On Friday night I went to the Seoul Bamdokkaebi Night Market on the Han River. We left early in the afternoon because the trip required walking, two subway rides, and then more walking (but it was absolutely worth it). The market is in the Yeongdeungpo district of Seoul in Banpo Hangang Park beneath the Banpo Bridge. As soon as the sun sets, the perimeter of the park is lined with dozens of food trucks, while the park itself contains countless vendors selling their handcrafted goods from tents.
My friends and I ventured to try cow intestines (or ‘gopchang’), a popular Korean dish and by far the food truck with the longest line. We waited for nearly an hour for our gopchang, and when we finally tried it, we each quickly learned that none of us could stomach it. The smell reminded me too much of driving through farmland and the taste was not much better. In Korea, however, it is considered extremely rude to waste food and to not consume the food you take for yourself. As a courtesy, and out of fear of causing offense, we carried the gopchang around with us for most of the night until we had a chance to dispose of it discretely. To cleanse our palates of a taste that closely (and unfortunately) resembled the smell of manure, we waited in line for a truck serving Mexican street tacos which, thankfully, were far more satisfying.
Right after we got our food, we noticed that a large crowd of people had started gathering around a stage down near the river. We made our way over and, right as it became dark, fireworks were launched from boats on the river while a band took the stage and started playing music. The musicians were dressed in colorful, blinking lights that illustrated their dancing silhouettes as they moved around the stage in the dark. The crowd turned on the flashlights on their phones and waved them rhythmically in the air. The lights on the bridge changed from their bright white to an assortment of red, orange, yellow, blue, and purple. It was a remarkable (and unexpected) display of light and color.
We sat and enjoyed the music, fireworks, and lights for several hours, along with many Koreans of all ages who had come to enjoy the market. Families with children, young couples, and elderly people had all come out prepared with blankets, picnics, and sweatshirts (it got really chilly) to spend the evening together. There were surprisingly few tourists around, which made it feel like a truly authentic cultural experience, and it was confirmation to me that we were spending our evening the right way. After a few hours, the food trucks had moved on, the vendors packed up their tents, the fireworks stopped, the music began to wind down, the crowd began to dissipate, and it was finally time to make the trip back to Sinchon. I had forgotten that I was still in the middle of Seoul. The atmosphere of the market in a park along the river made me feel removed from the bustling city, despite still being in the middle of it.