Kuala Lumpur Chinatown

Lottery tickets

You see lots of street vendors around Bangkok selling lottery tickets.  Here's some being sold in Chinatown.  

Chinatown market

Some additional pictures of markets in Chinatown

Chinatown in general

Just some additional pictures from around Chinatown.  Famous herb and medicine shops!  Fancy telephone booths! 

Pork - it's what's for lunch

We found the best pork restaurant we've ever been to in Chinatown.  Although, to be frank (hah!), this was the only pork restaurant we've ever been to.

And we're using our own terms when we say pork restaurant - I don't think that's how they advertised themselves, but it seemed that they only served pork there.  And wow, the pork.

Picture one - pork - let them show you the ways.  Picture two - just some of what we ate - in soup, in sauce, alone.  Innards, meaty bits, skin - wow.  The one that particularly sticks in my head to this day - the crispy skin.  In the States you can get pork rinds, but imagine sliced roasted pork, with a little layer of pork fat and then crispy skin on the outside.  It's enough to make a vegetarian a carnivore, and enough to make a carnivore weep for joy.  Lord knows I did.  Picture three - the menu, read it and weep.

Ah, Chinatown.  Ah, Bangkok.  Ah, pork.  How I love thee.  Let me count the ways.

More Chinatown food

Here are more pictures of food we saw while in Chinatown.  Chinese cuisine, for those of you keeping score at home, is one of the greatest cuisines in the world, so when you serve it up in the heartland of another of the greatest cuisines in the world (Thai), wonderful things happen.  Eat your heart out Rachel Ray.

Anyhow, what you're seeing: a famous wonton noodle soup vendor (we could tell with how packed the place was - and yes, the ham on the guy's face was free -- it should also be noted that the more theatrical your food vendor is, the more famous they are - you can see the same thing in Seattle with the 'Fish!' people).  A lady chopping up fish in all sorts of ways, a lady with some wicked good pork soup going on, some awfully tasty looking grilled salted fish, and a very famous meat jerky shop.  Oh, if only we lived in a town with such great food.  Oh, wait, we do.

I accept your envy by proxy, thanks for sending it along.

Fin.

Shark fin, that is.  If you haven't eaten it, then eat it once, and enjoy yourself, and then research how they harvest it, and don't eat it again.  But give thanks to the Cantonese for figuring out how to make such a relatively inedible part of a relatively inedible fish so darn tasty.  Because love or hate the environmentalist considerations around it - shark fin is really darn tasty.

Here are some shark fin joints (and shark fins) around Chinatown.  Note the prices for the big ones (3500 baht is about $100 USD) - there's a reason you pay - it's tasty, the big ones are rare, and it's hard to tell the real fins from the fake ones, so you pay for quality and for famous restaurants.  The ads for "300" or "500" baht shark fin soup - not only is that a fair bit for a meal in this town, but you're going to get a little tiny bit of shark fin for that amount.  Yup, when it comes to shark fin, you get what you paid for.

Oh, and go eat some shark fin.

Fin.

Chinatown New Year's part 5

The temples were busy in Chinatown on Sunday as people paid their respects.  Here are some shots of less crowded times at some of the temples.

Chinatown New Year's part 4

We ventured down to Chinatown Monday night with our new Australian friends Ben and Megan to check out the festivities.  A couple other people had the same idea.  It was worth braving the crowds, however - we saw dragon dancers (Ben tried to feed one a fish ball), and lots of decorations.  We ate pepper crab and coconut ice cream.  And Ben got a light-up toy (he says it's for his work).  

What an excellent evening!

Chinatown New Year's part 3

Throughout Chinatown on Sunday folks were making offerings and paying respects.  Some people laid out various offerings of food and drink to the gods (note that some gods seem to like Beer Chang elephant beer).  Some people burned 'ghost money' for their ancestors.