1:08 AM
I went to the wet market with my host mom this morning and I was not expecting much out of the trip, but it ended up being one of the most interesting experiences I've had in Malaysia. It's definitely in the top 10.
The market opens early in the morning and sellers start packing up around 1pm which is pretty late for a wet market here, but this market is housed in a permanent complex so it doesn't close as early as the other portable wet markets that set up in the street. The lower level is partially in the car park, and partially underground and it is reserved for the pork butchers. It was dark and smelled like raw meat and ammonia and was full of people yelling and chopping. Most people working there were wearing white tank tops, were chopping meat on giant blocks without gloves, and were sorting piles of raw meat into different piles of raw meat. The whole situation was pretty gruesome. The man that was chopping our meat pile was sort of indiscriminately yelling at other customers, flinging raw meat, and making sausage all at the same time. I learned that the adage is right, and that I really didn't want to know how the yelling man in the partially underground butcher's shop was making my sausage. At one point a woman working in the shop started piling spare pig parts into a bowl and walked around for a while, holding a giant floppy leg. The American meat section may be pretty boring by comparison, but part of me missed the standardized, shrink-wrapped meat and the muzak of the supermarket.
The meat market.
The guy that prepared our bag of meat pieces, next to his meat pile.
This guy was just shoveling a mound of meat pieces into blue plastic bags.
The next floor of fruits, vegetables, and flowers was less intimidating (less meat cleavers) but was full of people all trying to buy the same things at the same time. It felt a little like we were all secretly on Supermarket Sweep. I spent most of the time trying to ask people what things were, because I only recognize about 65% of food items here. My host dad asked me the other day what I was eating and thought it was funny when I told him that I didn't know. Some of the foods here are just things that don't exist in America, so I have no idea what they are. When I told him that I really only know what I'm eating about 50% of the time, he thought that was hilarious. He might have thought that I was joking, but I honestly have no idea a lot of the time. Usually I'll be familiar with a few of the ingredients, but sometimes it's just things that I've never seen or heard of and can't even comprehend.
Our spoils.
After racing everyone else to buy a lot of bumpy weird vegetables, we bought fish. I was trying to identify the different kinds of fish when I noticed they were selling a small shark. I asked my host mom what someone would buy the shark to make, and she told me that shark is usually used to make fish balls. Fish balls are in a lot of different dishes here (fish in general is in a lot of dishes here- if it's not fish ball in your soup, it's fish paste, or fish cake) and are often in soup. So, for the third time since coming to Malaysia, someone has let me know that I'd unwittingly eaten shark. That's about three times too many for me.
See the long black tail on the far left? That's the shark.
Before leaving we visited the spice shop that sells packets of seasoning paste to flavor dishes. Most Malaysian dishes are seasoned with some kind of paste, often a combination of shrimp paste, chili paste, and other seasonings. We bought specific meal-appropriate packets and scooped garlic paste, onion paste, and chili paste out of big tubs to mix our own seasonings.
Packets in the front row and buckets of other pastes in the back.
Sorry for the crappy phone pictures! I really was not anticipating this being as entertaining of an experience as it was!
3:03 AM
This past weekend Kailea and I went to the Cameron Highlands. The area was first developed by the British as a retreat from the heat. The British were followed by vegetable and tea farmers and the region is still mostly agricultural. The parts of the highlands that remain undeveloped are gorgeous. The hills around towns are being leveled and covered with boxy hotels for tourists, but when you get out of town a little it's rolling hills, streams, and small waterfalls. And the weather was such a nice break from KL's heat. It's hard to want to do things outside in KL, especially in the middle of the day, but in the Cameron Highlands being outside was a pleasure.
A tea plantation.
It's a difficult area to explore without a car because the Cameron Highlands area is actually three small towns that are strung together with tourist sites. We booked a tour for our second day there, but for our first day we wanted to try and do what we could on our own. The local bus is pretty useless because it only runs every 2 hours but we gave it a shot and took it to one of Cameron Highlands' most famous tea plantations. The bus dropped us off 2 km from the plantation so as we were walking to the plantation we met a group of tourists that had stopped to take pictures. They offered us a ride because they were headed in the same direction and we ended up spending most of the day with them. They were already on the way to the top of Gunung Brinchang, the second tallest mountain in Malaysia, so we went with them and got a chance to walk around the mossy forest. After Gunung Brinchang and the tea plantation they were on their way to a strawberry and cactus farm so they took us too! We ended up going to all of the places Kailea and I didn't think we would be able to see because we didn't have a car and got to meet some very nice people. We were so thankful that we ran into our accidental tour guides and that they let us come along and join their vacation. On this trip we've had to frequently depend on the kindness of strangers but I am amazed at the amount of kindness that we've received and the enthusiasm with which it's been given. I've been watching the people that I've met that give freely and easily to strangers and I'm trying to pick up their knack for it, because it's a gift I'd like to have.
The mossy forrest.
Our second day we went on a tour to see the rafflesia flower, which is the largest flower in the world. We hiked pretty far into the jungle and even though it was a much more strenuous experience that either Kailea or I anticipated, we were glad we went. That night we met up with some German friends we'd made on the bus to the Highlands from KL. We meet Germans everywhere we go here, but these girls were especially friendly and we enjoyed befriending them. We'll see them again when they pass through KL.
The rafflesia flower.
My highlight of the trip was having tea at Ye Olde Smokehouse, a historic British Inn. It was so pleasant to be able to sit outside in the cool weather and drink tea.
12:03 AM
During my time here in Malaysia I've been working for Women's Aid Organisation. In the past this has involved going to meetings, organizing file cabinets, writing letters, and whatever else they could give me to do, but I've finally received my "big project". WAO tries to give their office interns a self-directed project that will be useful to the organization in some way, and because I am working at WAO for class credit, my project also correlates with my course requirement making it a neat two-in-one.
My project is to look comprehensively at the way the Malaysian police force responds to domestic violence situations and the way they protect domestic violence survivors. WAO has had issues with the police in past concerning the safety of domestic violence survivors and there are problems that need to be identified and addressed so I will be starting a discussion about what is not working and how things can be changed. My Global Studies Project will be dealing with the same problem and I've already begun interviews with a few of WAO's social workers to discuss their experiences with the police and domestic violence. They've been very interesting so far. I anticipated discussing the cultural attitude toward domestic violence in Malaysia and how that effects the way the police deal with domestic violence situations, but I did not anticipate looking so deeply into the Domestic Violence Act and the Penal Code to look at the law structure and how it's preventing women from receiving adequate protection. I won't get into the details here, but if you're interested send me an email or ask me about it when I get home. I should be pretty well-versed in the subject by then, and it's really interesting stuff. And if anyone knows a police officer in the US that works in domestic violence response or prevention, let me know! I'd love to get some insight into a police system in another country that's responding to domestic violence in a different way.
Note: This post was originally entitled "Workin' 9 to 5" but after that song became firmly stuck in my head I decided I wouldn't do that to you nice people.
