Good evening from the night market in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia.
It has been a scorcher of a day.
The sun has finally gone down.
It’s still over thirty degrees, but a much better temperature now
to just wander around and see what we can find.
I basically ran over to this table because it looks so cool.
I’ve never seen this before.
Two different types of seaweed.
One is called dried seaweed
and then green seaweed and
I was just talking to the man here, he says he was out on his boat and picked it up today
and you can eat this raw or cooked.
The dried seaweed looks so cool.
It looks like coral, actually,
And then the green looks like little tiny little grapes
that you would eat like this or something
and both the dried seaweed and the green seaweed you cook by boiling in some water
and then adding some seasonings, so chili sauce, garlic, and salt.
This machine here is really cool.
It has a big engine and then two buckets and there’s this…
it looks like a Medieval torture device or something.
This little knob in the middle that’s metal looks really dangerous, and it is,
and it’s actually for shaving coconut.
So there’s coconuts hanging here and a sign that says how much it is per kilo
and so they basically cut the coconut in half and then hold it up
and as the motor runs it turns round and round and it shaves all the insides of the coconut
and the shavings fall into this basin
and then they package them all up into bags and sell them by weight.
I wish we had smell-o-vision because then you would already know
that I’m standing right beside the BBQ.
But maybe the wafts of smoke are giving it away as well.
You always can find your way to the satay through the night market.
You just look for big plumes of smoke
and know that you’ve arrived
and satay is super, super popular in Malaysia.
It’s basically different kinds of meat, usually chicken, lamb, or beef,
served on a stick and done over a BBQ
and they use different seasonings and different sauces
and this cost one Malaysian Ringgit for one stick so that’s about thirty cents Canadian.
We got the last chicken satay
and I asked her like you must be so hot standing here.
You must be hot standing here all night.
And she just smiled so I guess it’s ok.
It has soy sauce on the outside.
I love the soy sauce flavouring.
Wow, that’s good.
I’ll be ordering ten more of these.
My eyes are kind of stinging from the smoke.
Mine are getting bloodshot.
Time to move away from the satay.
After getting satay and standing near a BBQ for a little too long,
the logical place to come next
was to buckets filled with ice and delicious fruit juice.
So they have tons of these.
You’ll see these all over Malaysia, especially at the night markets.
So I treated myself to a large.
It was two Ringgits so it’s still under about a dollar Canadian
and I got mango.
It’s my absolute favourite and the cool thing is that they use liquid sugar here
so you can see before you buy how much liquid sugar is mixed in with your fruit juice,
So it’s not just straight mango fruit juice but the sweeter the better, right?
And it’s full of ice and one of my favourite sounds
as I’m walking around the streets of Malaysia honestly
is hearing people turning the ice and just…they’ve got these huge...
spoons almost that they’re just getting their arms in there and
the sound just makes you feel refreshed.
It’s like…it’s kind of the equivalent sound of
you know when you hear someone popping the can of a Coke
or something cold and you just… you start to feel cold inside?
That’s the Malaysian equivalent is hearing the sound of the ice as it’s churned around.
I could down this entire thing right now.
I think I will.
Lots of chicken.
I feel like chicken tonight!
Do you find do you sell more chicken or beef?
More chicken, yeah?
This table is full of tuna so you just pick whichever fish you want
and he’ll chop it up for you.
This is cool ‘cause you can see how he’s cut it up
and then right over here one of the fish is looking up at you with a very big eyeball.
We got Mee Gorgeng Mamak here at the night market
and it’s basically noodles and chicken and there’s some curry in there
and the guy said it’s ‘a little bit spicy.’
But a little bit spicy here is like a lot of spice back home.
This is very spicy by our standards but it’s really good.
I also picked up a pineapple juice.
This was two Ringgit
which is about sixty-five cents Canadian or maybe like forty cents US
and it’s absolutely delicious.
So good after the spice.
This one is called Nasi Goreng USA.
I’m not really sure what makes this the USA version.
It’s got just a mix of different vegetables here with spices
and there’s an egg over top of rice which looks delicious.
This is another dish that he described as a little bit spicy.
It is actually less spicy than the first dish
but still spicy by our standards.
The meat and fish aisle is not a place you want to wear flip flops.
One because you might slip - I just saw someone almost slip -
and mostly because obviously they’re chopping up meat and fish
and there’s blood and puddles everywhere.
There’s so many different fruits here that we don’t see in Canada
and it’s so cool to just see them here in the marketplace.
Like this one.
What is it?
It kind of looks like a dragon’s egg, Game of Thrones style.
Or a giant acorn that you can eat.
Yeah.
Is it good.
Yes.
Is it sweet?
Yeah, sweet.
Very sweet?
Thank you.
There you go.
There’s a ton of seafood in Kota Kinabalu.
From where I’m standing right now I can see the water, I can see the boats,
and then if I look down right in front of me are
the fish that they’ve caught in those boats, on that water.
I mean that is fresh.
And the idea here at the market is that they have menus
and you can decide exactly what kind of seafood you want,
exactly the way that you want it prepared.
So they’ve got fish soup, hot and sour fish, steamed fish.
They’ve also got like squid and shrimp
and just all sorts of seafood so very fresh, very custom.
I think what she means to say is you can choose your own ‘poisson.’
There’s the water, boats, menu, fish, table where you eat.
It’s all in one view.
These ones look like Jackson Pollocks.
I studied these in art school.
I love walking around night markets
and just seeing the different things that they have.
And what’s really cool about this one in Kota Kinabalu
is because it’s right on the water, I mean literally it’s a few steps up from the water here,
they have the seaweed and then the fresh, fresh seafood
that you can just pick whatever you want.
In this case they’ve just put the menu right on top of the seafood.
And then they cook it in front of you and put it on a plate
and it’s always fun to just kind of follow your nose and your eyes around,
which led me to the satay - the BBQ -
and then to follow it over to the sound of ice
and have that cooling mango drink.
It’s just…I don’t know.
There’s always something neat that you can find at the night market
so I hope that you guys have enjoyed this video.
Make sure you give it a thumbs up if you did
and subscribe if you haven’t already
and we’ll see you in our next video.
Bye!