Finding out new things in KL

I pottered around the house this morning while Ross went to the gym. About 11, we decided to walk over to Pavilion to do a couple of things and to have a coffee. I had been meaning to get to the Chow Kit Wet Market for about a year so Ross and I decided today was the day.

While sipping our coffees, we rang Brian to see if he wanted to come with us and he met us at Coffee Bean not long afterwards. From Pavilion, we walked up Bukit Bintang to the monorail station and got off at Chow Kit. It was pretty easy to spot the market from the monorail so we walked 100m or so and entered the under cover market.

At the front were lots of little stalls selling household goods, toys, accessories etc. As we walked deeper into the market, we passed sidewalk food stalls and within the depths, we finally found the fruit, vegetable and meat stalls.

As with any wet market in Asia, it had a pretty pungent smell but nothing too bad. There were a lot of stalls selling fruit and veg and I was amazed to see how some stalls were displaying their few bits of produce carefully on coloured plastic plates. It seemed that a lot of these stalls were from home gardens.

Some stalls sold fruit, some salad vegetables, some herbs, some onions, potatoes and other staples. Before long we walked into the meat section. Butchers selling all manner of meat were everywhere. We saw massive tongues, livers, cows tails, massive hooves and many other things we didn't really stop to ponder!

We also found the fish mongers and we decided to buy a fish, some squid and some yabbies. We think the fish may have been a coral trout - not sure though. For a decent sized fish (about 50cm long), 1 kg of yabbies and a couple of squid we payed 47 ringgit - bargain! I also bought some banana leaves to cook the fish in. I bought a huge bundle for 2.50 ringgit.

We walked around a bit long before the heat became a bit too much and we headed back to the monorail station to start our trip home. We walked back to the apartment from the monorail station and put the seafood in the fridge. Ross and I spent the afternoon relaxing before Brian came back over about 3.

We watched the AFL game and prepared the food and at half time, the boys began cooking. I whipped up a salad and some coconut rice as well as a few of mango/ pineapple daiquiris. We sat outside and enjoyed our feast eating off banana leaves as plates (see photo) which was great idea as it saved on washing up!

About 9, Brian left and Ross and I watched some TV before heading off to bed. It was good to discover something new in KL and see a bit more of the authentic KL rather than the Westernized side we see every day.