Malaysia 2022/23 - #8 - Jonker Market Foodie Post - AND Our Luck Runs Out

 It's Christmas Day in Melaka, Malaysia. A Sunday. The last of three days each weekend that the Jonker Street Night Market is open. Started in 2010, it transforms one of the main streets of Melaka's Chinatown into a rousing market. After our failed attempt as finding a street market in the Portuguese Settlement and navigating a SUPER MAJOR tourist attraction on Christmas Eve, why wouldn't we go for AN EVEN MORE SUPER MAJOR tourist attraction on Christmas Day. 

I will give myself some credit for having at least anticipated that this might be a pretty crowded time to be in this center of Melaka tourism. I had planned to leave our apartment on the early side to be at the market just as it was opening up. However, I have not accounted for the VAST number of tourists that pour into this area. The guides we read before our trip, said this old town area was packed on weekends but not during the week. However, I think all those bets are off when it comes to a holiday time like now. Even though this part of the world is not very Christian (and I am speaking of all of Southeast and East Asia), this is still the time that most countries close schools and have a winter holiday. The apartment complex we are staying at is totally inundated with massive families coming from various parts of the world. 

So it was that it took a good 45 minutes before we could get a Grab to come get us. Then it took another 45 minutes to get to the center of Old Town to start the walk. As a result instead of reaching the market before 6pm when it started, we were there at 7pm when it was in full mass mode. I hate crowds and have a history of bailing out when encountering overwhelming masses of humanity. But I am working on overcoming these and other behavior patterns. So after a brief hissy fit, we plunged in.

(Note on Photo/Video quality - My focus was on the eating experience. I limited myself to using my phone. Often times, I was taking pictures with one hand while trying to eat or purchase something with the other. So no claims of photographic quality are made for this post.)

Prepare to meet your doom de-I

 Masses of Humanity

Hey wait! That's from Christmas Eve in Portuguese Settlement! 

There, this kind of masses of humanity

 First dish of the evening. Quails eggs on skewers.

 

They are cooked takoyaki pans (cast iron pans with a set of semi-circular indentations. The eggs are crispy on the bottom and soft on the top. You can get a variety of sauces on them.

The stands selling them frequently are selling grilled sausages and chicken on a stick

Next were various fried things

There were potato spiral cooked on a stick and fried. Individual pieces fried. And all kinds of animal parts friend. I went for the Salted Egg Chicken Skin (there was a Salted Egg Fish Skin too that I almost tried). These were just okay. The potatoes were a bit soggy. We should have gotten mayo with them. The chicken skin was weird. I have seen many dished with 'salted egg' flavoring and this was the first I'd tried. I thought they would be like super gribbnes. But they were sweet tasting and there mostly breading.

The next was my favorite of the evening. Oysters and Scallops grilled on their shells.

I should have just stayed her and spent all my money. They were that good. There was some kind of ginger, garlic, SE Asian flavored sauce on them that enhanced the flavor and didn't over power them.

Dragon Beard Candy

I didn't actually eat these but was fascinated by the production process. I looked it up online and it wasn't really clear. One makes a dough out of cooked down and cooled sugar or corn syrup and then you start shaping, pulling, and separating it (tossing with glutinous flower to keep the strands separated) like you were making hand pulled noodles until you have a mass of strands.

You can see the end result better here.

Then they wrap pieces of it around either crushed peanuts or sesame seeds

Tell me you don't want a Waffle Dog

This caught our eye

It is essentially deep fried corn kernels on a stick

Wife was wondering "Who took the time to put all those kernels on the skewers?"

Wife wanted to try these.

The key ingredient is a pineapple jam that is long-cooked with nothing but the pineapple itself. 

There are many versions with thicker crusts or encased. They use a shortbread type dough

 On to Dim Sum!

You picked your own. These were basically chicken and pork shu mai.

 My haul

By this point, I was getting really full. There were other things I wanted to try but I decided to opt for restraining in the name of feeling good.

Which is too bad because I then came upon...

Oh blessed lord of cephalopod surely I have come to the mother lode.

Squid, cuttlefish, octopus - all for the grilling

 After I had eaten my fill, it was time for Wife to indulge in photographic pursuit. Here are a couple of ambiance shots.

  It was a good evening. We'd been on our feet for a couple of hours. It was time to get a Grab and get home. Hmm, do you think on this Christmas night when the entire area was a mass of people that we might have a problem? We did. We waited again for a half an hour without getting any takers on coming to pick us up. I suggested that we walk out of this most crowded area to see if the traffic would clear up and we could maybe get someone to pick us up. I plugged in the direction of our apartment and we started walking.

I now realized that we were not in one small area that was awash with people, put were in a much larger area awash with people. We walked for about 15 minutes and finally got out of the tourist area. Here was a McDonald's, a big one. I tried again to raise a Grab with no success. But the app told me the best pickup spot was the entrance to a major mall very close by. I saw the mass of humanity waiting at the entrance/exit to be picked up and realized that our chances were slim to none. 

I had noticed when I plugged in our destination into Google Maps that we were only a little over a mile and a half from our apartment. It seems a lot longer when driving through the traffic. And when you drive, it is not a straight shot because of all the one-way roads. Wife and I decided we might as well walk back. So we did. It was flat and was pretty much a straight shot on a major road. The temperature was nice. If we hadn't already been on our feet for hours, it would have been a pleasant walk. As it was we were pretty exhausted when we got back to the apartment.