Prugio Fair
Recently after work, when rounding the corner to enter my apartment complex, I came across kind of “fair” setup close to our building. How fortuitous, I thought, because I knew that these kinds of fairs always had a stall full of bootleg movies, and I wanted a few more DVDs to watch while I do the ironing (it’s called multitasking). It didn’t take long to find the movie stall and discover that this one was offering 4 movies of your choice for 10,000 won (or just over $10).
I was looking around when my wife arrived and we did some shopping. First I got 4 movies, three of which I’ve seen since then, and the best of which was United 93. It was almost like a documentary—pretty harrowing stuff. As for the rest so far, at 10,000 won, I still paid too much to have my intelligence insulted by the latest big budget offerings.
Since these stalls are targeted at apartment residents, all kinds of domestic goods are on hand, some not typical of what you’d find at an average market. For example, more exotic varieties of dried fruit, or slightly different pickled chilies, are available. We bought samples of each of those.
Other stalls sell wooden products like wooden utensils and Korean tea tables, bedding, and plants that a guy will put in a new pot for you. One stall accepts all old fry pans and saucepans for exchange; you receive credit according to the weight of your old ones and on top of that you pay a little extra for a new pot or pan. Later that evening we took down an old fry pan and picked up a new soup pot for around $5.
The largest stall there was a restaurant, primarily serving meat, and at its entrance a pig on a spit turned near tables that had meat for sale. We were thinking about having dinner at the place but few vegetarian dishes were being served. However, not far away was a kind of soup stall with four steaming cauldrons. One of these had a vegetarian soup on the boil and we took a bag of it home for dinner.
In the picture, you can one with large meaty lumps in it. I steered well clear of that. It was something made from cattle blood, which I hear is healthy to eat, but, you know, it looked like it would make me sick. I was happy with the boiled weeds, or whatever it was we had for dinner.
Next to our apartment building was this tiny fair ride for the kids. From our balcony, we could hear kids screaming with delight late into the night.
The fair was there for a couple of days and then I guess it all moved on to another apartment complex somewhere in the city.
