Hallim 5-day market

Lunch today was in Hallim 5-day market, in the stall in the photo above. You can’t afford to get too sticky on hygiene but the bibimbap tasted delicious.

Hallim is smaller than other 5-day markets I’ve been to but the same ingredients apply: piles of fruit and vegetables, fish and meat, a section with fake branded clothing, some hardware and plant stalls, and elderly and bent folk, many of them women, manning the stalls.

Hallim market, Sunday afternoon

There weren’t many customers in Hallim Market this afternoon. Some stallholders were working with their stock – unloading vegetables, preparing fish – while some were watching televisions in the little rooms behind their stalls. Some were sleeping, like the women with her cat in the photo below or the man under the quilt in the photo at the bottom. I don’t blame them; I’m sure they spend long days at the market and need to take a nap when they get a chance.

Jeju International Peace Marathon

It was a good day for a race – dry, cool and overcast. It also helped that the course was flat. The race started in Hallim and headed southwards along the coast with different turning points for the different races. There were views across to the sea and the waves on the beach or, at one point, splashing over the sea wall onto the road.

The band played before the start, as they did before the Jeju Mandarin Marathon last November…

…and the crowds stood and faced the other side of the stadium where I assume there was a Korean flag on one of the flagpoles. The guys in the photo below saluted; they may have been in the army, possibly national servicemen.

Hallim Port

It’s very difficult to judge from the ‘Tour Map of Jeju’ how big a place is. It tells you where all the filming sights are of popular Korean TV programs, but I’d be more interested in an accurate representation of the layout and topography. Is that an unreasonable hope?

Anyway, the map shows ‘Hallim Port’, about 20 km to the north, but gives very little clue about the size. It turns out to be a reasonably large town with a fleet of fishing boats. They were preparing to go out late yesterday afternoon – we watched one boat loading sacks of ice and taking nets on board through a set of rollers. Many of them carried a set of flags on bamboo poles, presumably so to locate their nets when they were in the water.

There were stalls selling fruit in the town. The tangerines have been turning orange on the trees over the last couple of weeks and I assume the ones we see for sale now are this season’s crop. There are also persimmon, which look delicious.