Chowrasta Market for pickeled or dried fruit

This is a "must-visit" site for every Penang visitor; and everyone I know knows of Chowrasta Market.

You come here to buy all the Penang stuff that's essential tidbits and snacks, or essential for cooking.

That most renowned Penang item - nutmeg - is found here in every processed identity. See if you can spot them (click to enlarge photos).

That poly-sided building in the background though only about 20 years old is the TAR complex named after Malaysia's first PM Tenku Abdul Rahman. It is rundown and many of its shop tenants have left her for newer shopping malls. Unlike this old Chowrasta Market gran dame!

That's one of the two hawkers at the entrance of the little road beside the market selling fruits from China.






Loads of the "old style" sugar-pickled fruits in tubs. Nutmegs galore in the three photos below. The brown balls (first pic below) are the raw fruit; halves and quarters in middle pic; and the most popular tiny sliced size in the last pic below.





Left the market and walked the lane alongside. The side of the market building has grilled wall sections, essential for the escape of those pungent aromas and foul smells of a rural market.



And typical of markets everywhere, there are many roadside stalls and hawkers, ie every market is never big enough! Wife just bought a couple of those "angmoh loolian" (the round fruit in the blue basin on the right hand side in the centre pic below).





That's a nursery stall, and the owners were just keeping the potted plants back into a cage that's permanently ON the road in front of a shophouse!

The 50cc or 100cc motorbike (below) is ingeniously modified to function as a roadside stall besides being able to transport large and heavy stuff. It has another rachet-extensible "leg" on the other side.

That's (middle, below) the other China fruits hawker mentioned earlier.



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