Dongdaemun Market

Last weekend I went to Dongdaemun market. This is the most famous market in Seoul. It has over 30,000 stalls and shops. This is spread out in several buildings as well as outside on the street. It's crazy, and it never closes. Kristin teacher and I wanted to look for curtains for our apartments, as I have a big patio door right by my bed that crazy Koreans peer into at night. Just kidding, I am on the second floor, but I thought it would make the story more interesting.

Anyway, so we go to the market, and find out that the draperies are in building C. Easy enough. We go inside and there are 9 floors of draperies, fabrics, yarn, etc... and this is no small building. Each floor was huge, and everything is crammed in on each floor. There are no roomy aisles to walk down, so you have to push through people. You'd think with 9 floors of only fabric people would be spread out enough to make it a comfortable shopping environment. Guess again. I guess that's what it's like living in a city with 11,000,000 + people. It's nuts.

It's funny too because in most cases, prices are not marked. The point of the market is to bargain. Well, it's kinda hard to bargain when you don't speak Korean. So most of the day we just wandered around asking "eolmoyeo" (how much is it?) and when they would answer us in Korean (since we asked the question in Korean), we would have to motion that we didn't understand and they had to type the number into their calculator. More work than I usually like to do when I shop. And at the end of all that, I didn't find any curtains.
I miss Target.