Ansan Asia Town

I went to Ansan Asia Town twice this week. (When Tina first called it Ansan Asia Town, I laughed and said, "We're in Korea. It's all Asia town," but according to the internet, she was right and the area is called Ansan Asia Town. My bad, Tina.) The city I live in, Ansan (a suburb of south of Seoul), has the largest foreign population in Korea, mostly laborers from SE Asia or Southern Asia. At Ansan Station, they formed Ansan Asia Town, a several block district full of ethnic restaurants, supermarkets and 3923590 places to buy an international calling card. (For any K-bloggers reading this, it's like Itaewon without the jacked up prices, American military presence or the Quiznos.) To get there, take Line 4 south (towards Oido) to Ansan Station. Take Exit 1, cross under the street and have at it.

On Wednesday, Tina and I went to the Thai market in Ansan Asia Town. Tina is Thai and wanted to make curry. I like Thai food and am incapable of cooking for myself. It was a good match. We bought several heavy bags worth of Thai food and carted them back to Tina's apartment. I chopped the vegetables (see above: peas, mushrooms and eggplant) while Tina did the cooking. We made Thai stirfry and oh my Lord, was it ever spicy!


Tina forgot that Thai peppers were spicier than Korean peppers, and consequently almost killed me. It was one of those meals where I couldn't stop crying and drank an entire litre of water, but it was too tasty to stop eating. I went back to Asia Town yesterday night with Marie and Greg. We ended up eating at an Indonesian restaurant because none of us had every tried Indonesian food before. We're pretty sure the place was a front for a brothel and as the only two women in the dinning area, Marie and I got a lot of interested looks. The food was tasty, even if we only got what the waiter could translate. (Rice. And chicken. And some fried rice called nasi goreng.) We were able to also order some fried fritter type thing (the internet tells me they are called gorengan) by pointing to another diner's table. We ate the fritters with a sweet viscous soy sauce we called Soylasses. (It's thicker than soy sauce, thinner than molasses. It's sweet, it's soy, its soylasses!) After dinner we wandered around for a while and salivated at all the other restaurant choices: Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Nepalese, Filipino. I might even be able to find some Middle Eastern restaurants there. I want to do my own version of Man Bites World.