Malaysia

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!