Korean Diaries : A Beat Around Suwon

Yet another weekend off here in Suwon, and decided to check out the tourist places around within the city itself. The plan for the day included going to Namun Market and checking out a part of the Suwon fort. So soon after breakfast a group got ready to leave to this place.


Flagged down a taxi to take us to the Namun Market. Reached there in about 15 mins. Right near the entrance of the market was a huge gate, a part of the Suwon fort, which encircles the heart of the city if not the entire city and is an UNESCO world heritage monument. But apart from the fact that this encircles the city of Suwon there is nothing spectacular about it.
Just to the right of this huge gate (converted into a traffic circle :P) the wall takes a steep climb. We went along this steep climb in order to get a birds eye view of the city of Suwon. And as promised the view provided to us was good.Also we could see the fort wall snaking through the city.


Down we came and went towards the Namun Market. Now this was a traditional market and not malls,as one would expect whenthe word "market' is heard in these parts of the world. There were lots of shops selling traditional korean stuff and also the not so traditional stuff too. Prices were bargainable if you somehow manage to , since English is not spoken at all.The procedure of bargaining involves the seller typing his price in a calculator and we typing our prices .... and soon the bargaining begins.

[A View From The Top]

After a bit of shopping and roaming around we started to feel hungry. Now one would wonder with so many eateries strewn across the entire market , why not jump to one and have some "pet ki pooja"..... but seeing the menu we didnt have the courage to enter any of these eateries. The menu included, lizards, octupposes, and wat not.I think their eating concept is anything with four legs and above is edible :P.

[Namun Market]

So to be on the safer side we went to a known(by others) pizza joint to have a vegetarian pizza. Now the magic word here is "yaachi pizza", which translates to "veg pizza". Also one difference I found in these eateries were the bill came first before the actual food. This probably was to give us a hint that "If you cant pay this, get lost now only ":P. But to be frank the veg cheese pizza was one of the best I ever had . Delicious, soft and not at all chewwy as we find in the Indian Pizza joints.

[Fort Wall Snaking Through The City]

Anyway by this time it was evening we returned back to our guesthouse. Learned a new korean word while shopping, i.e. "Kamsa-midha", which means "thank you".