On January 24th, I took a nice Sunday walk in Dongtan Lake Park. Now you may be confused and thinking, hey wait a minute, January 24th was a Monday, and you would be right, except I took my walk last year.
Dongtan Lake is in Dongtan Lake Park which is in Hwaseong City, Korea. Lake Parks are parks with small lakes in them and usually, it means you can walk around the lake. In Korea at least, there are hardly any natural lakes and this is technically a reservoir (it has a damn on one end).
According to the KTO:
Dongtan Lake Park is a well-being space within the city with large grass field, picnic area, phytoncide forest and more along the lake. There are walking trails along the container bridge, various customized benches, and beautiful landscape to enjoy. Other facilities include sports facilities, water playground, and a large water fountain with a fountain show.
If that doesn't get you pumped, for my virtual tour of the lake with a focus of ducks on thin ice, I don't know what to say. So buckle up, you are about to be overwhelmed with stimulus.
I enjoy watching ducks walk because they are very awkward at the best of times. Waddle, Waddle! On ice, it's even more interesting, because they slip and slide. There are a few ducks that hang around Korea all year, and the ducks I noticed were the Eastern spot-billed duck. They are very common here and if you see a duck, there is a good chance it's this fellow. You can easily tell because the tip of their black beaks are bright yellow.
I also enjoy watching them sleep. I always wondered how do their legs and beaks stay warm? They don't have a fat mass of feathers there, but they just tuck those in to sleep. These guys are well adapted to the ice. I'm guessing unless you are an animal rights activist, and especially if you live somewhere cold, you probably have a feather pillow or down jacket. But chances are it's not made from one of these fellows. Let's leave it to sleep on the ice.
Ducks are good at floating. My guess is that the water is freezing cold, but they don't care. Their feathers keep them dry and warm and any water just slides off them almost instantly. I enjoyed watching them try to get on and off the ice, especially, tiny ice cubes.
Look at these strange fellows. Nope, they aren't ducks, these are Eurasian Coots. They are also very common in Korea and live here all year round. They are easy to notice because of their bright white beaks, and bright white 'frontal shield' above their beaks. Actually, there is an expression "bald as a coot". Although they sort of look like ducks, they don't have webbed feet. They also have freaky red eyes and their babies are really ugly. I like them, they are even more awkward when walking on ice.
Anyway, enough of the coots, back to the ducks, I just found this photo to be nice. It's neat seeing them stand in the puddle on the nice. The one duck seems to be looking down wondering why he is standing and not swimming, while the other duck is inspecting it. Ducks sure know a lot about swimming, but I'm not sure if they understand what ice is.
If there weren't ducks standing on the nice, it may be hard to actually nice this is ice in some places, especially where it is covered with a bit of water. My guess is if the ducks weren't around, the entire lake would be frozen. But I can't help wonder, if they fall asleep, on thin ice, do they ever wake up floating? For a human, that would be a rude awakening, but for a duck, maybe it's nice.
As you can see the lake park is now surrounded by apartments. This is a very new neighbourhood, the south half of the lake still has a lot of buildings under construction and those in the north are only a few years old. Because the trees are still small and because it is winder, those houses are far to exposed, just like the ducks. Also, the path is far too close for those houses in particular, In some cases, so close, I was meters from their windows, and there are probably thousands of people walking around the lake on the weekends. Since the park is open 24 hours a day, if they have their blinds open, there is no privacy.
There is more to the lake than just ducks and apartments, the other side is far busier. The shopping mall is called Lake Como. I think they tried to get the Lake's name changed to that, but most people are getting sick of this kind of stupid marketing, it looks nothing like the famous Lake Como. If you are wondering the high rise apartments above the shopping mall cost like 1~1.5 million USD. The smaller apartments in the back are like $ 600k~1M and I have no clue what those low rises apartments in the previous picture are worth.
I just quickly walked at that end of the lake, there are too many people at that end. Also, the dumb sculpture and a "musical light fountain" didn't give the vibe I was looking for. I can't stand those, they are so tacky. There are way too many of them in lake parks in Korea.
Maybe you can get an idea of how crowded the lake is from here. That's why I stayed at this end of the lake, just like the ducks.
I give this lake park a 3/10 for being too new, too busy and too built up. It's also not easy to get to.
All pictures were taken with my Sony A6000, except the last photo which was taken with my phone.
I've decided to pin this to #pinmapple, it's been a while since I travelled anywhere interesting, but from what I can see it's the first pin in the area. Oddly, the pineapple map is really outdated, they must use the old google stuff. Here is a proper map if you want to find the place. It's not easy to get to because it's a couple of kilometres from the nearest train station. But, if you want to find the place, just go to Dongtan Station (Suseo LRT) or Osan University Station (Seoul Subway Line 1), then grab a cab or a bus.