Eating Live Octopus at the Noryangjin Fish Market

Every Thursday my friends and I get together for Thirsty Thursday, we try to do dinner and drinks in every area around Seoul.  This past thursday we decided to head to the Noryangjin Fish Market for some fresh fish and eat some live octopus for the first time.  Let me tell ya, it was quite the experience.

When you get the the Noryangjin fish market, it's packed with fish vendors trying to sell customers what they have.  You can buy live snapper, salmon, flounder, scallops, king crab, shrimp, octopus, etc.  My girlfriend Haley and I ended up wondering around  drooling over king crab while our friends who were a bit fluent in Korean were bargaining with the vendor about what type of fish we wanted and how much it was going to cost.  We ended up getting a big flounder, big snapper, two small fish that were kinda like tuna, 9 jumbo shrimps, 5 baby octopus' and scallops for 110,000 won.  That was split between 9 people so it came to 12,000 won each ($11.00 CAD).

After we had purchased our fresh fish, there's a guy who takes you upstairs to a restaurant where you have your fish pre-pared and served to you at no cost.  Our fish was served sashimi style, our shrimp and scallops were grilled and the fish remains are made into a delicious spicy stew.

Our appetizer was live baby octopus, it was served freshly cut and still moving around on the plate (like worms squirming around) seasoned with seasame oil.  It was so weird and kind of freaky seeing my live baby octopus appetizer moving around on my plate.  I found it difficult to pick up with my chopsticks cause it was moving and sticking to the plate.  After I put it in my mouth, all I can feel was the tentical moving around and sticking to my cheek and tongue, you really have to make sure you chew it well before you swallow.  It actually wasn't that bad, it was delicious

DMZ

On November 1st I took a trip to the DMZ.  This is probably the closest I'll ever get to North Korea, that's if I'll ever have the guts to take a trip over there.

 

ImjinGak

ImjinGak is as far as civilians can go to the North by themselves without permission.  Imjingak was built to console those who had to leave their homes in the North. 

The 3rd Tunnel

This was first discovered in 1978, was dug by North Korea to infiltrate into the south.  It is 2m in width, 2 m in height, 1,635m in length, and 435 m from MDL.  The floor of the tennel is covered with rubger mats and the wall with charcoal which was applied to give some possibility to the North Korean claim that the tunnel was part of an abandoned mine.  The tunnel would allow about 10,000 armed or 30,000 unarmed soldiers to invade Seoul within one hour.

 

Dora Observatory

This allows visitors to get a view of both the DMZ and the Kesung city (the second largest city of North Korea).  You can also see a "Propaganda village" Kijongdong designed to give visitors the impression the North Korea is a prosperous nation.

 

If you want to take pictures, you can only take pictures at a certain distance, I guess they don't want tourists taking pictures of the village. 

I'd have to say, I was a bit disappointed about the DMZ trip.  I guess I thought it would have been more intense, maybe seeing more soldiers with guns walking around or something.  My favourite part about the trip was walking through the 3rd tunnel, it's so interesting to see it and experience it in person.

Playfighting in Hongdae Park

About two and a half weeks ago, my boyfriend Brad was play fighting with his friends in Hongdae Park.  He hurt it so bad that the pain in his knee was unbearable, so his friend and I ended up having to take him to the hospital to get it checked out.  After 9 hours in the emergency room 300,000 won worth of x-rays and a 650,000 won MRI, the outcome was a broken tibia in two places and a torn MCL.  The doctor said that Brad needed to have surgery done on his knee to have it fixed up since the injury so serious.  We asked the doctoer how much surgery would cost, we thought maybe it would be a couple of hundred thousand won since he had medical coverage with his school.  Turns out, the cost of the surgery was going to be 5 Million won (that's about $5,000 CAD).  That's 5 Million won including the medical coverage.  Yikes!

 

After a 5 hour surgery and 3 nights at the hospital, Brad is doing well.  He's hobbling around on cruches and sporting an awesome knee brace.  Serves him right for being drunk play fighting in Hongdae Park.