Langkawi Night Markets (Malaysia)

One of my favourite parts of our (now distant) holiday to Langkawi was visiting the nightly food market. As Langkawi is quite small the markets move location each night of the week - a roving troop of food vendors delivering tasty happiness to locals and tourists alike.

Depending on the location you may get more or less stalls...but there always seems to be fried chicken and let's be honest, that's all I care about!

Our first trip to market is on a Saturday night - probably the biggest market night of the lot given that it's held in Kuah Town, the major town on Langkawi. Every taxi driver on the island will know where the markets are but if you're driving keep your eyes peeled for this pretty snazzy looking building....

The markets seem to kick off at around 7pm (ish) each night. Again, we're on island time here so I think it's more like "the markets start when we feel like it". Thankfully once the sun sets on Langkawi the temperature becomes bearable and it's really nice to wander the markets stuffing your face. Bring the Aeroguard though - the mozzies are up for a feast too!

On our first visit I little spazz out at all the amazing food and + drink and make a pig of myself by eating nearly everything in sight including three pieces of fried chicken (pass on the Durian though). Dave and I also bought some things to take back to the villa for lunch the next day. All in all we spent around AUD$15.

The satay chicken was AMAZING, fried chicken was artery cloggingly GREAT and anything on a stick gets two thumbs up from me. Like I said we gave the Durian a wide berth but made multiple visits to the drink stalls to top up on Coconut Juice or Sugar Cane Juice - both are super refreshing and help to de-grease your tummy if you've eaten too much Ayam Goreng.

Our second market visit is on a Sunday night, to the much quieter Padang Matsirat. The market is set in a carpark nestled up against rice fields and a mosque. It was really nice wandering the markets (eating fried chicken, ahem) as the call to prayer rung out.

 
There wasn't a lot of food on offer as this location (espeically when compared to Kuah Town) but we noticed that Durian is EVERYWHERE!

We basically ate fried chicken here and took home some tasty Mutabak to have for lunch the next day. Our villa didn't have a microwave but this is suprinsgly nice eaten cold...

Your hotel or villa should be able to tell you were the markets are each night -- but if not here is a little list:

• Sunday at Padang Matsirat - in large car park area near the Field of Burnt Rice
• Monday - Ulu Melaka
 • Tuesday - Kedawang
 • Wednesday - Kuah Town
 • Thursday - Pantai Cenang (Tamoyong Village)
 • Friday - Padang Lalang (Air Hangat) • Saturday - Kuah Town

Tsukiji Fish Market, Tokyo (Japan)

Tokyo's Tsukiji Fish Market is the biggest wholesale fish market in the world...a surprising accomplishment for such a small country. I'm a fan of "big" things: the Big Pineapple; the Big Prawn and the Big Banana to name a few so there was NO way I was heading home from Japan without seeing The Big Fish Market!

Before we hit the market proper we get lost in a labyrinth of little laneways that we stupidly thought was "the market", or "the outer market", or "some version of the market". This area is undoubtedly attached to the market in some way (or exists because of the market at any rate), but keep burrowing in until you hit the "proper" Tsukiji Fish Market. You'll know it when you see it as it's a BIG, busy open space swarming with stallholders and scarily fast propane powered trolleys that seem to be quite happy to run over agog-mouthed tourists. Surprisingly though we saw no seagulls about...maybe it was too cold?

We spend a little while wandering about the nice "outer-outer, not-really-the-market market" which was lovely. I'm guessing this is where the locals come to shop for seafood and other items that are on offer including vegetables and fruit.  We saw a little bonito-flake factory, tried fleshly flaked bonito, bought some sake glasses, tried some proper green tea and were offered a sample of dried fish we loved, much to the delight of the stall holder.

For those that are keen you can arrive at Tsukiji Fish Market at some ungodly hour and wait in line to be accepted into the "inner-market" where the famous Tuna Auctions take place at about 5am each morning. There's little that will get me out of bed before dawn and watching endangered Tuna be auctioned off for ridiculous prices is not one of those things. It was interesting to see though, when we were waking around, that nearly all of the tuna was frozen rather than whole, fresh fish.

We arrived at about 11am and had a leisurely wander around as the stallholders were all packing up.  As we wandered around I really got a sense of how HUGE this market is. We hardly made a dent into the space after 20 minutes of wandering. It was also nice to see some "hipster light fixtures" being used for their intended purpose of industrial lighting...

I also started to get a sense of how much seafood the market must go through here each day...and I started to feel uneasy. For every fish I saw here I wondered how much "by-catch" was left dead on the docks or thrown, dead, back into the ocean. I also wondered what happened to all the fish that didn't sell...did it become "rubbish"? I was aware of our massive over-consumption of everything and I didn't feel great...but I felt hungry so we went for sushi!

There are a few very well known sushi places in the "outer-market" and they are easily recognizable for the horrendous queues forming outside. As it was about 3 degrees on the day of our visit I went straight to the restaurant with no queue. I was running with the theory that we were in Japan, at the biggest fish market in the world...surely ALL the sushi joints would be great.

And look at this fabulous old uncle dishing up sushi from behind the counter! I felt like I was in the movie "Jiro dreams of sushi". Our restaurant couldn't have been more perfect!

The restaurant is tiny, and I'm fairly most of them at the market would be about the same size.  There is *just* enough room for us to sit on our stools and for the waiter to squish past with our green tea and soup.

Unsurprisingly the majority of the sushi on offer is tuna. I'm sure there's a way to ask for "no endangered Tuna please Mr Sushi-maker-man, just line caught Slipjack for me" but lord knows how you say that in Japanese...so we just ate what we were given and I have to say it was pretty terrific. Everything was super fresh and so delicious. With the addition of the green tea and pimped out miso soup that had noodles in it we left feeling very full and happy.  This feed cost us about AUD$25 each.

For details on how to get to the markets and their opening times this Wikipedia link should help.

Borough Market, London

London is the final European city on our 2013 Great Escape. I’ve been to London a few times before but this was The Boy’s first time here. Now, I LOVED London on all of my previous trips and I’ve often daydreamed about utilising my British passport and returning here to live but this time I just HATED it. I HATED London’s guts BIG TIME! I wanted to punch it in the face and stomp on it…HARD! I’m not sure what it was about me and London this time around but boy, did I have the sh!ts with this city for our entire 6 day stay.

I think a big part of my London grumpiness was the fact that the lovely AirBnB flat I’d picked out for us in Notting Hill fell through at the last minute. We ended up staying in South London, in Camberwell which I’d describe as a really “nothing area” with nothing to do - may as well be living back in West Ryde! Yawn.

There was really nowhere to eat or shop locally and I really missed having that “just-step-outside-of-your-front-door-and-everything-is-at-your-feet” feeling. I also think I was cross with myself…there was A LOT I wanted to do and see in London but no enough time to do it – so I just ended up feeling cranky and rushed the whole time. When The Boy casually dawdled around The Tower of London I was nearly tearing my hair out as I was already ready to be away to the next place to see.

The next place to see of course was the famous Borough Markets. I don’t know what I was worried about – that they’d sell out of ALL the food and I’d go hungry. Not likely.

The Borough Market is thought to date back to about 1014 – it’s incredible if you really sit down and think about it. People have been buying and selling food on this very site (or near enough to it) for nearly a thousand years! The market is split into two sections that are separated by a narrow road.

On the one side you have a lot of stall holders selling ready-made titbits that you can eat on the spot. All of it looks really tempting and it’s hard to decide on what to buy. I made a silly mistake earlier on as I was SO hangry The Boy and I stopped for a quick bite to eat at Pret A Manger so neither of us were that hungry by the time we got here. D’oh!

On the other side of the road stallholders are selling all sorts of meats, cheeses, vegetables, fruits and breads – I wonder if this area is the older part of the market? It has more of that ye olde worlde feel to it and is undercover whereas the other side of the road was open air (not so great in the rain).

 

The Boy and I go a bit nuts on this side of the market – buying all manner of goodies in the hopes of recreating some of the wonderful meals we had for ourselves in Paris.

We had a pretty good picnic back in our flat, but it just wasn't Paris if you know what I mean. Le sigh.