Well after Saturday's visit to Wonchon Amusement Park a day in the bathtub would have seemed exciting, but with the sun shining and the whole day ahead of us we decided to go to Carribbean Bay. Carribbean Bay is a water park that is linked to the Samsung-owned Everland amusement park, which we visited last year. The park was only a 40 minute bus ride away from Suwon, and we were able to travel in a nice express bus with air conditioning- a pleasant break from the sweaty subway system.
Can you imagine travelling for 40 minutes without watching TV? Me neither, and luckily the bus was showing some Mapagi skits. The passengers were in hysterics, you have to admit it is pretty funny.
Of course, since it was a water park I wasn't carrying my camera around all day so all of my pictures were taken after the park closed. Trust me, it was busier than the pictures suggest, but the wait times weren't too bad for most of the rides. Later in the season admission prices peak around 60,000 won, but we bought our tickets for 40,000, which seemed pretty reasonable. The park was quite nice and pretty similar to water parks I've visited in Florida.
One thing I really liked was that you could buy a wristband with a bar code on it, purchase some credits, and then use the wristband to pay for drinks and snacks within the park. It was much easier than running back to your locker for cash everytime you were thirsty. Of course the money disappeared very quickly on hot dogs and swim caps...
Yes, we bought swim caps. The park was not without it's random korean rules. The wave pool, which at it's deepest point was waist-high, required a life jacket! I mean, I'm not the best swimmer in the world but.... really! A life jacket? I don't think koreans as a whole are good swimmers- perhaps they don't have many oppourtunities to swim. There aren't many public pools. Most people wore life jackets on the waterslides as well, even though the water at the end was -again- only waist high. No shirts though- take off the shirt, put the life jacket back on, and then you are permitted to go down the slide. And a swim cap was required to go on any water slides, or even the lazy river in which you float around on an inner tube and your head never touches the water. These rules were slightly annoying, but amusing nonetheless. And don't you think I look great in that swim cap?
The park had 2 wave pools, one inside, and one large pool outside. There were 9 waterslides, and on most of them you could use a single or double innertube to go down. It was fun riding with a friend because we went with Shaun, Hannah and Shanda, but the heaviest person had to ride in the back of the tube (which we didn't realize at first) and the ride attendants didn't have a lot of tact when it came to asking who was the heaviest. "Who is heavy??" they said. "Who is chubby-chubby????" Really!
There were some really nice hot tubs, each with different supposed health benefits. There were strawberry, jasmine and lemon baths. I can't say that they smelled like their names, but they were warm and relaxing. One of the baths had seats around all the sides, which you could sit in to be massaged by a bunch of different pressure jets.
At the end of the night we were satisfied with our day of fun which more than made up for the scary ghost park the day before. It was about 30 degrees all day so it was the perfect day and I got a little tanned but not burnt like I usually do. It was good to relax this weekend, since the students that arrived on Monday could only be described as... creatures. Creatures who are very very "englishy no". Mel's students don't even know the alphabet but have to put on a drama production Friday. Wish us luck!
But really, who is "chubby-chubby"?
Is it you?
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