This Little Expat went to Market

Wet markets are part of everyday life in Malaysia. Many blog sites show exotic pictures of different types of tropical fruit, fish mongers and colourful stalls with smiling merchants, however, in reality it is quite different. There is heat, humidity, flies, odours of raw flesh and fish and torrential downpours. They are the first obstacles one has to overcome to shop at a local wet market. Next you have the sites that not every westerner has been exposed to, fresh crabs being hit by a mallets, piles of raw chicken, lamb carcasses hanging from hooks,  people yelling at you “hello sister, want something”, fish being gutted and chopped and more importantly no hygienic gloves or hair nets on anyone. If you stand too close to one of the meat stalls some of the meat juices will hit you in the face while they are hacking away. In reality it is not an exotic but worth a visit

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My first visit to a wet market, on my own, was one week after just moving to Kuala Lumpur. Previously my local friend had described what they were like to me and highlighted that they are not for the fainthearted. With that in mind I took up the challenge to shop at a wet market for my daily groceries. My first sight when entering the market was meat hanging in the heat and the flies (no-one seems to mind nor swipes them away) which sent me into a catatonic shock that I vowed never to go there again. My next stop was the TMC super market which was another shock to the system. The super market was full of products from every country with really small aisles. One section in particular that caught my attention was the rice and MSG (aginomotto) section where both were sold in 10kg and 20kg bags . Once I had bought my groceries my next big learning curve was how to line up at checkouts. This shop had a number of checkouts joined together and people would line up behind each checkout no matter how cramped almost like a traffic jam and if there is hesitation on your behalf as to what line you were in and the checkout it belongs to you will find yourself at the back of the line….again. After this first impression of shopping local I decided to mainly shop at Bangsar Village Grocer (a supermarket tailored to expats).

After a few bad batches of meat and high grocery bills, I thought it was time to shop local again. After friendly advice from a local co-ordinator at my mother’s group I ventured to TTDI wet Market. This market was a little different to the common images of wet markets. For starters it is in a building, not under umbrellas and secondly the fish and chicken are all kept on ice. I was very impressed by the chicken merchant as whole chickens can be bought and cut to however you like at no extra cost.  The same applies to fish mongers, fish cut the way you like and more importantly  the prawns freshly shelled for you at no extra cost. Also, at this wet market anything and everything can be supplied, even Tupperware. I have a Tupperware addiction so I try to avoid her stall as much as possible. Up the top there is a food market and a little Indian woman who sells Roti Canai and Appum. She is very funny as she will often yell at customers with her famous line “If you have a problem with my food, simple don’t buy it”. 

After a while I believe an Expat goes through a stage of trying to be as local as possible, well I did. Again on advice I decided to venture to a real Night Market (wet market at night) in PJ SS2 (very local area) which happens once a week and this became my weekly shop for at least 6 months. I would arrive late in the afternoon to the night market and walk around to all my favourite vendors feeling proud that I was the only white person in the area. This area was large and very busy at nighttime, easily 1000 people at night. On one occasion  I brought my older child with me (aged 2 1/2) but this only lasted one visit as many people would approach me and warn we that my child could be easily taken, something a mother does not want to hear. At this market everything and anything can be bought at “best price” if you speak the local lingo. Crocs for 10-20 rm,  illegal DVDs, CDs, cakes, honey, household equipment, pets and the list goes on . This shopping trip would usually take 2 hours from door to door but I would come back with bags of fruit and vegetables hoping they would ast the week (mangoes usually 10rm / kg or during season 10rm for 3kg). The only problem was the vendors do not have cold storage facilities so the fruit and vegetables are not that fresh depending on when they were delivered. Most of the fruit and vegetable are imported apart from the local varieties. My oranges are usually from South Africa or Australia.  Fresh imports are usually sold at a premium. I always try to buy Australian as opposed to Chinese as the quality is good and you know there are restrictions on using too many chemicals. 

However, one night when I was having dinner with my Husband’s local drinking buddies an old man asked me where I shopped (this is a question that every local will ask you once they know where you live). I proudly said SS2 and his remark to no-one in particular was “why the hell would she go out there” and no-one seemed to know the answer. I have since discovered that there is a night market in the area that I live with the same vendors from the SS2 market because all the vendors travel to the same night markets as all the areas have night markets just on different days of the week. I also found out that there is a law that prevents the vendors from having different pricing for different areas. Thankfully I changed my routine after this discovery as the shopping became an unpleasant exhausting chore.

After living in Malaysia for two and half years I still go to the TTDI wet market and I now shop at the small wet market (my stomach is much stronger now) and the village grocer and TMC.   If a night market is on and I am in the area I will go buy some fruit as there are usually some good deals.