Sokcho, Korea

When Dave's conference was over, we headed out of Daegu to our next destination, Sokcho.  This city on the east coast of Korea made the perfect place to stay while we took day trips into Seoraksan National Park.  I'll talk about that later.  We took the bus to get to Sokcho, definitely not as fast as the bullet train we took our first day.  Seven hours later, we had arrived and we took to the streets to find out about this new place.  Sokcho is known for its slice raw fish markets.  You heard me right people.  I think it is called Sashimi in Japan.  In the picture below are the bins of live fish that customers choose from.  The fish are sliced and plated right there.  You can see people seated at tables in the background.  We "eye shopped" there and made our way down to the next sliced raw fish market just down the beach a way.

I was interested in these giant cement shore breakers that were all along the coast.

 

You can really see how large they are here with people climbing and fishing from them.

At the next fish market, we sat and watched as people negotiated for which fish they wanted and how much they were willing to pay for them.  Although we really couldn't understand what was been said, we could tell it was very common and quite a fine art to haggle for you fish at the raw fish market.

 

Later that evening we came across someone who spoke English, the first we had found in days.  He told us that a basket of fish like the one below would cost about 60,000 won or roughly $60.  This is what would be purchased as a meal for two people.

Here one of the sales people is trying to negotiate a sale.  She would show the basket and they would talk, then she would change the fish in the basket and talk again until finally both were in agreement.  Then, the fish were taken to a nearby table and sliced immediately and plated for eating.  It was really fascinating.



 

There were tanks with all sorts of fish, squid and octopus.  We came across this big guy and couldn't believe how big his was.  The seller indicated that it was alright to touch it.  I am sure he was amused with the shock on my face when I first saw this octopus in his tank.  Have you ever touched an octopus.  It is amazing.  It is hard to describe, but the body is super soft while the suction cups are very strong.

 

There was an abundance of crab as well which we learned came from Russia and was being sold for about $30 a pound.

 

So after an evening of eye shopping at the fish market we opted to get our dinner from the vendors selling fried fish.

 

We got 4 super tastey jumbo prawns, two fried pototates and one calamari and all that was only $8.  As exciting as trying sashimi would be, I was happy with my fried dinner.

We came across those Cicada grubs again.  This time they were cooked.  Dave tried one again...still not very good.