Pasar Malam

[Wednesday July 25^th] On Wednesday night there is a open market near my apartment. I’ve been told its called the ‘Pasar Malam’, the night market. It was quite a bizarre experience strolling though. It was fairly crowded with people from all over.



Where do I begin? Well it’s a crowded little side street with several blocks of shops. Very much like a craft fair setup. As you stroll through you see all sorts of different things. There is a lot of food out for purchase from fruits and vegetables to fully cooked meals. Its quite different from the US. There is a guy taking whole (but plucked) chickens and cutting them on the spot. Everything they do is up front for you to see. Everything is open air and just hanging about.


They have fish stalls too. Lots of fish just sitting out waiting to be purchased. There is even this guy on a corner selling fish. He sits on this 6 inch high seat, between his legs is a small brick. Someone will order a big fish, say 18 inches long and about 6 inches wide. He’ll take is knife and scales the fish like skinning a potato. Scales just pile up on the street. He then whacks off the fish head. He slices the head in half right down the center and displays the cut open head to the customer. He pulls out the fish guts from the remaining fish body and they just lye on the street next to him. He cuts the fish down length wise and then many time vertically, the whole time keeping it as one large piece and flailing the fish around. The fish hits the ground (street) many times during this. He shows the fish again to the customer and then puts in a bag. Without washing up he accepts the cash payment, puts the money into his fanny pack and gives back change. Yhep. Fish guts hands and all. He then works with another customer, the scales and guts just continue to pile of and age as the night goes, new fish touching the old remains. Very strange!



They have some very strange produce here. I haven’t tried them yet but many of them are very spikey. Quite different than an apple!



Ah, then we come to the DVD booth. Extremely professional looking. Each DVD has its own case cover and each DVD has professional screen printing on the disc itself. It has the full move description and some even have holographic print on the cover sleeve! You could easily mistake them for the real deal. If you look carefully you can see movies that just got to the theater such as Diehard 4, Harry Potter, and Transformers…


-Terry