Bustling Morning Street Wet Market Toned Down At Chowrasta

An excerpt from blogpost on SmartDory…

This is the best Asian wet market experience in George Town.  Wake up early for a true blue Penang experience of shopping at an authentic lively wet market. Watch the street vendors set up stall just before the crack of dawn. By 6am most of the roadside stalls would be set up with vans parked and goods offloaded.

Watch how the local housewives shop as they moved from stall to stall to do their marketing. Most of the shoppers and vendors know each other. It’s the daily chat and mingles they look forward to.

It’s worth the effort to walk through the market even if you don’t plan on buying anything. Just taking in the colours, smells and people watching is a great pastime.

FOOD CARTS

It is easy to find good and cheap food for breakfast in most outdoor food markets. There are five “kopitiam” (coffee shops) on Kuala Kangsar Road. These are hidden just behind the umbrella hawkers selling decent, affordable breakfasts.

I head to my two favourite breakfast food here. There is a popular Chee Cheong Fun cart which serves steamed flat rice noodle rolls is without any filling. The springy rice rolls are drizzled with oil and three types of sauces. The pungent prawn paste (hae ko), sweet red sauce (tee cheou), and chilli sauce.

Another breakfast favourite is the Chee Cheong Chok, a thick flavourful congee cooked with pig innards and blood cubes. This is topped with loads of white pepper, spring onions and chopped crispy deep-fried pig intestines.

I down that with ‘Kopi C’ a thick local coffee with thin evaporated milk. ‘Kopi‘ is local coffee with thick sweetened condensed milk. ‘Kopi O’ is just black coffee with sugar.

For a truly Malaysian experience, watch out for the motorcycles balancing containers and goods riding through the crowd of pedestrians and shoppers! Seriously no one seem to care as everyone just go on their own pace as they jostle for space on the narrow road.

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