The Wet Market Chicken Stall

"Visit a local market" is an oft heard piece of advice when traveling internationally. It's a great way to take a peek into the daily life a local. For many visitors to Penang's Pulau Tikus Wet Market, also known as "The Rich Wives Market," the tour starts off pleasantly enough. The din of hundreds of customers and vendors echoes through the air, and there are plenty of exotic fruits and vegetables to ooh and ahh over. The fragrant, vividly hued blooms at the flower stall just beg to be photographed. Everyone is having a jolly good time.

Then....they come upon the chicken stall.

A chicken is weighed before being slaughtered.

For anyone who does all their shopping at a grocery store, the chicken stall is an eye-opener. If you're used to getting your chicken out of a refrigerated case on a styrofoam tray neatly wrapped in plastic film, the wet market chicken stall hits you over the head with the reality of how chickens end up on the plate in Penang. This realization left one visitor I was with standing there stunned with her mouth hanging wide open and a look of abject horror in her eyes. (Don't worry. No bloody photos ahead.)

There was something extra tragic about a living, breathing bird being weighed on a scale surrounded by members of his flock who had only recently been bled out and plucked. Did she fathom that she was about to share their fate?

Who's the Fairest of them All?

Sunny beaches and tropical breezes. That's Penang for you. For most Westerners, one of the best souvenirs of a stay on the island is a bronze glow, a golden tan, and the potential for skin cancer. Not so for the locals. In Malaysia, as well as much of Asia, being fair and white is the preferred complexion.

It's as if a culture's beauty standards purposely mess with people's minds by idealizing the hardest attribute to attain. Most Malays and Indians have medium to dark skin. Beauty ads here tempt them to make it fairer. Most white people are...well... white. The beauty ideal for them in the West is tan.

Online Resources for Expats Moving to Penang

Before I moved overseas, so many questions raced through my head. Where do I buy food? How do I find a doctor? Would I ever make friends? How do we handle banking? What will I do with myself all day? Luckily, I found online resources that helped answer these questions. Now, I send the following links to anyone who asks for advice on moving to Penang.

How to Handle Daily Life
Penang Momma is an excellent resource for daily expat life in Penang. It covers a wide variety of concerns, for example:

•   Hospitals and pediatricians
•   Finding a preschool
•   Organic grocery stores
•   Hiring  maids
•   Ordering food at a hawker center 

If you have a young child, the Penang Mommas discussion group is a great place to ask other expat mothers your questions.

Living in Penang is another website with practical advice for foreigners.

Retiring in Penang
Both Pick of Penang and Retired in Malaysia are written by guys who have settled in Penang under the Malaysia My 2nd Home (MM2H) visa program. Visit their blogs for insight on the cost of living, getting an automobile, housing,  banking, and other aspects to consider when committing to the long-term move. They also seem to get out after dark (unlike me) and have numerous recommendations for nightlife.

Fun Activities
Spiral Synergy hosts a variety of events every month. There's everything from Photo Workshops on the streets of historic Georgetown to the Furniture Confidential tour showing you where boutique hotels acquire their fabulous decor. If you're crafty, try Basket Making, Wooden Signboard Carving or Batik. The Stylish Shopping events are quite popular, and a Welcome to Penang Expo is on the calendar for September 8, 2012.

Meeting People
Personally, hanging out poolside at my condo and around my kids' school has been the best way for me to meet people. This year, I also plan to join the International Women's Association. Bowling, book clubs, wine dinners, and choir are just a few of their activities. If you're a foodie, Food Friends explores various epicurean delights around Penang.

Culture Shock: Buying Chicken

To Market, to Market to buy a fat hen

I wonder if Malaysians come to America and think, "Is this it? Is this is the only way to buy chicken?" Like the vast majority of carniverous Americans, I would just go to the grocery store and buy neatly packaged chicken out of the refrigerated case. Who knew that this simple task would have so many variations when I moved over here?

Super Chicken!
No, it's not the latest Marvel Comics hero. Super Chicken is the term for what Americans think of as Whole Chicken. A Standard Chicken, however, means with the head and feet still attached.

Chicken Feet
Succulent chicken feet are a Chinese delicacy. In the same way that you may opt for just drumsticks, you can get just feet here. In the mid-80's, my parents in America tried to start a business exporting discarded chicken feet from the U.S. to Hong Kong. Tyson Chicken informed them that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration did not permit chicken feet for human consumption, thus thwarting their plans. Then, Wal-Mart successfully lobbied the FDA to change the rule so that they could export chicken feet to their stores in China. True story.

Wrapped in plastic on a Styrofoam tray
Yup, you can go to the grocery store in Malaysia and buy chicken this way, too. For the most part, this is my default method. But the inventory is small, and sometimes all that's on the shelf is drummettes or wings. Another time, my car smelled of Death when I got home, and the odor was definitely coming off the chicken despite the fact that the expiration date hadn't hit.

Sometimes, I'll get lucky and tongs are available for handling the chicken.

Buy it in bulk
At Tesco Hypermart, carts in the middle of the aisle will be piled high with chicken. On the day I took this picture, ice was layered between the pieces. Most times, however, a only the pieces on the bottom are being chilled with the upper 12 inches of the pile just exposed to room temperature. In this situation, I'll grab the pieces directly off the ice. If you think Jenga is hard, try dislodging slippery, raw chicken from the foundation of a tall poultry tower without causing the whole thing to tumble down. Just scoop it up, dump it in a plastic bag, and bring it over to the Weigh Station for the price sticker. Do not dare go to the Checkout without stopping at the Weigh Station first. Hint: Dig the hand sanitizer out of your purse before your hands are covered with raw chicken juice. I learned this one the hard way.


At the Wet Market (top picture)
The Wet Market supposedly has the freshest chickens. It's also the place with the most abundant supply and with the most customers. The chicken is slaughtered and plucked that morning, then brought to the market. Have I mentioned that the market is open air and unairconditioned? The chickens are laid out on tile counters, typically without the benefit of ice or refrigeration.

I must confess that I waited until a good friend had purchased chicken here for weeks without falling ill before I was willing to give this a try. When I did, my friend in Singapore commented that I had really embraced SE Asian life. I only buy chickens here if I can arrive early in the morning before they've sat out in the heat for too long.

The chicken stall at the Wet Market is similar to a butcher shop. You tell the vendor which pieces you want, and he'll cut it up for you. You get the discarded bits in the bag, too, because they weigh the entire chicken before taking a knife to it.

Freshly Slaughtered
Some markets bring the chickens in alive and then slaughter them on site. Now that's fresh! The only way to get your poultry fresher is the way my mom did it as a kid. Go into the yard and do it yourself right before cooking.

My local market doesn't slaughter chickens there, so I was naive and unsuspecting when I was at another market and wandered into a room labeled "Chicken." I must not have noticed the clucking noises or else I would have anticipated what I would witness. I've always imagined chicken slaughtering as either the complex machine in Chicken Run or else with a butcher knife raised high in the air before coming down on the chicken's neck laid upon a chopping block. Not in Malaysia.

Since the majority of the population is Muslim, chicken must be killed following Halal protocol. Halal is the dietary rules of Islam, similar to Judaism's prescription of Kosher rules. [If you're the squeamish type, stop reading!] When I walked in, two people were holding the live chicken in mid-air and one of them was holding the knife. With the both the slaughterer and the chicken's head pointing towards Mecca, the long blade was drawn across its neck, slicing through the jugular vein and windpipe but not the spinal column. During this process, they murmur a prayer to Allah. Some of my devout Christian friends wonder if it's permissable for them to consume halal chicken since it's been killed in Allah's name. Causing minimal pain to the animal is imperative. The chicken is then drained off all blood before butchering. I did not buy chicken this day.


As long as I'm here, I'll continue trying out the various ways to obtain chicken. But when I return to America with its sanitary chicken supply far divorced from the reality of slaughter, I'll be as happy as a rooster in a hen house.

Culture Shock: Buying Eggs

A Variety of Unrefrigerated Eggs at the Wet Market

When you move halfway around the world, you expect things to be different. You probably even look forward to the differences because they add to the adventure of living in a new country. It would be boring if everything was exactly the same as home. So, I was surprised that one of my first big culture shock issues came from eggs — yes, eggs. The first week after we arrived, I was buying groceries at Tesco (similar to Wal-Mart) and had eggs on my list. I couldn't find them anywhere in the dairy cooler section where they'd be in an American grocery store. They weren't with the chilled meat. They were just sitting out on an unrefrigerated shelf. Surely this couldn't be right.

I'm the kind of gal who's hyper vigilant about food safety. At least, I used to be before I moved here. If I was serving a mayo-based dip at a party, I'd look at my clock when I set it out on the table and then replace it with a new serving two hours later. Because that's what all the American food safety rules told me to do.

Now, I know that European countries don't refrigerate eggs. They have no problem leaving them out on the countertop. But this is hot-as-an-oven Malaysia, not the cool environ of Europe Even the outdoor markets sell their eggs at room temperature (88° F). If the very long discussion thread on Chowhound.com is any indication, I'm not the only one who wonders about this. Would the eggs be okay here?

Baking is one of my favorite hobbies, so giving up eggs is out of the question. Plus, it'd be really hard to avoid when eating out. I guess I had to bite the bullet and start using unrefrigerated eggs. I did eventually find refrigerated, pasteurized eggs at Cold Storage, the fancy expat grocery store, and I make sure I use these for all my raw egg recipes like ice cream. But I'll go ahead and use the room temp ones if I'm planning on cooking them.

Unlike in America, I can also find everything from Grade A down to Grade F eggs here. I splurge and buy the Grade A ones.

With Easter rolling around, I was faced with a new challenge — finding white eggs for us to dye. Every single chicken egg I've seen here is brown. My friend says she searched all over last year and never found white ones. So, I headed to the local wet market to see what I could find. The variety is amazing. They are sold in bulk. Just grab a basket and start selecting how ever many eggs you want.

What type of bird did you want the egg to plop out of? Chicken, duck or quail?

Teeny Tiny Quail Eggs about as big as my thumb

Salted Eggs

I had to ask the vendor what the black eggs were. They're salted eggs. Ideally, they should be duck eggs, but chicken can be used, too. Raw eggs are cured in either a supersaturated salty liquid brine or packed in a salted charcoal clay. Ah, that's why they're black. After you buy them, you rinse it off and boil it. The salt permeates the entire egg and gives the yolk a deep, orange-red hue. It's a popular condiment cut into wedges in the local rice porridge.

Century Eggs

I didn't have to ask about Century Eggs because a) they were clearly labeled, and b) my parents ate them when I was growing up. Personally, they never appealed to me as a kid, and I haven't worked up the motivation to try them as an adult. These eggs are preserved by being covered in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, lime (as in calcium oxide, not the fruit) and rice hulls for several weeks. The ones in the picture are advertised as lead-free. The other ones (leaded, I guess) looked like they were covered in a fine, brown mulch. Something about the clay, ash, and lime has always turned me off. Plus, when you crack them open, the white has transformed into a jelly the brown color of strong tea, and the yolk is black. I am too cheap to buy one and open it up to take a picture for this blog.

Score! I found white eggs! At least, they were mostly white. I definitely had to scrub some of the soiled bits off when I got them home. Some eggs were a grayish, almost translucent color, and others were a lovely shade of pale blue. I put them in the basket and handed them to the Egg Lady. She wrapped them up in newspaper, plunked them in a plastic grocery bag and handed it back to me. Our egg dying project worked out beautifully.