Monday night market at SS2, Petaling Jaya – part 1

The next few posts are dedicated to the very lively, popular, and wonderfully diverse night market (Pasar Malam) at SS2, Petaling Jaya – one of the largest in the area. The market sells various types of goods (clothes, toys, electronics, etc.) but the main reason to come is the street food.

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Monday night is market night ! We were there early-ish and the parking area was filling up quickly. There were hundreds of stalls just setting up when we arrived.

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We have never heard of this market, let alone finding it which lies just outside Kuala Lumpur.  So thanks to our local friend J who drove us to SS2 and showed us the place.

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Petaling Jaya (known locally as PJ) was a satellite town set up in the 50’s to deal with the overpopulation of Kuala Lumpur. It was granted its city status in 2006. SS2 is one of its districts.

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The Chinese word means “explode” – it comes in cheese or wasabi flavor.

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Deep-dried jackfruit – we had some – nothing special – I (Chris) don’t see the point of deep-frying it.

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J bought us some otak-otak. We have no idea what is sandwiched between the two blades of leaves.

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It was toasted on a strip of hot metal. The inside is mystery meat – similar to the material used to make fish ball. An interesting way (and certainly ecologically-conscious) to cook and serve food.

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This contraption is (I believe) for making salt-baked chicken. Please insert a comment if I got this wrong.

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Salt-baked chicken (I think) looked delish … but since we were going to have a sit-down dinner at the open-air food court, we were deterred from trying this out.

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At the open-air market and food court, there were more Chinese food here than Malay or Indian dishes. Wikipedia says the demographic of PJ is more than 50% Chinese.

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Other than cooked food, there were many fruit and vegetable stands.

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As much as the food was not covered, nobody seems to be worried about hygiene or spoilage due to weather – there were no flies – this is partly because the food was freshly made and sold immediately.

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We saw many cake stands too –  on the left is vanilla milky cranberry cake, yam cake in the middle and green tea-red bean cake on the right.

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More street food stands to come in the next post. Click here to see our post of a market on the other side of the world, in Vienna, Austria.

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