Malaysia's Market

The vendor is making one of my favorite breakfast, rice with sweet bbq pork and peanut. Chinese breakfast is unlike American breakfast, people consume a lot of calories because many are labor workers and burn way more calories.  Especially in this climate, you sweat a lot of your calories away. While I was in Malaysia, I did nothing but eat and relax.  I ate 3 full meals and snacks in between but did not gain any weight. 

This is called the Year Long Cake (in Chinese is Nian Gao). This is made from glutinous rice and is very sweet. When it is fresh, it is soft and very sticky, as it age it hardened.  This is very popular over Chinese New Year and can be found in every household. When it is hardened, it is cut into half-inch strips, get coated in flour and then fried in oil.  The outside becomes very crispy and the inside soft and gooey. It is heaven when it is warm!

Chinese sausages and waxed duck.  The ducks are preserved and need to be steamed because at this stage it is very tough.  the Chinese sausage is a favorite of many Chinese but I do not care for the taste of it.  It is too salty and waxy for my liking.

Chinese New Years means lots of sweet bread.  These are all bread in a variety of shapes, colors and sizes.

Next to food stands, there are stands where you can purchase incense and papers that you burn at the temple and home alters.

You can also buy toys..

Clothes...

Jeans...

At the end of one street, 2 men are selling shrimps out of a bucket. Note that both men have cigarettes in their mouth.  FDA will certainly disapprove!

Everywhere I looked, there was a mountain.

Durian

The highway consist of many stands that sells anything from fruits to fried food. This is a durian stand where you can either buy durian to go or as you can see someone had the fruits there.  Durian is considered a vile smelly fruit that most hotels banned.  I can not tell you that it smells bad because I grew up loving the taste and smell of it.  I always looked forward to them when they were in season.  Andrew Zimmern compared this fruit to rotten custard while Anthony Bourdain loves it.

When I was about 6, my father brought my sister and I to a friends place to visit.  He was working in the jungle, about 15 minutes off the trail. Trees of more than 100 feet surrounded us and I kept hearing thumping sounds every few minutes, sound of something hard dropping onto the floor. I remember I asked my father what that sound was and he said that it was durian falling to the ground. I was terrified of one falling on my head that I stuck close to him for the duration of the visit.

When it is durian season, durian sellers like this one collect the fruits daily and sell it within 24 hours of picking them. So the smell of this fruit is amazingly strong.  Since this was the first trip back to Malaysia in about 15 years, my brother-in-law knew that I have not eaten durian for that long.  So he made sure that he got a few for me to have.  We could smell the un-open durian while it was in the trunk of the car. NYC do sell durian but they are not the same, they have been frozen and thawed.  Some things are meant to be eaten fresh or not have at all. To me this is one of those things.

This fruit has a very spiky hard shell that grows on very tall trees.  If you are unlucky to be under it while it drop, you are a goner!

The seller expertly opening a durian, some customers eat it right there.  I guess if you are driving by and wanted some durian, you can have it then and there. If you want something fried, go to the next stand, drink? Next stand too.  This is what so great about driving through Malaysia.  They may not be as sanitary as the FDA deem safe but if you grow up eating there, you will have the immune system to fight off bacteria or for instance the rusty cleaver the guy is using to open the durian.  These are all standard in Malaysia and I grew up just fine in these condition.

 

This is a fruit you either hate or love, there is really no in between.