Last weekend I had a fun date at the Ulsan Whale museum.
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| There's no shade, so bring your own hat or steal someone else's |
I took the express bus from Dongdaegu to Ulsan, and it took a little longer than expected. The bus to the whale museum stops right in front of the bus terminal ACROSS THE STREET from where the express bus terminal is. Buses 246 or 406 will get you there. My Cashbee card worked happily on the bus. The bus ride is pretty long, and you may get the feeling you've missed your stop when you go past big whale signs and whale sculptures. Do not be fooled. Ulsan is full of whales. It used to be full of real ones, but let's just blame Japan for that too, ok?
When you finally get to the whale museum, you'll see its big modern buildings standing out against the relatively nothing-ful town/dorpie it is in. It's right on the water, which is nice. Tickets were pretty cheap - we got the packagee deal which included the whale museum, the whale experience building and a 4dx whale movie.
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| The immigration office |
The bus stop is in front of the Ulsan Immigration Office, where nice whales can get their passports stamped before being brutally murdered and served for lunch at the restaurant next door.
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| Yum |
Wait, what? If you don't want to eat whale, there's a convenience store that sells squid, nuts, fruit, junk food and ramyeon. They also have fried chicken cunningly hidden by the door.
The museum is more of a museum about whaling rather than an environmentally friendly save the whale kind of place. It didn't seem to pass much negative judgement on whaling; instead, a cute cartoon is shown to kids about how whalers were death-defying heroes who struggled to bring in the whale that would help their village survive through the winter. Fair point, I guess.
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| Happy fun dolphin time! |
There are lots of cute and fluffy things about this museum. There's even a whole section about how Korean Dokdo is. But there are non-cute and fluff-less things as well, like porpoise fetuses in jars and the contents of a whale's stomach.
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| Best viewed before eating lunch |
There are also some friendly, poopy dolphins playing in a tank for you to watch. They poo a LOT. The 4DX movie... Well, telling you anything would result in spoilers and I take a firm stand against that.
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| Ready for some 4D experiencing |
Finally, between April and October you can go whale-watching/water-staring on a boat for about 20 000 won, next to the museum.
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| Whale watching info. Click to embiggen |
We didn't have the nerve to eat whale meat this time, and the whale watching season was over, so I think we'll have to go back to stare at the sea and hope to catch a glimpse of our lunch in the wild next time.
