Gwangjang Market

Last week while taking in some sites we decided to look for Dongdaemun Market - Seoul's bustling fashion market. When we finally reached the market it was huge. I'd say about 5 NYC blocks long packed with stores and wholesale clothing. It was too big and we were too tired and too hungry to even step foot inside. Instead we headed to a local food market we passed on our way. Gwangjang, the food market, was huge and filled with food stalls that are seperated into 4 sections. The first section was the least appetizing, to us. It was the blood sausage and pigs foot area. Lot's of pig snouts and feet sticking out of boiling cauldrons. We weren't convinced that this was the place for us. We kept going and found the fried section. What doesn't taste good fried? All kinds of vegetables, potatoes and fish were being battered and deep fried and served with one of our favorite Korean foods, pa jun, a scallion pancake. Our dinner prospects were getting better. We went to another stretch of the market and found the sashimi and fish area. This looked good but we thought we were too new to the area to eat raw fish from a street vendor - even if hundreds of other people were doing it. And there were hundreds of people at the market. It was so packed that it was hard to get passed one food stall to the next.

We decided to go back to the fried foods section and we got a hearty variety of foods for 5,000 won ($4.25) plus a bottle of Soju (more on soju later) for 3,000 won ($2.55). We sat on the heated benches surrounding the food stall with our dinner and soju and tried to converese in what little ways we could with the people around us (more on trying to make friends in Seoul later). We found the food in Seoul to be relatively cheap so far but this complete dinner for $6.80 was fantastic. And to top it off the woman who cooked our food gave us a free fried fish and some tea to top it all off.