Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Go Fish

            A goal of mine while in Korea is to go sightseeing once a week to learn more about Korean’s and their culture. The lobby in the hotel has a lot of local maps of Changwon and I was lucky enough to find one in English. Being without a car I needed to find something interesting within walking or biking distance and decided upon the Masan Fish Market. Masan is in a neighboring town but I think it is technically considered part of Changwon. The fish market was appealing because I knew it’d give a taste of the local flavor much like the Vancouver fish market I visited when I was in middle school. GoogleMaps was helpful in finding the location of our hotel and the fish market but unfortunately in Korea you can’t get directions on Google. After some time zooming in and tracing the roads it appeared the journey needed bikes. The hotel has some mountain bikes for rent for only \2,000 for three hours. The best guess for the biking distance was around 9km which made sense because it took just under an hour to get there with some stopping time to take photos. You can see the two cities on the map below. Point A is the hotel, Point B is the Masan Fish Market.



View Larger Map
       
          The bike path was alongside the road but I saw many interesting things along the way. There was a prison, a large river, a Pizza Hut, a really cool bridge, some local boats, a nature walk, and a lot of ship-building facilities. I once read that one of the largest exports of this region of South Korea is ships. These weren’t your standard 30’ sailboats; they were massive ships that were getting pieced together in about 60’ X 60’ X 60’ sections. My best guess is that they were cargo ships. The cranes needed to lift each section were the largest I’ve ever seen at about 100’ high and 250’ across.

The first glimpe of Masan

Massive ship components
 
The largest crane I've ever seen

Just one of about 35 different pieces at this facility
 
On the bridge to Masan


Looking over the bay that leads into the Korean Strait
             In the heart of the town I was clueless where the fish market was and after asking a taxi driver he pointed that it was only about 100 feet away. Before going in I grabbed a Gatorade at the local market and made sure I had my camera with me. At first glance it was like a farmer’s market with a long ¼ mile hallway with smaller alleys branching off to the sides. The only things I could see from the outside were fresh vegetables including garlic, two-foot long stalks of scallions, peppers, lettuce, and massive carrots that were about two inches in diameter. A few steps into the fish market I realized they had what I was shopping for, pictures of bizarre foods. I felt like Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern, TV food show hosts known for filming exotic world foods. Unlike them I had little intentions of trying the local fare.

Masan Fish Market

A fancier sign
 
The first glimpse


These are appetizers for drinking at the bar. You eat everything but the head.
 
Dried Squid
 
Eels on the left and I have no clue what's on the right

Live Octopus and some kind of shell-less turtle


More fish
 
Raw Pig

Cooked Pig


A typical stand

You can see a dining area in the background

Grabbing a snack for later
            A majority of the food booths were about the size of a children’s bedroom and had an eating area behind them. My impression was that you could buy the seafood to bring home or they could prepare your lunch for you right on the spot. About 80% of the stands were staffed by older women, hardly any men. There were about 150 different stands but many sold the same items as the person next to them. For example, there were about four pork stands next to each other, all serving the same cuts of meat: head, butt, and foot. If you think that’s unappetizing, it was actually some of the best looking food there. The seafood was unlike anything in America with octopus, turtles, pointy shellfish, eels, and fish I haven’t even seen on The Discovery Channel. Most of the seafood was alive and swimming in household buckets except for a few stands that sold dried out stingrays, squid, and sardines of various sizes.
            One customer at the market spoke a little English and we struck up a conversation in the seafood area. He wanted to know about America and I wanted to know what was all around me. I kept pointing at the most bizarre food I’d seen so far and all the female stand owners kept laughing. One female merchant took one of the slimy pieces of fish and offered it to me. I pointed to the Korean next to me and he ate it. My stomach was not prepared to eat it just yet. Back at Samsung I shared the pictures asking what I was offered and they didn’t find it too appetizing either so that made me feel a little better.


The lady in the purple vest offered me some free samples

The orange and black slimy things were just not for me.
            The picture below is an assortment of rice cakes from the cafeteria last Thursday. It was the day before Samsung Techwin’s Birthday, a day all workers get off. The engineers were very excited to receive these rice cakes and I could tell it was a special treat for them. They tasted different than an American dessert, especially the rainbow cake that was rice based. They weren’t super sweet with a taste more like a nutty and fruity granola bar with the consistency of Jell-O. At the Masan Fish Market there was one stand that sold just rice cakes, it is also pictured below.
Samsung Rice Cakes
Rice Cakes at the Masan Fish Market


Saturday, May 28, 2011

Soju and a Margarita

            What an adventure Korea has been so far. It’s hard to believe I’ve already been here for over a week. In Korean areum-dapda (아름답다) means beautiful and is a word now used daily when talking to strangers about how I like it here. This past Wednesday the group of engineers that I work with had a team dinner that was an incredible experience to be a part of. Each month every team goes out for a special evening to socialize and have a good time. This is different than an American style happy hour where co workers casually meet up; it is hosted by the company and a way to say thank you for your hard work. It really helps boost morale and makes the workers feel very appreciated.

            Chang Soo Lee, one of our Samsung counterparts, gave me a printout at work of the address and map of how to get to the restaurant. I knew it’d be an adventurous night when the cab driver didn’t know where it was and it was only about 10km away. Upon arrival our driver pointed to an unpaved road that looked to be in the middle of a forest. After walking down the road I saw what looked like a small little cooking shack and a few dining areas (again, no chairs). The team was not there yet so I explored the area and saw that there were a bunch of outdoor dining areas around the property. Samsung arrived in about ten minutes and we all sat a huge 20ft table and there were a total of 10 of us. The dinner was several courses and although already cooked, it was presented in large bowls over mini gas stoves at the table to keep things warm. The first round was a whole duck in a soup, kind of like the chicken soup from the other day and it was very tasty. As usual there were a ton of plates of garnishes and side dishes including kimchi, hot sauce, peppers, bean sprouts, and even minnows which are used like salt. Yes, I did eat one of the minnows, I had to try it. The other rounds of food were more variants of duck – some with veggies some with rice, all delicious. I learned a few interesting things about Korea:

1)      I feel very bad for the dishwasher, we used about 500 plates
2)      Koreans don’t take leftovers home
3)      Waiters do not check up on tables unless you call for them (by tableside phone or buzzer)
4)      How to say, “Please bring me three bottles of Soju”
5)      They say “Kimchi” instead of “cheese” when taking pictures
6)   It is customary to never pour your own drinks and to use two hands when pouring or holding a glass

The restaurant

A view of one of the dining areas
 
Fooling around while waiting for Samsung

Ms. Kim and Ed

Min Gu and the cook. He is getting ready to prepare Bibimbap, a Korean meal that involves a lot of tableside mixing. You can see we were setting up for Soju Bombs.

Samsung and myself. The little green bottles are Soju.
 
Jongil and the duck soup
 
Chang Soo Lee and Jongil
 
Bibimbap before mixing

Bibimbap after mixing
What a great bonding event
               I drank some Soju that night, a lot of it. Soju is like Korean vodka and tastes a little like Sake. You can sip it from a shot glass or have a Soju bomb just like a car bomb. They all kept calling me superman because I told them it went down like water and I was twice their size so my tolerance was much greater. I had a lot of great conversation – they all love the Boston Red Sox so a lot of baseball talk and many questions about America came up. Only a few of them have ever been to the states so they are very curious. They now know what a man cave is. After about three and a half hours the meal was over and it was a night I’ll never forget. I really hope all the coworkers here can come visit me in America one day so I can share similar things about my culture.

Last night Ed and I decided to check out the downtown scene and do a little barhopping. It started at the Irish pub with a burger and some Korean beer, Hite. It is like bud light and very cheap, $2.5 for about 1.5 pints. The bar had some great music playing and we played three or four games of pool. We then wandered to another building where we found another bar that was practically empty inside. The owner was a mid 40’s Korean lady who had traveled the world and really did a good job hosting us. She had a dart board and a foosball table and played a lot of red hot chili peppers. Another man and her played a game of darts and I told them I called winner. She was a little cocky and insisted she would be the winner. She won and it was my turn. Before playing she explained the house rule that if either of us misses the dart board we have to buy the other person a drink. This stressed me out a little and I was second guessing playing the owner of the bar after she just won a game and I hadn’t played for a while. Side note for dart players: they don’t play cricket with points, you just close out and move on, and you also have to close out doubles and triples – closing those out is really hard. She threw first and hit the dart board but never scored. I threw three darts: bullseye, bullseye, 20. She quit on the first throw and offered me a drink of my choice. I asked for a margarita and she had no clue how to make one. I taught her how to make a classic margarita (tequila, triple sec, lime juice) and it was delicious. After a few more games of darts, we went to another bar called the International Pub. There were people my age playing Texas Hold’em at a table, including the young Korean cook from O’Briens, and another crew of people playing beer pong. It was late in the night so we didn’t stay long before heading home to the hotel around 2:00 a.m. I could tell Ed and I had a fun night because at breakfast today we didn’t talk much and both drank a lot of water.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Korea

          There are quite a few PW people I’ve ran into here at Samsung, all here for different jobs. So far most have been in the quality organization including Mike Lee, a PW employee who is actually lives in Asia. Mike used to be stationed at Samsung in Changwon for a few years but Pratt recently relocated him to Taiwan. This week while in town he has helped me get to know Changwon a little better by bringing me out to lunch with our Samsung team and his team. We ate Sam-Gye-Tang which translates into Ginseng Chicken Hot Soup. When I walked into the restaurant the first thing I noticed was that there were no chairs and the table was about 18” off the ground. Halfway through eating I asked if I could get a massage during lunch, my back and legs were killing me. Before the entrées were served there were a lot of side dishes around the table and a centerpiece of some kind of smoked fish. It turned out to be eel and was delicious; it kind of tasted like trout. In a few minutes our soups arrived and I had a large bowl in front of me with a small, whole chicken in it. The chicken was stuffed with white rice and the soup had some walnuts and dates in it. Mike told us that this was a Korean delight and very traditional. It was appetizing and tasted just like American chicken soup. The only difficult part about eating it was picking out the tiny bones. After our main meal they gave us all a special cold, sweet tea as a dessert. It was red in color and tasted a little bit like a cinnamon and raspberry. After eating I found out that eel is very expensive, about twice as much as the entire chicken soup entrée (\20,000 vs. \11,000 respectively).  Right now the exchange rate in Korea is about \1090 for $1.00. We split two eel among eight of us so everyone could get a taste. One guy at the Samsung office later told me that eel is like Korean Viagra. It was a tasty meal that tasted like home and Korea at the same time.

Eel

So many different flavors in one meal
 
I feel bad for who has to do all these dishes

The Entree: Sam-Gae-Tang
 
Min Gu (A Samsung engineer I work with) and myself

The eel heads were not to be eaten


Monday, May 23, 2011

Time to Explore and Eating at Work

Is it already Monday evening? The weekend flew by as we explored the local city of Changwon.
            On Friday night the CT guys and us hailed some cabs at the hotel and went to the Irish bar call O’Brien’s. One of the CT guys was craving a cheeseburger from this place and I also wanted a little taste of home as my pallet was in shock. The wait was an hour long so we walked down the street to an Outback. There aren’t many American restaurants here; the Outback is the only non fast food place I’ve seen that we have in the states. The menu was a little different, no blooming onion, and for those who ordered steaks they were very small, about 4 oz. yet still the same price of a 16 oz. steak. After dinner we hailed a cab back to City 7, our hotel, and I was exhausted from the week of traveling.

The street we ate dinner on
            One thing to note about the buildings here is that unlike the U.S., restaurants and shops go past the first floor. Billboards and neon signs go all the way up buildings and usually the sign is around the floor that the shop is on. I still haven’t eaten on a first floor restaurant yet.
            7:00 a.m. Saturday I woke up from a deep sleep finally adjusted to the time zone. The CT crew had left town and we were on our own. I was clueless to my surroundings; I couldn’t even point out which way was North. Ed, my travel partner,  and I saw a nice tree-lined path alongside the road and decided to walk it. We walked past a convention center, a large sports complex consisting of a soccer stadium, bike racing stadium, and swimming pool. In between each of these stadiums was a lot of large tents set-up with a ton of middle schooled aged students. There was a big stage for performing but we decided to keep on walking. About a mile from our hotel we walked into a major rotary circle about ½ a mile in circumference. We chose to go right and in about 500m we realized that we had walked all the way to O’Brien’s. Since the wait was an hour the night before we wanted to eat there for lunch as it was around 11:30 a.m. The place was closed so we tried about 5 other western pubs, all closed. It took no time to realize that Koreans stay up late, very late. At one of the closed bars you could see inside; the bar had pint glasses on it still filled with beer from the night before.


The nearby sports complex

Changwon Map

Part of the main party street

Random storefront



Downtown area

Another city shot

Residential Towers

The youth festival nearby

A lot of different tents for the kids

The stage

            After being rejected again at O’Brien’s, this time with a locked front door, we ventured back into the street. There was a 7-11 and we were thirsty from our 2km+ walk as well as curious to what they sold. About 80% of it was in Korean with a few American items: Snickers bars, Vitamin Water, Alcohol, etc. We walked around the area a little bit and noticed there were a lot of Americanized shops and a lot of bars. This must be the party area: there was a bowling alley, and bars and nightclubs in every direction. At around 12:00 we went back upstairs to see if O’Brien’s was open and it wasn’t so we ate a few rooms down at an Indian place. The Indians eating stared at us more than the Koreans had. It was a good lunch, again with very small drinking glasses and napkins the size of half a tissue. You may want to ask me why I’m not eating Korean food for every meal. Well, would you spend $30 on an entrée that you had no idea what it tasted like, looked like, or had in it? We walked into one restaurant that had an English sign but not a single picture or English word inside. We chose not to eat there and later found out it was very spicy and a very smelly ammonia-type soup place.With such a language difference it is best to have a Korean friend show you what to eat and where. I plan to eat many meals with the people at Samsung, we hadn’t gotten to that level of friendship in being there only two days.

What would you have ordered off this menu?

A typical shelf at the 7-11

            One the way back from lunch we walked past the outdoor teenage festival again and stopped to take a look. There were a lot of people in costume; my best guess is that it was a dance competition between schools. For dinner we walked around the City 7 area and checked out a few menus. Dinner ended up being some sort of garlic chicken and a few local beers called Hite.
            Sunday was much of the same tempo – walk around in a different direction and then found a place to eat along the way. I ate at a pastry shop which served sausage that resembled American hot dogs. For dinner I finally made it to O’Brien’s and had a good burger.

Hiking up a local mountain

A random grave in the middle of the hiking trail


Looking back as I head up another hiking trail

A residential street with City 7 apartments in the background


A lot of front doors looked like this

A random vegetable garden along the street. The tall stuff is garlic.

A vegetable garden halfway up the hiking trail

An outdoor workout area at the top of the hike. There were no weights to adjust, all these machines worked against your body weight

A nicer home around town

The nicest home seen so far

There is grass everywhere in Korea except for soccer fields and basketball courts

My sausage lunch with a delicious soft rye roll

            For Lunch during the week we are mostly eating with our coworkers in the Samsung cafeteria. Samsung provides breakfast, lunch, and dinner free of charge to all employees and at each meal they serve only one plate of food – no choices unless you didn’t want to put something on your tray. I guess this is how they can serve 2,000 employees in an hour. The first day there was rice, broccoli, kimchi, some kind of chicken gizzard dish, and seaweed soup. The seaweed soup was pretty tasty; I could have eaten the entire bowl.  In the cafeteria no one gets a beverage until after they are done eating, pretty bizarre. One of our team members, Ji Min Gu, said that I used chopsticks better than him. Ed, my travel partner, seems like the only one in the cafeteria who uses a fork but that’s fine by me, I don’t want him flinging stuff at me while he learns how to use a chopstick. Lunch today was like a panko crusted chicken cutlet, kimchi soup, beef and glass noodles, and a big scoop of white rice. I couldn’t eat it fast enough, chicken cutlets were my favorite food growing up.

Seaweed Soup, Bon Appetit!
 
The cafeteria


I didn't use my fork once, only chopstix, and cleared this plate faster than the Koreans sitting with us