South Korea: Taepo Fish Market

Saturday afternoon, we headed to Taepo Fish Market which was along a street by the sea. As we walked in, immediately on our right were stalls selling tempura (Japanese style seafood or vegetables that have been battered and deep fried).

On our left were shops promoting all kinds of dried seafood.

I planned to survey those items and their prices in different shops with Mum, then only we decided what to buy. But when Mum saw some aunties and uncles from our group entering one of the first shops, she quickly followed them.

While they were bargaining with the shopkeepers, I happily tasted free samples of dried oysters, anchovies, seaweeds, etc.

Later, we saw other aunties and uncles coming out from another shop further down with plastic bags. Mum talked to them and realised that we had paid 10% more than they for exactly the same product.

Towards the end of the market were stalls of fresh fish, crabs, squids, octopus, sea cucumbers, shells, etc. The sellers were mostly women. I guessed their husbands must be the ones who brought back those seafood from the sea.

It was a pity that we had just had our seafood lunch in a restaurant before we came. Otherwise, I would have loved to take a couple of sticks of tempura or taste those things with funny appearance boiled in a wok.

Sitting inside a restaurant behind one of the stalls to have a fresh seafood feast while appreciating the sea view would have been a nice experience to me even though I was not a steamboat fan.

Before we got back to our bus, Mum and I bought six tteok (rice cakes) with three different colours and flavours for dessert, which were the only sweet stuff we could find from the fish market.

After sea creatures, now it was the turn to visit land animals.