Ansan Asia Town: An Itaewon For Asian People!

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  The Adventures of Melodie and Shawn in Korea and Taiwan

  
  
  Teaching English, wearing horse heads and riding ostriches.
  
  

  Ansan Asia Town: An Itaewon For Asian People!

  While hundreds of North American and European expats flock to Itaewon every day for their fix of food from home, hundreds of Asian expats are doing the same thing in Ansan. Ansan is a city about 90 minutes from Gangnam, but it's still connected to Seoul on subway line 4. We'd heard this was the home of "Asia Town" (a funny concept considering that we're IN Asia) and that this was the best place around to get some authentic Asian food.

  
  

  

  
  

  The culture was noticeable from the minute we left the train station, as a group of Natives were putting on a concert for a small crowd.
  
  We immediately felt like we were in a different place. It was a little run down, but in an exciting kind of way. Nobody really looked Korean anymore, and we overheard different accents being spoken all around us.

  
  

  

  
  

  We crossed the road away from the station and entered the "Asia Town" food street, which stretches for about 5 or 6 blocks and makes for a sizable international district roughly the same size as the "core" district of Itaewon. It seemed like every store on the street was named "World Food" or "Asia Mart". The shops were full of things that I didn't recognize- import items from the Philippines, India, Vietnam and all over Asia- comfort foods for many, I'm sure.

  
  

  

  
  

  This Asia Mart even had a row of basic-looking long distance phones outside in case ET would like to phone home

  
  

  

  
  

  There were a few Halal shops, too.

  
  

  

  
  

  The majority of shops seemed to be Chinese. In fact, there was one street where there was nothing but Chinese on any of the signs. Even the local Hana Bank sign was in Chinese only. It was about 1000% more Chinese than Incheon's Koreanized Chinatown, 

  
  

  

  
  

  An Indonesian restaurant (I counted 3 in total).