South Korea – May 2023
I’m just about to finish up some work on my computer when my friend Eric texts me: “Are you free? Let’s go to Incheon!”. An hour later, he picks me up at Sinae’s house in Seoul, and we drive west on the Gyeongin Expressway. Since it’s almost dinner time, we first head to Incheon Chinatown, where I finally want to try the famous Jjajangmyeong (noodles in black bean sauce). Once we find a parking place, we stroll through the main street, only to find many restaurants closed. But finally, we are lucky and get a table at a place set in an impressive building, painted in red. With the red lanterns lining the street, it really does feel more like China than Korea here.
But let’s get to the food: while I am already set on Jjajangmyeong, Eric takes a bit longer to decide. When the plates finally arrive, I can’t contain my excitement and immediately dig in. The sauce is absolutely delicious and refreshingly different from any other Korean dish I have tried. Both of us are quite hungry, so we wolf down our dinner and continue exploring a bit of the neighbourhood. I get some bubble tea at a small café and then Eric takes me to the nearby seaside. Here, we watch the sunset behind Incheon Island, on which the city’s international airport is located.
But the sunset isn’t the main attraction in Wolmido that Eric wants to show me. After a bit of searching, we find the theme park on Wolmido Culture Street. Eric has been telling me, that the park is a popular spot for young Koreans – especially in the evening time. Apparently, videos showing some of the rides went viral on different social media platforms, and now everyone hopes for a few seconds of fame. For now, judging by the car park, it seems to be a slow day. We enjoy the view of the sky painted in all shades of pink by the setting sun while looking for a suitable rollercoaster to start with.
Eric really wants to try the round one that spins around in a circle with seats on the edge. However, there are no other people to be seen at all, and it feels a bit awkward with just the 2 of us on there. So we continue looking for another ride and end up at a swing style of rollercoaster. Again, there are no other people waiting. We buy 2 tickets and show the tokens to the man operating the ride’s large arm with 8 seats attached on one end. He shows us to 2 neighbouring seats and presses down the safety guards over our shoulders. However, when the latch on the bottom clicks into my seat, I can feel that there is still quite some room between the plastic structure and my shoulders.
Eric is nervous too. We don‘t really know what to expect, since we haven‘t seen other people taking the ride before. The arm slowly starts swinging from left to right and back again. The man who took our tokens comments in Korean, Eric laughs and I try to enjoy the sunset view of Incheon Island. Everytime the arm swings up higher and my belly starts to drop more and more each time we go back down. I scream: „When does it stop going higher?“. Eric replies with: „I don‘t know!“. Suddenly the night sky becomes visible between my dangling feet and the pink sunset colours disappear from my view. We are upside down high above the themepark and the ride stops for a second.
Then we decend rapidly on the other side, before being lifted back up into the looping a couple more times. I‘m glad that we ate something before, this definitely gets my adrenaline going. After overcoming the first shock, we are enjoying ourselves and screaming our lungs out. Back on the ground, Eric tells me that he didn‘t expect us to be going into full looping. He thought it would be a harmless one to start with. On an adrenaline high, we then decide to just go for it at the spinning coaster, even though there still are no other people around. Again, we hand in our tokens to a man at the booth and he tells us to sit down anywhere on the padded edge of the plate.
There are no belts used on this one, and if we don’t want to fall from the seats, we should hold tight onto the bar behind us. We strategically don’t sit too close to each other to have more control over our movements. Then the plate slowly starts turning counterclockwise. The man in the booth starts talking to Eric in Korean. I understand that he’s asking about our age and how we know each other. I just about hear Eric’s reply about us first meeting in Laos, but that‘s about it. Then the spinning gets too strong to focus on the foreign language and my physical workout begins.
Using all the strength I can muster up in my arms, I try to hold on thight. But the sudden stops and bumping motions applied by the operator are adding extra force to be counteracted. We try different techniques to attempt to keep control. I put my legs up on the padded seat, which makes it easier to hold onto the rail with both hands, but now I feel dizzy from the circluar motion. So legs back down. But this is getting really hard on my hands. A sudden stop. I lose my grip and slide over towards where Eric is sitting. He‘s struggling too, holding on tight, but losing control over his lower body. His feet seem to be losing touch with the ground more and more. Then we suddenly stop, before the spinning continues in the other direction.
I think the ride only lasted a few minutes, but to me it felt like eternity and I‘m exhausted. For Eric it must have been even harder, being put on the spot with the operator interviewing him for the whole ride. However, that‘s exactly why people come here. Once we get off and walk around more in the Themepark, and closer to the sea we finally encounter the place Eric was looking for originally. The spinning coaster looks identical to the one we just got off from, but there are a lot more people on it. Luckily there are some benches set up for spectators and we sit down for a bit. The procedure is the same, but with 20 people on the ride at once, some funny things happen.
The operators do their best to make people loose grip and stagger across the spinning plate. Potentially landing on the other side in someone else‘s lap. Sometimes people are kind enough to reach out and lend a hand. Of course, this is expected of men when women are struggling. But it doesn‘t always work out. Sometimes the helper himself is then dragged into the middle by the spinning force. And to top it off, the operator at this ride is on fire with his comments. So Eric and I stay for a while and watch, but quickly decide that we are too tired for another round of adrenaline.
Instead we venture over to the food stalls, enjoy the night view of the coast and take some commemorative pictures at one of the photo booths. What a fun evening in Incheon. Well worth the 1 hour drive from Seoul.
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