The Main Market

We thought we had been to the market until we found out that every 4th and 9th day (14th, 19th, 24th...) there is a huge market in downtown Changwon. We have since been there just about every opportunity we had and it's not that hard since I work less than a 1 minute walk from this market.

"The Market" is a big 3 floor building that has lots of no frills shops and on market day tons of local farmers and others surround this building with their little booths. There are so many booths that the sidewalks for 1-2 blocks from the market centre are filled with more vendors. Inside the building they mostly sell the following: what looks like knock off clothes, homemade pillows and blankets, some bulk food, frozen and dried fish/seafood, shoes, bags, flowers, knick knacks and a strange kind of grocery store in the basement where we managed to finally find some familiar spices like basil, parsley and oregano.

The first time we went to "The Market" we were so excited that we spent $60 Cnd on produce and eggs. What would have been 1 month or more worth of produce back home lasted us 7-8 days here. We bought 10 English cucumbers for $4 Cnd, 30 eggs for $5 Cnd and 8 big Asian pears for $5 Cnd among other things. Some of the deals seemed like it was the same price as we would have seen back home, however for here it was a good deal.

A side note, whenever we walk around this market we think of John. All the good products at the best prices available and if you speak Korean you could haggle a little. This place had John written all over it.

Kimchi is the most consumed product in South Korea. Koreans eat kimchi (pickled cabbage) at just about every meal so it would only make sense to be able to find some kimchi at "The Market" and we did. There are several stands that sold kimchi but we have yet to buy any and I don't think we will since we always get kimchi as a side dish with whatever we order at any restaurant. This booth had kimchi of all flavours and several other pickled items like whole garlics.

Some of the vendors yell out their deals like you see this fish guy doing. He was quite entertaining and when someone would buy his long scary looking fish he would clean them 3 at a time, chop them in into 3 big pieces each, salt them and bag them for sale all in under 20 seconds. It's not that he had "the mad skills" but all fish guys would do this at that speed. We also found a shop on the side of the building that had hanging pork. There were 3 butchers chopping away yelling their deals, which kind of felt like I was at the Korean version of"Licks". (the hamburger place that the employees sing songs while you wait in line...)

I know the prices look confusing but we just take off one "0" and add a $ sign and it's pretty close to the conversion. (5000 won = $5.00 cdn) So far we bought a pillow the size of Angèle for $17 Cnd and a new pair of no name shoes for Pierre at $17 Cnd. We haven't found any good priced electronics yet, which is what we were hoping to find.

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Tastes Like Korea

I recently had a post that briefly explained our "tastes like Korea" saying and I felt I could elaborate on it. On most street corners you could find a vendor that is set up to have some parts of what you see these vendors selling. They have 3-5 things cooking or boiling and most of it smells like boiling fish water. Sounds delicious doesn't it?

We have tried some things and the one that we like is a chicken kebob that is grilled and constantly sauced to perfection. It's pretty good but it's very spicy, John would love this. We have also tried the silk worm larvas (see picture) which is "boon-day-guie" in Korean and it wasn't the worst thing we ate since we've been here but it's close and we won't be eating it again. Also, we think "boon-day-guie" is one of the leading causes of the wonderful aroma in the air near these markets that we have come to call "tastes like Korea".

We have seen a lot of dried fish or jerky style fish. We have no idea what kind of fish this is and I don't think we will ever get to know what it tastes like. We have also seen huge bags full of dried up minnows and we can't figure out what they do with them.

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Dick Sticks, Booby Bands and Body Yogurt....

Could this be an embarrassing purchase at the grocery store or a novelty shop? Nah, just a regular day of shopping in South Korea! This was actually some purchases that we could've made at the market, all in a day's work.

To our surprise, Dick Sticks, which can be purchased at the bargain price of about $1.50, are actually chocolate covered bread sticks. We're guessing they wanted to say, Dip Sticks, but we could be wrong. This could be a very effective marketing ploy. It sure made us look twice!

I know what you're thinking, Booby Bands? Maybe some fancy nipple covers? Nope, just some cute band-aids for kids. A whole pack for just $0.40! Perhaps they meant Boo-boo Bands, for when you fall and get a boo-boo. The best part is that in smaller font under the name, it reads "Spring is Booby's season!" We think there might be an entire line of Booby products.

A little Body Yogurt to top it all off? This moisturizer must be a little thicker than the line of 'body milk' creams that we sell back home. There's something about the word yogurt, however, that sounds less appealing...

So, a clever marketing ploy? Or another case of Konglish? I hope they're not paying these translators too much money!

Busan Fish Market - South Korea

We have seen many markets in South Korea and most have a variety of booths that sell different things but in Busan along the ocean shores there is a market that is strictly fish. I didn't see anything that looked like what I would call fish for sale though. This picture shows less then half the booths that were set up and everyone was selling the same things.

The second picture really reminded me of, well, I'm sure you see it too.

The third is full of small octopuses that people eat raw and alive. I've only seen a few video clips on "youtube" but they dip these little guys in a sauce and eat them head first. The tentacles wiggle around their faces and try to get out but of course they fail since they are being eaten alive. I'm told that if you don't chew the tentacles enough they can stick in your throat and choke you. I'm not a "save the animals" kind of guy but this is cruel in my opinion.

The forth is squid which we see a lot and it's funny to see them swim in tanks as they don't maneuver much and just have a big burst of speed in 1 direction and hit the tank walls.