further that Korean ads are a lot different than American ads. See also the 2 plastic surgery ads. I don't know about you, but I really don't think those girls look all that much better in their after photos.

The breast enhancement surgery is my favorite of these...

Random out of order picture: After the aquarium, we went to see "Snow White and the Huntsman" at the movie theater in the mall, which was enormous and fancy, as you can see here. I enjoyed the movie, even though I don't really like Kristen Stewart because I think she is moody and expressionless. At the end, I thought "Oh she wasn't that bad." Then I realized it was because she barely had any dialogue and occasionally smiled.

Anyway, we entered the aquarium here. It was very prettily lit up.

I will point out here that the first time I went was Sunday afternoon with Carrie and the aquarium was insanely busy. You had to wait in line to see each fish and had to fight small children and cameras to see any fish. The second time it was a Wednesday evening and it was barely busy at all. It was basically me, Denise and the two families that were also there. And the Russian tour group that seemed to sprint their entire way through the aquarium, since I only saw them briefly.

I spent most of my first trip creeping on small children, so I could take cute pictures of them, since I couldn't really take pictures without them in the picture anyway. I will now add my commentary to all my pictures. I warn you, there are a lot of pictures.

Here is the hovercraft fish.

He looks like he's photo-bombing, except there's nothing behind him.

Here's a leopard fish.

This is my favorite picture I took. She is adorable and the fish is so perfectly placed.

Here's the crowd of people on Saturday.

Hey, what's up guys? I'm bored.

Korean Water beetle. 물방개. For some reason, this beetle was enormously creepy.

This fish's tank was far too small, considering he was almost as long as the tank. This was Sunday. Wednesday, the fish was no longer in this tank. Clearly he died from lack of movement. Or they put him in a better tank.

These gold fish were amazing. They just looked so friendly!

They were so cute. So, I took about 100 pictures of them.

Ok, maybe only 50 or 60. They're just so cute and happy! They would come look at you and smile. I'm not even joking. They were fascinated with the people looking in on them.

There were also these interesting features of the aquarium, that will also be out of order a bit.

There were fish in a fake sink.

And a fake refrigerator

Inside a fake mirror.

Inside a fake tv.

These were weird looking.

This guy was cute, too.

Here are the goldfish again.

Here are some fish. In a mailbox. With baby Spidermen.

This guy was sprinting around his cage attempting to make an escape.

Here are some fake Amazonian people, since it was in the Amazon World part of the aquarium.

An alligator snapping turtle. He was scary.

Some kids looking up at the rays above them.

These fish were definitely featured on "River Monsters." You know, the show where the guy jumps into rivers to find man-eating fish. Or fish that are known to attack humans.

They look like angry, dinosaur fish.

According to the sign, this is a Beard Dragon.

He posed for the camera completely. Cocked his head and everything.

Here are some piranhas. They were also featured on River Monsters. Obviously.

Please look behind the fish at the person looking at the picture.

Here are some fire eels. They were pretty cool looking.

Electric eel. Bzzzzzz.

But I want to get my hand bitten off!

This guy had quite the chapped, but completely full, set of lips.

I got photobombed by a beaver.

People were very inconsiderate of the fish. Adults were continuously banging on the glass (as you can see here--an adult male was banging on the glass with a Gatorade bottle). It was really bizarre. Workers were watching and never said anything about it!

I also got photo-bombed by a fish. Or the fish got photo-bombed by the ray that was chasing him and smiling.

Here are the 5 million people.

He also looks really smiley.

A pufferfish!

This is called a Chambered Nautilus. It was extremely strange looking and looked like...well you can see that it looks like a giant swimming hermit crab or something. And it was swimming! It was so bizarre.

Here are the pictures from Wednesday's trip now.

Here's the turtle at the entrance. Aka Crush.

Here are some fish in a stop light.

And look! The friendly looking goldfish again!

Here are some fish in a phone booth.

Here are some fish in a toilet.

Fish in a vending machine.

Some prairie dogs.

The dreaded bats, as usual!

Yes, they were sleeping.

This fish was making such a Dori Face from Finding Nemo. It made you realize the researchers really did their jobs. Also, they were really, really, really, really silver. They looked like they were wrapped in aluminum foil.

The puffer fish again

They had tiger sharks at in the shark tank. Apparently they don't eat the other fish?? Yeah right!

They had really adorable manatees, that apparently mother has developed a strong fear of, going so far as to say "Gargle blergh!" when she saw them. But they are just so cute!

They had a hammerhead shark.

They had a cool tunnel that you walk under, while the fish swim over you.

My camera died about halfway through my first trip to the aquarium, probably due to the 5000 pictures I took of the goldfish. So, when I arrived at the octopus tank, I could only take pictures of the octopus with my phone. The octopus was the most active octopus I've ever seen. It was pretty cool to see it swimming around. My phone took ok pictures, but not the best.