To market, to market, to buy a ...

In a hot tropical country such as Malaysia, it is hard not to find a fresh veggie and meat market in any town. That is one of the things that I missed about living in Germany - to have a market available.

My first stop, and hopefully not my only stop, is Miri in East Malaysia. Starting the trek from Edmonton, it took about 22 hours to get here. The route was Edmonton to Vancouver to Hong Kong to Kota Kinabalu to Labuan to Miri. Booking a flight to Asia at this time of the year is very tricky as it gets full fast and leaves you with a limited amount of choice in terms of flight times or airlines. In our case, we ended up with an 8 hour layover at the Hong Kong Airport. Once arrived, we were greeted by relatives that were kind enough to pick us up. The ride through downtown gave us a sneak peak of the festivities that lie ahead with the Lunar New Year coming. There were red lanterns hung everywhere and a few streamlined lighting, almost stick-like, where the lights lit up from top to bottom giving an illusion of a firework. I was excited in learning how people in Asia would celebrate the biggest event of the year first hand. I hope it will be like Silvester in Germany with crazy fireworks being set off :)

We arrived on January 13th, so it gave me plenty of time to observe how people prepare for the New Year Eve on the 22nd. The most obvious thing you will see at this time of the year is sales! Yes, the golden word for shopping lovers and a not so good thing for me at the start of my trip. Miri has a few malls, one mall in particular called The Imperial Mall had a one day sale. This gave people a chance to get anything they still needed to celebrate the new year from house decor to clothing. Clothing is the biggest thing as it is traditionally believed that one must start the new year wearing something new. And in Asia, instead of wearing one thing new, everything from top to bottom must be new. Hence, people will go out buying shirts to shoes. Believe it or not, the only thing I bought from the mall was a SIM card. It's called DiGi and let me tell you, I get sms spam from them almost everyday. But it does make me feel important :)

The other thing people buy like crazy is food and plenty of it. A celebration such as this that will last about 2 weeks mean that you need to have plenty of food and snacks available for all the visitors that will come stopping by to bring well wishes. There is a daily market downtown that sells fresh produce. One of the vendors is my cousin. She, like all the other vendors, would get up every morning around 3 am, drive their vans there to set up their produce at their designated stall by around 5 am as buyers start swinging by at that time. Most of the vendors will start packing around 1pm only to start again the next day. This is their daily routine as this market runs 7 days a week and is their livelihood. In the same vicinity, you will also find cafés set up for eating fresh cooked food. I haven't eaten there yet, but my uncles love coming here with their friends to have a bite and a drink ... or two.

If people want fresh fish (usually eaten on the new years eve with family), there is a fresh fish market nearby. You can smell it a bit aways. The stalls are set up a bit differently as there are not many vendors compared to the fruit and vegetable vendors. The stalls are set up at the edges of the tent leaving the middle for any preparations such as fish sorting in the middle. As I walked around, I was blown away with all the different types of fish available. I even saw one stall where the fish and eel were still alive lying and wiggling on the table to display how fresh they are. And there was even one stall selling blowfish (my mom swore she saw it). Aren't those not safe to eat unless properly cleaned and prepared? Hmmm ... I don't think I would try it just yet.

Still in mood for more markets? Well there is one more market that is specific for the new year. It's the new year night market. It opened up on Jan 17th and here you will find it like any other night market in Asia with the exception of selling more new years related goods. There are all sorts of stuff you can buy; it's really a trinket paradise. You can find bags, wallets, jewellery and even toques! You may be lucky and find something special and worth your while. There are so many people and with the hot weather, you would not resist buying drinks and even some finger foods such as buns and satays. The oddest thing that people were mesmerized by was something called Magic Ice Cream. I peaked where I possibly could in between people to see what the hoopla was all about. It was a kid selling ice cream sticks. The actual contraption looked something from the lab. A steel round pan holding metal tubes that apparently had ice cream in it. My guess is that you spin it like an ice cream maker. I wanted to take a photo of it, but me with a big SLR camera in between people legs didn't sound like something that looked proper so this is the best description I could give you. On top of all this, there are lion and dragon dance performances to break you away from the crazy stall to stall shopping as well as singing and dancing performances on stage.

With all this buying, I will see the fruits of people's labour as the Lunar New Year comes around the corner. Until then, it will be off to the market to buy anything and everything needed.