Busan : Jagalchi Fish Market

13
Nov
2015

Busan : Jagalchi Fish Market

I always love to travel during winter time. Looking at the calendar, I will choose the weather over the destination. Make sure the places that I wanted to go is either cold or cooling if not I will just reschedule until their winter season. Reason being I sweat easily and I sweat a lot… I am a polar bear I cannot survive under hot weather.. The time when I last travelled to Korea is during winter, mid of winter. That’s by far the lowest temperature in my travel list except for the 2 days in Mount Fuji Japan with the temperature of -3 in 2013. However, Busan is a beautiful place. Its still cold but not as cold as Jeju or Seoul. We only had 2 days in Busan so it will be just summarized into 2 blog posts.

We arrived late + the taxi driver lost his way to our hotel = We checked in around 11pm late night. All we had was a good supper and we headed to bed. Good thing is.. We stay just beside Haeundae Market and there’s certainly plenty of things to eat and shop during the day time. (Next post)

The next morning we explored the famous Jagalchi Fish Market. Jagalchi Fish Market is the largest seafood market in Korea situated right next to the Busan Harbour. So theres where you can get your fresh seafood. Most of the people who sell fish here are women. They are called “Jagalchi Ajumma” means middle age or married women.

So how to go to Jagalchi Fish Market? :

Jagalchi Station (Busan Subway line 1), Exit 10, Turn right to Jagalchi 3(sam)-gil street, walk for 5 min and turn left to arrive at Jagalchi Market.. or.. you can just follow the crowd.

They always say : We can smell the market before you even reached there. YES. I agreed. It’s not the smelly wet market we had in Malaysia.. Its the smell of the sea. I love it!

Jagalchi Market has a lot of sections. The fresh seafood, the dried seafood and the restaurants. So the first thing that appeared in front of us is actually a restaurant with big tanks of king crabs.

And so, walk straight and let the market tour begins.

All kinds of seafood you can think of. The ribbon fish!! I only get to know this fish after i watched “Running Man” Hahaha. So ribbon fish tasted really good. Will show you later. (The silver shiny long fish below)

Oh.. and also the shark. This is my first time.. the whole dead shark.. on the land. You get what I mean right.

We passed by rows of restaurants cooking their fishes outside.. such a dilemma, fresh fish on your left and cooked fish on your right. And so, cooked fish won. We went in one of the restaurant to sample some of the local grilled fish.

Its ok if you dont know how to speak korean in Seoul but in Busan, please learn some basic one. As i mentioned, most of the vendors are Ajummas, they dont understand or speak english at all, what we can do is.. POINT. Just look around what your neighbour is eating and point at the dishes politely.

They served varieties of side dishes. Oh nom nom. Oh.. bare in mind, the prices are quite high.. Its an expensive meal i would say but.. oh well. FOOD comes first.

We had grilled ribbon fish and some grilled fishes that we cannot identified but they were simply delicious. Its grilled with salt only but i guess because its so fresh, it taste just as good. And did you see that bowl of orangey thing? We saw a lot of Ajumma eating while we were exploring just now so we just give it a try. No idea what was that but that bowl of i assumed its pumpkin rice cake porridge was the best among all. YES it beat the fish. Hahaha! I still cant figure out what was that but why so yummy!

And fresh sashimi in the market. Just stand there can eat with the sauce! yums!

We left the fresh seafood section and went to the underground food section. EMO for a while.

Disclaimer : I use my phone camera to take some photos at the later part. Transferred the photos to my office desktop and FML office got broke in and my desktop and cpu all got stolen. What breaks my heart? THE VIDEO OF ME EATING LIVE OCTOPUS IS INSIDE!!!!! ROOOOAAAARRRR!!!! Great.. no more sannakji photos!! SADDDDDDDD!!!

And this is the food section where you can choose your fresh seafood and eat them alive in front of their fellow mates.

and this table is where I had my Sannakji. Sad.. dont say liao.