Tag Archives: Market

Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Chorsu Bazaar

The lovely tiled dome of Chorsu Bazaar is but the dusty tiled tip of this immense iceberg of a market

Chorsu Bazaar is the bustling heart of Tashkent. We love visiting markets anyway, so Chorsu was high on our list and after a few hours wandering through it, we think it’s a strong contender for the best market we’ve visited.

Inside the cool Chorsu dome are the various meat counters set out in concentric rings

This guy asked for his photo as he was restocking one of the butcher counters with fresh meat

The icon of Chorsu bazaar is the wonderful turquoise tiled domed hall that sits in the north-west corner and houses the meat market. Outside, we found rows of rice and spice sellers, rows of beautifully ripe vegetables – including tomatoes the size of baking apples – and trucks full of melons and watermelons! Further, we found household goods, shoe repairs, a high street-like two storey row of clothing shops and stalls and a cafe area. It was then we realised the dome is but a fraction of the size of this sprawling hub of sights, smells, tastes and trades.

Rows upon rows of fresh produce, like this one of potatoes

There were echoes of our experiences in Bangladesh markets where the traders would beckon us over wanting their photograph taken or for us to pose with them!

In a quiet corner of the bazaar, our good friend Jo (whom you might remember joined us in Vietnam last year) was roped into a photo while buying some dried apricots

Kulkedash Medressa

The Kulkedash Medressa sits on a hill in the south-eastern corner of Chorsu Bazaar, and is where the busses drop off from the airport

The Kulkedash Medressa is a welcome slice of serenity after the claustrophobic bustle of Chorsu Bazaar. Medressa translates as school, and is akin to our higher education or university system; students learn a wide syllabus of sciences and Islam.

The lush serenity of the Kulkedash Medressa courtyard

As well as teaching rooms and student accomodation, teachers have small offices and as we walked around a few of them were open. When we popped our heads around the door of the calligraphy room, the friendly gentleman inside came to the door and invited us in. His English was excellent, and after he showed us the various styles of Arabic script, including a mosaic style used on minarets and diagonal diamond patterns, he wrote Julie’s name in Arabic on a scrap of paper!

Calligraphy teacher writing Julie’s name in Arabic. He explained that he travels quite a bit to advise the decorative restoration and construction work of Islamic buildings within Uzbekistan

Amir Timur Square

Statue of Amir Timur, the national hero of Uzbekistan

Born around 1330, Amir Timur is the Central Asian Chinggis Khan – regarded as a military genius and tactician who sought to reunify the great Khan’s empire, his Tirmurid dynasty extended from southeastern Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, through Central Asia encompassing part of Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and bordered Kashgar in China.

Today, he’s regarded as the national hero of Uzbekistan and his statue dominates Tashkent’s central square. It’s pretty much the only thing here save for a few fountains and as there’s little shade we didn’t stay for long.

Independence Square

The gates to Uzbekistan’s Independence Square

A couple of blocks away from Amir Timur is the country’s Independence Square, where fountains abound and giant square gates are adorned with silver pelicans said to bring good luck. The independence celebrated here is from the former USSR, Uzbekistan was one of the first countries to declare their independence when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Tashkent's Crying Mother statue in remembrance of the Uzbek soldiers that fought in World War II

Tashkent’s Crying Mother statue in remembrance of the Uzbek soldiers who fought in World War II

Facing us across the square is the giant statue of a Crying Mother who commemorates the 400,000 Uzbek soldiers who died fighting with the allies in World War II. Having such a imposingly powerful memorial here gave me a strange sense – perhaps it’s meant as a reminder that independence is hard won but worth fighting for.

Khast Imom Square

Khast Imom Square. From left (east) to right (west, through south): Hazroti Imom Friday Mosque; Moyie Mubarek Library Museum; Telyashayakh Mosque; Barak Khan Medressa

It won’t be much of a spoiler to tell you right now, that one of the three words we’ll be using to describe Uzbekistan in our Round Up we both said out loud when we first saw the Khast Imom Square.. “Wow.”

Julie and I in front of the Barak Khan Medressa

This is the official religious centre of Islam in Uzbekistan. To the east of the square is the Hazroti Imom Friday mosque, to the west is the Barak Khan Medressa which used to be a centre of learning until the student rooms filled up with souvenir stands.

According to our guidebook there is a third building called the Moyie Mubarek Library Museum that houses the Osman Qur’an (Uthman Qur’an), the oldest known copy of the Qur’an. I thought it might be the small, squat building in the square, but Julie thought it was the grand, wooden pillar-fronted one to the north. We poked our heads into the latter to find what looked like a doctor’s waiting room, and received a very puzzled look from the handful of people sitting inside. We translated the sign on the outside and deduced it was, in fact, a family planning clinic!

It took a bit more wandering before Julie decided that it might be worth a look in the small squat building in the square. The one with the short fence and the security box outside.

We paid 6,000som each (about £1.20) to the guard inside the building, and taking centre stage, is reportedly the oldest Qur’an in the world.

The Osman Qur’an (Uthman Qur’an), said to be the oldest in the world. A few pages are missing, and we overheard a guide say that there’s a page in the British Museum (photo source: Bruce Loeffler)

Its pages are about a foot square, made from deerskin and written in old Arabic script. Even with a few pages missing, it weighs about 40kg.

Our guidebook tells us a little of its history..

This enormous deerskin tomb was brought to Samarkand [in Uzbekistan] by Amir Timur, then taken to Moscow by the Russians in 1868 before being returned [to Tashkent] by Lenin in 1924 as an act of goodwill towards Turkestan’s Muslims. – Lonely Planet, Central Asia, p147

Peeping through the door into the Hazroti Imom Friday Mosque. We were allowed to enter the courtyard and look through the windows but we weren’t allowed into the mosque itself

The library has many more examples of the Qur’an, including a couple of tiny ones with pages smaller than postage stamps, and a display of translations into different languages.

Museums

Fine Arts Museum of Uzbekistan, not much to look at from the outside but definitely worth the visit

Like any capital city, Tashkent has a good number of museums though most get lukewarm write-ups and of the ones we decided to visit we found the quality was a little variable.

First up was the Fine Arts Museum of Uzbekistan which we really enjoyed. Each of the 4 floors are partitioned into small, easily digestible rooms and the whole place is chronological from the ground up, starting with 7th century Buddhist relics, through Uzbek crafts such as block printing and silk production, to Russian paintings and sculpture inspired by the European Renaissance.

The House of Photography, described as “edgy” by the Lonely Planet may have lost its edge

We love photography museums because we like taking photographs and they’re great for ideas and inspiration. Not so much Tashkent’s House of Photography which, while very cheap, had one display of aerial shots of Uzbekistan akin to those you might find in a tourism brochure, and the other two were probably what I’d shoot if you gave me an expensive DSLR for a day – in focus, good detail, but standard subjects, composition and nothing memorable. Still, at only 10p to get in it was worth the punt, and there wasn’t an extra charge for taking photographs.

Mobbed by a class of school kids as we made our way into the History Museum of the People of Uzbekistan

Last on our short list was the History Museum of the People of Uzbekistan, which we were lucky to get into at all as it must be a prerequisite school-trip!

It’s essentially a history museum of Uzbekistan from ancient Turkestan to the present day and, while a little heavy going in places, and a little bereft of English captioning on recent events it was a good over-arching introduction to the people and dates that shaped the country.

Orthodox Assumption Cathedral

The Assumption Cathedral in Tashkent reminded us of the many Orthodox churches and cathedrals we visited in Russia

We loved visiting the massive Orthodox churches and cathedrals in Russia, especially the Church on Spilled Blood in St Petersberg and the golden domes of the The Church of All-Saints Resplendent on Russian Land in Yeketerinberg, which we were reminded of when we saw Tashkent’s Assumption Cathedral.

The golden domes are topped with very ornate crosses

With the balmy weather, Julie and Jo had forgotten their headscarves, but were able to borrow one so we could take a look around inside. We didn’t take any pictures as there were people worshipping, except for one at the entrance..

Julie and Jo in borrowed headscarves

Daegu, South Korea

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We’ve been using Airbnb to find accommodation on and off throughout the trip and it’s been especially useful for finding apartment rentals for a few weeks as it’s really nice to have a kitchen and a bit more space than the average hotel room. Another option is to rent someone’s spare room, which at its best is basically living with locals in a local neighbourhood. This is what we opted for in Daegu and we felt like we’d struck gold staying with lovely Gabby and Andrew. On our final evening we all had takeaway fried chicken and beers sitting in their living room watching Korean soap operas – it doesn’t get much more homely than that!

Gatbawi hike

July is the rainy season in Korea and we’ve sometimes had to juggle our plans a liitle to better suit the weather. On our first day in Daegu, the forecast was for a cloudy day but with no rain so we set out on the hour long bus ride north from Daegu to the Palgongsan Provincial Park and the fairly short but steep hike to Gatbawi shrine. The mountains were shrouded in clouds when we arrived and rain seemed inevitable but we’d come too far to turn back now and anyway I had an umbrella and Andrew had his hat, we’d be fine…

Very cloudy path up through the forest

Halfway up the hill there was a heavy shower which we were able to shelter from in a rest pavillion before continuing upwards through the damp air and dripping trees. The stairs were unrelenting with no flat sections at all but it wasn’t far really and we soon arrived at the shrine. The Buddha statue is carved from a single piece of stone and its official name is ‘Stone Seated Medicine Buddha’, but he is popularly called ‘Gatbawi’ which means ’Buddha of the Stone Gat’ (the traditional wide brimmed Korean hat) referring to his very obvious headgear.

Lady praying next to Gatbawi Buddha

The area around the statue is set up for the devout rather than for tourists with piped monk chants coming from speakers and stacks of mats which Koreans use when bowing, a kind of meditative humbling process to bring them closer to the Buddha Nature

The view might have been fabulous but all we could see was cloud and then it started to rain again. This time it was more than just a shower and the tarpaulin over the bowing area wasn’t really keeping the wet out anyway so we decided to head back down the hill. The Lonely Planet said there were two routes between the bus stop and the shrine, we opted for the non-step route for our return. It wasn’t any easier going, if anything it was harder as the path was sometimes rocky and slippy in the wet which required more care than the reasonably regular steps.

Andrew on the downward trail

Eventually we reached a crossroads with signs pointing off to different temples in each direction. The name of the one off to the left rang a bell, but that made no sense at all so by mutual agreement we set off on the path heading down the mountain. Of course, what we should have done was consult the photo of the trail that we took at the bottom of the hill and match up the Korean symbols with the sign, but it was raining, we were wet and trying to juggle camera and umbrella without getting more wet was too difficult so we just set off plodding downhill.

Hollyhock in the rain

After a while we rounded a corner to arrive at a car park and (closed) information point. It was clear that we were in entirely the wrong place and to make matters worse, the trails marked on the map in the car park, the photo we’d taken of the map at the bus stop and our memory of the crossroads didn’t tally up at all. We ate our lunch on a wet seat before trudging back up the hill to the last temple we’d passed to see if we could work out how to cross the ridge. Fortunately the rain had more or less stopped and it didn’t take long to arrive at the seemingly deserted Yongjuam temple.

Dozens of Buddha statues at the entrance to Yongjuam Temple

After admiring the bell and ruing the lack of view due to the still massed clouds we thought to pass by the main hall in search of a trail down the other side; cue very loud barking dogs who obviously were not keen on letting us past. At last a groundskeeper appeared, shouted at the dogs and pointed out the trail to Gwanamsa temple from where we could pick up the original path down to the bus stop.

We were very glad to spot Gwanamsa temple at last!

The supposed two hour round trip hike took us more than four hours, it’s a good thing we didn’t need to be anywhere else that afternoon!

Daegu markets

On our final day, we spent the morning chilling in a traditional Korean bathhouse before meeting Gabby for lunch at Seomun Market. She took us to “the best” food stall to sample tteokbokki, noodles and pancakes. After the delicious lunch we wandered through some of the stalls. Saturday afternoon is probably the busiest time of the week and it was packed. I was surprised that many of the clothes shops had an almost boutique look to them, much more upmarket than the clothes usually for sale in markets in England.

Cooking up tteokbokki, rice cakes in spicy sauce, in Seomun Market

Daegu is well known in Korea for its traditional medicine market. This dates back to the 17th century when the king decreed that a medicine market should be set up there. It wasn’t quite what we expected. I thought it would be a big covered hall with shops and stalls (like a regular market) but it’s actually a couple of streets in the city centre which are lined with shops selling herbs and offering traditional medical services such as acupuncture.

A look through one of the shop’s doorways. The large glass jars contain ginseng, a vital ingredient in many Korean herbal remedies.

Most of the shops had piles of what to our untrained eyes looked like bundles of twigs

Yangneongsi Oriental Medicine Museum is just off the market’s main street. It is nicely set up but has essentially no English signage so the friendly lady on reception gave us a tour in broken English. It begins with a few dioramas showing the history of the area, followed by an overview of the different plants (and animals) used in the remedies, and some scary looking acupuncture needles. On the lower floor was an interactive space where quiz machines would work out which of the four body types you are, and we learnt how to make remedies, as well as being able to try a small cup of herbal medicine tea (quite tasty!) and try on a traditional hanbok.

Yangneongsi Oriental Medicine Museum (clockwise from top left): reconstruction of an old style traditional doctor’s consulting room; medicinal herbs; learning to make herbal medicine in the interactive area; herbal tea dispenser

Us in traditional Korean hanbok. It’s unclear what link this has to traditional medicine but it was a fun activity. The hat Andrew is wearing is the ‘gat’ which the Gatbawi Buddha is named after.

Busan, South Korea

United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Korea (UNMCK)

It’s safe to say that before arriving in Busan neither of us knew anything about the 1950-53 Korean War, we’d barely even heard of it. The UNMCK is a reminder of the involvement of the rest of the world in this conflict between North and South Korea following their split at the end of WW2. The United Nations forces led by the US backed the South and China and the Soviet Union fought for the North. The site is unique as the only United Nations cemetery in the world.

Each grave is marked with a small plaque and a rosebush

The cemetery is the final resting place of 2300 dead soldiers from 11 nations, including 885 from the United Kingdom. We were shocked to discover how many fell under the banner of the UN – a total of 40,895 which doesn’t include almost 140,000 South Koreans. The grounds are beautifully maintained and it’s a peaceful place to wander and reflect away from the bustle of the city.

There’s a 15 minute film outlining the history of the conflict in the inter-faith Memorial Service Hall

As well as the grave area, there are a couple of small exhibition halls and a number of different memorials around the site including a sobering recently erected ‘Wall of Remembrance’ inscribed with all of the names of the fallen.

Memorials at UNMCK (clockwise from left): The UN Forces Monument; Canadian Memorial Statue; a line of flags in front of the Wall of Remembrance

Busan museum

Just up the road from the UNMCK is the Busan Museum. It wasn’t the most gripping museum I’ve ever been to but, coupled with the video at UNMCK, it was a decent primer on Korea’s history with an understandable slant towards Busan. Situated on the peninsula’s south coast the city was the entry point for Japanese invasions as well as envoys in more peaceful times.

Busan Museum (clockwise from top): the museum building; reconstruction of a Jumak, or traditional tavern-inn; celadon pottery Arhat figures

Jagalchi market

Not another fish market I hear you cry. Well, errm yes, sorry about that but it was a 5 minute walk from our guesthouse and listed as one of Busan’s top sights so we had to go…

Outside stall complete with splashing fish in plastic bowls

We started with a stroll around the outside stalls before heading into the large, modern market building and were surprised by how much of the produce for sale was still alive and wriggling. There seemed to be fewer fish and more shellfish and other sea creatures than the markets we saw in Japan. Several times we had to take a closer look to inspect something that we didn’t recognise at all.

Jagalchi market (clockwise from top left): Colourful stalls inside the market building; dead octopuses on display; bowls of weird sea creatures; drying fish above one of the stalls

There were a lot of octopuses. A Korean delicacy is a dish containing octopus so fresh that it’s still writhing – we haven’t yet felt quite brave enough to try it! Several times we saw a small octopus making a bid for freedom down the street before the stall-keeper spotted it and threw it back into its bowl!

The streets east of the market building contained lots of shops specialising in dried fish and seaweed

Hiking around Geumjeong Fortress

For our final day in Busan we planned a long walk in the surrounding mountains, bookended by visits to a couple of the city’s temples. It’s hardly surprising that hiking is a popular pastime for Koreans, the country is covered in (small) forested mountains and Busan city snakes its way around several. It doesn’t take long then to leave the city behind and hit a trail. The weather was kind, after grey clouds and intermittent rain on the preceding days we woke to blue skies and bright sunshine.

After a subway ride and 20 minutes in the bus we were ejected at Beomeosa Temple, just inside the city but so peaceful that it felt like miles away. As we were reading the information board and lining up photos at the entrance gate we were accosted by a retired man working part-time as a volunteer guide similar to those who gave us tours at Matsumoto and Himeji castles in Japan. There wasn’t any discussion of whether we wanted a guide, he just started his spiel, but as always we found that we got more out of the visit with someone to point out interesting features and answer our many questions.

Beomeosa temple’s entrance gate is called ‘One Pillar Gate’. You’ll notice from the front that it actually has four pillars, but if you move around to the side it looks like only one. Hmm, personally I consider that cheating…

The style of the roofs and bright decoration reminded us of Chinese temples

We were surprised by the number of worshippers at Beomeosa Temple. Each hall had a chanting monk and was full of ladies praying. Our guide explained that the different Buddha statues in each hall are prayed to for different reasons, e.g. one to wish for good fortune, one if you are recently bereaved or it is the anniversary of a loved one’s death.

Beomeosa temple buildings

The trail from Beomeosa temple up to the Geumjeong Fortress North Gate (Bukmun) is a steady climb through a valley strewn with boulders, a natural formation called the ‘Sea of Rocks’. It was hard going but we were sheltered a little by the trees and eventually emerged at the fortress wall. The wall extends 18km around the mountaintop and, along with its gates and watchtowers is all that remains of the fortress.

Sea of rocks

We followed the undulating trail around the wall, stopping for panoramic views over the city and to look inside a couple of the defensive watchtowers. In one of them we found two locals taking a break from their hike with a picnic. They gave us some delicious fresh cherry tomatoes and a cup of makgeolli to try, telling us laughingly that it was ‘Korean Champagne’. It’s a kind of cloudy and fizzy rice wine (about 6-7% alcohol) and quite tasty although we declined a second cup for fear that it would slow down our pace – we still had a lot of ground to cover!

Fortress walls and city centre in background from Wonhyobong, the highest point on the eastern ridge of Mt Geumjeongsan

View to the east from the Wonhyobong viewpoint

We stopped for lunch at the East Gate before pressing on to the South Gate (Nammun). This was definitely the hardest section. Mostly uphill over a combination of steps and rocky path, it was not what we wanted just after lunch…

Geumjeong fortress gates and watchtowers (clockwise from top left): Us at the north gate; fourth watchtower; east gate; south gate

The hike from South Gate to Seokbulsa Temple was described as tough in every reference I found to it. After the allegedly ‘moderate’ path around the fortress wall I was worried about whether I would even make it! But as it turned out it wasn’t too bad, a steep, rocky downhill followed by a winding and unrelenting concrete road uphill but the distances were short compared to what we’d already covered and frankly it almost felt like the easy bit!

Julie on the trail down from south gate

The temple itself was very quiet with just one other visitor while we were there and no monks in sight. If the buildings weren’t so well maintained we might have suspected that it was abandoned. Seokbulsa translates to ‘Stone Buddha Temple’ and this explains the main reason to visit which is tucked behind the temple buildings, a courtyard surrounded on three sides by sheer rock walls carved with 10m high images of Buddhas and guardian gods.

Andrew admiring rock carvings on one of the walls

The other two sides of the temple carvings

At the back of the courtyard are a couple of small cave temples with damp walls and flickering candles. Behind these, climbing the steps to the left leads to even more carvings, this time of a seated Buddha and sixteen disciples as well as a shrine to the mountain god.

View out over the temple roof from the top of the stairs behind the carvings

It was a beautiful and impressive end to a long and tiring day.

Japanese markets

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Markets are some of our favourite places to visit. For a start we love food and it’s always interesting to see the exotic (to us) ingredients available to local cooks, and they are usually interesting and colourful places to photograph too. We’ve found Japanese markets to be just as interesting as the ones we visited in Riga, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Bangladesh, and three very different markets from the first half of our stay in Japan really stand out.

Omicho Market, Kanazawa

The Omicho market in Kanazawa really feels like a locals market. It is comprised of stalls mainly offering fresh ingredients and is arranged in a series of covered corridors. There were lots of restaurants around the fringes and on the second floor, we ate at a couple of them during the few days that we stayed in Kanazawa.

A quiet corner of Omicho Market

All kinds of fish feature heavily from live oysters to dried squid, and especially big red crabs, this fine specimen is priced at just under £30!

Japanese vegetables – that’s fresh wasabi in the bottom left, bamboo shoots above it and the white vegetable with green leaves to the right of the lemons is called udo

Non-fish and vegetable stalls include cakes, desserts and flowers

We enjoyed sashimi bought from the fishmonger for lunch one day – eaten standing at the side of his stall

Nishiki Market, Kyoto

This very long covered market stretches for four or five blocks through the centre of Kyoto. It was a great place to spend a rainy afternoon, unfortunately lots of other people had the same thought so we spent much of the time shuffling along in a crush of bodies. There were a lot of weird and wonderful traditional foodstuffs that we attempted to identify, with enough samples to keep things interesting and the occasional souvenir shop as well.

Stained glass skylight over Nishiki market

Vast arrays of pickled vegetables

Miso pickled vegetables (called misozuke) are made using a fermented soy bean paste

We managed to score several samples of sake by looking simultaneously appreciative and indecisive :)

Souvenirs included beautiful ceramics, mobiles and cotton scarves

Food offerings ranged from fresh vegetables and fish to the intriguing sounding ‘Espresso Milk Jam’ (sadly no samples available) and packs of spices

There were lots of snacks available too, these Tako-tamago looked interesting – a baby octopus with a quail’s egg in its head on a stiiiick!

Kagoshima Fish Market Tour

When we read in the Lonely Planet about the weekly early morning tour of the Kagoshima wholesale fish market I got very excited, to the point of planning our trip to make sure that we’d definitely be in town on a Saturday. The tour is run by a group of local hotels and ryokans, but it’s not necessary to be staying with one of them to join in.

We were collected from our hotel just after 7am and whisked off to the Wholesale Fish Market on the seafront where we were issued with wellies and met our guides and the rest of the group – two locals and a group from a Hong Kong TV company (without their video cameras). A market representative guided the group in Japanese, but fortunately for us Yukiko, one of the hotel managers, spoke good English and gave us a really good overview of what we were seeing.

Bustling commercial fish market in Kagoshima

When we arrived fish was being auctioned. The smallish group of wholesalers moved around to each of the crates with the auctioneers amidst a cacophony of bells and whistles. Everything happened very fast, there was a lot of cryptic jargon (even to Japanese ears not in the know) and the bidding was done by the wholesalers quickly scribbling their price on a clapper-like pocket chalkboard which was then flipped open at the auctioneer so that only he could see it. To us, it seemed like the wholesalers got one shot at naming their price for each crate before the auctioneer moved on to the next.

Auction in progress, the guys with the red caps are the auctioneers

Wellington boots are pretty much required footwear around the wet floor of the fish market

We were able to wander fairly freely, trying not to get in the way and marvelling at the huge diversity and amazing freshness of the fish. I’ve never seen eyes so bright or scales so shiny. Obviously the quantity and variety of fish each day varies. Yukiko told us that this morning’s catch was a particularly good one.

Flying fish are a specialty of the Kagoshima area. Their pectoral (side) fins are very long to allow them to glide over the water’s surface.

Fish of all different shapes, sizes and colours

Next we moved into the section of the market where the wholesalers sell to trade, i.e. restaurants and fishmongers selling to the public. Here we were given a demonstration of a 40kg tuna being carved and even got to try some as sashimi – short of cutting it up on the boat, I don’t think we could get it any fresher than that!

Tuna preparation: from whole fish to delicious sashimi in less than 10 minutes!

Some fish varieties aren’t available locally and these are imported from as far afield as Scotland, Argentina, and Chile, and kept in huge walk-in freezers at -20^oC. As you might imagine, keeping so much fish fresh in Kagoshima’s warm climate takes a lot of ice. Market employees send a piece of paper up a dangling line to order whatever quantity they need and then collect it from a nearby huge chute.

Clockwise from top left: refrigerated trucks lined up outside the fish market, collecting ice from the dispenser, the market’s shrine to the god of the sea where thanks are given for its generosity, Andrew and our guide inside the walk-in freezer

There are a couple of restaurants on site that serve meals to the employees and workers at the market, but they’re also open to the public whether you’ve been on the market tour or not. The whole group went to one of them after the tour. Andrew and I ordered the huge sashimi set which contained some slightly exotic items (a large sea snail, and sea urchin) as well as more familiar fish.

A sashimi feast! The snail is at the top left of the picture, the sea urchin is the orange coloured meat in the middle right. As well as this mountain of raw fish, the set meal also included rice, miso soup and pickled vegetables.

After seeing the workings of the market it was great to sample some of its delicious wares, and to talk with the hotel managers who created the fish market tour, and who continue to run it every week with the support of the Kagoshima Fish Market.

The Markets of Bangladesh – a photo essay

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We love wandering through markets, and the ones in Bangladesh stand out for two reasons; firstly, they’re very raw – by that I mean everything and it’s working are on show – live animals tied up or in cages witness their fate as butchers work at the same stall; and secondly, perhaps because we’re so obviously foreign, the stallholders invited us to take pictures of them, or of their fellow sellers.

Just by being curious, smiling, and saying a few words in Bengali, we got some amazingly candid photos. Here are some of our favourites from the markets of Bangladesh..

The first seller in Bangladesh to request his portrait from us – Betel leaf seller, Dhaka

Then the two guys at the next stall wanted their photo taken too – Betel nut sellers, Dhaka

Butcher having a cigarette after a hard days work, Dhaka

More friendly butchers, Dhaka

This whole spices seller saw us taking photographs and quickly nipped back into his stall to get his photo taken as well, Dhaka

Florist making a sale, Rajshahi

Jaggery (uncentrifuged sugar) seller, Rajshahi

Entrepreneurial jaggery (uncentrifuged sugar) seller who stopped us walking past so we could sample his wares then happily posed for a photo, Rajshahi

One of Julie’s favourite portraits, a poultry seller, Rajshahi

This lovely greengrocer who was pointed at by all the stallholders around him to have his photo taken. He didn’t say a word or break his smile. Rajshahi

Our favourite of a line of fishmongers in Rajshahi. Cross-eyed and still has all of his fingers!

When this coconut seller asked for his photo, I gestured for him to hold a coconut as his stand was quite sparse, and look what he pulled out – what a lovely pair! Dinajpur