Seoul Korea Day 2

Seoul, South Korea
Day 2 (27th November 2010)

Today's itinerary is one that I am so looking forward to for the entire trip as we are heading to Namdaemun, Myeong Dong and Noryangjin. Many of you have heard of the former two places as it is famous for flea marketing and the younger & modern shopping street. You may be thinking, what is Noryangjin and might be hitting the Google bar to see what it is. Just to give you a head up, it is a wet market in Seoul whereby you will definitely love if you cook &/or love seafood but may not like it so much otherwise.

How to Get There

You can take the subway line 9 or line 1 and stop at Noryangjin station. If you are taking line 9, once you've reached, look for the exit towards line 1 and once out of the station, look for a flyover. You will see a flight of stairs up to Line 1 subway station. Take the flight of stairs and don't stop at the station at the top, there is another flight of stairs up. Keep going up and you will see this looooong walkway. Take the walkway and walk all the way to the other end whereby you will see a car park and you will be greeted by, depending on each individual, a whiff or an overwhelming fish smell. At the car park, look for an exit and take the staircase to go down to Noryangjin wet market!

[Tips: If all else fail, ask someone for the location of Noryangjin su san shi jang]

This is taken from the 2nd floor of the wet market where you will
see many restaurants. But more importantly, this is where you will find the toilet!

The restaurants on the second floor will more than often have
one of their employees who can speak foreign language stationed
downstairs so that in the event that the vendors doesn't understand
what tourist like me wanted, these people come to our rescue!
You are not obligated to bring your purchase to their restaurant,
but as a courtesy, you may want to obliged them with a visit.

I read somewhere that if you go early in the morning and I mean early as in 3-4am, you will be able to see the auctioning of sea produce going on in the market. If you are there, the word of caution is to NOT yawn as it may be seen as a bidding gesture so keep the sleep fairy at home ;).

The facial mask does help a bit with the smell it is not the reason
why my wife is wearing it. The reason is because during our visit,
not only was it cold, the wind is strong. These mask are excellent
to keep the brutal chill wind from stinging on our cheeks.

Prices are generally lower than supermarket and
you can actually see their prices by enlarging the photo below.

There are many stalls at the wet market and one thing I realised that is especially unique to Seoul and that is, all of them stalls of the same product congregate together! I mean, if you go Namdaemun and saw a stall selling ginseng, it is likely that at least another 10 stalls are all connected together. If you are in Dongdaemun and saw a stall selling bedsheets, you can expect to see the next 10 other shops selling similar products next to each other! Likewise in Noryangjin, when you see one stall selling crustacean, all of them congregate together. But fret not as there are hundreds of stalls around here selling all sorts of sea produce e.g. life fish, crustaceans, fish fillet, giant octopus tentacles and if you can't find it here, it is likely that that particular sea produce that you are looking for does not exist in Korea.

This Korean lady allowed me to take photos even though I didn't
purchase anything from her. Those things stuck on the aquarium
at the middle of the photo are abalones and depending on
their sizes, prices start from KRW2,000 upwards.

Does anyone know what are those creatures that looked like a
cross-breed between earthworms and sea-cucumbers? Kind of disgusting...

Snails are common here and it looked pretty much the same as
those eaten in ASEAN region e.g. Malaysia and Singapore.

Remember that I mentioned to you that most stalls that sells the same produce are situated side-by-side? With a setting like this, one can help but use it as their bargaining chip but mind you these vendors are no pushover too! Be reasonable and if the price quoted is not one that you like to deal with, just smile and tell them "Kamsah hamnida"(Thank you) and move on. I had some successful attempt in bargaining for a good price and also a bad encounter. For the latter, I have been offered a bargain of the day for some abalones but thought that I could still go for a lower price, the vendor got angry and asked me to go... after trying my luck at other stalls, I realised that I should just go back to that stall and buy my abalones from there... I did!

This is the korean auntie that got a little put-off by my haggling.
After I counter offered a ridiculous price, she just throw the abalones
back into the tank and muttered something in Korean that I would
not bother to check what it meant. Anyway, I got 2 medium size
abalones from her for KRW8,000 and a basket of clams for another KRW5,000.

A PRC lady came to my rescue while bargaining with the vendors and eventually gave me a business card bearing the restaurant's name that she works in and ushered me to the restaurant. I told her I would like to look around a little bit more when really, I am trying to shake her off :p. Anyway, I brought my purchase upstairs and try to look for the restaurant that was recommended by another blogger and guess what? It is the restaurant that the PRC lady was working in... great, just killed two birds with one stone. The restaurant name is Jinnam Sushi Restaurant and charges are reasonable. Our bill worked out to be KRW 30,000 which is not exactly cheap but reasonable.

You will also find many stalls selling raw oysters on a tray at
great price! I got a tray myself (My wife don't fancy oyster) at
only KRW8,000! Taste fresh and yummo~!

We go sashimi for one of the abalone while the other goes
into the clear broth hotpot. The texture of the abalone is fresh and
crunchy. Not really appealing to me. The one in the hotpot is more
to my preference. Slightly soft, chewy and feels right in the mouth
Clams in the clear broth hotpot. The koreans like their hotpot
without salt as they liked the original taste of the ingredients.
At first touch, it tasted bland but after a few sips the natural taste
of the clams became more obvious and without knowing it,
we almost cleared the whole pot of broth. If it is not due to the
excessive quantity of food, we would've surely licked the pot clean.

This is the best bargain that I got at only KRW22,000
which works out to be SGD26.80 or USD 20. Prior to this, we have
purchased several Boston lobsters which weigh around 300gm
at SGD25 a piece. My wife told me "Its not really that cheap
compared to the the Boston lobsters that we've got". I simply
replied her "This one is 1+Kg" and she is satisfied with the answer.

One more tip before I signed off for this post. As Noryangjin is a wet market, wear proper foot wear like boots or any waterproof sneakers and note that any jacket that you may wear will catch the smell of the wet market and trust me when I say it is nowhere near pleasant. So to prevent yourself from wearing that great-smelling jacket throughout your vacation (If you must wear a jacket) try to schedule this place nearer to the end of your trip and pay a visit to the laundry when you get back to your country. We learnt it the hard way...

I will continue with my visit to Namdaemun and Myeong Dong in another post and I hoped you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed eating those seafood.

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