Malaysian Wet Market

This past weekend Damien, Audrina, and I ventured to Chow Kit to see the wet market where the local Malays shop for food. It was a very eye opening experience! Here are some picture of what we saw.

*Disclaimer: Don't continue reading/looking if you're grossed out easily.

Produce section

I see these beans everywhere here. I'm not sure what kind they are though or how they use them.

 I think these are a type of large legume. 

 They have a ton of different peppers here.

Damien and I always wonder what this is when we see it.

Long beans, they're very long. 

We picked these next two fruits up while we were there. This one is a mangosteen. They are one of my favorite fruits here. They have a dark purple skin on the outside that you have to pull away from the delicate white-fleshed fruit.

This is what they call snake fruit. You can see why they call it that. The skin of the fruit looks like snake skin. They grow on palm trees, according to Wikipedia. We got some to try since this was the first time we'd seen this fruit. I would say the taste reminds me of hairspray and the texture is unlike anything I've ever tasted before. It's kind of coarse and very firm and crispy.

Now onto the disgusting part, the meat and poultry section of the market. 

They're really into dried fish here. The smell is horrible.

Snails.

More fish.

I think this is a water snake or some sort. They were still alive and moving around in this bucket.

 These catfish were huge! This guy was trying to catch one for someone to take home.

 After they catch it, they kill it at this station with a large knife.

 

  

 

More dried fish. This time it was just the head.

 

The beef section. This part grossed me out the most. I think that's cowhide on the left and tongues on the right.

Rolls of lard.

Cow heads. 

Poultry

Quail eggs. They're kind of cute looking with all their spots and how small they are. I've never tried one though so I don't know what they taste like.

I think this chicken was cooked in some sort of yellow spice or maybe it was just brined. Not sure!

 Desserts

 This guy was frying up some kind of breaded food.

Nothing like a day under the tents at the food market.