Jegi-dong fruit and vegetable market has all the lively activity and
down-to-earth scruffiness of a market in a developing country – which it’s easy
to forget that the Republic of Korea was, not so long ago. Ajoshis push
around the big, flat wooden carts stacked with their boxes of fruit. Some of
the stallholders doze off behind their piles of goods, while others shout out
sales pitch.
We were given slices of peach to try. “Look! So delicious, even
the foreigners want some!” shouted the stallholder as my two friends each came
away with a bag.
At Gwangjang food market we saw dog meat. Disgusting and
fascinating at the same time, it was proof of a stereotype about Korea’s
otherwise near-peerless cuisine that I had presumed was long-extinct in real
life. But there it was, pre-cooked and kept under red heat-lamps to keep it
warm, the paws still attached, a kind of gruesome confirmation of the identity
of the animal.
There was a plethora of dried fish and other types of seafood. One
shop sold pigs’ heads with the tongue still hanging out. I bought a big
bean-shoot omelette from a seafood stand for the equivalent of about £2.50, and
three of us shared it for lunch.
Next, we looked around the vintage clothes market, a place that
would delight anyone who has ever picked up a snazzy jumper at Beirut’s Souq al-Ahad, for here were enough fine wooly specimens to warm many a chilly winter
night. In addition to jumpers, there were shoes with thick rubber soles in
colours that didn’t match; bright vinyl jackets with cartoon characters, dragons or baseball logos on the back; and a wide range of army surplus gear.
Shopping done and dusted, we took a bus home. It patiently
progressed through the Saturday afternoon traffic, passing streets of shops
selling mountaineering gear, fast food restaurants and convenience stores. At
one point we went by an inner-city golf driving range, fifty-foot high nets on
all sides catching the drives of two storeys’ worth of practising golfers not
spending their weekends by ruining a good walk. There is a lot to see when you
travel over ground rather than on the metro. So much so that you almost
fail to notice the shopping malls.
